[EVENTS] Why Trade Associations Matter: Inside VMA26 With Will Fediw (Podcast)

Lalo (00:06)
Welcome everyone. we have a new event that we are actually attending. It’s new to us, but it’s been around for a while. Cindy and I have the honor and the privilege of getting invited to Virginia Maritime Association’s annual conference.

normally known as VMA X, you know, in this case it’s twenty-six. VMA twenty-six coming up in October. We’ll talk a little bit about that in a little while, but I thought I’d bring in Cindy here and I just to talk a little bit about it and at the same time also bring in one of the folks from the VMA or Virginia Maritime Association, sorry, just to so we can talk a little bit about the event.

Talk a little bit about the association and what it means for Virginia and how maritime is is vital or crucial for that area as well. So, Cindy, thank you for joining me on this.

Cindy Allen – Trade Force Mult (01:03)
Good to good to see you, Lalo and good to have be on a podcast where it’s not just me talking. So it’s it’s really great to to have other

Lalo (01:09)
Yeah.

Cindy Allen – Trade Force Mult (01:11)
people to

join in the conversation.

Lalo (01:13)
Yeah, and then so but this one is also real cool, and we’ll talk a little bit about about that here in a little bit as well. But our our our guest is Will. Will and Will, I I I’m totally gonna mess this up, but is it Fidu? my god, okay.

Will Fediw (01:28)
You got it.

Lalo (01:32)
Will Fidu. So he he’s vice president of the association there and has a lot of different

tasks and things that he’s doing. amongst that he is running this event alongside another person who we’ve been coordinating with. But Will welcome to the podcast and thank you for for joining us, inviting us and all this good stuff. and everybody stick to the very end of the podcast because we do have a special offer for you all to get a discount to to attend. So I’m gonna make you all wait either that or fast forward, but don’t do that. Welcome, Will.

Will Fediw (02:09)
thank you so much for having me. It’s it’s a great treat. watching y’all’s podcast, you know, for quite some time and seeing you and Cindy it’s always a pleasure. So I’m excited to be here.

Cindy Allen – Trade Force Mult (02:20)
It’s good. It’s great to have you on, Will. Like I said, it’s I’m usually doing these by myself with Lalo behind the scenes, like making me sound really good

Will Fediw (02:29)
Yeah.

Cindy Allen – Trade Force Mult (02:29)
and and clipping out all of my mistakes. So it’s good to have you. And I have to say I lived in Virginia. I lived up in the in the DC area, so was on the Virginia side, but VMA is something that I’ve known about for quite some time.

When I was with C V P and and since then I know maritime industry in Virginia has a long rich history. So it’s really exciting that we get to go and and and meet everyone there and talk about our favorite things of trade.

Will Fediw (03:00)
hopefully for you all listening along, I promise you this isn’t just gonna be a sales pitch about Virginia and coming to our conference. I know Lalo and Cindy and I have talked about some really interesting ideas. And so my goal today also was to share with you kind of the importance of what it means to engage with your local trade association and your particular industry niche and to get the most ROI.

out of what you’re doing in the industry. So I’m excited for today’s conversation. Love talking about this kind of work and and hopefully it’s gonna be productive for for everyone listening.

Lalo (03:32)
Awesome. Well, you’ve said, I think when we first engaged, Will, we were talking about the actual the the association itself and also the the the event and how it’s grown significantly in the last I mean, even last couple two to three years that that it’s it’s becoming something more of a community. can you talk a little bit about that? I mean what what I mean we we know a lot, Cindy and I

Of course, we run around in the trade groups and associations. We feel depending on, actually, I shouldn’t say depending on, I think most of the conferences that we attend and the groups that we are go we go to feel a lot like family. You know, it’s just like, and not only that, but people who know you, you know, they know where you’re coming from and they know that.

You’re not going crazy because all these tarots and all this and that, right? You know, so how how is that like in in the maritime world? You know, is is it similar? Is it just as as as hectic as it is for for us in trade and and of course with the importance of the association itself?

Will Fediw (04:45)
Yeah, great question. And I would say first and foremost, I feel like anything that affects the the supply chain or trade industry is affecting the maritime industry because we definitely view them as as a little bit of of intertwined, you know, definitely when we look at supply chain and the movement of goods, especially in our economy where the 70% of the earth is water, you know, we know goods are going to be coming and going via ship and coming to ports all over the world. So tariffs have been obviously the conversation of the last year or two.

something new every day. So so not much to say there. but a little bit more about us. So so the Virginia Maritime Association, we are a hundred and six-year-old 501 C6 trade association here in the Commonwealth of Virginia. So statewide, with about 400 member companies across the entire maritime supply chain. And what that looks like for us is everything from ocean carriers and ports.

And terminals to the inland side of trucking and rail and warehousing and distribution centers, and then all the way through to either the importers and exporters themselves, manufacturers, and everybody in between. So when you think of freight forwarders, lawyers, bankers, anybody who would be involved in that maritime supply chain from dock to door, that is our membership. And we’ve really existed over a century.

to continue to protect and promote and encourage more commerce through Virginia’s maritime supply chain. We do that predominantly through advocacy at the state and federal level, so very active not only with Congress, but with our state General Assembly, as well as traditional Chamber of Commerce type activities like B2B networking, educational events, and the ability for member companies to come together to do business.

learn new things, support each other, and really benefit from being part of the the collective of an association. And our annual trade symposium came out of that’s what that’s our annual event that we’ve we’ve done for over 20 years alongside our annual maritime banquet, which is over a hundred years old. So a great annual event for our members to come together from around the world, really.

Cindy Allen – Trade Force Mult (07:01)
And I I would add, you know, I attribute a lot of my success and my career to being part of different trade associations. It really helped raise my profile, it helped with the networking,

of course. It helped me stay abreast of everything that’s happening in trade. And I have a group of very close friends that has transitioned from being business friends to being close personal friends now for 20 years or more. So

You know, those are the people that you call when you say, my gosh, what’s the latest

news release happening in in the trade world? You know, today it’s Canada putting putting

retaliatory tariffs on us for the the 50% tariffs. You know, those are the people that you commiserate with, but those are also the people you go and say, Hey, how are you handling this? What’s going on in your world? How can we make sure that this happens together? And then

that bleeding into the advocacy I think helps, you know, helps really propel changes. So associations like VMA is so critical for that, especially in that area.

Will Fediw (08:07)
Exactly. Yeah, and that’s one of the things we’ve noticed and you mentioned on is sometimes it’s that that peer-to-peer just engagement on hey, how are you handling situations? Especially when we think about our our shipper community. You know, I think a lot of times people might think these big name brand companies, they have tons of people working in their supply chain department. And as you well know, there might be one or two people. And so all that work, all that responsibility on a small team.

So when they get the ability to get together either in a committee meeting or some sort of social meeting and talk to a peer that’s at another company and say, how are you guys handling this? Or how are some of your best practices? So that level of collaboration in an environment where it ha really has nothing to do with competition is what really adds to that ROI for someone being involved in a trade association.

Lalo (09:01)
I think it’s also being a small company myself, and and w we we have limited resources, meaning people, you know, and and and abilities like that we are we don’t have like an in in-house attorney, for example, or you know, we don’t have that the the the luxury of having big staff like that. So as a small company, I also see that.

associations tend to help you because you kind of almost level set in that. You know, you’re you’re setting the benchmark as to how much is the least that anybody knows. And sometimes because you are in an association or group, I see that that helps companies, small companies like myself, be able to be get educated and understand things that maybe I might not have access to. I mean, is that

also something that you see in your membership. Do you like smaller companies, smaller shippers? I mean we’re talking about a big port there in Virginia.

Will Fediw (10:01)
Right, and and that’s a great point. And something that we’ve we’ve come to see, so I’ve been with this association since twenty eighteen. I came on initially to do their industry and government affairs work. my background, I’ve been in the maritime industry my whole career. So out of out of college, I joined the US Coast Guard, did a lot of regulatory compliance work on vessels and terminals, so everything regulatory and making sure things are safe and secure.

And then after that, I was able to transition into the oil and gas industry in the Gulf Coast, where I was working on export terminal development. So working for the government and then working for private sector industry, the ability to go to an association, which I would have never ever thought I’d work at an association, but being now in a position to work with both entities, where you’re working with state and local and federal government, and then you’re working with your industry and you’re bringing the two together.

to solve problems. So but but to your question about small and large companies, I think every company comes and they need different things from an association. And I’ll tell you three quick stories. when I talk to people about why they should join an association, one of the first things I talk about is you should join an association because you don’t know what you don’t know. Right. And I’ll give you a classic example. So we had a manufacturing company here in the maritime space, successful company.

Bootstrapped, you know, really well doing what they were doing with manufacturing components for vessels. But when they joined the association and we started to introduce them to new people and introduce them to the local economic development groups and the state economic development groups, we would have conversations like, hey, did you know about this incentive program? No, I didn’t know about that. Hey, did you know about these grant opportunities? No, I didn’t know about that. And so we were able to start connecting them with things that

were essentially right under their noses, but they didn’t know were there. And to be able to unleash, you know, grant funding and all kinds of incentive opportunities for their company. And they just didn’t know that stuff was out there. So being part of the association was one way to help them plug into that. The second is a lot of people join associations for for sales, right? They want to do business-to-business transactions. They want to get in there, they want to sell their product. So

We had a another situation where a very large utility company, which was a member of ours, was looking for a particular coding specialist. They had some infrastructure assets that were starting to wear. The coatings were wearing off. And they reached out to me and said, Hey, Will, is there anybody in the membership that specializes in these types of industrial coatings? Well, literally two weeks before, we had somebody who had joined the associations who was a it worked in coatings.

Right. And we were able to say, hey, actually, here’s this new company that’s joined. I think this is worth a conversation. Connected the two, signed a contract. So a little bit more of a unicorn story, but that that one company who had just joined for less than three weeks now had a contract with a major company doing exactly what they they specialized in. So there’s there’s the B2B sales part of it, right? Where an introduction can be very helpful. the final thing I say is when people join company or join associations.

Is for that advocacy piece. Now, here’s the differentiator, right? When you mention small and medium-sized companies, where to your point, they don’t have the budget or the staffing to have a full-time lobbyist or all these extra roles. So a small company can join an association and now lend their voice and get the benefit of collective advocacy, you know, working with elected officials and so forth. But what’s even more interesting is even large.

Multinational name brand companies see the benefit from joining as well. One of my favorite stories is a very large multinational name brand company that’s a member of ours. That naturally, when we begin to talk to them about being part of the association, they’re like, well, that sounds good, but you know, we’re very well known, we have a big presence, we have a team. That’s not really something we need to be involved in.

Okay, no problem. You know, we maintained a relationship with them over the years until one year in our General Assembly, which is our state government, there was some legislation that was proposed that was very unfriendly and targeted to this company. And it was going to impact a lot of other companies in that space, but they were essentially the target. And

When you’re the target of legislation, you need all the help you can get. So they had come to us and said, Hey, can you guys help us with this piece of legislation? So we were we were able to get involved. And given our reputation, given our long-standing relationship with the state government, we were able to work to ultimately get that bill killed. And when that happened, this company now you know these scales fell off their eyes and they saw, like, wow, maybe being involved in some of these.

these these state associations or trade associations is worth it even though we are a household name around the country. So whether it’s advocacy, whether it’s sales, whether it’s information, having that fractional staff support for an invet a fraction of an investment, and that’s what we like to say is if you’re thinking about joining association and you’re like, I don’t have the funds, or you’re thinking this is coming out of a discretionary budget.

Right. This is some sort of nonprofit donation. It’s really best to thinking this is a strategic investment because I know there’s a lot of associations out there you can join for a few hundred dollars, a few thousand dollars, you know, if you’re a small company, which might be a lot on a small balance sheet. But what you get out of that investment is just just pays for itself over and over down the road in in various ways. So as you

Cindy Allen – Trade Force Mult (16:09)
I think.

Will Fediw (16:10)
can tell, I’m I’m I’m an association fan.

Cindy Allen – Trade Force Mult (16:13)
I I think also from the advocacy perspective, sometimes companies don’t want their names out there in the news

Will Fediw (16:18)
A hundred percent.

Cindy Allen – Trade Force Mult (16:19)
as being for or oppose something. And that’s really where a lot of associations can come in and play the role of representing the entire industry without really calling out specific members and having that view overall of of looking at the overall industry instead of one particular company and how it’s

impact the whole industry, which is so important because many many in government, whether it be federal or state or local, don’t really sometimes take that strategic look and say, I didn’t think about how broad the impact of this proposed

change legislation policy was gonna have.

Will Fediw (17:02)
So, yeah, Cindy one of the things I love about that is one of the things I like the most in my role is the ability to educate our member companies on how to interact with our government officials and our electeds. So once a year we take a huge portion of our membership up to Richmond for what we call Maritime Day. And we break into teams and we go around and visit all kinds of legislators and talk about how the maritime and supply chain industry impacts our state, right?

And some sometimes people are so nervous to talk to an elected official. And so one of the things we really focus on is that they’re they’re people just like you and me. The majority of the of the time, if they’re they’re state or municipal level, they’re part-time. So they’re out, they live in our neighborhoods, they’re out in our community, they have jobs. And the majority of our elected officials are not in our industry.

Right. If if you really were to look at it, you could think of okay, like you might think of some names in your head of of where you are, or and you think of who who these people might actually know anything about supply chain or or maritime industry or logistics. And it’s not a lot, right? So one of the things we tell our members is is you are actually the subject matter expert when you walk into the room. You know more about the issues than they do. They know how to craft policy and come up with solutions.

But you are that trusted voice. So the ability to to be confident, engaging with your elected officials as the SME and saying, hey, we’re having these problems. This is what tariffs are doing. This is what this particular piece of regulation or legislation is doing. That’s good or bad for our industry, right? And to have those type of discussions. the other part that’s important about that is is coming armed with data to talk to the elected officials. And I call it our

Our who cares documents. So we have here in all of our state districts. So we have a 140 state districts here in Virginia, we have these data sheets that the the Port of Virginia, which is one of our partners, provides for us. And what’s so great about these data sheets is it shows per district the amount of cargo that comes from that area, the the amount of economic impact that comes from that area, the amount of

maritime or supply chain related companies in that area. And so even when we’re talking to an elected official that is, you know, in the Shenandoah Valley, right, or Southwest Virginia, and they’re thinking, well, well, why are we talking about maritime in our district? And it says because because the whole supply chain passes through your district and it’s all connected. You know, we like to say that that the port and vessels coming in and out, that’s either the beginning or the last step, right, of the whole supply chain.

The rest of it is happening inland, right? So once they see the data, once they see how much it impacts their district, it’s having those aha moments, right? And the the last thing I’ll mention that we like to do to really drive these points home is to not only go up to these fly-in visits on the Hill, you know, whether that’s with Congress or or in the state government, but also taking our elected officials out on tours.

So throughout the summer, typically, and I just had a few this week, our our pilot association is gracious enough to let us use one of their pilot vessels, and we will put a bunch of elected officials on a pilot boat and we’ll go around our entire harbor for about an hour and a half and have these amazing show and tell opportunities that, hey, look at these container terminals. This is what they’re doing. Look at these bulk export and import terminals, look at this cruise ship terminal, look at these shipyards.

This is our maritime industry. This is what it means from an economic impact point of view. This is what it means for a workforce. And letting them have that ability, especially if you pull them up real close to an ultra-large container vessel, and they get to see like this is this is how the world works. This is how we get our goods in the store, right? It creates this new narrative and this perspective for them to understand now when they’re lawmaking.

what the impacts are and how big the maritime and supply chain industry is to our community.

Lalo (21:25)
Great, great. So let’s go. Will, I mean, let’s now that we understand a little bit about the association and the importance of being part of any association, in this case Virgin VMA, let’s talk a little bit more then and and just kind of get to know a little bit more about the as the conference that’s coming up also in October. we are looking at

October thirteenth through the fifteenth in Norfolk, Virginia. And that will take place at the Hilton. Is that correct?

Will Fediw (22:02)
Yep, the Hilton Maine in downtown Norfolk.

Lalo (22:05)
it is a three day event, although the first day is a golf tournament or I don’t know if it’s a tournament, but it’s a golf event. And then there’s

Will Fediw (22:11)
Mm-hmm.

Lalo (22:12)
there’s also a networking session in the evening. can we start talking a little bit more about that? Because I I know the your agenda is

Sh it’s full of really interesting people, including Cindy is doing one of the luncheons. And also, I did see Laura DiBella as well. She’s chairperson or I I I hate to call her chairman because that’s her official title, but she’s a chairwoman, you know, or chairperson of the FMC. But she’s in other words, she’s a big cheese over at FMC, which is really good win for you all to have her speaking. But can we talk a little bit more about that?

Will Fediw (22:50)
Sure,

absolutely. so a little bit about our conference. So, our first you gotta start with our banquet. So, 106 years ago, we started our annual maritime banquet, and it was really meant for an opportunity for regional leadership and industry to come together and celebrate the the maritime economy in Virginia. So that has now grown in its hundred and sixth year to nearly a thousand people. And over the years, over 20 years ago.

We started having a little bit of a luncheon with some content, you know, married up to the banquet so that folks had some more to do when they came in town for the banquet. That grew from a luncheon with a speaker to half a day of programming, full day of programming, day and a half, to now we we’ve hit a sweet spot of two full days of programming. And as you mentioned, a full Tuesday of lots of networking events and social events to kind of kick everything off. So what I really like about our conference.

is one, it’s grown from a a regional conference that was just about Virginia or the Mid Atlantic region, to a truly national and international level conference. So we have speakers and attendees that now come from around the world, various ports in Europe and in Asia and Africa coming, as well as supply chain and maritime professionals and speakers from all around the country. You know, so so the first thing I will say for listeners, this is not a Virginia thing.

Just because you hear Virginia in the title and it’s hosted in Virginia, this is an international level event. and you can see that if you look at our speaker list. So if you go to VMASymposium.com, you’ll be able to check that out. The another interesting thing about this is since it’s put on by trade association, and we’re not a for-profit media group, which means we while we you know seek to obviously make

a good ROI on our investments and it is part of our annual budget as an association. It’s not something that’s going to cost you, you know, two, three, four, five, six thousand dollars when you know you are familiar with some of those other conferences, that that is what you’re gonna pay, right? the second piece of that is I like to call it we have a for us by us planning committee. So our planning committee and its chairs are made up of all industry volunteers. So there’s there’s

truckers and there’s folks working at port terminals and and ocean lines and you know all kinds of different people in the trade, importers and exporters. And they are the ones deciding what should we talk about? What are the hot topics? Who are the speakers and the subject matter experts we need to bring in? Because they’re in the industry day in and day out. And so they are they have their finger on the pulse of what’s happening. So they’re then saying like we need to talk about this.

So let’s bring in these experts. And we’re excited, as you mentioned, our speaker list. We have a lot of top-tier, not only government government officials coming in, but we have carrier CEOs. We have senior executives from all across the industry coming to be part of this event to lend that expertise, right? And as you mentioned, it’s grown year over year. Last year we had over 650 executives in the maritime and supply chain space. Over a hundred of those were shippers, so importers and exporters.

and we’re we just continue to see that that grow. So I I’d like to say if there’s anybody, I know there’s a lot of conferences that go in the fall, and Cindy and you and Lalo know that when you are especially a small company and you have finite time and you have finite resources to spend, you might be sitting there with your fist full of dollars, saying, Well, which which one of these conferences I should should go to? You know, I would definitely encourage you to go look at all the agendas, see what makes sense for your business.

But we would definitely love to host you this fall in Norfolk.

Lalo (26:46)
That’s

great. I I did see that also I wanna add this because we do have our audience being a trade audience. I do wanna also add that it there is also a crossover in trade. I mean they have Eugene over from AAEI and Pete Mento. And of course, like I said, we they do have also Cindy speaking.

and Will you did say that earlier how you you’re maritime, but it crosses over everything, you know, without without without maritime or transportation, you don’t have trade. And then that affects the anything of tariffs and all that kind of good stuff affects the whole industry. So so there’s a big crossover there as well. So but anyway,

I don’t know if you have any last takeaways or inf or anything, maybe even you, Cindy, before we close this out.

Will Fediw (27:39)
Yeah, the only thing I’d offer real quick is as a special thank you to your listeners. if you if you’d like to attend our conference this fall, October 13th through 15, if you use the code VMA26Trade, so VMA26Trade, you can get a hundred dollars off registration just for being a listener to the Simply Trade podcast, and you’ll be able to get that discount. And we hope to see you this fall. Like I said, and you really hit it on the head, Lalo. It’s

It’s the maritime industry wouldn’t exist without trade and trade wouldn’t exist without the maritime industry. So it’s really about the buying and selling and the movement of goods. And that’s the part you know we play is that movement. So all related and hopefully your listeners will see a lot of the same crossover and topics of interest.

Cindy Allen – Trade Force Mult (28:26)
I’m really looking forward to attending and speaking at the luncheon on a panel. So looking forward to it.

Will Fediw (28:34)
Very good. Well, it’s been a it’s gonna been a great pleasure to be part of the Simply Trade podcast. I’m looking forward to seeing you all. And for everyone listening, like I said, the big takeaway, if you’re not part of your local or national trade association based on your specific niche in the industry or your chamber of commerce, look into it. It’s worth your investment. it’s gonna do wonders for your business if you really lean in and and take advantage of it.

Lalo (28:59)
Thank you. Thank you, Cindy. Thank you, Will.