87% of Distributors Still Expect Growth—Here’s Why

[00:00:04] Welcome to Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution with Kevin Brown and Tom Burton. Sponsored each week by LeadSmart Technologies, Tom, Kevin and their guests review the news of the week and dive deep into the topics impacting manufacturers, wholesale distribution, independent sales agents, and the global wholesale supply chain.

[00:00:24] Whether it's M&A, SaaS and cloud computing, B2B e-commerce, or supply chain issues, we peel back the onion with our guests into the topics that impact your business the most. Well, how's your morning? Okay, it's cold, rainy, but otherwise good. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. I understand. So, good to see you today. I appreciate you being with me today. It's good to travel with you earlier in the week too.

[00:00:52] I get to go see some great customers in Ohio and work on some planning with them. So, it's good stuff. You want to hit a note with where we're headed and what our plans are for the day and what we're going to talk about before I go do a little bit of our housekeeping work? Yeah, so I think while we're going to get in, obviously we'll start with the usual economy, but there's really not a lot to talk about there. So, we'll go by that really quickly. Nothing's changing, right? Yeah, nothing's really going on.

[00:01:19] We'll talk a little bit of the manufacturing and some tariff pieces. And then we're going to kind of focus in on a few things, a couple things related to marketing. And, you know, we're not that heavy with AI today compared to previous weeks. But we're going to touch on a couple of points with cybersecurity and AI and we're going to really work to be done today by like 15 after. You know, like an hour and 15 minutes rather than on and on.

[00:01:49] So, we're going to try and get through some of these things a little bit faster today. See how that goes, huh? Yeah, we'll see how it goes. I'm so appreciative every week as we do this and there's people that are hanging with us for, you know, an hour and a half. Sometimes we keep going and we're getting comments in at the end from great folks. So, anyways, that's my appreciation for the day or my gratitude for the day. So, that's good. We're going to talk about that.

[00:02:15] I'm sure we'll bend a little bit towards some of those AI articles as we always do. But it's great to have everybody with us again. I'm Kevin Brown. This is Tom Burton. We get together each week and talk about the news of the week. As Tom was saying, we look at the economy, supply chain, manufacturing, distribution, sales, marketing, AI, technology, cybersecurity, mergers and acquisitions.

[00:02:40] And we try and bring all of that data together to talk about what that news has to do with wholesale distribution manufacturing. So, as the podcast's recorded version of the podcast's bumper music says, it says that we try and peel back the onion. So, what we really try to do is take a look at what's going on out there and how that relates to the markets that we serve from our company in wholesale distribution and manufacturing.

[00:03:05] So, we do that every week. And as I mentioned, we have a newsletter that goes out. So, if you're listening on the podcast and can't see our live show or our stream today and not watching the recording even, we publish a newsletter each Friday morning. It goes out about 4 o'clock Pacific time. And that goes out to, I don't know, I think we're around 10,000, 10,500 people or so. But that goes out to you each week.

[00:03:33] And we talk about, and we cover, I should say, the articles of the news of the week as we mentioned earlier that we are going to be discussing on the show. So, if you don't get that newsletter, we would love to get that out to you. You can get it three simple ways. If you are on LinkedIn and active there, you can subscribe to the newsletter. Just search Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing Podcast. Both the microsite for the show is there. You can subscribe to that, but the newsletter is there as well.

[00:04:03] And you can subscribe to is, you can send us an email at hello at leadsmarttech.com. And we'll get that out to you. Just request the newsletter. Or third is we have a website for the show, which is www.aroundthehornpod.com. And you can sign up for it there and see past episodes. So again, we're live here today on YouTube Live, LinkedIn Live, and Facebook Live. And then later in the day, our producer and editor, John Taylor, will put all that together.

[00:04:30] And he'll get that out onto Apple and Spotify and Odyssey and Amazon and all of the other podcast platforms. You can get it any way that you would like. So that's what we do each week. But we wouldn't be able to do that if the company that Tom and I work for, Lead Smart Technologies, didn't sponsor the event. And what we do at Lead Smart is we've developed a AI-enabled CRM and customer intelligence solution for wholesale distributors and manufacturers. We don't work with construction companies or law firms or anybody else like that.

[00:05:00] We solely work with wholesale distribution manufacturers. Tom, 30-plus years of background in technology and my 30-plus years of background in manufacturing and distribution. Brought all of that together to solve some solutions and some problems that provide solutions. What we do with that is we try and get deep insights into your customer, your business, and your teams to help make better decisions across the company.

[00:05:30] And we do that by bringing siloed data that companies have in marketing automation, e-commerce, ERP systems, data lakes or data warehouses. Bring all that into a single platform so we're no longer having that siloed data. But we have one centralized data solution where we can make great, great decisions based upon actionable insights. So that's what we do.

[00:05:52] If you're trying to grow with technology, digitally transform your organization and serve your customers better by having a better understanding of them, we would love to talk to you. So we appreciate that. So, Tom, you ready to dive in? Ready to dive in. All right. Let's take a second here. Let's pop it up first. I know you're going to share that newsletter in a second. Hey, I wanted to say good morning to Paul and Will. Will is giving you some suggestions on how to write lyrics. Good morning to Brian. Yeah.

[00:06:21] If you're out there, please, yeah, jump in. Say hello. Hey, Tom, I forgot something. Okay. We got something kind of cool to talk about. We do. More cool than the news? More, more kind of. Well, if you like the news that we talk about each week here, you might like what we're getting forgot to mention. You know, things were things were sliding along there. And I was like, whoops, we forgot about something. But we are launching next Monday version 2.0 of this show.

[00:06:51] So I made a little video posted that to LinkedIn. If you haven't seen that, just look at my contact. And if we're not connected, please connect with Tom and I both on LinkedIn and you'll get these updates as well. But we decided to do a second version of the show. And really important for me to share because somebody on LinkedIn asked me the question this morning was, hey, is this replacing the show? No. What we're doing today is going to continue to live. It's two and a half years into this now. And we're going to continue. Where are we at?

[00:07:20] 133 today. We're going to continue to do what we do in the format. But what we've learned is we oftentimes have guests on the show that we could talk with for hours. And we don't have time on this show to do that because of the format. So we're launching starting next Monday morning at nine o'clock Pacific time or 12 o'clock Eastern time. We're going to be talking next week on the very first episode of Around the Horn 2.0.

[00:07:46] What we describe it as big ideas and bold conversations shaping the future of distribution and manufacturing. We're going to start off with our good friend, Brendan Breen from the Industrial Supply Association. Brendan was our guest last week. He's a super gentleman. Their event is coming up at the end of this month, beginning of next month, the first couple of days of April. I'm honored to be on a panel speaking there about technology and AI.

[00:08:12] And we're going to talk deeper with Brendan about the distribution industry, wholesale distribution as a whole, the work that his organization does and their event as well on a little bit deeper dive. These are going to be regularly scheduled like this show is. They're going to be kind of ad hoc, I guess we'll say. We'll probably do at least one a month, but this gives us an opportunity to bring the guests in and talk deeper about their business, their background. And we see those opportunities pop up all the time.

[00:08:41] So if you have ideas for for guests or topics that we could talk about on a deeper dive, let us know. Yeah, no, it's just deeper dive, right? It's not going to be news centric. It's going to be focused. No newsletter there. I'm a guest of the expertise. All right. No newsletter there. Yep. So, all right. Excuse me. Let's let's dive right in. So, hey, just, you know, a few little things going on in and around the economy this week. Nothing big, I guess. Understatement.

[00:09:10] Yeah, you know, it's interesting as I was reading through these articles and just kind of reading through stuff. And I don't know if I've seen in my adult life, I don't know if I remember kind of a scenario like this where you've got kind of two layers of things going on. You have the fundamentals, which are, you know, the data and the, you know, what's really going on with the economy, what's going on with the job market, interest rates, all of that kind of stuff. But you've now got this sort of emotional level, right?

[00:09:39] That is running rampant. And I guess I probably have not seen this anymore. That is driving a lot of. Well, certainly influencing or maybe overshadowing some of the things at the fundamental level. Mm hmm. And obviously we talked about this last week, right? The the uncertainty and confusions and changes and all of that stuff is driving the emotional turmoil. Yep. Very, very high, not only with business people, but with consumers.

[00:10:08] I don't know if this isn't our thing, but the consumer confidence came out this morning. Yeah. It was much lower than expected. You know, consumers are also rattled as well along the way. But if you take a if you kind of remove the that a little bit and this is some of the articles here. Right. You're going to see, for example, on this first article, inflation actually dropped reasonably significantly in the last, you know, last month compared to what they expected.

[00:10:34] Job gains are improving or better or at least staying stable. You know, you're seeing if you just again kind of can get through the emotional piece of it and really look at the fundamentals that are occurring. The fundamentals are pretty solid. But, you know, the stock market is riped off five trillion dollars of value in the last three weeks. So it's not clearly from changes in fundamentals. It's changing in sentiment. Well, I think that's a really good point. Right.

[00:11:03] So this is an article from this particular one is the latest data shows inflation. Inflation's fall to Fed's target continues to stall. So this is from Yahoo Finance. We're going to kind of blend a few other articles in with this discussion today. But I think we're we're in a really interesting place. Right. And we've talked about this a lot related to the new administration.

[00:11:31] We've got Wall Street that has for the first time, I would say, and it's been at least a couple of years, probably closer to three years is all of a sudden they are. There is, as to your point, sentiment there. There is a little rattling going on there that we haven't seen, because even with all of the interest rate issues and the other things that we had in the last few years, Wall Street just plowed ahead and said, I don't care about the data. Right. Everything's been great. Right. And now we just watch what's been going on.

[00:12:01] I mean, I wish my bank account was bigger to go by right now in some of these settings. Right. But the market is reacting. And this is what I find intriguing is the market is reacting finally in a very interesting way. And I think it's the unsure, unsure nature of things.

[00:12:20] And I would assume, I'm interested in your thoughts on this, I would assume part of this is, you know, and I think that the current administration or the president even said this might have been said it before the election, but certainly before the inauguration is with some of the things that they want to accomplish in the administration is there will be some uncomfortable times. And there may be some difficulties before we see the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, I think we're now seeing those difficulties starting to happen. Right. And part of that is tied.

[00:12:49] My wife and I were talking about this yesterday. Part of this, I think, is really tied as well to the the what I put it, the the sentiment component of it that we get from the news. Right. If you're watching Main Street News, most of the Main Street News is is all about the the jobs that are being cut. Right. Sure. There's you don't hear the discussion about the other side of that coin. And I'm not suggesting any of these things are right or wrong.

[00:13:17] What I'm suggesting is you have to really dig in deep to what's going on as opposed to just getting some some news bites, because no matter how you slice it, when you look at some of the agencies that have been having some of these major cuts is there is a lot of fat in those organizations. There's a lot of people that are part of those layoffs that are happening that are also the people that said, I'm not coming back to the office.

[00:13:43] There are people that were in superfluous jobs that just were really not really relevant to the growth of those organizations. Now, I'm sure there's some cuts in some of these places where we might feel right. You know, if you got rid of I don't have any idea what the numbers, I'll just say if you got rid of the third a number of people at the IRS, the IRS isn't very efficient, it appears to start with.

[00:14:06] But if you went look past what the news snippets are saying on on the mainstream news media and really looked at is like, well, let me try and figure out how many of these jobs were are irrelevant to getting the work done. Probably see that a big part of that is truly fat being cut.

[00:14:26] Well, if you also look back to the federal budget and the goal is to cut the federal budget back to what it was in 2019, not in 1919 or not 100 years ago. Right. Our federal budget has ballooned in the last five years. Right. That's not really a long time in the scope of things. Yep. Right. That's a lot of extra. So it's not like the world is a completely different place than it was in 2019.

[00:14:55] That we can't look at reducing some of those things that are there. So, yes, I think. Anyway. I'm sorry, Tom, what's government spending? What percentage? We looked at this a few months ago. I think it was like 27% or something like that in GDP is government spending. Yeah, I don't recall. But I know you have different viewpoints on different things. I think it was between. There was multiple views of it. It was between 20. I think one of it was 24 and one was 31.

[00:15:24] Or something like that. But anyway. But if you go back five years, you look at the GDP growth. It has been fundamentally growing to a large degree through government spending. Right. Federal spending. Yep. So, like I said, 2019 was not very long ago. Mm-hmm. So to say, well, let's see how we go. You know, how do we reduce things so that we go back to 2019 or whatever. Again, this isn't like, hey, we want to go back to the way it was in 1940 or something. Right.

[00:15:51] It's a very different scenario there. But yes, I think the context to your point, right, you have to get through and look at the context of the different things that are really going on and not just react to the soundbite. Right. So it's, and Will's saying tariffs are a great example of short-term discomfort and disruption to facilitate long-term gains in the USA. Yeah. You know, people argue, well, you know, is it really going to have long-term gains and

[00:16:21] all of those types of things? We'll have to see on that. We're going to get to tariffs in a few minutes. Right, right, right. But yes, anyway, the uncertain, one thing that is certain right now is that the change and the rate of change and the rate of things that are being done are making people very uncomfortable. Mm-hmm. Right. And, you know, we even, we were talking at a customer meeting this last week. It's, you can't do anything about that. So let's just stay focused on what we can do stuff about. Yeah.

[00:16:50] And plow through, you know? Right. No, exactly. The, well, the next article talks about job opening, seeing gains in January and a sign of labor market stability. But I think, you know, that was January, right? Before we started seeing all the cuts, right? So that, and this is where I think this is the challenge, right? If you're looking at all of these traditional benchmarks, right?

[00:17:17] And we're going to, it's going to be an interesting discussion to have later this year, you know, even maybe middle of the year and then at the end of the year is like looking at the way, because we have an administration here, which 70, what was 77 million people or whatever it was voted for that is saying we're doing things different, right? We're in, in part of that is going to throw some monkey wrenches into the metrics that we use to look at the economy in general right now, right?

[00:17:47] We're, we're looking at right now, you know, declining job openings in, in the, um, um, in January, but, um, the economic uncertainty that goes with this, this article is talking about, you know, is going to be playing into this. And then what's going to happen with all of these cuts within the federal government to the unemployment numbers, right? We're, so now we're looking at these skewed numbers and skewed happenings that are tied

[00:18:16] to an action that an administration that's saying, I don't care about that disruption and those metrics because we want to go accomplish this bigger, bigger picture. Right. And until the dust settles, a lot of these metrics are going to be very difficult to, to, to put a lot of weight into. Um, I think that, uh, we may find if, if, if here, well, I'll go out on a limb for a second and then you can tell me I'm wrong.

[00:18:45] Um, you're not opposed to that. Are you telling you that you're wrong or having to go out on a limb? Either, either. Uh, yeah, I'm, yeah. All of the above is fine. We're good. That might be. Um, and I, I'm not suggesting that this is actually going to happen, but I think if we continue to go through this, as we call it, similar simmering or muddling along with

[00:19:10] the economy, the way we've been for so long now, and we've got, you know, um, a couple of the articles that we have here referenced today. In fact, it even ties into the next article from CFO dive, uh, dot com, which is small business optimism sags amid the uncertainty, uncertainty whiplash, they called it. But, um, uh, and then we talked about inflation. I think if inflation just simmers around this, these numbers that we're playing in now and

[00:19:37] that, you know, 2.8, 3.1, whatever it is, if we continue down that path, we're going to really need to start taking a look at the metrics, right? Especially specifically the inflation metrics, because it appears that something in the two, five to three, five range is really where things are settling in as an economy. And I think we've got to take a look at those things I've said before.

[00:20:03] I, you know, in the past many times, uh, specifically last year when we were, we're having our little battle about interest rates and what our thoughts were about those. Um, the economy is suggesting that it doesn't need to be a two, two percent. Well, I don't know if you can say that the economy is suggesting that. I think that you could argue whether or not the raise to higher interest rates really had much of an impact of what occurred over the last period of time economically.

[00:20:32] But I don't think we're going to get a new normal anytime soon. I think what you're proposing and what you have proposed is we're going to have these new normals and, you know, we need to set our new benchmarks around these new normals. And I don't think there's any one, I don't think it's just what the inflation number is. I think in general, our metrics maybe need to be revisited. Right. I just, well, I don't disagree with that. I just don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. So that was the response I expected.

[00:21:01] Nor, by the way, does anyone email me throughout the week asking me about my views on the administration asked you to come on to the, you know, I should let them know that you're available. I'm not though. Okay. Is that it? All right. Yeah. No, I'm not available because I'm busy carrying you, you know, day in and day out. Yeah. All right. That's fair. Yeah. No, no. I'm way too busy with changing the way wholesale distribution views data. Okay.

[00:21:29] That's my, that's the lantern that I currently carry. So. Well, maybe it may be a slight advisory position or something. I would, I would propose you and then I would just influence you. All right. Fair enough. How's that? That you would love something like that. So you never, not a chance would you see me involved in something like that. So anyways, there was in this article I mentioned before, a small business optimism sags, you know, how could you not write in, in, in bringing that back to the discussion of,

[00:21:59] of wholesale distributors that we, you know, our focus is on wholesale distribution and manufacturing in our business. And this show is tied to that. How could you be looking at what's going on right now and being bullish or confident? Now I'm, you know, we've got great people that are on, even on the show today who are, are charging their businesses forward, growing big optimism. We were visiting, uh, earlier this week with one of the lead smart customers, uh, that was

[00:22:28] a great couple of days of meeting meetings and, um, great folks looking to double their business in the next five years. Right. And then that's not going from four branches to eight branches. That's going to high forties to nineties. Right. Uh, of number of branches. So very difficult to have that bullish outcome on that. And I've got a good friend, Paul Kennedy commented earlier.

[00:22:54] Paul's with us, you know, his company DSG is growing, you know, leaps and bounds and new branches and new people and, and, uh, family members in their case that they're bringing in. Um, and, but how do you, how do you feel confident right now when you've got all of this disruption going on, on top of what we've had for the last few years with the interest rate issues and the cost of money, the port strikes and all of those things going on.

[00:23:21] And now we have these, these tariff issues happening, uh, plus the other things going on. It would be difficult to have a, um, a high level of confidence, which is what this article describes. Yeah. Well, and that's along with the consumer confidence as well. Absolutely. It's arm and arm. Yeah. No, it's, it's a, it's a challenging time right now, but how do you, how do you really

[00:23:45] have the strength and conviction right now when interest rates are, are still high? Right. And we've got this, you know, pricing, you know, challenges coming. Um, and we've got a administration who is using, uh, tariffs in this case to do diplomacy. So it's an interesting time. Right. But again, kind of what starting off full circle, what I started with is if you take a

[00:24:13] step back from the uncertainty a little bit or, and just look at the fundamentals of the world and the economy and the growth or whatever, the opportunity maybe is a better way to look at it. Yeah. And that's, you know, the conversations we had this week is obviously, and maybe the new normal is a lot more change and uncertainty than we've had to deal with in business. And I think this goes way beyond just distribution. This is all businesses, right? There's a lot of change in uncertainty, but what can you put your attention on?

[00:24:40] What can you do to move things forward? Because again, if you, I do think underneath all of it, there is still a pretty solid business environment and business climate to an opportunity to take advantage of. So, well, I think, I think the challenge will be in this, we were chatting with, uh, Brendan Breen about this last week on the show and in the prior week, we even had more lengthy discussions about it with, with, uh, Sean Dubrovac, who's, who is an economist.

[00:25:08] Uh, you know, the challenge right now, biggest challenge right now, and I would look at, you know, the folks that are joining us today that, uh, are here in the, in, in the live audience that are in the distribution world is life would be a whole lot simpler when you're looking at tariffs. If you knew that the tariff was one, not just a threat that's going to change. And I have talked to a number of people this week and I've used your, your comment about wait 72 hours.

[00:25:35] Uh, had a number of conversations last week with people in Canada. I've got a conversation with a, a large, um, HVAC and plumbing distributor in Canada later today. Um, kind of same ideas while we've got this frustration in, in the, uh, from, from our trading partners out there about the tariffs. It's like, don't get so excited, you know, wait 72 hours, 48 hours, see what plays out with all of it.

[00:26:02] And, you know, there's been representatives from Canada in Washington DC all week, right? Working on what this all really looks like. But if there was some certainty that we could apply to this, that just says, Hey, you know what? The reality of it is there's a 25% tariff on these level of goods coming from Canada for the next 36 months. You can make business decisions from that. If it was right. If it was, Hey, you know what? We're here's a, here's a list, right?

[00:26:29] In fact, there, we showed a, a screenshot a couple of weeks ago about, uh, what all of our tariffs are with different trading partners around the world. It just said, look, it's Germany. It's there's a 20% tariff and the, on, you know, us products going into Germany. We're going to balance that out. Um, you then get to know, right? So I think that becomes an interesting, an interesting point with all of it. So I think if we had some stability, we'd be in a much better place. So, yeah.

[00:26:58] And I guess as we, before we move on from here and I kind of hit on this last week, I think we will get some clear answers sooner than later. Um, I think that the, I think they're holding off because they're trying to kind of get people to the table, but you're also seeing a lot of whether it's the farm, the agriculture, auto workers, a lot of the U S companies are basically going to our government and the administration saying, Hey, look, I understand what you're doing here, but give us some clarity. Right.

[00:27:27] And so I think we're going to get that. I just don't know. Is that tomorrow or the next day? But what, what are your thoughts on that? Um, Hey, Paul, Paul's summary is great. Okay. Let's see that. Look, that's what you're saying. Look through beyond the noise, spend time focusing on the opportunities that do exist. Not all of the drama. He said it better than I did. The uncertainty and noise isn't helping, but if you were consumed by it, you will be paralyzed. Great point.

[00:27:55] I mean, I, that's what I, again, he said it much better than I did, but that's basically what I, what I was saying. I think Paul summarized your philosophy of don't watch the news, right? Well, that's well, yes, that's a good point as well. Yes. So, and it's, it's interesting, but you know, I think it's, so this is interesting, right? I, I, I subscribe to a different philosophy of, uh, of, of, you're not watching the news.

[00:28:23] I happen to listen to CNBC in my office off and on throughout the day on satellite radio and, um, and, and, you know, try and keep up and try and keep up on some of that to be helpful to doing this show each week as well. But there's, I think there's a balance there, right? To what Paul's saying is you, you, the noise, right? The news is the noise. So, but we, you kind of have to be at some level understanding what's going on, but that shouldn't change where you're headed.

[00:28:53] Right. And, you know, I look at it in our business, right? We have very specific financial goals for this year and hiring goals and all the things that goes with that for the growth of the company that you and I work for. Paul is good example of that, right? He has very specific goals within his organization and his leadership team of hiring and branches and technology and all the things that they're working on. It doesn't change what we need to accomplish. We probably do need to understand what's going on around us.

[00:29:22] But if you get, you know, you can get into that analysis or paralysis by analysis side of things as well and, and, uh, stay too myopic on one line of thinking with that. That's, that's problematic as well. All right. You want to roll into, uh, let's roll past a couple of those and let's, uh, jump into our manufacturing distribution segment, Tom. And just, uh, there's a, there's a, there's a good article in industry week about a strategic

[00:29:47] move to reshore, uh, uh, with things with, uh, reshore nearshore. There's an, uh, this article is again from industry week and, uh, it, it talks about some specific steps that people can take related to putting in nearshoring and non-shoring program in place, which I think was, was pretty helpful, but they also use the term, they called it friend shoring.

[00:30:13] Um, which is, uh, the idea of really kind of moving things out of, uh, and it really ties to China at that point in time, right? When you've got getting to places where you don't have geopolitical challenges as much as you might have the tariff issues, um, going on. And that really would kind of lend itself to doing more business in Southeast Asia. And then if possible, you know, Mexico really becomes that big other manufacturing hub, uh, that becomes real valuable for us here.

[00:30:42] So any thoughts on your end on that one? So who are, who are our friends? Who are they suggesting? Well, I think that the friend shoring component of what they were talking about there is just, I'll just read a quote from the article. It says, since the trade war against China started, that started during Trump's first presidency in 2018, many firms shifted some operations to countries to avoid paying the tariffs associated with that said Apple shifted, uh, operations for China to other French or in countries such as India in that case.

[00:31:12] Uh, so they use India as a good example with that, but we also would go with that would be, uh, some, uh, countries within Southeast Asia. When we start talking, especially, you know, a lot of, uh, we have a lot of listeners that join us each week that, uh, are coming from the industrial segment, or even if they're HVAC or electrical distributors, they sell some industrial products as well. And so much of what you see in the industrial segment and really it's everywhere.

[00:31:38] But is coming out of China, but there's tons of applications, um, and growing businesses in Vietnam and Laos, Thailand and so forth. Now the challenge with that is you've got to look pretty closely at that as if you're trying, this is, I can guarantee you the, the, um, that the, the, um, the administration is going to want to start looking at, you know, country of origin of things, uh, and country of not just

[00:32:06] origin of what the finished good is, but where the components are coming from. Because one of the things that I think we've mentioned this briefly in the past is that, you know, China is opening up in some of these other more friendly countries as well. And as well as, you know, a lot of business that's, uh, happening in Mexico is, you know, full of Chinese components. They're being assembled somewhere else and brought here and the tariff component will, they'll get to that. But the idea from this article about, uh, moving around that is first off is to try and

[00:32:35] get things here. Um, and then secondly would be the near shoring as close as we could. And then third would be that fringe shoring, which now India, Pakistan, some of those countries start to come into play. Yeah, I've been doing a, and I need to do more homework on this, but I've been trying to understand, you know, even a week or two ago, right. When we were, and we have been talking about tariffs, the purpose of them was more punitive for, you know, Mexico for letting people

[00:33:03] in on the border and all of that stuff. And I'm sure there's an element to it, right? There is a punitive element to it. Then there's this other element here, which we're talking about, which is bringing manufacturing and business back into the U S or at least closer to home to your point that's there. Um, and maybe balancing some of the trade, you know, the import and exports with some of these other countries that are here and quote unquote, making things fair. But there's a third thing,

[00:33:31] which no one's really talking about, which is, you know, the administration is also proposing major tax cuts and corporate tax cuts and, and so forth, large, major, significant and deregulation. If you go back and look at, you know, like I think it's 1890 or somewhere in that neighborhood, there were no corporate income taxes. The entire federal budget was, was, um, funded by tariffs

[00:34:00] late 1800s. And then it kind of switched, right? It moved from tariffs over to income taxes. I'm wondering now is, is income taxes, if they're trying to, Hey, we're going to have to offset some of these income taxes that we're going to reduce to try and drive growth. Do we need to kind of go back and be thinking about what we were doing a hundred years ago for 125 years ago to balance some of that out? With tariffs at the same time. Well, I think you're spot on and that leads to another component of this article. And you don't

[00:34:29] hear this at all. Let me rephrase that. You do hear some of this in, in some of the, um, uh, discussions with, um, uh, on the business news side of things, but you don't hear this in mainstream day-to-day news is two components. The first thing that I think is really important in, in Darlene and I were talking about this the other days. Um, this administration is very different, right? Now,

[00:34:57] when you think that make America great again, regardless of what your thoughts are on whether it was already great or whether there's been a downturn, whatever, forget about politics. Think about what this and not even just the president, but the drive of this administration is about America. Previous administrations had been a more global view of making the world good.

[00:35:23] I'm not going to suggest that I'm smart enough to know if either one of those is right. But what I do know is you have to, in this administration at this point in time, look way beyond what you're hearing and look at what the intentions are. Border crisis with drugs and people, very clear balancing and having what we, the, this country,

[00:35:50] the U S pays globally in tariffs and taxes and, or even supporting other global organizations like the UN and world health organization and NATO and so forth and, and getting things fair for the U S. And I'm not suggesting that I know whether they are fair and they're not fair. What I'm saying is that's what the intention of this administration is. And then the other side of it, as we talk about

[00:36:14] tariffs and you brought up the great point, Tom, about tax benefits now is, Hey, look, if you, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Canada, Mexico, if you want to get around tariffs, open factories here. Sure. Right. And you've watched the automakers doing that for years. Right. I mean, you know, you're the BMW in your driveway was made in Tennessee. Um, this article is here. You get these IUS expansion.

[00:36:44] That's right. Potential tariffs, right? You are so good. I've taken my lead on this. This is great. You just fed right into that. It's perfect. Tom, thanks. Exactly. Right. So the next article is a Reuters article about your companies looking at U S expansion to lessen the fallout from tariffs, right? Reuters article about that, which I think is, is fantastic idea. And if you, and, and, you know,

[00:37:08] this administration, I think is if there's such a thing as playing four dimensional chess versus one or two dimensional chess in the global world from a political standpoint, and you know what? Yesterday, I haven't looked into this at all. I can't speak to it because I'm not up to speed on it, but I saw a new snippet last night that Putin's willing to do a ceasefire, you know, for a period of time to discuss peace. Well, none of that was done, you know, in the last

[00:37:38] couple of years. Right. And so this is a, we've got an administration that's out trying to do the things that they said that they were going to do. And, uh, and part of that is growing this country right, wrong or indifferent to our friends in other countries. We have a number of people here today from other countries. Um, but that's, what's going on in the U S right now is, Hey, you want to play, come do business here. We'll make it easier for you to open factories here. Um, but we're not going to

[00:38:07] continue to, uh, you know, pay your tariffs and, and not have you pay something back. So interesting time to be alive, huh? Yep. So let's, and then just to kind of wrap the, put the bow on all of this in this section. Yeah. And then the net, uh, net plus report, 87% of distributors expect growth. Yeah. Yep. So, you know, it, I think at the end of the day, right, we still have schools being built

[00:38:35] and we still have roads being repaired and we still have, you know, electronics that are being made and, uh, hot water heaters are still breaking. Um, the, um, the, uh, well, uh, will, uh, wills trying to describe my four dimensional chest to think star Wars or Harry Potter. So I've never seen a Harry Potter movie. So, uh, what about Harry Puder has he puts it? Oh, maybe that's a different movie.

[00:39:02] Yeah. Okay. Uh, but I like that, but, uh, but, but it's interesting. So, you know, at the end of the day, I think when you look at things from, from our good friends, uh, Jennifer Murphy and Dan Judge and the team at, at net plus Alliance, they, this is an industry outlook that Dan Judge does. In fact, Tom is, as a quick point, uh, again, if you, if you don't get this, this modern distribution

[00:39:26] management, uh, has all the information on their website about, uh, the net plus, uh, industry outlook. This is something that Dan Judge, uh, the founder of net plus, which is a wonderful buying group and just great people there as well, uh, puts together as a side note. And I don't know if Dan's with us today, Dan's here with us regularly. I was, I was at a net plus event, uh, about a year ago and I was, we were on our way to top golf to have an evening out there. And I was sitting with Dan

[00:39:55] on, on the, um, on the bus and I was, we were chatting and then we turned out to be in the same golf group at, at top golf as well. And both on the bus and over a beer at top golf, I was trying to convince Dan to come on the show with us. And he's like, no, I guess, you know, you guys move too fast and just preparation to do. And I like listening. And he says, you know, if you ever want to have a talk or a chat, you know, in general, let's do that. So Dan was a big component of us

[00:40:24] doing the new, uh, around the horn 2.0, where it's going to be conversational driven. So Dan, if you're with us today and listening, you're going to be one of the early guests. So watch for my, my note here shortly, but I love it when the trade associations and the buying groups put out the data from their members, because that's, that's real world stuff, right? That's not from the government. That's them talking to their membership and getting the feedback. So I thought that was that the optimism there is good. And no matter how you slice it, things break and things are still

[00:40:53] being built. And, you know, we, we, again, back to the discussion we were having earlier in the week with a plumbing and HVAC, uh, distributor is, you know, they've got, they've got projects that they were, they quoted three years ago, right now pricing might adjust accordingly, uh, with those, those projects, but you know, we've, they're working on things today that aren't going to be built for multiple years. So the optimism that we're seeing there is positive, which I'm happy to see.

[00:41:21] So how about diving ahead to, uh, our e-commerce and marketing segment? Yeah. Where do you want to, uh, go here? I think what I want to do before we do that is remind, uh, the folks who might be listening on the podcast and the recorded version of our show on, uh, Spotify, Apple, wherever you might get your podcasts is what you're missing. If you're listening versus watching is we have the newsletter that we publish each week live, uh, here on the screen in front of us, which is what we're referring to.

[00:41:51] So when you're hearing me mention, you know, cfodive.com articles, we're looking at those on the screen here from the newsletter. And, uh, if you don't get that newsletter and you would like to three simple ways, uh, send us an email at hello at lead smart tech.com. Again, that's hello at lead smart tech.com. We'll get you signed up for that. Uh, two, we have a website for the podcast,

[00:42:14] which is www.aroundthehornpod.com. And third, and probably the simplest is if you're active on LinkedIn to search around the horn and wholesale distribution and manufacturing on LinkedIn, the podcast will pop up there. You can subscribe to the podcast so you get alerts. You can follow the lead smart technologies page, which is very beneficial to us to expand our audience. And then third is there's the newsletter you can sign up and it'll come right

[00:42:40] to your inbox and to you on LinkedIn each week. So three easy ways to get that. So, um, diving back into the news here, martech.com has an article about how B2B marketing is becoming a strategic growth driver. But that was kind of an interesting one. Any takeaways for you on that one, Tom? Well, I think at a high level, right? This is what they were touching on. And I don't, I don't know

[00:43:06] how rapidly we're seeing this in wholesale distribution yet, but I do think it is slowly becoming a trend is that rather than marketing just being like a sales support role or, you know, a brand, Hey, we're doing brand or things like that is that marketing and sales are trying to work closer together to really align towards more corporate or company goals related to growth,

[00:43:31] revenue sales, you know, customer retention, revenue retention, all of those types of things. There's starting to be that trend. Um, I think we still have a long way to go, but I, you know, we're certainly seeing that awareness and that's what this article was about is that is becoming a strategic growth driver where, you know, as marketing is, as it becomes part of that larger equation of growth and revenue. Well, I think it's, I think it's a, this is a great article, right? And it really ties to

[00:44:01] something we've talked about and it's kind of near and dear to my heart. And I I've said this, been saying this for a few years now, is it, if you have, if you have in your business sales and marketing departments that get adversarial or poke at each other a little bit, I always use the term right forever, right? Sales has says marketing sucks because their leads are bad. And, and, and marketing says, well, sales sucks because we work so hard and we get these great leads and so forth.

[00:44:29] And sales isn't doing anything with them. And we've got this, you know, push, pull scenario there. If you're not in your organization working on having it, call it what you want. You know, I, my view of it is you should have a revenue department and people have some marketing functions within the revenue department. And some people have some sales functions, but the revenue department has goals and they're aligned as a group, not as marketing goals and

[00:44:56] sales goals, but to a broader goal of a revenue growth within your organization. You're, you know, you're driving a model T still, right? You need to be really thinking about how do we bring those together. It makes me think I won't name the person or the company. Uh, but we have a wonderful customer. Um, and I think their marketing director was actually joining us for the show today,

[00:45:20] but she is the perfect example of that as is their sales leadership of, and they have a chief revenue officer that works with these groups, but you've got marketing that's taking data in their setting from their ERP system. But that data is actually living in our lead smart channel cloud platform. So they can analyze it better and bring it in with other sets of data. And as they're starting to

[00:45:46] look at promotions that marketing is doing, they're tying all of that data back together. It is, it is just some great stuff, right? Where they're tying the data that they have from the ERP about customers that are either about like products or this company's products that they're doing a promo for. And they're then automating the process of setting tasks for their sales side of the house

[00:46:10] to go and contact these people about the promos. And now it's literally this joined marriage of a sales function and a marketing function coming together and using data that's on a platform like ours to understand how they work together for a goal. Right. And I think there's a lot in this article about, you know, um, this particular article. And again, this, this one is from martech.com

[00:46:36] about how B2B marketing is becoming a strategic growth driver. And it's really that mindset that says we're, we're using marketing for more than just setting up our trade shows or our lunch and learns or whatever it is. It's a strategic part of the organization that is part of a revenue growth team versus just marketing does one thing and sales does another. Yep. And then I, that's all you got on

[00:47:03] this one. You usually have good thoughts when it comes to. No, I mean, you, you know, you just have gone over the same sort of thing, right? Is, is more specific examples of combining the two of them together. I think we can jump ahead to this third article here about winning beyond the inboxes related. Good. Yes. You know, this article was talking about, okay, well, you know, what am I doing with marketing to actually try and be more effective? Right. And,

[00:47:33] you know, Hey, look, we all know that we all get millions of emails every day. We get all kinds of phone calls and stuff. That's by my stuff, by my stuff. Yep. And what they were talking about in here is a couple of things. One is, is there different ways to reach people, which there certainly are right. Uh, other than email and phone calls and so forth. Avoid the digital fatigue is I think what they call it in the article. Right. Um, so there's certainly different ways of reaching people,

[00:48:00] but maybe more importantly, the messaging that you're reaching them with versus, Hey, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. Right. Right. There could be definitely other things that are more, uh, compelling along the way. So, um, anyway, I thought the two kind of went together, right? If you read the two. Yeah. Right. They talk about integrating physical and digital strategies, which is like a great, a great view of that. Right. So, you know, tangible marketing, uh, and they tie that to,

[00:48:30] you know, some of the ideas of long-term visibility. And, you know, I think we still see, um, a lot of kind of spray and pray from a marketing standpoint, that's not strategic or refined and defined of what that is going to do in that setting. So I was, I was kind of appreciative of this article because it, it, it really does. It, it, there was some, some, uh, tactical solutions that could come from that. And this is from sales and marketing.com. It says winning beyond the

[00:48:59] inboxes. Uh, so they, you know, talk about why digital isn't enough. What is tangible marketing? Some of the things that they describe is direct mail, branded corporate gifts, exclusive events, interactive print, and even, uh, AR related activities or experiences and handwritten notes. And I think this, what I like about this and some of those, some of those sound very simplistic. Um,

[00:49:24] the, um, um, I mean, if you were, if you were a strategic marketer, some of those things might be simplistic, but you know, um, I think that when we start taking our digital strategy and some of our historic tools, and I think about things like, you know, handwritten notes, I try and write a

[00:49:48] handful of those a week. Um, just because people aren't used to, I know I have a digital tool I used as well called felt. So I can, from my iPad, do a handwritten note from my iPad that's digitized and someone else in the third party sends it out, but I've got a stack of notepads right next to my desk. And I try and write those notes here and there because we want to touch our audience, I think, from an authentic standpoint, first of all, right. And think about people still being people.

[00:50:19] And, and whether it's, you know, you, you got a lead smart technologies fleece vest that you got from, from us at a, you know, at a meeting we did or a followup from a phone call and a, and a handwritten note or all of the digital touch points we have. But, you know, I think when we can start merging these, you know, again, the title of this article is winning beyond the inbox, right?

[00:50:43] Something more than just sending out emails, which we can have automated and now the AI tools that can be doing that is developing relationships outside of just a digital place. I thought this article talked about some good stuff. Yeah. No, it's, it's attention, right? We, we have limited attention. Yeah. I guarantee you there's emails that I get every day that are probably quite useful and valuable and something I should be paying attention to, but I don't because it just gets,

[00:51:12] it's all messed up in the noise. Yeah. Or it's, you know, when we think about again, that digital fatigue, sometimes the digital fatigue is tied to quantity. I get, I get some newsletters from some people that I would, would like to read, not even their newsletters, but their emails and their content. I would like to read it, but they sent me four in the same week. Yeah. Well, they all four might be, might be great, but it doesn't mean I'm going to get a chance to look at them closely. So anyways, that's it.

[00:51:41] So let's dive ahead into our technology, cybersecurity and AI segment. We don't need to spend a lot of time on this, but from a manufacturer, digital.com general motors is putting a virtual reality in the, excuse me, as a standard in some of their pre-production work. And what I liked about it is the image that goes with this article is a guy in a manufacturing

[00:52:04] plant with a VR goggles on, which is pretty darn cool. And it looks like he's got a, a, a meter of some sort that's looking at something closely. And it makes me think about a, as we think about virtual reality and being used in manufacturing, it makes me think Tom about during the pandemic. I heard a story. In fact, this was at an ISA event, a virtual ISA event while we were

[00:52:32] still in lockdown and a cutting tool manufacturer was talking about the fact that, you know, so much of what they do is that they, um, their onsite teams help companies identify how their manufacturing process is using cutting tools and, uh, and how they can save on that and, and refine their production operations, uh, uh, more so that they can have some cost savings. So this company did is they very

[00:53:00] quickly went out and they bought, uh, virtual reality goggles that were connected to the internet and a camera, uh, where they could send those out to their end user because they couldn't visit them and say, okay, let's do this online now where we're connected by virtual reality in what is happening in your facility. So I think we're seeing more and more of that. And that really goes back and ties

[00:53:25] into thinking about using virtual reality along with AI when we start talking about digital twins to evaluate in this setting, manufacturing settings, uh, what should we be making? What's, what would happen if we changed X, Y, and Z, uh, within the process. We see that from a digital standpoint versus actually having to go implement those changes.

[00:53:50] Yeah. And in the, in the picture here, and he's, I think, again, it's just being used just entirely to model something or are they using virtual reality actually within the production or in the actual, you know, actual manufacturing line so that you're, you know, able to either identify something, see something, or even have a much more clear thing.

[00:54:14] The article, the article talks about Volvo, uh, at Volvo trucks and then general motors using it in pre-production planning. Okay. Uh, and they say that the expanded significantly evolving from a single VR station, a sophisticated system used across all of the new GM vehicle launches. So they're using it pre-production now. Um, but what it's allowed them to do is it said, uh, the quoting, the quote in the article, at least at GM is they've significantly reduced the dependency on physical

[00:54:44] prototypes. Now I think about it 20 minutes up the road from me is where Toyota has their North American design center where historically people have been literally modeling new car models out of clay. Yeah. Right. Well, now we're taking some of that. It doesn't mean they won't necessarily do that, but you know, and this goes back to even our, our earlier article from a marketing standpoint of, you know, the, the real world and digital and bringing those things together. And I think this is a

[00:55:12] great example of that. Uh, they talk about enhancing ergonomics and safety through VR. It says beyond optimizing design, they're leveraging VR to improve ergonomics and workplace safety for assembly line workers. It said traditional manufacturing simulations may confirm that attacks is technically possible, but VR allows GM to assess whether it is also practical and comfortable for workers and they can simulate world, real world assembly scenarios. Right. So you think about that from a,

[00:55:41] an ergonomic standpoint, I sold ergonomic products when I was a manufacturer's rep, we were represented one of the largest manufacturers of those globally. And, uh, you know, we were looking at repetitive motion issues and so forth. Well, now imagine you play with a VR setting to prototype some, some things like that, and then tie that into existing workplace medical data or, and risk type data into an AI

[00:56:08] model. And now you come out and you can say, okay, based upon what we've done before, here's our, you know, the data that we have about the safety component of it claims that we've had and so forth. And you tie that in with VR and now you're making it in the best of both worlds. You've got real world use cases and you've got VR that can simulate things. Pretty cool. Pretty cool idea. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's, um, I think definitely something we're going to see a lot more of in the,

[00:56:36] in the next year, right? We've talked a lot about robots, but I think we've not talked a lot about AR and VR, which is, you know, there's been a lot of chatter about it, but never really gotten off the ground. I think we're going to see more of that. Huge digression here. Did you see, uh, any of the, um, the video earlier the week, both, uh, uh, Google showed the Gemini related robot, but,

[00:57:00] but the Tesla robot, there was a great clip that came out this week of it showed it by a Christmas tree, um, in a box. And then three minutes later, it literally, I think it says like three minutes later and there it is with a hat on and an electric guitar playing guitar and dancing. And then it shows the same robot and it looks like it's, it's real. It really is real. And then it shows it dancing and

[00:57:29] it dances better than, than I do. Uh, and then it shows it a moment later in the kitchen with a party hat on making cocktails. Uh, and most of it looked like it wasn't staged. Uh, it looked, it looked pretty impressive. So back to my housekeeping robot coming soon. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was one of the trends for this year. Yeah. Right. So we'll see if I'm right or not. So jumping ahead to a text explore.com.

[00:57:55] They talk about home Depot launching this magic apron solution, uh, kind of a cool, cool new tool there as well. Did you have any thoughts on that one? Yeah, I think I can't wait to actually get my hands on it because you know, this to me, I've been talking about the, the killer app, one of the killer apps for, for AI and our business. And what I, again, I haven't touched it, so I don't know how well it works, but what it looks like is they've combined

[00:58:23] all of their structured data about all of their products and all the things that they're selling and probably sales information. Yeah. Unstructured data, best practices. And what do you do? And made that, or they call it a customer, a customer concierge, but this mobile app, it's a mobile app will be, I'm sure used by their sales associates as well, right. To help customers and to help other people that are there. This is along the lines of what we've been designing for our own customers.

[00:58:53] Obviously Home Depot has probably put a ton of money into this and will be, but I think this is the, this is a form of a digital twin, if you will, for a sales associate that, you know, can be used, not only by the sales associate, but also by the customer. Again, I haven't tried it, so it'll be very interesting to see how well it really works and if it, you know, what value it adds, but I'm very interested to see it. And so this uses one of your, one of your favorite

[00:59:20] words out there is concierge, right? It's rolled out an online concierge powered by generative artificial intelligence to help answer customers' questions about millions of products and even how to get projects done. Right. So, you know, this is consumer facing, right? At this point in time, I'm sure there's some great applications built into it for the growing segment of their business at,

[00:59:45] within the trades, trades group as well. The reason that, you know, I wanted to talk about this today is, you know, you, you mentioned earlier as well as just, you know, the killer app component of that as well. And, um, phenomenal opportunity here. And I wanted our, our wholesale distributors and manufacturers that are regular listeners to this show, being able to see the things that are possible and the things that are coming and are going to be available to us, which are going to be,

[01:00:13] continue to be extremely powerful, uh, on, on that standpoint of being able to, to have touch points with your customers. And there's some great, great folks that are doing some cool stuff already, you know, uh, on the, on the traditional technology standpoint, like our friends at MobileEco and, and other tools that have mobile messaging solutions and mobile app tools for, for, uh, for customers. But this is now going way past that from a standpoint of, Hey, you want to know how

[01:00:42] to do a job? Probably don't even need to go to YouTube. It's right here. Right. And I would assume even as a con as a customer, you're going to have a login, you'll have your sales information, you'll know what you've bought. It'll make recommendations. Right. Yeah. Right. So. Yep. Yep. Uh, so interesting component of that. I think, you know, it talks about having contextual understanding of, of where you're at and what you're doing. It talks about, you know, literally

[01:01:09] the chat bot experiencing, uh, being asked about stains and it starts asking questions about jobs and then it can start doing recommendations for you. So what a great, what a great tool. Um, you know, and I think we could even look at this, like I said, I think it'd be a phenomenal opportunity for wholesale distributors of where the future's at, right. Of using generative AI. And to your point from a digital twin is helping people get jobs done, um, uh, as part of a mobile

[01:01:38] app. And because I think, you know, at the end of the day, there's a lot of wholesale distributors is example that have made mobile apps, but you know, some of them might be showing inventory. Some of them might allow, you know, I mean, I even know just to plug a little bit for our friends, uh, uh, at Moblico, right. They've got a payment tool built into their mobile app as well. And, uh, and, and customers can use that for communication and messaging and, and lots of

[01:02:06] different things. But what we're not talking about is having a digital twin or videos about how to do a job or the different chat bot that can help you decide between this vendor and that vendor. Right. Um, you know, even this, I could, no, I was just going to say, I think we should hit Bob's comment here on this is, you know, they talk about how a project is done, right. What he's saying is, well, what, how to do it or what to do is one thing, why you would do it. Why do you use this tool

[01:02:34] rather than that? Or why should you buy? And I was, as I was reading his comment here and I was thinking about this, you know, I, you know, I moved right. The last, in the last nine months, I do know you moved and I, uh, I have bought, we have bought a lot of gardening tools and stuff that we didn't need at our old place. And I, and I realized that I bought things that I think I just thought that I needed. Right. And so we ended up with all these extra things, but if I were to just go in and say, here's what I'm trying to accomplish.

[01:03:04] Yep. Here's what I want to do. Yep. I would have probably had fewer tools, but maybe more appropriate tools for the right thing. Or to, yeah, I'm sorry. Finish Tom. Anyway, it, it would be like, you know, a, a, a much more of a guide, right. To help me in what, in that situation. But we, we just talked about all week with our, with the customer we're visiting is how are they guiding the customer more? How are they providing more value to the customer?

[01:03:31] How do they provide more in-depth, you know, analysis to that customer? That's really what, why, why should you do this? Why should you work with us? Right. No, a hundred, a hundred percent agree with you on that. And it, it really ties into an example you did for, uh, one of our, uh, partners at a, at a large, uh, uh, pipe valve and fitting distributor. Uh, we were visiting the

[01:03:56] Southeast a while back and working with them on their long-term AI strategy. And, uh, we tend to work with some of our large, uh, potential customers and existing customers on really helping them understand the, not just AI, but what does it mean to my organization? What does my strategy for AI mean in that setting? And, you know, you showed an example literally of an AI tool

[01:04:21] that was a prototyping within our platform where you can take a picture of a job. This happened to be somebody working in a ditch, right. And, uh, and looking at the project that needed to be done from a, from a, a pipe valve and fitting solution where literally generative AI was able to look at a picture, look at all of your SKUs within that company solution and come back and say for that job,

[01:04:47] here's what's needed. Right. And, and that's the place that we're headed. Um, I wouldn't be surprised if this Home Depot thing has some, that's what I was just saying. And that's when you triggered about your, um, the, um, with your, what your trigger about that from a standpoint of working in your yard, uh, from that component was that if you could have just taken a picture of your backyard,

[01:05:14] you know, here's what you need to get rid of the weeds in your grass. Here's, here's five options of things to consider planting based upon the month of the year and when, what you should be planting. Here's where you could put this beautiful above ground garden or, you know, or, or planter box over here. And then by the way, these are all the tools you'll need to take care of it. And would, would you like me to put a quote together for you? Or order that for me and you can pick it up at the, at the online ordering.

[01:05:42] And, and for the, in Home Depot setting, right for the, the contractor side of business is where would you like this delivered because of their now their ownership of SRS distribution. So I will do this between, between now and our next show and I'll be able to provide a much better evaluation. Very good. Yeah. That'll be a good one. So kind of jumping ahead. We, we, uh, kind of short on time, a little bit more time today. We're going to, we said we were going to hold the line on a certain timeframe today, but, um, there's good article in Inc magazine. We don't

[01:06:11] need to talk about it at length, but it says 42% of CEOs are making this multimillion dollar mistake and it ties to basically cybersecurity in general. And it said a recent study reveals 42% of CEOs are not adequately prepared for potential cyber attacks, a significant oversight given that the average cost of a data breach has risen to 4.24 million. This was just from 2021 data on that. So it's a

[01:06:37] much, much higher now, I'm sure, but they talk about the, you know, not having a plan for the financial impact of cyber attacks, not having a preparedness plan and then strategies, long-term strategies for improvement. I'm going to add something to that as well, that I think is really, really important for people to be thinking about. And talk to a number of people about it just this

[01:06:59] week is that very few companies are looking beyond their own cybersecurity issues and not asking their technology vendors about their cybersecurity systems that are in place, right? You look at an organization like us that we're bringing data in from, you know, ERPs, marketing automation, e-commerce solutions, and now we have that company's data. You know, companies should be

[01:07:28] just pounding on companies like ours and any of your other technology vendors on, hey, I want to do an audit of your systems, right? We know a company that we bump into, I wouldn't really call them a competitor, but we bump into them in some deals here and there. They use the term CRM in their solution. Four weeks, they got hit with a ransom attack, and it took them about four weeks to get up. And I haven't talked to any of their customers

[01:07:57] other than the ones that we're working with that have reached out to us yet. But those that I had when they were first coming back up, they didn't even have a confidence they were going to get all their data back. And what happened to that data? Where else is it in the world, right? Just because someone paid the ransom attack doesn't mean that they really don't have that data somewhere else. So it's imperative for people to be thinking about what are the cybersecurity

[01:08:24] preventative measures that your software vendors have in place, not just what are your protections to protect your servers and your online presence, but what are your vendors doing as well? Yep. No, it's a good point because it's what the vendors are, right, especially all of us cloud vendors are a very key point of a company's tech stack. Well, exactly. And, you know, I mean, I, I, I was, I kind of laugh at that a little bit because, uh,

[01:08:51] the, um, we have another company we bump into here and there and some deals within the industry. And about a year ago, they, they, not a year ago, probably eight, six, eight months ago, they did a press release about, you know, having, um, the, uh, um, about having achieved one of the most common, you know, security solutions, sock suit sock two type two. And I just kind of had to laugh because

[01:09:19] they had one and I literally want, I know their CEO and I wanted to send them our list of, was it 20 or 22 certifications and ask to stay at testations that we have released for channel cloud. So something to be watching. Paul makes a great comment here. Engage your cyber insurance carrier before you have an attack. They make you and help you get better. Yeah. Right. That's a good way to force your hand on those things. Yeah. Yeah. Make sure that, that Paul's check is in the mail,

[01:09:47] Tom. Uh, yeah. Yep. So, cause that, that's the perfect, you know, great starting point about that. So we're going to kind of bump into our sales and MNA segment kind of quickly. Uh, if you've been watching, uh, and if you, if you pay attention to the news at all, whether it's our newsletter or any of the other ones out there with MDM, DSG, industrial supply, whoever it might be. And then as well as CNBC has been covering this very closely, uh, QXO with this big, uh, acquisition they're working at and,

[01:10:17] uh, with, uh, looks like right now about an $11 billion transaction for beacon roofing supply. Um, it's really kind of, I mean, you could almost make a movie out of this probably, uh, that the dynamics of it back and forth last weekend, Brad Jacobs, the, the founder of QXO sent an open letter to beacon employees, uh, on LinkedIn about their intentions and what the future looks like. And it was

[01:10:43] pretty cool. Cause, um, on that article, in fact, our friend, uh, from, um, uh, digital commerce 360, Mark Prohan actually asked Brad on there about what their technology strategy was. And he on LinkedIn came back and made some comments about the plan to grow use of technology and e-commerce and so forth at beacon. So this was interesting because this was super adversarial. It's still very

[01:11:09] adversarial, but now they're coming to the table more to the point that QXO has extended twice in the past week, the deadline and beacon canceled a shareholder update that was coming. That was supposed to have been this weekend as well, or this week as well. So they canceled that push, just pushed the date out. So it looks like they're coming much closer on this. So we'll see if we see

[01:11:32] a deal on this in the next week or so. Okay, good. So anyways, I think that, uh, kind of wraps things up in our people in leadership segment, a couple of different, there's one little thing I wanted to reference there. There's, is a good article from HR dive magazine is there is a, as we talk so much on this show about AI, there's a, um, uh, a bill being introduced by the California Senate.

[01:11:57] They call it, called it no robo bosses act. And the idea behind that is really that the, um, Paul says back to the QXO thing, he's got a little, it's pretty impressive. He's got a little popcorn emoji with his, with Paul's comment there said, it's been interesting to watch. So Paul, this is just, uh, when I see you next at some upcoming events later this year, I want to sit back and maybe we can chat over a beer a little bit like we like to do about what's been, what are your thoughts

[01:12:27] about this particular QXO thing? Maybe some popcorn. Yeah, I'm going to stick with a beer. I, I having a beer with Paul's really, uh, I, every time I do that, I learn, I walk away smarter, even though I've had a couple of beers. Um, but, uh, but back to this piece in California, what this is basically saying is the no, no, no robo job act act is they're requiring human oversight of any type of use of artificial intelligence related to hiring. And I think that's

[01:12:57] that makes great sense. And, you know, living here in the people's Republic of California that I've lived my whole life, that there's a lot of bills that I see going in, in this state that I scratch my head about, but this is, this makes good sense, right? Because what this is basically saying is you can't just throw all of your hiring solutions into AI and AI does it all for you. Uh, so I, I don't know. Look, I tend to agree conceptually that having AI handle all the hiring is what's just not a

[01:13:27] smart thing anyway, but this isn't, this isn't how you're going to enforce this. How are you going to, you know, it's, it's, I don't know. It's well, the other part of it is, you know, in this state and I can poke holes at it because I've lived here for my entire life is there's probably another, a bunch of other stuff that's probably not, not good for business built into that as well. So anyways, we go every week out of that segment into our channel leaders on the move. There's a couple

[01:13:53] good quotes there. Uh, then into our industry scuttlebutt section. Again, if you're not getting the newsletter, please let us know. We'd like to get this out to you. Uh, a couple of things in there about, um, uh, invent buying, uh, uh, avails electrical group, some information about Ferguson's Q4 sales, sales growth, uh, that, uh, had been reported. And then our friends, uh, that formerly

[01:14:18] known as Alaska rubber group now, ARG industrial that's Alaska based is expanding into Oregon further. So congratulations to those folks on their, their, um, hose and fittings business expanding quite a bit as well. And then we always have our second look segment as well with articles that we've talked about previously. If you get a chance to look at that in the newsletter, there's that article in reference to that open letter that, uh, QXO CEO and founder Brad Jacobs had put in that

[01:14:46] open letter there to a beacon employees is in our second look segment. So that's kind of it today. We're, uh, it's, it's 10 16. So we didn't make it Tom. It was close. Um, we did close and thanks for everyone for sticking around. Yeah. Great conversation. One last little plug, two things. If, uh, if you like what you hear each week, regardless of the platform you're on, if you're, um,

[01:15:11] um, on Spotify, Apple, any of those formats, please subscribe and leave a review that gets this out to more people that would be beneficial to, uh, jump on the lead smart technologies, LinkedIn page to see what we're up to there. Follow us there. And then certainly the, uh, the LinkedIn, um, around the horn page as well. Follow that. And if you're on YouTube, which a lot of you are, I talked to a

[01:15:36] wholesale distributor down in Tennessee the other day and meeting up with him, uh, recently, uh, he was probably one of the most flattering comments I've had about the show is that he listens to the Friday show on YouTube on his Saturday morning walk. So it's great to be with some folks on their weekends as well. So that's helpful. Last thing, Tom, what are we doing Monday? We are doing Monday, a version 2.0 of

[01:16:05] Here we are. Round the horn 2.0. Big ideas, bold conversation, shaping the future of distribution and manufacturing. First guest for that show is Brendan Breen from industrial. So it's a good way to end your week and then start your week. Yeah. So it won't be every Monday, but it'll be, it'll be, it'll be ongoing. Going to try and do at least one a month. So yeah. And Brendan brings some good takes really. He brings some, which I really liked. And we're going to kind of do the deep dive on his

[01:16:32] upcoming event as well. I've heard he's got some really insightful speakers coming. Okay. Yeah. All right. All right, my friend. All the best to everybody. Thanks for being with us until next week. Be safe, be kind and do good things. We hope you enjoyed today's episode and our guests. Each week, we try our best to dig into the topics

[01:16:57] that are impacting your business. So please reach out to us and let us know how you think we can make the show better or topics you'd like for us to tackle or talk about more often and even guests you'd like to see join us. We're looking forward to bringing you next week's session and hope that until then you stay safe, stay focused and do great things. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review to help others in wholesale distribution, get access to the

[01:17:24] conversation. And finally, please check out our sponsor lead smart technologies and their manufacturing and wholesale distribution industry, CRM customer intelligence and channel collaboration platform. That's lead smart technologies at lead smart tech.com.