Aventura, Fla.—Scores of North America’s leading commercial flooring contractors gathered here earlier this week for the 2026 Starnet Spring Conference—an annual event offering attendees and vendors valuable networking, educational and business opportunities.
“Red Zone Ready—and Built on Trust,” the football-inspired theme for this year’s conference, reflected the competitive spirit of professional commercial floor covering contractors as they strive to perform at a high level amid a challenging economic environment and everyday obstacles.
The “Red Zone Ready concept is all about helping members with talent development, both in their own organization and with their manufacturing partners that are part of Starnet,” Mark Bischoff, president and CEO, told FCNews. “It’s about striving toward operational excellence, both internally with their white collar workforce in addition to their blue collar, field labor workforce.”
It’s also about achieving excellence when it comes to technology deployment. As Bischoff explained: “Most people think about that as the digital part of the business, but we also view it as deploying new machinery, new tools and new methods. So if you do all those things well, you’re ready to run a ‘red zone’ business all the time. It’s about putting yourself in a place to be successful, just like an athlete would do inside the 20-yard line.”
Bischoff cited parallels between a football player’s performance when the game is on the line, and the ability of commercial flooring contractors to deliver results when opportunities arise. “You want to score all the time and consistently,” he said. “And that means not ‘winging’ it—you don’t just make it up as you go along. The receiver doesn’t run the route they want to; they run the route that was assigned.”
Trust as a tool
The second element of this year’s theme, “Built on Trust,” focuses on the importance of building trust as a leader in your business and/or organization. That was the focal point of a keynote presentation delivered by renowned author and speaker, David Horsager. “A lot of people think that trust is touchy-feely,” Bischoff stated, “but it can relate to many things. For example, your credit score is trust. Many things our members are dealing with as far as industry change and managing their employees—all of that is related to trust. So if you want people to change behavior or change your business, or do great things, they have to trust you as a leader to be able to accomplish that.”
During his spirited, high-energy presentation, Horsager recounted not only personal lessons learned in raising a family, but he also shared anecdotes gleaned from previous presentations to organizations ranging from professional sports teams, blue-chip firms to branches of the U.S. Military. He shared with attendees the eight primary pillars of building trust:
- Clarity
- Compassion
- Character
- Competency
- Commitment
- Connection
- Contribution
- Consistency
“It’s the little things, done consistently, that make the biggest difference,” Horsager told attendees.
(For extended coverage of the 2026 Starnet Spring Conference, look for the May 4 edition of FCNews.)