Top 8 Ways to Onboard Rookies to the Building Products Industry

30 May

Does this remind you of your company’s onboarding process?
Dilbert comic linked from Dilbert.com

How do you get new people up to speed on this industry they’ve entered?

Last week, I talked about the aging workforce of the building products industry and the personality differences of the milennial generation that is the future of our business. Beyond those things, however, there’s another fundamental challenge: getting to know the ins and outs of this business.

They’re a generation that does less work with their hands than their parents or grandparents did so, overall, there’s going to be a fundamental challenge of understanding the tools and processes that go into building and remodeling. Then, there’s the dynamics of a a multi-channel business like ours: the manufacturer>distributor>dealer>pro>homeowner sales process isn’t the same as the manufacturer>retailer>consumer one most of them may have an understanding of.

With all that in mind, I came up with this list of the Top 8 Ways to Onboard Rookies to the Building Products Industry. This list may not apply for all businesses, but I’ve focused on manufacturers in creating it:

  1. Send them to the International Builders’ Show (IBS), and not just for the exhibits. Send them for 3-4 days and get them to attend a variety of seminars, like this one I attended on panelized homes, for example.
  2. Ensure they’re subscribed to a range of publications. By that, I mean they should be reading a dealer-focused one (ProSales or LBM Journal), as well as at least one publication each targeted to builders, remodelers, architects and consumers.
  3. Put them in the passenger seat with one of your territory sales reps. Let them see the dynamics of a sales rep’s daily interactions, and see what a sales rep does each day.
  4. Put them behind the counter. Whether you sell through a distributor or not, your product is almost certainly being sold behind the counter of a lumberyard, big box or hardware store. Get your rookie there for a day to see what that’s like.
  5. Go build a house with Habitat for Humanity. What better way to understand how a house gets built then to do it yourself?
  6. Let them own a topic. Milennials love to “own” something at work, so give them the chance to dive it and get smart about a topic your team might be lacking for knowledge in.
  7. Put them on a committee. If there’s an opportunity for them to interact with people outside their department via an internal committee, let them try that.
  8. Put them on the line. Rookies should know how your product is made – the best way to learn that is to go to the plant and even work somewhere on the line if possible.

While it probably isn’t possible to invest in all these things for each new employee, keep them in mind as you bring on people new to the building industry. Just being able to do a few of them might make the difference in your employee embracing this industry and becoming a future star, and that employee moving on to greener pastures.

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Gray Hairs Everywhere in the Building Products Industry!

24 May

Image linked from msnbc.com

Our industry is aging rapidly; how can we overcome this challenge?

Have you ever thought about how our industry is aging? Over the last several years, many people have been “right-sized” out of the building material industry, as well as made the decision to leave. Take a look at your organization including your outside sales forces, GMs, product managers, marketers; do you have a good mix of ages spread throughout? The sad fact is many younger people were forced out of our industry over the past five years, and now many organizations need to bring in younger people and train their future leaders.

So, if you believe we need new blood infused throughout our organizations to revitalize the future, what does that look like? What does that generation need and what motivates them to take the industry to the next level of success? And how does that group want and need to be managed to be successful? Let’s start with that.

First off, what the heck is a Millennial? It is an abbreviation for the Millennial Generation, a term used by demographers to describe a segment of the population born between 1980 and 2000 (approximately). Sometimes referred to in the media as “Generation Y”, Millennials are the children of the post-WWII baby boomer generation.

A few facts about this group:

  • There are about 76 million Millennials in the United States (based on research using the years 1978-2000).
  • Millennials are the last generation born in the 20th century.
  • 20% have at least one immigrant parent.
  • A number of studies, including one by the Center for American Progress, anticipate that Millennials will be the first American generation to do less well economically than their parents.
  • They’re the most-diverse generation of Americans yet, with over 40% being non-white. And their children will be even more diverse, as American being the “melting pot” of the world continues.

As a general rule, they have a “can-do” attitude about tasks at work and look for feedback about how they are doing frequently, even daily. They crave a variety of tasks and expect they will accomplish every one of them. Positive and confident, millennials are ready to take on the world. So, here are 8 tips for managing this diverse population:

  1. Provide structure. Goals are clearly stated and progress assessed. Define assignments and success factors.
  2. Provide leadership and guidance. Millennials want to look up to you, learn from you, and receive daily feedback from you. They want “in” on the whole picture and to know the scoop. Plan to spend a lot of time teaching and coaching and be aware of this commitment before you hire them.
  3. Encourage the Millennial’s self-assuredness, “can-do” attitude, and positive personal self-image. They are ready to take on the world. Their parents told them they can do it – they can. Encourage – don’t squash or contain them.
  4. Take advantage of their comfort with teams. They are used to working in groups and teams. This is different than earlier generations with a Lone Ranger mentality. Develop team environments and watch them thrive.
  5. Listen. Your millennial employees are used to loving parents who scheduled their lives around their children’s activities. Because of this child-centric upbringing, they need their opinions and ideas to be heard.
  6. Create a challenge. Boring is bad! They seek ever-changing tasks within their work. Don’t bore them, ignore them, or trivialize their contribution.
  7. Celebrate their multi-tasking ability. These employees can talk on the phone, send emails, text, answer a question . . . all at the same time. It’s multi-tasking to a whole new level.
  8. Provide a fun, employee-centered workplace. Millennials want to enjoy their work. They want to enjoy their workplace. They want to make friends in their workplace. Worry if your millennial employees aren’t laughing, going out with friends for lunch, and helping plan the next company event or committee.

By some recent counts, 75,000,000 Millennials are preparing to join or joining the workforce. Think about how they could impact your building products company and what fresh thinking they could bring to your organization. Get ready for them. They will impact our future in a positive way!

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The Housing Trend—Where Does Your Market Stand?

22 May

Image courtesy thedailygreen.com

Every month, we get the new housing stats. Stats about everything: starts, permits, vacancies, ownership levels, mortgage rates, foreclosures, and of course, inventory levels.

It seems there’s an entire segment of the industry, and especially the government, responsible for reporting all these statistics.  And those are the factual statistics. Just as often we hear ‘experts’ talking about all the trends and forecasting for the future. I heard someone talking about the expected housing starts in Canada for 2015. Really? Who cares? Aren’t we all trying to ensure that 2012 is actually the recovery year?

There are some interesting facts that we should pay attention to. The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index (HOI) seems like a reasonable indicator to how your market is doing. According to the HOI, nationwide housing affordability is at a record high. But tight lending conditions continue to create a significant roadblock for many homebuyers.

  • 77.5 percent of all new and existing homes sold in this year’s first quarter were affordable to families earning the national median income of $65,000.  This beats the previous record set in the final quarter of 2011, when 75.9 percent of homes sold were affordable to median-income earners.

“Homes in this year’s first quarter were more affordable than they have been at any time in more than 20 years, yet many potential sales are not happening because of overly tight lending conditions that are keeping hardworking families from obtaining a suitable mortgage,” said Barry Rutenberg, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Gainesville, Fla. “Without this significant hurdle, the housing and economic recovery could be proceeding at a much stronger pace.”

The most affordable major housing market was Indianapolis-Carmel, Ind., where 95.8 percent of homes sold during the period were affordable to households earning the area’s median family income of $66,900.

Also ranking among the most affordable major housing markets were:

  • Dayton, Ohio
  • Lakeland-Winter Haven, Fla.
  • Modesto, Calif.
  • Grand Rapids, Mich.
  • Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y

Among smaller housing markets, Cumberland, Md.-W.Va. topped the affordability chart. There, 99 percent of homes sold during the first quarter were affordable to families earning the area’s median income of $53,000.

Other smaller housing markets at the top of the index include:

  • Fairbanks, Alaska
  • Wheeling, W.Va.
  • Kokomo, Ind.
  • Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, Iowa-Ill.

In New York-White Plains-Wayne, N.Y.-N.J., which retained the title of the least affordable major housing market for a 16th consecutive quarter, just 31.5 percent of homes sold in the first three months of this year were affordable to those earning the area’s median income of $68,200.

Other major metros at the bottom of the affordability chart included:

  • San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City, Calif.
  • Honolulu
  • Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, Calif.
  • Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, Calif.

Ocean City, N.J., was the least affordable smaller housing market on the list, with 45.9 percent of homes sold in the first quarter affordable to families earning the median income of $71,100.

Other small metros at the bottom of the list included

  • Santa Cruz-Watsonville, Calif.
  • San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, Calif.
  • Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-Goleta, Calif.
  • Laredo, Texas

So what does this mean to a building industry marketer? Focus on a few items that make sense.  This study looks at houses being built and their relative affordability in that specific market.  This tightly focused look at housing in a market is helpful.  Don’t get sidetracked on issues that you can’t impact or change.

Please visit www.nahb.org/hoi for tables, historic data and details.

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Which Presentation Tool is Right for You?

17 May

A Building Product Marketers’ Guide to PowerPoint, Keynote, and Prezi

[This is the first in a series of posts by guest-blogger Matt Hillman, ER Marketing's creative director.]

In the nonstop effort to organize our thoughts and get noticed during sales calls or pitch meetings, we have all turned to at least one of them: presentation programs. Not long ago, PowerPoint was the only show in town, and remains synonymous with the entire category. But now there are newer options, some that can truly dazzle—if not nauseate—your audience.

In the simplest of terms, they’re all pretty much the same—easy ways to present customized content through simple layouts using audio-visual technology. But that’s where the similarities end.

Each offers a laundry list of features and uses that can overwhelm the part-time presenter.

So how to you figure out what works best for you?

Consider two elements of your presentation:

  • How linear is the structure?
  • How dynamic is the material (and presenter)?

Then compare that to the following diagram.

©ER Marketing 2012 – please do not reuse without permission

Microsoft Powerpoint
office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint
The gold standard of presentation tools, PowerPoint is the go-to option for many businesses, well-suited to a variety of styles and situations.
Pros: Readily available; familiarity makes it easy to use; dependable option.
Cons: The all-too-common temptation to overload with info, turning a visual presentation into a printable document; tired graphics.

Apple Keynote
www.apple.com/iwork/keynote
Much more than “PowerPoint for Macs”, Keynote features a richer selection of templates and transitions, as well as dynamic animations, with a simple interface.
Pros: Simple interface; fresh graphics and animations; version available for iPad; opens and saves PowerPoint files; relatively inexpensive.
Cons: Mac platform; can feel counter-intuitive to a PowerPoint whiz.

Prezi
www.prezi.com
Gaining popularity dramatically since 2011, web-based Prezi is the hot option right now, offering a fresh format and fun zoom-and-pan navigation.
Pros: Web-based accessibility; great way to show high-level connections in complicated information; increases presenter “cool factor” significantly.
Cons: While simple, the interface takes time to learn; shift in thinking about content structure; transitions known to sicken some; no printouts; more difficult to edit which can cause a problem when multiple people are involved in creating a presentation.

Whiteboard
Call it whiteboard, dry-erase, presentation board or something else, the low-tech wall-mounted option still has its place in the presentation continuum.
Pros: 100% customizable; one of the easiest ways to lead and capture dialogue, discussions, and brainstorming.
Cons: Complete freedom puts more onus on presenter to stay on-topic; bad handwriting is a deal-breaker; no printouts.

So which is the “right choice”? That’s not a simple question to answer. Ultimately that depends on the presenter, the content, and the audience.

Watch for a series of posts where I’ll touch on the best ways to utilize each of these tools—simple DOs and DON’Ts to make the most of the new & hot as well as the tried & true.

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Where does Innovation come from for Building Product Industry Marketers?

15 May

Linked from InnovationPOV.com

How can you drive creative thinking, which leads to innovation, in your organization?

As building product marketers, most of us are hard-core product marketers that have seen flashes of innovation over the years either in products, service offerings or unique marketing programs. But, how do you translate innovation and innovative thinking into everything?

First off, creative thinking drives innovation, but at this point, it’s important to define creativity. According to Dictionary.com, it’s “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.” According to a study by Adobe, a vast majority of people around the world know creativity is crucial to economic expansion, the development of society, and their personal growth. Yet, only 1 in 4 actually feel they are living up to their creative potential. What’s the cause of this “creativity gap”? Let’s explore the key findings.

  1. Creativity is important: 80% of the people surveyed believe creativity is key to economic growth and 64% believe it is valuable to society. And 75% feel that being creative enables them to make a difference in their own lives, while another two-third believe it helps them make a difference in the lives of others. In a world in which innovation drives the economy and in which more people than ever have the opportunity to be creative, this is not surprising. And it’s good news. But here’s the rub.
  2. Creativity is not happening as often as it could or should: While 80% of respondents felt we all have the potential to be creative, they also stated that they spend only a third of their time being creative and only 25% felt they were living up to their creative potential. So what are the inhibitors to creativity?
  3. Organizational behavior is one key constraint: 2 institutions, schools and businesses, both have a tendency to inhibit creativity. Almost 60% felt creativity was stifled in our educational systems. And while a slight majority of people felt companies were demanding more creativity, 75% felt pressure to be productive was limiting creative potential in the workplace.
  4. Daily pressures and habits are the other limiting factor – by this I mean a lack of time and money. 1 contributing factor to lack of “creative” time is the increase in the amount of time we spend online. So what can be done?
  5. Provide the time, training, tools, and environment to enable creativity: these were the items the study found as most helpful towards increasing creativity. For those of us in leadership roles at business, if we truly demand creativity, we must empower our people to be creative by ensuring they have the means and permission to actually do so.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we, as individuals, must not use the limits of organizations as an excuse to not be creative. It is up to each of us to get inspired, make the time, equip ourselves with the means and provide an environment to allow our creativity to flourish. It’s crucial to our own well being and the well being of the building materials industry in the next decade. Creativity that leads to innovation will be what creates the new norm for our industry and maybe help us all stop talking about the “old days” before the recession.

Further Reading

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How can Building Product Marketers create their own “World-Wide Rave?”

11 May

Image linked from CalTech.edu

6 Core Rules to help you get people talking about your ideas from David Meerman Scott.

I read a book a few years back and thought the ideas were powerful enough to pick it up and review again. The book is World Wide RAVE by David Meerman Scott. The basic idea behind the book is to create triggers that get millions of people to spread your ideas and share your stories. In the world of building product marketing, we know how important relationships are, and years ago we called this “word of mouth” marketing. With technology, those basic ideas can be infused with steroids and put into overdrive. It may sound obvious but, in order for people to share your ideas and stories on the web, you must make something worth sharing.

Basically, Meerman contends there are 6 core rules:

  1. Nobody cares about your products (except you). Yes, sad but true. People care about themselves and ways to solve their problems.
  2. No coercion required. You don’t have to trick people to engage with free or % off deals, engage them with relevant content – no coercion required.
  3. Lose control. You have to be willing to lose control of your messages for this concept to even have a chance of success.
  4. Put down roots. It’s simple and the same here as in the off-line world. If you want to receive a letter, you need to send one to someone first. If you want your ideas to spread, you need to be involved in online communities of people who actively share.
  5. Create triggers that encourage people to share. Your content needs to solve someone’s problem, be interesting, or funny, or even outrageous to gain traction.
  6. Point the world to your virtual doorstep. Engaging content drives better search results.

Simple right? And, if it is, why are so many organizations still not doing this? Well, Scott offers up 26 different challenges to us to get past the logjam; some of my favorites:

  1. You have to answer the questions—what is interesting about you and your organization? Why do people like to do business with you? How are you and your organization unique?
  2. Never talk about your products and services again. Focus on your buyer personae and how you can solve problems for them.
  3. How can you push the envelope of what is tried and true in your market? What can you talk about that others are too scared to touch?
  4. Every company has something fascinating or unique that can be turned into a video that people want to share.
  5. What proprietary data and metrics do you have that would be valuable to others? Publish them.
  6. Think about how your organization can do work with bloggers or other influential online contributors such as podcasters and video bloggers. Include them in your press conferences, schedule interviews with them along with any traditional media journalists or include them in your product tests.

Just think about the last time you were at the stadium watching your favorite sports team – one person stood up and started the wave and it quickly spread to thousands. Get out there and create your “rave.”

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Theodore Roosevelt & the Building Products Industry – Great Quotes Series

8 May

Image source:Wikipedia

What can one of the 4 Mount Rushmore presidents teach us about marketing?

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

- Theodore Roosevelt

We’re all guilty of it as building product industry marketers. I’ve heard it countless times myself. I’m talking about making excuses for why we can’t do something.

We have a small staff. We can’t get that information. We have a limited budget. Our budget got reduced by 20%. The head of sales won’t work with us. Those are the kinds of statements I thought of when I read this quote from President Theodore Roosevelt. And I don’t think he was saying to be complacent or accept the status quo; that was never an option for TR and it shouldn’t be one for you, the building product marketer. So what can we do, as marketers?

  • Don’t spend time on it if it’s not aligned with the business goals: quite often, an organization has a long-standing commitment to something that doesn’t make sense with the business today. It might be a tradeshow that used to be the industry event, a publication that you’re always advertised in or a customer event you’ve always supported. There should be no sacred cows in your marketing.
  • Make sure you’re collecting usable data: for too long, we had to frequently justify mass media as being solely a branding effort. After all, how could we tie it directly to results? Now, with the ability to create and track unique URLs, use tracking phone numbers and create QR codes, it’s possible to tie results back to every single piece of communication possible. Start doing that, and it becomes a lot easier to decide where your dollars should best be spent – no more sacred cows in the media plan either.
  • Automate It: technology has made it easier for us to automate so many things that used to require time from internal staff. Want to trigger reminder campaigns? Tie your sales data into your email marketing platform, set the business rules and let the system run. Tired of creating custom spreadsheets with pivot tables and other data visualizations? Look at marketing automation/analytics platforms, of which there are many.
  • Bring in strategic partners: we’re all being asked to do more with less, but we can’t all be experts at everything. Maybe you can’t afford a full-time website designer and developer, but hiring a website development firm to build a site with a content management system (CMS) that your staff can use to update the site might be just the ticket.

It’s easy to say something can’t be done, but it’s an incredible experience to overcome all those obstacles and achieve the goals in place for the business. I think that’s what TR had in mind, and the organization he was leading had more problems than we’ve ever had to consider, as marketers.

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The Shift in Technology Spending for Building Product Marketers

4 May

Dollars are being spent by the CMO, instead of the CIO – why?

Every day we are faced with more technology in marketing. Websites, text messaging, mobile apps, phone tracking, analytics dashboards, database marketing and the list goes on.  It seems everything we do as building material marketers involves some technology.

So who spends all this money on technology? It used to be the CIO spent money on workstations and mainframes and big IT networks.  But the technology we use and how we use it has changed.

In a study earlier this year, Gartner predicts that, by 2017, the CMO will be spending more on IT than the CIO.  Why do they predict this?

  • Technology is at the heart of marketing – and adoption is well underway
  • Marketing is already a major buyer & influencer of technology
  • Marketing is becoming more strategic & expanding its responsibilities
  • Marketing controls the budget for a third to a half of marketing software

So how does this compare to your organization? Are you (the marketer) working to align with your IT department?

Information Week recently did an article with a CIO survey and Fifteen New Rules for IT to Live by—one of those is to make the CMO the CIO’s new best friend.

IT leaders have a ways to go to win over their marketing peers: 27% say their relationship with the marketing team is poor or neutral, compared with 22% who say that about their relationship with the finance team, and 15% who say that about operations/manufacturing.

Data-driven marketing and social networking analytics are places where marketing and IT groups should have a natural bond, as well as in mobile apps and websites.

Bottom line—regardless of where you’re at in consumption of technology, as a building material marketer your role in the recommendation and purchase of your company’s technology will certainly increase. How prepared are you for the changing role?

Gartner study

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Are 20% of Building Product Customers Getting Left Behind?

1 May

Image Source: Monrovia Weekly

A recent Pew Study shows 1 in 5 adults don’t use the Internet.

20% of U.S. adults think the Internet isn’t relevant for them, the majority of whom are retirees.

For anyone with an aging parent, it probably isn’t all that surprising. Those raised to search through phone books to find businesses, who eagerly await printed catalogs to arrive in the mail, who keep their mobile phone turned off until they leave the house, who watch The Weather Channel to get their forecast—in short, the “Boomers” and older who represent nearly 40 million Americans—they have been much slower to adopt the Internet…or to “see the point” in it.

It would easy to dismiss this, noting that many of them are retired and don’t work in the building industry, except for one problem: this audience is a massive portion of the end-step of the building supply channel.

Boomers are the core of the aging-in-place population, a group with billions in purchasing power and growing need for products and services that will ease them through their senior years.

And what we’re hearing is: they don’t use the Internet.

What does this mean for us as building product marketers? Simply put, it means we need to make sure we talk to our audiences—all of them—where they really are and not where we think they should be, or where we’d like them to be, or where it would be convenient for them to be.

Fact is, in the current environment, it’s our inboxes and not our mailboxes that are jammed full of junk, much of which we barely skim over to determine if it’s worth reading at all. As a result, some of the “old school” tactics that have fallen out of favor in the digital age are perfectly positioned to reach the “old school” audience.

So as it turns out, those print ads, direct mail, printed catalogs, prominent Yellow Pages listings, door hangers, and all the other tactics that have been shunned as too old-fashioned to reach the tablet-enabled are exactly the way to reach the non-Internet crowd.

That’s not to say that email campaigns and banner ads and SEO aren’t important ways to deliver your message and reach your audiences. But more than ever, we need to remember that an audience exists who isn’t reached through the Internet that now dominates much of our lives.

When speaking to those who choose to live comfortably off-the-grid, the tried-and-true tactics are still the way to get noticed and make a connection.

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As the Tech Revolution Continues in the Building Products Industry, Don’t Forget…

26 Apr

Linked from freedesktopwallpaper.org

Every day, we’re all inundated with stories about this device or this website being another “revolution” in our everyday lives, and while most of that is hyperbole, we’ve truly seen some revolutions in the past 20 (and even last 10) years in technology. You might be reading this on an iPad at home, or on your Android device at the airport. Or maybe you went “old school” and you’re reading on a desktop computer! Marketers like us tend to be on the forefront of technology and can sometimes forget that the people we’re selling to don’t fit that same model.

ProSales magazine, one of two main trade publications for the LBM dealer audience, conducted research titled “Building Material Dealer Sources of Information Survey” last fall. The first question in this survey was, “Which of the following types of resources do you use regularly as part of your work-related reading/information-gathering?”

The top response, picked by 82% of respondents, was “Trade magazines specific to building material dealers.” Yes, those magazines we all get at the office, the same ones derided as old/traditional media.

The second response, chosen by 61% of respondents, was “Building product manufacturer sales representatives.” Yes, in 2011, people still count on a one-to-one conversation to get the information they need to run their businesses more effectively.

This survey was conducted by email, so you can likely assume the respondents would tend to be more engaged with technology than the typical building material dealer…so imagine what the numbers would look like if you could survey those typical dealers.

Similarly, we conducted research for a client last fall, also sent by email to building material dealers across the country. We asked what methods they’d prefer to be communicated with by wholesale distributors, and gave them the following options: direct mail, email, fax, text messaging, social media or phone. Respondents ranked those choices, and Email was the clear #1 choice, but do you know what #2 was? Faxing.

We know the building products industry isn’t known for being quick to adapt, but that result still surprised us. Remember, this was an emailed survey, so it’s very likely faxing might be almost as popular a choice among the total dealer audience.

Am I saying abandon your efforts with mobile apps, social media, BIM modeling and other technologies? Absolutely not…but don’t forget that a lot of business still gets done in this industry with the same methods we used before any of us even knew what a “smartphone” was. A lot of “social networking” still occurs the way it has for years – in a lumberyard, face to face.

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