people. The intent isn’t to be salesy, but there are a lot of principles that could be applied to a genuine approach with people and getting to know them, developing genuine trust. And there’s nothing like getting rejected time and time again, day after day. That just does something to you where you learn to handle rejection well. You don’t really get afraid of people saying no – it’s just a normal response that people give, and boom! on to the next one. When you do that literally all day, every day, for two years, it kind of morphs you into a different person. PPB PCNA recently bought ETS Express. How is the transition going? Bell I’ve always had a great respect for PCNA and how they run the company. It’s a great team to be part of. They saw what ETS does, the quality of our business and how we run things, and they made the decision to keep this as a standalone business within the portfolio. There are a lot of things that we continue to do as a family-run business from a culture standpoint. A lot of our employees thrive on it and love it, and Neil [Ringel, PCNA CEO] has done a great job recognizing that and just letting that be. It’s been super humbling to have peers openly express their respect and support for this transition. It’s nice and comforting to know that, as we segue and know that we have a job to do, we’re in sync. We’ve had that same cadence and relationship before, and it just continues in a good and uplifting, positive way. PPB What do you hope to keep exactly the same as it’s always been? What do you hope to change? Bell Our employees and our team here have developed this culture, and they respect and treat the business as if it’s their own. I want that to continue. They need to know that this has been a wonderful familyowned business for the last 35 years and they can still look at it that way. We need to get back to ETS Express and find more ways of reducing order friction – basically, making it a pleasure to do business as it relates to when you send in your order and how quickly you can get it. I was super excited when we were at NALC to hear about Dale’s [Denham, PPAI president and CEO] plans of helping make that type of technology more readily available to everybody. How do we get that information to the production team quicker so that the orders get done quicker? That’s what I’d like to see change and get back to that “ETS Express” name and get it done quicker than everybody else. Zoch is an associate editor at PPAI. | NOVEMBER 2022 | 57 THINK
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