AI Enablement vs. AI Hype: A Practical AI Framework for B2B Growth

[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. Whether it's M&A, SaaS and cloud computing, B2B e-commerce, or supply chain, we're going to be able to get a lot of money.

[00:00:30] By chain issues, we peel back the onion with our guests into the topics that impact your business the most. What's happening? Good morning. What's the word? Not much. Welcome back to California. Oh, so nice to be here. It's a long week. You know what the tough part is? It's bad enough to have a full week of travel, multi-cities, long drive in between, blah, blah, blah.

[00:00:58] I got home last night at like, I don't know, eight something from Cleveland through Chicago. Spent a little bit of time with my wife last night and she left this morning for a week. Okay. Well, that was probably about enough time for her. Well, that's not kind. That's not how we start the day here. I can see that coming out of her mouth. Yeah.

[00:01:23] The, no, she's off to Colorado to see our little grandbaby. Yeah. Okay. So, the, yeah, that's the, that's the bummer. So it's just me and the, well, I guess you'll be here Monday. So, you, me, and the dog. Okay. All right. How's that? All right. We, we may hear from, from Cooper later this morning. I'm doing the show from home like normal before heading into the office. Yeah. It was a great week.

[00:01:52] It was with affiliated distributors and some of their great members and, you know, our customers and partners from the, their PHCP group, which is the HVAC plumbing pipe valve fitting group, and just a lot of really good folks there. So we'll get into that a little bit later this morning. It was a good week and headed up to Cleveland. The industrial supply association was having their event, which was everything I've heard was good event. I wasn't able to be at the event because I had been at the other one and got into town

[00:02:22] just as the, just as the ISA event was ending, but I did get to see some of our customers and partners that were in town by staying an extra day. So it worked out quite good. So just a go, go, go this year. I think two other trips came up this week for this year. In fact, I was talking to the gentleman that drives me to the airport back and forth and he had asked me about upcoming trips and I thought I had a rough number on the rest

[00:02:50] of the year when I left. And when I came home last night, I told him I had number had just changed. So it's okay. All good stuff. Yep. Yep. So yeah, the event you were at was a technology centric event, right? AI talking about AI, AI topics, things like that line. It was, that was the focus, correct? Yeah, it was a big part of it. So, you know, is the, the, um, network meeting.

[00:03:16] And so within a lot of the buying groups out there, this one was with our friends and affiliated distributors that we partner with. Um, they have, uh, networks. So they'll take in, in affiliated distributors. Um, methodology of it is they have non-competing members or distributors from different parts of the country that are in a network group. And, uh, so as an example, we have one of the network groups. We have two or three different customers, but they're spattered ones from, you know,

[00:03:46] kind of Northeast area ones from, you know, Southwest area a little bit or Western U S. And so they, uh, match them up and they meet throughout the year on zoom and other ways. Then they're big national events. And then they do these network meetings. This was their spring network. And, uh, they have a series of topics. This one led towards, um, definitely on technology and artificial intelligence. I had an opportunity to, uh, speak on a panel there. They had the keynote speaker. That was great.

[00:04:15] In fact, it's going to be a guest with us down the road here on the show was, um, Gene Marks is a writer and author and, and, uh, to covers technology and works with Forbes magazine and a few others. So he did a, he did a really good presentation. It was, um, you, you think we've heard many that are similar to it. Good AI overview and neat things you can do right now. But the mindset was get going and expand and focus on, you know, not just worrying about,

[00:04:43] you know, not, not just AI, but just technology in general, but with a big, big bend on AI. What was neat is what Gene did afterwards. He spoke for about 45 minutes. And then after that was, um, a panel discussion myself and a few other technology leaders. And we did a 45 minute session, uh, talking about implementations and, uh, adoption and, and executive buy-in and all of the things that kind of go with that to have a tech successful technology program in place.

[00:05:10] And, and we all came at it from a little bit different angles, really good session. And then, uh, after that they did, uh, workshops table by table. They, I gave them questions to talk about as a group. And then in the, uh, that was on Tuesday. And then in the afternoon on Tuesday, they all had their group network meetings, but obviously those probably tailored themselves more to, to technology. And, you know, it's, it's interesting. I think this will add to our discussion and Tom, what I think, what you were thinking about today too, is, you know, it's, there's so much more than just AI.

[00:05:38] There's a million things that you can do with, well, I mean, even as an example, there's companies out there that, you know, claim to be AI, but they're doing some advanced workflows and some things like that. Right. So it's, I think my view of this sometimes just worry less about whether it's AI or whether it's a flow or whether it's a system and worry more about what are you doing to use technology to enable your business to grow. Well, that was the, I talked to a couple of our customers who were there.

[00:06:08] Okay. I wasn't there, but it was interesting listening. Were they completely enamored with me? Oh yeah. No, they, they were still just amazingly buzzing. With awe of the panel discussion, they said. That's awesome. Yeah. But aside from that, they, there was, I won't call it frustration, but a little bit of, I don't know, angst if nothing else, angst and frustration about just so much chatter about AI.

[00:06:38] But really what the takeaway should be, and I think this is what people are starting to recognize. It's not, AI is a tool, right? Absolutely. What you need to be thinking about is how you use technology in your business to enable your business versus just manage your business. Right. If you've looked at traditional SaaS and traditional software over the years, predominantly, I'm not saying entirely, but predominantly it has been used to manage your business.

[00:07:08] Even in the CRM world, right? Even in the CRM world, right? Manage my opportunities, track my activities, run pipeline reports. Sure. All of that kind of stuff. That's managing the business. But if you start thinking about how you enable, whether it's sales individuals, marketing individuals, operations, whatever, how you enable the organization with technology. That's what I believe AI has, one, opened the door to more potential there.

[00:07:36] But I think opened the door and caused people to realize that it's possible. Great. And that, I think, is really the conversation that companies should be having now is not about do I have AI, but am I using technology to the best of its ability to enable and grow my business versus just manage my business? Yeah. So, anyway, it was just interesting listening to some of the feedback from the people that were there. No, and it was interesting.

[00:08:05] You had discussions with, you know, I'll give you an example. I think if I looked at the companies that we partner with or our customers that were there at that event were varying degrees of success with, let me rephrase that. Maybe varying degrees of success and varying degrees of outlook and effort. Some just clamoring for what else can we do, what else can we do.

[00:08:34] Some that are scaling up, some that are wanting to scale up and do a better job and so forth with that. So, I think you've got, you had people across the board. There were people there that were doing at the event that were doing very advanced things. You had people that were there that were wanting to do much more. I think where we're really at with this is, you know, and it's as we look at, at some point in time, we'll stop here in the show and do an intro to who we are and why we're here and what we're going to talk about today.

[00:09:02] But, you know, our view of things is, what can we do to take data from across an organization, regardless of where it's at, right? Whether it's in ERP data or it's in a data lake or it's marketing automation or e-commerce data or whatever it might be, or even standard operating procedure, you know, vacation policy, whatever it might be.

[00:09:24] Bring all of that data into a standardized platform and bring that fragmented data into a single place and then use the technology, whether it's AI or whether it's other tools, to uncover opportunities, find risks, but not make somebody go in and run a report that takes 17 clicks and, you know, in five minutes in an ERP system.

[00:09:46] Or, you know, go focus on how many opportunities did I enter into my CRM today, but how can I do some of those things by voice? How can I automate some of those things? How can I send alerts that are dropping opportunities right into somebody's lap, right? Yeah. So that's, I think, where we're really headed. And that's really going to help.

[00:10:09] And, you know, one of the challenges I was talking to, in fact, I think I made the comment about the panel on this, and we talk about this here on the show pretty regularly, is that, you know, the, I think it's up to 72% now of B2B buyers are millennials, right? And we've got, you have to assume that new employees coming in will be in that similar range over time.

[00:10:35] We talked sometime here on the show about what they refer to as the silver tsunami, you know, where people of our generation or maybe the generation before us are, you know, retiring very, very quickly. And there's an issue, a huge issue right there, right now, from a standpoint of the, how do we transfer that tribal knowledge and how do we transfer that understanding of the business?

[00:10:56] Well, there's wonderful ways to do that right now with technology where you don't have to have somebody, you know, be able to tell you what warehouse that particular, you know, widget is, or, you know, what hidden folder in SharePoint something's in and how we do a process. We can transfer that knowledge and understanding very easily through technology. Yep. Anyway, all right, let's move on. Yep, that's good. Well, so let's get started on our show, 10, 11, 12 minutes in. I'm Kevin Brown.

[00:11:26] This is my lifelong friend and business partner and co-host of our show, Tom Burton. We get together every week on the Around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing Show here. We're live this morning. It's 9, 12 a.m. Pacific time where Tom and I are both located. We're here in Southern California.

[00:11:43] And we get together and discuss the news of the week from geopolitics to mergers and acquisitions, the economy and supply chain, AI, robotics, mergers and acquisitions, you name it. We talk about it. And we do that by means of a newsletter that we send out each week. We send out a newsletter. It's called Around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing. It goes out to 11, 12,000 people now, something like that, and a growing list.

[00:12:10] And we send that email out and we would love to get it to you. If you don't get that email and newsletter and you'd like to, simple way, you can send us an email at hello at leadsmarttech.com and we'll get that out to you. The other methodology for doing that is to very easily go to our website for the podcast, which is www.aroundthehornpod.com. Aroundthehornpod.com. And then additionally, we're live on LinkedIn as one of the locations along with YouTube and Facebook.

[00:12:40] And you could just search Around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution there and you could sign up for the newsletter, at which point you'll receive it to your inbox and it will be available on LinkedIn. So we'd love for you to have that. We're also later in the day today, we'll be, excuse me, we'll be have our recorded version of our show. We'll be on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and Odyssey and iHeart and all the different platforms. And so if you are listening to us, you won't see the newsletter, which will at some points be up on our screen.

[00:13:08] But we'll be talking about articles in each of the segments of our newsletter. So finally, through all of that, we couldn't do this show that we're at episode number 187. We couldn't do the show without the support of the company that Tom and I work for, LeadSmart Technologies. LeadSmart is what we define as an enterprise growth platform. And what we've done with our LeadSmart Channel Cloud product is we've built this tool that enables us to unify, siloed, and fragmented data from across your organizations

[00:13:37] and bring that right into a single platform that has AI-powered solutions in it for sales enablement, for CRM, for managing the data and the information that's coming out of your marketing automation system, your e-commerce system, your connected systems, whether that be a storage system or it's a data lake and so forth.

[00:14:01] And we bring all that together and we use technology, advanced technology and AI to bring you information across all of your customer journeys because your customer has a lot more than a single journey of an ERP transaction. They have a marketing journey. They have an e-commerce journey. They have an interpersonal journey, that information that's supposed to be typed in or voice recorded into your CRM. And you want to look at the customer journey from across all facets of your business to understand where there could be risks,

[00:14:30] where there could be leaks, and where there could be opportunities for growth that have been missing. So if your company is looking for an opportunity to capture more business, understand your customers, your teams, and your overall business and accelerate your growth using technology, we would love to talk to you. So Tom, what did I miss? And can we go talk about the news now? Yeah, you were mentioning the podcast. I think if I've noticed, the downloads on the podcast have almost tripled in the last month or so.

[00:14:59] I have some really good guests. Yeah, I think that's right. That's right. It'll probably dive this week now that we don't have a good guest. No, we had... I don't know if anyone comes live anymore. I think they all just listen to the podcast. The podcast downloads are what's growing. So that's why, you know, it's funny as I was actually going to send you a note. I'll just tell you because I forgot to.

[00:15:22] You know, sometimes my camera here overloads my whole network and drops out of the StreamYard system, which is our simulcasting tool. And I think because we're, you know, we still have, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that come to the live show or watch the recordings.

[00:15:43] But I think today we have a handful of people that I saw from Italy, a couple of from France, a big group from Canada, a couple from Latin America as well. And the podcast, that's for the live show. And for the recording, I think we had six or eight countries that were here last week that I looked. So, but you know, what's interesting is I, by the way, as a side note, we had this great guest.

[00:16:11] In fact, now I think about it, Tuesday and Wednesday, I had dinner with two of the last guests. So, I had dinner in Cleveland on Tuesday evening with Alex Chausovsky that was with us last week, who's just such a whiz on geopolitical and economic factors. And same exact conversation over dinner that we had basically on the show and talking about things. But he's going to do more with us. We're going to have him a little more regularly with us on the show.

[00:16:41] And he's always an insight. And then on Wednesday night, I was able to have dinner with Steve Levy from Infor, who was our guest the prior week. And the highlight of that was he brought his lovely wife, Marge. So, we had a great, great time. So, that does not mean that I'm going to come to town and take every guest that we have on the show to dinner. Yeah, I was going to say. It just worked out well this week for us. But yeah, things are growing. So, let's dive in. So, lots happening in the economy and geopolitical issues going on in the world.

[00:17:10] It looked like this morning that the officials from the Iranian government are headed to, where were they headed? Islamabad. Yeah. I think it was those discussions. Oil prices are down in the mid-93 range. Stock market was up this morning. I haven't looked at the market since we started the show, but things were looking promising there. So. Yeah, I mean, markets are up. We can talk, we'll talk more about that in a minute.

[00:17:37] Just related to some of the stuff related to Kevin Warsh and the new Fed chair. Yeah. Kind of a reboot, I guess, if you will, on the Iranian situation. They're going to meet, I think, tonight or tomorrow. I don't know at the time. They're coming in tonight or sometime today to supposedly meet. It seems to be, there's a lot of chatter about, Rick, who's really in charge in the leadership right now.

[00:18:05] Which I don't know is a good thing or a bad thing necessarily. I think it makes for things to get drawn out. Yeah. To get drawn out along the way. Does not look like there's really any traffic moving through. Here's our latest ship tracker here. Looks about the same. Looks about the same as last week. And the week before. And the week before. A lot of stuff, so not a lot going on through here. You know, I do have a question, and maybe you can answer this.

[00:18:35] Or maybe somebody else can. So, well, I understand we, from a military perspective, we've pretty much wiped out the Navy, the Iranian Navy, the Iranian Air Force, a lot of their military capabilities. Why is it that we're allowing them to block or stop things going through the Strait of Hormuz? Like, why can't we just handle that?

[00:19:01] It seems to be this ongoing problem, but militarily, why can't we handle it? And I'm sure there's a decent answer to it. I just, you know, I don't know what it is. But it seems like if we've done so much to wipe out and disable them in so many other places, why are we enabling them to continue to have such an impact on the Strait of Hormuz? Yeah. So, I don't know exactly that. I have a couple of opinions. I'll briefly share.

[00:19:30] Isn't that what we do here? I guess we can do at the moment. But we need somebody on who's like an expert in this, sort of. We had him last week. We should have asked. I don't know if he would have known that answer either. But the, I think you've got, there's a difference, if I understand it correctly, between the Revolutionary Guard and the regular military there. And what's been going on this week is the Revolutionary Guard has said, hey, you know what?

[00:19:58] I don't care what the government is saying or the new Khomeini is saying is we're going to go do these things. Now, why, what's the reasoning if we've been, the U.S. government and military has been willing to completely knock out, you know, the infrastructure for uranium enrichment and so forth and other military bases and so forth. The ships that they have, they're not even ships, they're boats.

[00:20:27] And at this point, why they don't just take those out, it is kind of surprising at that level. I would agree with you on that. The, it just, it seems like there is a powder keg is what came to my mind that pending right now with all of this is that you've got probably a twitchy finger ready to push the button that says go for it.

[00:20:55] That does some mass takeouts on what hasn't been taken out already. Why they're waiting, I don't know. I think it's, I would assume it's tied to this diplomatic issue. Oh, it is. But, you know, there's been all these threats, right, from Trump and our side that if you don't cooperate, we'll take out your bridges and your infrastructure and your power plants and all that stuff. And maybe we do have the capability to do that.

[00:21:18] But it just seems like we should have the capability to keep the straits safe, right, and keep traffic moving through there. Mm-hmm. Which the blockade doesn't seem to really be doing that. I don't know that that was the purpose of that. But there just seems to be something, I don't know, there's something missing in the logic of everything here. Yeah.

[00:21:40] Well, there's another component of that too, right, is you've got, there's a, the political portion of that, you know, is, and the economic portion of that is, it would not surprise me if this administration is leveraging a little bit of that, looking to get some more support. Because, you know, I haven't looked, yeah, I haven't looked this week, but, you know, last week there were six to eight weeks of jet fuel left in Europe.

[00:22:09] And there's all kinds of, I did see at the beginning of the week, I think it was Ryanair is cutting all kinds of flights over the next couple of weeks. So I'm sure the less profitable flights that they normally need to keep going, they've even got a more of a better reason to do that now. So there's probably some pressure points in there that are being used and looking at that. And then if it's, say, if it's fully open, then you also have that lever that you're missing now because there's no free flow of oil to China.

[00:22:39] And China is under pressure right now, even though China has their own huge oil production operations. They have far more of the oil that they're using is coming from Iran and from the Middle East. So I think there's probably a handful of components of that to go with your question, Tom. So that's not entirely could we, it's the answer could be. I mean, I would think, I would think what's out there right now from the ship standpoint is could be taken out by one U.S. destroyer.

[00:23:10] You know, could probably take all of that out pretty quickly. And you saw what they did. What was it last Sunday, right? There was a, they were stopping movement. And there was a ship that they warned and warned and warned. And they just put a couple of mortar shells through the engine room. And they clearly told them, I was listening to the recording. I don't know if you heard that. It was like, move away from where this, you are going to get a mortar shell through the side of your, you know, the side of your engine.

[00:23:39] And so, you know, move away from that area of your boat because here it comes. Can you imagine? Right. It's like game over. And then there was moments later, there was a helicopter landing with Marines or whoever it was dropping in and taking the ship over. So this is, you know, it's such an interesting time. So let's dive in and talk about some of these things, right? Their first article we have here is from Reuters.

[00:24:06] U.S. business activity recovers in April with Iran boosting prices. We have a follow-up article to that about, you know, from Reuters again from U.S. business inventory slightly above expectations in February. So before we go kind of talk about Warsh and tariffs and some things like that next, let's kind of talk a little bit about the push and pull going on within the economy right now too. I mean, is there really anything between those two articles that is earth-shattering?

[00:24:36] It seems like more of the teeter-totter, right? A little bit here, a little bit there. The teeter-totter we've been talking about as long as we've been doing this show, I think. But I think there are some, there are some, what would you, we'll go out on a little bit of a limb here and say, I feel like, you know, for the 187 weeks, really probably 195 probably with the weeks that we've taken off,

[00:25:02] we've always, we use the term simmering, bubbling, you know, but there's no, the economy is not going through the roof and it's not falling, right? We've got inflation ticking up within, we've got, is it, we're going to cut rates too low and have recessionary pressures? We're just having these conversations back and forth. We've have not had a war going on through any of these things, right? And I think we might be getting to a really, really interesting stage with all this.

[00:25:30] One, it's like, let's see what goes on with these, these talks with Iran over the next few days. I just, I would tell you as a side note, you made an interesting comment that I think is very, very important that ties with this is, you know, if, if I, if I get on a plane and I fly to a city, wherever it is in the world to sit down with a customer and negotiate something, right?

[00:25:56] We know in this setting, if 99 times out of a hundred in that meeting, I know that one, I should have done my homework ahead of time to know who the decision-making group is, right? In that setting. But two, I know that if somebody sends a chief revenue officer and a chief financial officer and a VP of sales to a meeting that we're going to work on negotiating something, I have a very high level of confidence that either one, they have the final say,

[00:26:25] or they have enough influence over the CEO who has the final say that I've got the right people in the room. When you are going through a, maybe it's not regime change, but a change in leadership in a foreign country that has partially a political government and partially a theocracy, and you don't really necessarily know who's in charge or who has authority on things, you have to kind of wonder, and that's, they've been talking about that the last few days,

[00:26:53] about these next round of talks is do even people coming have the really ability to get something done? So, I think we're entering a phase with this is, there's two components of it, I think. One is you've got the economic risk in other countries of oil. Two, we have the midterm elections coming up in this country.

[00:27:17] The president, he's in, I wasn't able to be there because I wasn't in town in time, but Brian Wild from NAW, you know, who's just a great speaker. He's the chief legislative and political person at National Association of Wholesalers. And, you know, Brian was talking about the risk. I just talked to a couple of people that heard that we're at the session, you know,

[00:27:42] and he was talking about there's a big risk of losing both the House and the Senate in this coming up. And that if that were to be the case, you're going to have to watch whether this president kind of moves a little bit, shifts over a little bit more towards the Senate to try and get anything done. So, what happens in this point in time is pretty critical that they keep at least the House or the Senate.

[00:28:07] And to go along with that right now, the president's, the sentiment is as low as it's ever been. And so, something needs to come out of this war. And I think it needs to be either a, I mean, I hate to think about the destruction that could come from this. It needs to either negotiate something that's clear and people are confident and it's sticking, or they're going to need to go in and push that button that says, we are going to take out your infrastructure and your utilities and all of those things, which is just, you know, that's just horrible for people.

[00:28:38] You know, but one of those things probably needs to come to fruition fairly quickly because of the other economic risks. And, you know, they use the term that, you know, you got to consider the source. I had CNN on in my hotel room the other day, and they were talking about the president getting bored, you know, with this. I'm like, oh, okay. I don't know how you can get bored with a, you know. I don't know if you're going to get bored. A crisis like that, but something does need to give, right?

[00:29:06] So, and we had then this morning we had, so this article was talking about consumer sentiment rebound slightly after hitting the lowest level, but there was an interesting component of, as well, with the, this morning was the, this is tied to the University of Michigan sentiment reading for the month. So it was a 49.8, which on a scale of 100, 49.8 is pretty, pretty bad.

[00:29:35] I asked, actually asked. Better than expected. But it was slightly, slightly better than expected, yeah. So the, I asked Gemini this morning about, you know, the baseline being 100. What does that really mean? And the base year that they looked at the score from was 1966. The total score from the year averaged and set a value of 100. So it says above 100 consumers are exceptionally optimistic,

[00:30:04] rarely seen since the late 1990s. Around 80 to 90, this is considered a healthier normal range for a growing economy. Below 50 indicates an extreme economic trauma. So pretty significant going on. But then you look, you know, what's the market doing right now, Tom? Market right now, well, Dow is down actually. NASDAQ's up significantly. So, but a lot of that, and I don't know if we want to move into the next article here. Sure.

[00:30:34] But a lot of that market upside came this morning when the DOJ dropped all charges against all investigation and all charges, which opens the door for Kevin Wurst to be confirmed through the Senate committee as the new chairman. And the market immediately takes that and goes, well, okay, sounds like now the door is open for rate cuts. So therefore, we might as well, you know, risk on, right?

[00:31:04] Let's put some money back in the market here. Not that there hasn't been a lot of money in the market recently, but, you know, it's gone into tech at least as of today. Yep. Yep. It's an interesting thing what's going to come out of that. And it's, I was talking to some people, you know, this is one of the things that, it's a challenge for me up and down and backwards and forwards is I love and I hate being on the road.

[00:31:33] I don't like being away from home and I still have a job to do when I'm on the road. But man, the people that I get to talk to when I'm at these events and, you know, when you sit down and you really listen to, you know, a manufacturer that's manufacturing in China and has distribution in, you know, maybe 10 countries, U.S. operation, things that they have to say about what's going on. And then you talk to, you know, a distributor from Florida and a distributor from Maine and a distributor from Montana and everything in between.

[00:32:02] And you see the feelings that they have and what's going on in their businesses. It's just, you were not reading about it. We're, you know, talking to the pulse of what's going on out there. And, you know, I think everybody would look to like to look to something being a little bit more stable. But what everybody knows is even if there's a Middle East conflict or there's a tariff issue, tariffs we're going to talk about in a moment briefly. But when you put all of those things together, right, if you could also put that with some

[00:32:32] stabilized or reduced interest rates, life looks very promising at that point, right? Well, and again, probably the dynamics are not here. The Polly market, for example, is not counting on any rate cuts over the next two or three meetings that are there. But overall, if you look at Kevin Warsh is a definitely maybe a more liberal viewpoint on

[00:32:55] rate cuts, a more liberal view, my stock market thing, is I think that is, again, it's the, there's nothing really in the way now, it sounds like, from him getting confirmed. And, you know, he says, and this is what this article says, I'm not going to be a sock puppet on monetary policy.

[00:33:20] But he certainly has been more looser in his thought process than others in his thoughts on rate. And so that if there is an opening for a rate hike, I think there'll be an opportunity to take it much faster than there would be potentially with the current set of governors. Yeah, he even talked about the escape, AI escape velocity, talked about in this setting,

[00:33:45] it was that AI driven productivity games could actually make their, their job a little easier in finding out, finding a balance of things, which, you know, I think this, it ties back to a conversation that we've had a number of times on this show, right, is in many of the people that are, are, are really managing their business well and able to manage their balance sheets really well, are doing so by using technology to understand inventory turns or whatever it

[00:34:14] might be related to that much better. Their understanding where their growth levers are much better. They're seeing opportunities in their business much better to do these things. You know, and he's talking about all of the things that here that, you know, go with not just AI productivity games, but also the things that we can see from, from data centers being built and so forth. So I would just think that if we could get past some of the big things happening right now,

[00:34:39] that we could really get to a group or a place where we have, I don't know why I'm chirping here. I have my things on do not disturb. What is going on with that? The, we go try that again. But if we could just find one, some tariff balance, right? I think we, most everybody agrees there will be tariffs. Find what that tariff balance is going to be. Get through that.

[00:35:06] And I think people are starting to settle in on what that feels like. Have some reduced interest rates later this year and then move into next year. And it just feels like it's crazy that we're at a place in life where it's April 24th and we're talking about, you know, interest rate cuts in Q4 that could push the economy ahead next year. But, you know, it's a balancing act. All right. Speaking of tariffs. Yes. Speaking of.

[00:35:35] So let's talk a little bit about tariff refunds, which has been our favorite topic. Tariff refund system launches from Reuters. Tariff refund system launches as thousands of companies file claims into the system. I guess the system, for the most part, held up. There were some glitches and other things, but it didn't go down. I think they were concerned about the whole system going down.

[00:36:05] So, again, lots of companies certainly not going to sit idle and just, you know, wait for something to happen. But the second article here, which I found really interesting, lawmakers push tariff refunds, what it means for distributors and customers. And basically, let me see if I have the exact data here. A group of 15 Democrats in the House of Representatives urged CEOs, I guess they wrote a letter.

[00:36:33] Walmart, Amazon, FedEx. Yep. Urged CEOs of major retailers and shippers to give back any refunds they received from the tariffs to consumers who paid the higher prices. Has anybody heard anybody talking about that? Well, we talked about that. Remember, I told you I thought Costco was going to give us a few dollars back on our rebates every year. Good. We'll see. Right? We'll see.

[00:37:03] On the other hand, President Trump said on Tuesday that he will, quote unquote, remember companies that forego tariff refunds, implying some unspecified benefit if they abstain from using the portal and requesting a refund. That doesn't sound like this president at all. He wouldn't do something like that. Come on. I don't know exactly how that would work. Maybe if you're Walmart or Costco, but not some little company, I don't think is going to get any.

[00:37:33] Yeah. I don't think Joe's electric supply is going to impact. Yeah. The letter also asked CEOs to commit to not using any refunds for stock buybacks or executive compensation, which I found interesting. And there's about, you know, again, this is nothing new. There's about $175 billion potentially up for grabs on this, on these refunds that are here.

[00:38:03] Mm-hmm. And yeah, I mean, but again, this letter has no legal, nothing legally behind it. It's a pretty please, right? Just to take care of the consumer before your balance sheet. But I don't know. I mean, it's going to be interesting. I think there's a major PR opportunity for a big retailer to come out, even like Costco,

[00:38:29] and say, yeah, you know, we know roughly how much your tariffs in prospect, what you spent in this last year. I mean, they know all that because you get this rebate. Well, if you're, yeah. If you're applying for a rebate, you better, you know, you better know. So, you know, I think there's a real PR opportunity here. Again, this letter is, well, this could also help, you know, accelerate the economy if you do this.

[00:38:57] I don't expect companies to do a high percentage of it, but they may do some percentage of it. Anyway, just a very interesting. Well, you know, what nobody's talking about here, and certainly this would not be the, something that you would see that anybody in the political arena talk about this, you know, they'll just, they're putting this letter out to pat themselves on the back and say, hey, go do the right thing, right?

[00:39:24] But the other component of this is, you know, when you look at an organization, you know, of any size, right? I mean, we talked about this a year ago when tariffs first came out about the impact that it would have on a small manufacturer or a smaller mid-sized distributor. I mean, we had guests on the show that talked about they were meeting instead of quarterly meeting with key vendors. They were meeting weekly with key vendors about things. The time and the energy that has been put in to operations and purchasing and supply chain

[00:39:53] people, you know, I'd say you could have people argue that, you know, what their, the potential of what their rebates are going to be, there's a significant chunk of that that's going to be taken up in the costs that they've put into their business to manage these things. Yep. Yep. You know, so interesting. So we'll see what, we'll see what plays out of that next.

[00:40:13] I, I am Tom waiting for, so I've had probably five to seven emails, maybe, maybe more like four or five emails in the last three weeks from very misguided lists that people have that have sent, sent me for our company, an email from both consultants and law firms that want to help us get our tariff money back.

[00:40:43] Sure. For our technology company that paid tariffs. So, you know, they're blasting these things out. I'm waiting for there to be a, um, the television commercials from the ambulance chasers who have been, are pivoting to let us help you or come join the, the class action lawsuit against Walmart or Walmart or Costco or whoever it might be.

[00:41:11] So, you know, you've made the comment over and over again that, you know, in response to my, my comment about, yeah, but what about the, you know, we look at it from the distribution component of it or the manufacturing side is, you know, manufacturer got a, got a tariff passed on to the distributor, distributor passed it on to the contractor, contractor passes it on to the homeowner. And although I will tell you, um, we're getting ready to put a new roof on our house.

[00:41:37] We put it off for about a year and a half and the roofer came back and his quote was only about seven to 10% higher, uh, which I did. I, I expected it to be significantly more than that. Uh, but at the end of the day, right, there's a trickle down effect and, uh, with all of that.

[00:42:02] And so I can see that we could get into a place where there is a huge amount of class action lawsuits of consumers that tie to this and just a mess, right? It's just a mess. Billboards all up and down the 405 freeway. They'll replace the, you know, have you been injured with you paid tariffs? Yes. Yep. Yep. So it's a good additional good article that we included here. It's late later in the, in the newsletter, but, um, Mark Brohan, who's now with the distribution

[00:42:30] strategy group, uh, wrote a really good article, um, at the DSG website about distributors can now claim their $127 billion tariffs, but it won't be simple as it, uh, he tied to that. And so he wrote a pretty good article. Does Mark work for DSG? I don't know if he's actually working for them now, but he had been for years and years with, um, uh, did, did digital commerce three 60, which we feature their articles pretty regularly.

[00:42:58] He's been writing for DSG for quite some, they need to get Mark back on the show. I texted with him a couple of weeks ago. Mark, Mark hosts a great, great podcast with his sister. Who's a marketing executive. It's called B2B, no bull, I think, or no bull B2B. It's I, there was a, I'll send you, there was an episode I listened to. So I just texted him. There was a, uh, Mark's a Chicago, uh, writer on B2B and e-commerce.

[00:43:26] He's been doing this for a long time in Chicago based and just super, super guy. And, um, they had a gentleman talking about marketing and brand strategy and, and understanding markets and understanding the business component of that. A couple of weeks, I'll send you the, the, uh, uh, fact if anybody's listening and they want that particular one, send me a note. I'll get it to you. But it was really great, really great interview, really great show. So, uh, it's called, uh, B2B, no bull or no bull B2B.

[00:43:56] One of the two is really good. Really good show. I'll check it out. Yeah. Here I am promoting other people's shows on my show. So, but you know what? Was it rising tide lifts all boats? Something like that. Yeah. Very good. All right. Let's, let's, uh, let's, there's another article that we have in here. That's got some interesting statistics, uh, on CNBC about, um, how the, uh, Iran wars hitting us home builders as well. We won't spend time talking about that so we can kind of move ahead.

[00:44:25] But, um, why don't we jump Tom into our manufacturing distribution section? Got a good, great, really good article here that, um, my cocket, my friend put together. I didn't see Mike when I was at, uh, in Cleveland, but we were texting. We kind of crossed his ships. Mike was a guest with us earlier in the year, but, um, distributor branch traffic improved in March signaling early demands stabilization as an analyst from Jeffrey cited

[00:44:50] increased branch foot traffic at a handful of major industrial distributors, uh, which is interesting because so many of them putting the big push onto e-commerce and, uh, you know, online order placing and so forth and online transactions. But, uh, people are still coming into branches to pick up widgets. Do you think that's more MRO or more MRO related sales or, or? Well, it's, it's, it's, you know, in this setting, it would be tied across. So I'll give you an example.

[00:45:20] There's a chart here. Uh, it says branch foot traffic, um, Granger, Wesco. So Granger, largest industrial distributor that reaches into many other segments. Wesco on the electrical side, Fastenal on the fastener and industrial side, Parker Hannafin, um, and, uh, which is more higher tech pieces. So that's, they're showing March year over year, February year over year, and then the three months through March. So across the board is the types of distributors. Yeah.

[00:45:50] Because they're getting more branch traffic. Yep. Interesting. Yep. So, um, so the, uh, the little recap that I did on this is the data confirms that the branch is evolving from a transaction hub to a service point as well. So there's, you know, some of these people are coming in to get tools repaired or those types of things as well. But, um, the e-commerce piece is growing as well. I'm sure we could go find an article tomorrow that shows all the growth of that.

[00:46:19] I think what's, what this says is that there are across the board, our economy is strong. Business is happening. Sentiment is frustrating. Geopolitics is frustrating. Sentiment is down, but business is still booming and moving. We're building a lot of stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this goes back to just stuff and doing stuff. So, well, this just goes back to, you know, the whole, this, this, uh, almost said regime,

[00:46:48] uh, this administration's goals, right? Is onshoring lower interest rates, growing manufacturing in this country. And those things are happening. And it's not just on the electrical side with data centers, right? It's so much more than that. So, all right, let's roll ahead. Tom, where do you want to go? We want to just hit this real quick. We can, um, QXO, uh, you want to talk about Amazon or no, no, go ahead. Let's jump into that. Yep. Sorry. In your take on it, right?

[00:47:18] It was, um, basically the article for reasons why industrial supply manufacturers need Amazon business. Business, right? Yep. You know, same, I mean, the article talked a lot about the things we've talked about before. I don't want to sell on Amazon. I sell through distribution. I don't have control over what I do in Amazon, but it seemed like it was trying to debunk some of those myths. Yeah.

[00:47:42] So to speak on why it would be, make sense to, um, at least explore the Amazon business. Yep. Exactly right. Well, it's in the, this talks about, uh, this is from David Gordon and I think he did some of this data was from in Ciba, which yeah, it is for, which is from, um, our, uh, friends over there. So, um, Brian Beck.

[00:48:09] So, um, it took me a second to come up with that. So, you know, the, the end of the day, right. This is a, it ties to a conversation we've had many, many times here. So let me just hit these, these points, right? The first is Amazon business is huge and getting bigger. And I think I've commented on this. I'll say it again before, but Amazon said this in the, what do they call it? The aughts, um, the first 10 years of a, uh, of, uh, of, uh, of the two thousands,

[00:48:39] I think it's the aughts. Um, but it was somewhere around 2005, 2007. Amazon was very clear as Amazon business was getting started is they said, you know, they knew Granger was doing $3 billion of electronic transactions already. And they had the ability to do that. And I think Tom, I'll just, I'll share this again. If people listening have listened to the show for a long time, this might be the third time I've said that, but I was, I'll never forget.

[00:49:06] I was at Eddie V's steakhouse a couple of blocks from the San Diego convention center at a large, uh, safety equipment conference. And I was with an executive from Amazon. I won't say his name, but I don't think he's there anymore, but you know, upper middle management, maybe not executive. Um, but as we were talking about it, uh, about, uh, you know, all of the things that they carry.

[00:49:31] And he basically said, if it's, um, if it's not illegal and is not fully immoral, something like that, and it fits in a box, we'll sell it. Right. So, uh, and there's varying degrees of immoral, I guess. Uh, so they, the way that I think in, in, in, so David talks about this, that they're

[00:49:56] big and they're getting bigger, um, 300 million users spending over 630 billion in 2024. Right. That's the, the, the e-commerce market size and Amazon business has become the first place many B2B buyers go and making purchases. We talk about this every time we talk about e-commerce, Tom is right. Is there's this varying or blurring line between our personal life purchases and our business purchases, right?

[00:50:24] We live Amazon created it, right? I can order something at you. You still have a cough that you've had for two weeks. You could go online right now and have Amazon bring you cough syrup and it would probably be there before 5 PM or one of the options would. Right. And so people are looking at that. I've told stories from, you know, the 2012, 2013 about, you know, talking to somebody,

[00:50:51] uh, who just talking to a, um, manufacturers rep who had just been at a big, um, construction site. And the guy there said, you know, when I call XYZ company, they have part of my order, ABC company, they have another part of my order, another company, they have another part of my order. Nobody can do my order complete. And most of the time, if I need batteries and flashlights and some hard hats, Amazon's always going to have it. Right. And it's just what they do. Right. And then they talked about, David talks here about, uh, Amazon business gives B2B manufacturers

[00:51:20] more control versus other selling ways. So, you know, they, they have a lot of data, right. You don't, they're not going to tell you exactly who the end user is, but you'll get, you know, uh, point of sale reports that are really, really accurate and really strong and available 24 seven and a lot of great data that's available. And again, this is talking about manufacturers selling there. Uh, the third is that access to drive it, data-driven insights and analytics. David put some charts up here.

[00:51:48] It says one of the biggest advantages of Amazon businesses access to data-driven insights to typically go beyond the basic sales metrics that most manufacturers receive from traditional distribution and retail partners. The rub here, right. Is, you know, has historically been distributors want to hold what they're doing and how they're doing it and who they're doing it with close to their vest to keep manufacturers from going direct to their customer.

[00:52:15] You know, we live in a day and age now where I believe that, you know, there's, it used to be, I always use this example, right. It used to be when I spent my early career in the, in the safety equipment arena and it used to be, it might be very difficult to find who the safety manager is at a, you know, a maintenance, United Airlines maintenance facility at Denver airport. Um, now go on LinkedIn.

[00:52:44] You got him right. That guy's not hidden anymore. So if a manufacturer was going to want to go direct, they're going to be able to go direct anyways, if that was their mindset. So anyways, the fourth one is higher conversion, better ROI and more incremental revenue. So they even show up a line item from a, from a balance sheet here. So anyways, there's some really good, really good thoughts here. It doesn't mean as, um, it doesn't mean that this is the right answer for everybody, but it

[00:53:13] certainly is not the wrong answer for everybody. My view of this has always been, if I were a distributor, I'd have a store on Amazon as well. Yeah. I think when I read the article, it was more, Hey, okay. First of all, have an open mind, right? Number one. That's a good point. Yep. And number two, with an open mind, step back and look at strategically, right? How could this possibly help you? Right. You know, and do a kind of a SWOT analysis if you want to do that and take a look at it

[00:53:41] and say, okay, so rather than just, you know, having the bias of no way, take a step back, look at it. It still may not make sense or it may make sense, but at least look at it through an open mind and is it the right strategy or could it be a good strategy? Well, it may not be the enemy, right? Right. They, they, and sometimes though, there's that old thing too, is right. Um, so it's saying, um, but knowing your enemies best, something like that.

[00:54:10] So something to consider there. Closer to your enemies. Yes. There you go. Close to your friends, closer to your enemies. Yes. There you go. Good. All right. So QXO bought another company, top build. Another billion, multi-billion dollar acquisition. Yeah. Yep. 17 billion to acquire top build. So, you know, now we've looked at this, now we've, I guess I'm looking at this and waiting

[00:54:35] for Lowe's to jump into the game here because, uh, a little bit, they've done some smaller things, but you had, you know, uh, Home Depot, you know, two years ago, I guess now bought SRS, uh, building materials and roofing. Um, you've got QXO. Um, you've got QXO. Then after that bought a beacon roofing. Then QXO has now bought Kodiak, a building supply, uh, distributor that, or, or was a PE group that, uh, basically owned a bunch of brands.

[00:55:04] And, uh, uh, and then quickly following that a few weeks ago, there was the announcement that Home Depot had bought, uh, uh, Mingeldorf's, the HVAC distributor in the Southeast. And, uh, that was a big dip. And then I talked to a couple of distributors this week that had also been contacted by HD, uh, in that setting. One of them who's contemplating selling his business right now, that was not the right

[00:55:32] fit for him, but, uh, it's quite interesting. So I think we're going to see more and more of this, um, whether it's publicly traded, large publicly traded groups coming or even more PE play. But, uh, the, looking at the, the, um, component of HD getting in, coming in and buying, uh, Mingeldorf's, so family owned operation in the Southeast and the HVAC space that surprised quite a few people. Yeah.

[00:55:59] That, that's, uh, that seemed like a interesting acquisition to me. Yeah. Um, but you know, obviously they, they did their homework, I assume. Yep. So good. Where do you want to roll next? We're going to roll, uh, into our AI and the latest updates. I mean, we've got, you know, probably time for maybe one more topic here. So I know we're going to do it. Let's, let's scroll down there, Tom. Let's hit that one about, uh, 86% of B2B leaders aren't AI ready.

[00:56:26] And the reasons run deeper than just tech that ties into the discussion that we had when we started our day, huh? Yeah. Um, yeah, absolutely. And so, I mean, so the article, right, the article, I think highlighted the usual things that we hear, you know, data problems and cultural issues and unwillingness to change and, you know, push back and, and, and all of those things are there.

[00:56:53] And I think that's why I think it's healthier to take a step back right now and say, how, what, how do I want technology to enable my business? Like we talked about earlier. Right. How and where. And then look at, okay, from there. And I think you had a meeting, Kevin, with somebody, with one of our customers, right? Who's kind of taking that approach, right?

[00:57:22] They're looking at, I mean, and they've always been technology forward and they're now taking a step back and going, Hey, how do we kick it up another notch? Yep. Right. But there, it didn't sound like, you know, it's all AI. It's not like, okay, we're going to, everything has to have the word AI in it. It's how do we use technology and the more modern technological options that we have here, including AI to take our technical in our, enable our business to another level. Right. And I talked to their CIO yesterday.

[00:57:51] You'd, I know you met with the CEO. I talked to their CIO yesterday and I think their approach is very healthy, right? It's like AI is an important part of it, but it's not the end all be all for the whole thing. Right. And so they're looking at what they, what they want to accomplish. And I think by doing that, some of these barriers that we're seeing here, because yes,

[00:58:16] I mean, data can be a barrier for AI, especially, you know, generative AI, of course, but there's a lot of things that can be done. You don't have to let perfect get in the way of progress. Yeah. And there's a lot of things that can be done to start moving things in that direction rather than having everything in my, am I ready for, you know, AI running my business. Well, in that particular organization, right?

[00:58:46] And we see both sides of this in the business that we have at LeadSmart is you got, I'm going to put this best. Next, you've got, in some instances, you've got the tail wagging the dog because there are, and we see this in, in all facets of our business and customers is there are large producers that

[00:59:12] sometimes are, I'm going to put this best and describe this best Tom. So, it's very common to see in any type of distribution company that you see people that are mature within their career and mature within an organization who are, maybe lack of a better term, rainmakers, right? Or are very significant revenue producers that have some weight and they can, you know, push their weight around a little bit.

[00:59:39] And some organizations are ready to kowtow to that person and other organizations are saying, hey, let's talk to our, we were on, I joined you on a call yesterday with one of our existing customers as well. And we were talking about that is how do we show those people the value and the benefit? So, they come on board along with what everybody else in the organization is doing. So, there's a way to do that, right? To say that. That's change management, right? That's change management. What's in it for me? Helping people understand it.

[01:00:08] But then you've got people like the company that you were just talking about a moment ago who are looking at, across the board, they're looking at, do we have the right ERP? Do we have a strategy for the future? Because, you know, you look at ERP implementations, right? And those are typically planned for multiple years, if not sometimes many years, people gearing up for them. And they're oftentimes a multi-year project. But people are looking at across the board is, where does my business need to be?

[01:00:37] And this is what I would tell everybody. In fact, I mentioned some of this in the panel I was on earlier this week. And I've got a few more panels like that coming up. Is be thinking about, you know, we use the phrase all the time on the show here is the old Wayne Gretzky thing is, right? Skating to where the puck is going. And where is the business world going to be that I need to be a player in, right? And need to continue to keep, grow market share, not just keep market share, but grow market share.

[01:01:06] And what are the technologies that I need? I might need not, I might not need to get the next highest, higher level e-commerce solution, you know, this year. But do I have a plan of how the e-commerce component of my business is going to grow and what it should be contributing and what I want it to contribute? And do I have the right people and so forth? And then, you know, the other side of that is, look, I might have, you know,

[01:01:32] Joe or Judy who contribute X millions of dollars in revenue to my business that don't want to use, they don't want to log into the ERP. They don't want to log into the CRM. They don't want to share anybody their notes. But how long is that person going to continue to hold your business hostage in that setting? So I think the smart folks right now are looking at what do I need to do to get to the next level versus what's happening today. And this article talks a lot about that. Yeah.

[01:01:57] And there's a framework I brought up before that if you talk about what does it mean to use technology to enable, right? And it's kind of, and I use this framework of, I think on the show a few weeks ago, and it's proving to be true over and over, right? If you look at how do you use technology, one, to discover, right, whether opportunities or situations, right?

[01:02:22] Then once you discover them, how do you use technology to alert the right people about those either opportunities or situations? So that's the second one. The third one then is, okay, I've been alerted. How do you guide them, right? So that they know how to take advantage of that opportunity or handle that situation that's there. And then last, how do you look at automating some of this over time?

[01:02:49] So some of these things can happen autonomously so that the people are focusing on more higher value actions. Sure. If you look at enablement as a function of those four things, discover, right, alert, guide, and automate. And you have to look at them from that perspective. If you're looking at how you're going to use technology to do those things, and of course, AI is a part of that. And of course, data is a part of that.

[01:03:15] But it puts a purpose in of what you're trying to accomplish. And it does help to your point of the change management and all of that kind of stuff, because you can get feedback from people on, well, what are things that we should be discovering that we're not? What are things that you would like to know about your customer or about your territory or your branch that you do or you don't? You know, all the way down the process and incorporate that change management.

[01:03:42] So the framework that I've been using that framework a lot with our customers and our projects, and it's working very well to keep everybody kind of focused on that. Hey, what is our goal here? And what is our purpose? Good. There was a great quote in this article, and it says, most organizations aren't blocked by access to AI. They're blocked by how their teams are structured to adopt it. Without clarity around ownership, purpose, and day-to-day impact, even the best tools struggle

[01:04:12] to gain traction. Yep. That's exactly what we just said. Yep. Anyway, not surprising, but, and I know you've said this, there's just all these conferences and everything talking about AI. I just would strongly recommend nothing else. Take a step back and look at technology has the capability to do things that it has never had before right in the past.

[01:04:40] So how do you want to harness and take advantage of that capability? Yep. And it's the, it's funny. I'm going to say this again. I said it in the panel I was on earlier in the week. I say it all the time, and I took it from you. You told this to me when we were just developing our company years ago. And you said, buying software is easy. Getting outcomes is hard, right?

[01:05:09] And to get outcomes, you need to have a plan and you need to understand what you want to accomplish. You need to have an organizational structure in place of how to get that adopted. And until you're ready to do that, you can buy all the software you want and you'll have mixed results. It ties to why, you know, the MIT, I think did the study that said something like 92% of AI initiatives fail, right? There's, you know, ups and downs within that. You can read between the lines and that, but you're going to struggle with your technology

[01:05:37] initiatives across the board, unless you have executive buy-in, you have an organizational understanding, you have purpose, and you understand what you want it to achieve. So that's good. All right. Last article here before we go. We have one, huh? That's the robot. Yeah. What do you think? I don't know. I haven't seen them, but the third generation robot is supposed to be coming out very soon, like in the next couple months. Mm-hmm.

[01:06:03] And they're going to be running their factories with them accordingly, supposedly. Our friend and channel partner that we have integration partner with at Moblico, the mobile messaging platform, our friend Pierre, I was on the phone with him for a bit on Tuesday, driving from Indianapolis to Cleveland. That was a beautiful drive. It's almost like the entire drive was under construction. Was there a lot of corn?

[01:06:32] Did not see a ton of corn, but I did see a lot of farmland, but not a lot of corn yet. So I think we're maybe early, but did see a lot of farmland. And it was in that five-hour drive. That was quite a drive. I just figured that by the time I took an Uber to the airport in Indianapolis, waited for a flight to Chicago, spent an hour and a half at Chicago waiting another half hour on the runway and then flight on to Cleveland and then an Uber back.

[01:07:00] It was just easier to drive and talk on the phone the whole way. So it was good. But Pierre bought a humanoid robot this week, or leased a humanoid robot this week. He did a... From Tesla or from Chinese? No, no, no. No. From, I think it was called Neo. So I asked him what Kelly, his wife's thoughts are on it so far. And that jury is out and he doesn't know when he's going to get delivery, but he's leasing it. So what is he expecting it to do?

[01:07:31] He wasn't completely clear on that. He was talking about helping clean the house and walking the dog and some things like that. I just, it'll be interesting. Maybe we'll have him, maybe we'll do a live, live shot with Pierre once he gets it. And let's see what it's doing at his house in Florida. I think it would be great. But look, here's the scenario, right?

[01:07:52] This is the stuff that Elon Musk is talking about right now doing is, makes Tesla look like child's play, right? When you put together him talking about, you know, all of us having multiple humanoid robots to assist us with things in our lives and the humanoid robots running the factory and him talking about us not needing to go to work.

[01:08:19] And then you just even look at thinking about SpaceX, Grok, X, and Tesla all potentially coming under the same, under the same roof. Don't forget cursor. He's just bought cursor. Then he just bought cursor this week, right? What? Tell everybody what cursor is. He made an offer to me to buy cursor. With $60 billion for a company that's what, 18 months old or something? Three years old. Three years. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:08:48] So coding and, but yes, anyways, the, the Optimus robots are going to dwarf Tesla is basically the plan in that setting, right? Well, that was his trillion dollar pay package was based on that, right? I don't remember it was, you know, millions of robots, right? Deployed and so forth. But again, there's a lot of common technology and common, you know, things that are being

[01:09:16] utilized to drive the different capabilities and the different businesses. I listened to him in August. I've come up. This is funny. I don't have a great memory, but I remember exactly where I was. I was on our way to see our friends at, uh, Lone Star Electric Supply in Houston. I had left New Orleans and flown to Houston. I'd been at a Hardy, uh, HVAC trade association event and, and, uh, doing a speaking thing there with the friends, our friends at Hardy.

[01:09:46] And in fact, I heard from Allison there this morning at Hardy about their, their, uh, winter event. But, um, I was driving down the road. I was listening to the All In podcast and they were interviewing Elon Musk and the guys on the All In podcast are all friends with him. And they were talking about robots and this, everything I read about robots goes back to this discussion because the first thing I look at when I see a robot is its hands. All of the stuff about them boxing and all of the stuff about them running last weekend,

[01:10:15] there was a race, I think in China and the robot ran faster for a half marathon than the, the human record or something like that. But is what can they do with decks manual dexterity? And Elon Musk said on that podcast, driving down the, the, the, what do they call it? The loop in, in Houston was, uh, the absolute hardest component of the robot. That bar none far and away is from the elbow to the fingertip. Sure. Right.

[01:10:43] And they said the new robot has three or four times the dexterity of the version. Yeah. So it's good. So they're coming. I am, I'm telling you, I will have one that will be washing my car while I'm sleeping and weeding the hillside behind my house and we'll be able to find dust better than my lovely wife can find dust. And she didn't believe that, but I said, it will be looking for new ways of finding dust as opposed to you just find the dust because you know what you're doing. Okay. So.

[01:11:13] Well, we'll have to have you, have you, have you and Darlene on the show telling you us about your robot experiences. I'm sure we're going to have Pierre and Kelly Barbeau first because I have yet to order one. So that will be the likelihood of it, uh, coming, coming quickly. Uh, so we'll go from there. All right. Well, let's listen. What did we, what did we miss today? We didn't cover a handful of things. There was good articles, uh, on leadership practices in our, uh, people in leadership segment. There was a few of those.

[01:11:42] There was some additional components in there about some marketing tools, uh, redefining B2B content strategy for AI search was a solid article in there. So we had quite a few other articles we didn't get to today. There's like 20 articles so far or today in the newsletter. And I put in less this week than last in the last few months. So, um, but the, my reason for sharing that is if you don't get our newsletter and you would like to, we would love to send that to you again.

[01:12:10] It's called around the horn and wholesale distribution and manufacturing goes out to thousands and thousands of people every week. We'd love to send it to you. We had a request, a couple of requests this morning, but we would be happy to send that to you. The simple way to do that is send us an email at hello at lead smart tech.com. And, uh, we'll see that right away. And Lily or somebody on that team will get that out to you. And then secondly, you can easily go to the, uh, LinkedIn.

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[01:13:58] Uh, as I said earlier, I think we're somewhere between six and eight countries on average each week. We'd love to get that to 10 or 12. Sounds good. Good. Tom, anything big for the weekend? Uh, no, no. Um, and do some yard work, work on my grapes so that we have some better grapes this year and, um, stuff like that. So I forgot you have grapes growing in your backyard along that back wall.

[01:14:27] Are you going to be doing some, some trimming and pruning and spinning? Yep. That's right. And what's going to happen with those grapes once you pick them? Last year I made juice. I didn't make wine. I made juice, but the juice was excellent. So if you got the juice, you can make the wine. I know you can make the wine. Maybe that'll be this year. I just can see this now. I, you, your neighbor is a, what would we call Matt?

[01:14:51] Matt, Matt is a man of many, many, many skills, many skills when it comes to fermenting, uh, distilling and smoking. Yes. Let me rephrase that. Smoking meats. Yes. Yes. So very good. I hope you enjoy that. I, um, am looking forward to being home for the weekend, but I am looking forward to seeing you this week. Tom and I live about, uh, an hour and a half to two hours apart. He's going to be down in our office down here next week. So I will see you on Monday.

[01:15:20] I am contemplating. In fact, uh, not that anybody here cares, but would you prefer a filet, a ribeye or a reverse seared smoked tri tip on Monday night's dinner? Let's go to the latter. I've been hearing a lot about that. So let's try that. Okay. You got it. That's what we'll do. Well, thank you, my friend. We wish everybody a wonderful weekend. Thanks for being with us. All as always be kind to be safe and do good things.

[01:15:52] We hope you enjoyed today's episode and our guests each week. We try our best to dig into the topics 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.

[01:16:18] If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review to help others in wholesale distribution get access to the 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 leadsmarttech.com. I'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.