[WRE UPDATE | BUSINESS]


AWRF SPRING – GENERAL MEETING


SCOTTSDALE BY: BOB GLENN, EDITOR THE ASSOCIATED WIRE ROPE


FABRICATORS (AWRF) held their Spring General Meeting in Scottsdale, AZ on April 22-25 this year. Te warm desert weather was a welcome respite from the long and late winter many endured, and the venue provided ample opportunities for the nearly 400 attendees to relax and network. In addition to spectacular golf options, Scottsdale afforded ample outdoor recreation and outstanding dining options both onsite and off. Te well-attended program included a strong slate


of new and familiar presenters covering a diverse range of topics – from general interest to general business and deeper into some industry-specific topics as well. If you weren’t able to attend, here’s a taste of some of the topics and takeaways covered. Former U.S. Army Ranger and private security contractor Kris Paronto (a.k.a., Tanto) delivered a recounting of the terrorist attack at the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 to a spellbound audience. He set his remarks up not as a political story, but rather as a story about service and sacrifice emerging from a simple narrative accounting of a series of events and their impact on the team of people engaged in those events. Among the important themes he pulled out of his story for emphasis:


• “Under stress, you fall back on your highest level of training.” Tis message is certainly relevant to our industry given the inherent dangers of lifting and moving heavy objects.


• “Put yourself down to pick others up.” Self-deprecating humor can be a great way to reset everyone’s attitude when a task is dragging on and morale is flagging.


• “Faith increases your luck.” Having something to believe in is powerful.


• “Never quit. You have to keep fighting ….you will succeed.” On this point, again and again in the course of these events, something bad happens, something that


76 MAY–JUNE 2018 WIRE ROPE EXCHANGE


makes the situation much worse than it was immediately before. And every time “you have to keep going.” It’s the only way. Mr. Paronto remained on hand after his talk to sign copies of “13 Hours” which was written with his surviving annex security team members and Mitchell Zuckoff, and of “Te Ranger Way”, his own memoir. He was very personable and remarkably generous with his time in speaking with attendees who were on hand. Moving from general interest to general business


topics, three representatives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce shared their perspective on various aspects of the current business climate in two separate presentations. Among these, Tom Sullivan (Vice President, Small Business Policy) addressed five policy priorities for the $8.5 trillion sector of the economy defined as “small” business (essentially, firms with fewer than 500 employees).


Tese priorities will sound


familiar to anyone in business today, but he shared some interesting context on their current state of play:


• Workforce: Recruiting and keeping qualified and willing employees is remarkably now considered the biggest challenge for small businesses for the first time since 2000.


• Health Care: Businesses are increasingly desperate to find some options that make providing healthcare support to employees affordable.


• Regulatory Reform: Real progress has been made, perhaps because it’s been largely overshadowed, with some actual retrenchment of regulatory action rather than merely slowing the growth in the regulatory burden.


• Access to Capital: Remains challenging in part stemming from the ongoing impact of Dodd Frank regulation on the community banking sector.


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