SEAA 2023

Southeast Acquirers Association, Incorporated, is a non-membership, 501(c)(6) trade association. SEAA was formed in 2000 and produced the first SEAA Annual Conference in 2001. Since then, SEAA has hosted thousands of industry professionals and presented hundreds of hours of education networking with the top vendors in electronic payments.

Sunday night: We had some nice entertainment at the hotel – got to meet up with many old friends at the event every year.

Shoutouts – Dale Laszing from the GreenSheet, John Shipley, Jamie Garfield, John McCormick, Sonny Wooten, and the rest of the board members of the SEAA!

Monday: Demo day and in meetings, we looked at some new technology and software and met with and possibly new vendors.

New and exciting technologies always appear on the scene; we take our time to evaluate each one and then do a test before we get knee-deep into something.

The exhibit hall has over 130 vendors – to speak with, network, and have food, drinks, coffee, and snacks.

A lot of talk about Self-Serve Kiosks, Robots for restaurants, and electronic signage where business owners can make a monthly income from that. – Everyone is talking about cash discount and merchants paying 0%.

On Tuesday: We had the keynote speaker, and there was a tribute to Derek Vowels, who recently passed away – he was president of the SEAA for several years, and Derek and I worked together as he was employed by a few vendors that we work with.

The main speaker was Mark Walberg – many people thought it was the other Mark Wahlberg – the famous actor and he really played it off with pictures.

Marks’ story was quite interesting – currently, he is the host of the show Temptation Island – one of my favorite reality TV shows – after a busy day nothing like watching a show that is entertaining with dating drama –

Mark's talk was about how he was able to connect with people, and that has been part of his success.

He spoke about Quitting:

Q - Quit – Get quiet and label your feelings

U – Unplug – from that feeling for 10 minutes

I – Instead - do anything that brings you joy

T - Trust – that you’ll forget to go back and worry

He also talks about service – we are in a service industry

We are the best version of ourselves when we are IN SERVICE TO OTHERS

At Nationwide Payment Systems – we are here to Serve our Clients/Merchants!

Then he spoke about making presentations:

Set an intention of service
Listen deeply and respond
Call out the elephant – as he did with he is the other Mark Wahlberg
Choose to be passionate – about what you do!

It was cool to meet Mark, speak with him and his wife later in the day at the cocktail hour, and share a laugh about all the reality tv shows – I recorded the show's first episode already.

Later that day, we attended – lunch sponsored by American Express – shout out for having vegetarian options –

We attended several breakout sessions – they were talking about software and referral partnership, and the last one was about Banking as a Service – which we are exploring because this is a service that merchants are definitely leaning towards.

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