Big Economic News and The Changing Face of B2B Marketing

[00:00:00] Welcome to Around The Horn in Wholesale Distribution with Kevin Brown and Tom Burton. Sponsored each week by Lead Smart Technologies, Tom, Kevin and their guests review the news of the week and dive deep into the topics impacting manufacturers, Wholesale Distribution, Independent

[00:00:21] Sales agents and the Global Wholesale Supply Chain. Whether it's M&A, Sass 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. Very good. How are you my friend?

[00:00:39] Okay. Very good. Well, we've got a lot to pack in today. So let's do our quick introductions in our housekeeping, getting rolling and hopefully we get some good guests. It's a good, good, good, good listeners today and some good comments.

[00:00:54] So if you're out there let us know where you're from, if you're with us on the live broadcast and so to get started today, I'm Kevin Brown. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Lead Smart Technologies and I'm here with my life-long friend and co-founder of Lead Smart Technologies

[00:01:10] Tom Burton and we get together every Friday morning unless somebody's in an airplane, vacation or the hospital, I guess would be the way we look at that and we chat about the news of the week.

[00:01:26] And mostly you just went on mute out your microphone in a way. Well, it's tough morning for Kevin. It looks like he just dropped off. Well, anyway, I will continue. So as Kevin said,

[00:01:55] we are covering the news each week. We go through a number of different categories as we know economics, technology and so forth and actually we have some great articles to cover today. If you are listening on the podcast, you're obviously not going to see the newsletter,

[00:02:14] but you can see the replay of this on LinkedIn as well as on YouTube and a number of other streaming places. I think Kevin has just completely disappeared. So oh and by the way, you know, I'm not

[00:02:29] used to doing this. This is usually his job is we are sponsored by Lead Smart Technologies. That's the company that Kevin and I are the co-founders of and they sponsored this each week

[00:02:41] and allow us to move forward. And I also wanted to make one more announcement before I guess I get into the news is the 100 episode. This is episode number 98 of around the horn. We have

[00:02:56] the 100 episode coming up here on next week, but the week after the 26th and we have the legends of all legends. So I think we talked about this before, but if you want to join church beverage,

[00:03:11] Ian Heller, Mike Hockett, Dan Schuber, the list just goes on and on. Marty McLaughlin, Paul Kennedy, just keeps going and going and going. Please go to the LinkedIn page for Lead Smart. You'll see

[00:03:24] it there at the top and you can join and sign up for that show which is coming up in two weeks. All right, I can only assume that Kevin lost his internet, but let me see if I can find out.

[00:03:46] Well, I'm not hearing anything from him. So I only can assume that he is lost his internet. So I will handle the news myself until we get him back here. And hopefully we are coming through

[00:04:01] on the other end. Man, this has just been one thing after another this morning. So starting with the news here, economy and supply chain and it really is too bad because Kevin would be really gloating right now. As you're probably aware of you've listened, Kevin and I

[00:04:17] have had this bet about are we going to have one to one rate cut or two rate cuts this year? You know, a month or so ago the chair pal had basically said we're going to do one,

[00:04:29] one rate cut and Kevin was telling me that I was gloating. Well now with come out this week as an inflation has fallen a bit or still at the 3% rate, but it's down from what is expected.

[00:04:43] The fed our chair pal had a meeting saying that they don't want to continue to hold rates for too long. Oh, looks like he's coming back here. Hey, do you miss me? I was just going on my own. We were

[00:04:56] already down the road and economy and news. Well man, and I'm guessing everybody had probably joined right in and said Kevin's not here. It's going to be a great show. Yeah, it's I'm getting more comments and there's everyone seem to be super excited.

[00:05:11] Awesome. Well I apologize. I don't know what happened. They're all of a sudden I got this thing. I was on mute and no camera and had to re-plug everything in and change microphones and

[00:05:22] but I don't think it was a microphone issue. You know, I got any mic as you've been helping me with this week, but you can hear me okay. I presume? Can you hear you okay? Okay. Sorry about that.

[00:05:33] And you know, I'm sure you covered the news everything's good. I tried to do the housekeeping as best I could it was probably a little clumsy, but I think people got the point. So I was just a

[00:05:46] computer right over here. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well I apologize for that. That's, you know what? We're 98 today and that's the first, you know, pretty big snafu we've had. So let's not too bad. So thank

[00:06:00] you for covering for that. It was just saying to everybody you're probably gloating and I was just going into these first articles about the inflation changing. But well I was thinking, I'm going to

[00:06:13] see I'm going to see you next week in person. You want to just go ahead and buy the stakes an hour? Yeah. Yeah, that might happen. No, and I was just, I was actually just about to go through.

[00:06:27] I, you know, despite all of this again opinion, right? Yeah. And I was thinking about this a lot last night. If I, and this is not just me trying to, you know, hold my one position. But if

[00:06:41] I really just look at this, this is how I kind of see this playing out. I do agree that we are going to see a rate cut probably in September assuming that nothing drastic changes between

[00:06:51] that and that. Yeah. I think that, I don't think we're going to see, you know, where this 3% rate or whatever, I don't see we're going to see much difference in that whether it goes to 2, 9

[00:07:01] or 3, 1 or 3, 2 or whatever, I think it's going to stay around there for the next few months. But I do think we are going to see that rate cut in in September. I think that's a high probability

[00:07:12] event. But then I still believe that's the end for this year. Okay? And for a lot of different reasons, because I think unless we, the, the, the edge is we talked about, I think two weeks ago,

[00:07:25] I don't see the interest rates changing or the not the interest rates. The, um, the inflation index changing much over the next few months, the job level may change and if the job level continues to drop gradually, then we're going to, I believe we'll see more cuts going

[00:07:41] into next year, which I do believe will happen. But I think this year we're not going to see radical change. They're going to give us the one throw us the bone and then that's going to be

[00:07:49] until the end of the year. So yeah, I'm still sticking to sticking strong. Yeah, well, you can clearly hear yourself trying to justify a poor decision. So, I don't have a call, poor decision. I just call

[00:08:03] to an estimation. Well, anyway, one, one lacking in merit. Oh, so anyways, I think that where I would disagree with you on that time, I think this, from this standpoint is there, and this is what

[00:08:21] this is what I, and I'm going to read between the lines a little bit. And professor, I guess I should say that, you know, as we always do, we're not economists, we're not, nobody's invited us to be a board

[00:08:31] member at the Fed or a governor as they think they call them. But I think here's what's really going on with, with listening to Paul this week with some of this is numbers are looking better

[00:08:42] right? They think they use the term speed bump of what happened in the first quarter. And now things are doing what they expected them to do. But what you're hearing more and more and more of and from

[00:08:55] Powell himself and then Janet Yellen came back out and commented that, you know, the, they looked at things from the labor market, reinforcing what Powell had said about the labor market, supporting that we're on the right track with this. I think what happens is you look at

[00:09:13] this is that bond market had an adjustment. Stock market had an adjustment or the treasure I should say out at adjustment earlier this week when Palspoke. Stock market certainly did. Stock market is certainly factoring these, these changes in I think significantly at this point. But Powell

[00:09:32] I think is really starting to say in this setting is that there, it's almost like he's rationalizing I've got to get this done because of the negative impact that could happen if we don't right

[00:09:46] if we missed this it could be just as bad for the economy as us getting a late start of raising interest rates. And I think that's a big piece of where he's coming from right now.

[00:09:55] Well, I agree with that but I think there's another edge, another side of that coin is they start cutting too much too quickly and then they have to come back and go, oh crap. And then they're

[00:10:06] actually talking about raising something again that can also cause. So it is a balancing act. I just think if you look at all the dynamics I'm still sticking with my one so.

[00:10:15] And I think that's good. I mean I'm appreciative of you doing that. It really kind of sounds a lot like what the Republicans are, you know, stalwarts are staying at the saying about the present,

[00:10:25] stay in the race, stay in the race, right? Stick with your opinion. I do believe though every day right now and you know what to your point though. We could see an uptick and something or a change

[00:10:38] on something in the next couple months but there's pretty major people out there right now that are also talking about, um, they should be doing something in July versus waiting till September. I don't, I don't see that. I think right now everything is pointing to two. There's in

[00:10:56] one of these articles there was an economist that had his whole explanation of why we should do three this year. I think my view of it is it's just different than yours.

[00:11:07] Is that I think we're going to see two this year because it's baked into so much and Powell and the Fed is scared of not having the reverse effect and that maybe we don't see anything in

[00:11:22] Q1 of next year. That's I'm going to take a little different view than yours and saying to this year because of the pressure to get in. And we're probably saying the same thing as it relates

[00:11:36] to the next six months or next nine months. Yeah, I think I run and track through that. I think it's more of the timing issue that I'm looking at differently because again there's two

[00:11:46] factors that are two major factors that tend to be, you know, the ones least we hear about. One is the inflation rate or the CPI or the PDI or whatever they call it and then employment.

[00:11:59] Well, if we see a tick up and employment which could vary what happened going into the holiday season and so forth. If we see a tick up even from the three level to three one three two then they have

[00:12:10] every reason to work okay let's not get ahead of ourselves let's hold back a little bit and be more deliberate. Now again it's a timing issue right? Then you come into the new year

[00:12:19] you have the election you have a lot of other things that could affect the dynamics of that and the timing of it. So that's a bit of a crapshoot I think still at this point. That's why I

[00:12:27] wasn't waiting two weeks ago or whatever when it was we're only having one right? I mean look how much is changed in two weeks, you know, whatever it was and I think that's key we've got it and hopefully

[00:12:38] that's why people tune in with us pretty regularly and the kind of at least see the articles that come in the newsletter. I presume when I fell off the face of the earth there for a couple minutes you

[00:12:47] talked about the fact that we published a newsletter each week called around the horn and wholesale distributed. I did. Yeah, I didn't do it near here anywhere near as eloquently. We probably went faster

[00:12:56] though but I was much faster and I'm sure people got the point. Yes. Very good. So we had four articles this week about related topics to to this. We're going to talk a little bit about the job market

[00:13:08] things easing a little bit there as well but I think you know what we are I think if we look the things from the next six months were probably on the same page. I'm going to ask you

[00:13:18] though to throw this out there and you neither one of us have enough insight into these things other than having an opinion but an election in November. Pressure from the White House on the Fed

[00:13:31] because that you can say all day and all you want that I'm not in the Fed's, your poll can say that they're not impacted by this and they don't care actually. I actually think that with everything

[00:13:41] else going on around the election and the candidates and all the other things that are happening I think that the Fed is taking a back seat and I think that their impact on the election

[00:13:54] given all of the other dynamics of the election right now is relatively minimal. And I think it gives them a bit of a get out of jail free card to not have to one way or the other feel like

[00:14:05] there are being politically inclined. I think it gets taken them out of the line light, line light a bit. So I don't think we're going to see much movement one way or the other based on politics.

[00:14:21] If my understanding you saying that if it wasn't for all of the myopic polarizing view of what's going on with the current president and his mental status or health issues, if there wasn't that, that there could be some talk and

[00:14:40] some pressure here or there's too much going on related to that for anybody to care about this. Pretty much. Okay, yeah I think you might be right with that because I do think that there

[00:14:51] would be a great amount of grandstanding that could happen if we're, you know, have a cut and September and then we're looking at another one late was with being in November right? It would be the next option. Right. To be, you know, grandstanding the day before the election

[00:15:08] saying in the next cuts coming and look at what I've done. So yeah, it would be interesting to watch and that's not the issue at hand right now, right? So yes, correct, correct. We don't talk politics on this show so we'll we'll just jump ahead on that.

[00:15:22] So I'm going to kind of jump here time the other article that we had in our weekly section here where we talk about the economy and supply chain was about retail imports continuing to rise

[00:15:37] despite supply chain issues and this was I thought a pretty good article here where it shared the idea of the fact that stuff's getting in through the ports, right? Probably not as much as supposed to but they're talking about this happening in spite of

[00:15:57] freight increase price increases being up significantly. No likelihood, they're sort of going to talk about no likelihood of there being a any change to the Huchie Rebels situation going on in the red sea and the so

[00:16:13] as canal. And the fact that we've got labor issues going on, the Zoxia is in Canada. There is risk of a rail strike right now and then you've got the East Coast and the golf ports

[00:16:26] unions who September is when they're contracts up. So things are still getting in, but prices are way up and that's going to impact both wholesale distribution and you know the B2B world and the B2C world. And inflation. You all there he go.

[00:16:45] What was I what I in the article here which I found interesting right for all the challenges and that but what they didn't say is necessarily why are how right? It just said that it was

[00:16:56] better and that people were getting through but it wasn't talking about well what strategies or what's what are companies doing to kind of you know navigate around all the barriers and challenges that are there. Yeah, they did a little slightly to the shift to West Coast ports

[00:17:14] and you know that's being long beach guys you know both of us growing up there maybe those ports are a little more efficient when you think about the West Coast but there's a lot of them too right. Seattle Tacoma down to Portland, then see even coming in

[00:17:31] on the Columbia River there and then you work your way down to the Bay Area and there's multiple ports before you get to like and you know the port of San Diego has continued to get more and

[00:17:41] important and valuable both for produce coming from Latin America to the US markets as well as the automotive market there's huge movement in the tankers that are coming in or not

[00:17:52] tankers but to car carriers coming into San Diego those of you who come out to a San Diego for trade shows and events when you're at the San Diego Convention Center literally an eighth

[00:18:05] of a mile away you can see it from some of the parking structures is where part to the port are where some of the car carriers are coming in there so yeah it's it's going to be an

[00:18:14] interesting thing to see what happens with this I that is funny you're coming about the inflation component of that but it's true. It's exactly what I was saying earlier right it's it's just

[00:18:25] and again right things changed literally it seems like by the hour sometime but if you take a little bit of a longer term view I were certainly not out of the woods as a relates to the

[00:18:37] and the ups and downs and the little ups and downs on any given day doesn't change a longer term situation that it still exists. And anyway I know we're off that so let's let's not get right you

[00:18:50] know so we're still in our economy and supply chain we have quite a few articles there this week because they were good there's an article and it's talks about from MDM on our distribution management

[00:19:02] but it was quoting some other things from the Biden administration and the article is about taxing steel and aluminum imports that are routed through Mexico and you know the issue behind

[00:19:14] that time away I wanted to address that briefly today was the fact that we talked a lot on the show about unshorried neochoring right and so from that standpoint this matters a lot and we've talked

[00:19:32] about quite a few times here is that we need to be watching when we're thinking about manufacturer wholesale distribution in the US we need to be thinking about how is Mexico

[00:19:44] doesling up if they were to how are they doesling up to China and Russia in particular and this tariffs are related to aluminum and steel tariffs that are coming from China, Russia, Belarus or Iran

[00:19:58] and Mexico I you know I I view this as Mexico can probably be a it's just made me think about I need to have a discussion with us over some good

[00:20:12] sipping to Kilo with our next or neighbor the next or neighbor that moved in about a year ago is a retired telecom corporate lawyer from mostly m and a lawyer moved here from Mexico City

[00:20:25] your great guy and I think this would be a great conversation because what Mexico does right now over the next 12 to 18 months even in this setting about China's steel coming in there and

[00:20:37] coming to the US it could be a big, big factor in US Mexico relationships and the impact of NAFTA so these tariffs coming in could be an interesting thing to watch and we're going to

[00:20:47] watch it here for everybody ever. And they said that Mexico is cooperating with that exactly right I think that I agree with you on them I think Mexico is going to be the most interesting

[00:20:59] country to watch not over the next few months but even the next few years. I think it's got a really strategic role internationally but certainly on the North American side of things and

[00:21:14] I think that's one of the things is going to have to continue to build the relationship and strengthen the relationship over time but I think it's going to be one of the most interesting areas to watch over the next period of year. I just must.

[00:21:28] It kind of makes me think I want to do some research thinking about how that relates to NAFTA in general right because it's not just an impact here in the US it's an impact in Canada. So we talk you know

[00:21:40] the reason we included that article was we talked regularly about on showing near-shoring, near-shoring things coming into Mexico or Latin America from manufacturing. We would love to see them using US deal from map, most of that steel and aluminum are coming from countries that the

[00:21:57] US has some struggles with right now so we'll keep an eye on this for everybody right? Yep. Good. Before we go on here it's going to say good morning to Will.

[00:22:05] Good to hear that we are coming through too so anyway but yeah well by the way we're everywhere when I fell off the face of the planet for a minute I still had my phone going and I was

[00:22:19] watching I was trying to get all this stuff reset and was watching you continue to talk so you are mesmerized by my intro I'm sure. It's actually recognizing the fact that it's important that we have two of us. Yeah. I think it would be hard with one person.

[00:22:36] I don't think the show is set up for that. I don't this you know there are some shows that and you feel a different style or whatever it would make sense. Yeah. Yeah absolutely.

[00:22:47] You know it's interesting. We talked about that as we just do things different here around the horn and wholesale distribution weekly is that I get emails every day and you probably do too from people wanting to there's folks out there that are like agents for podcasts guests

[00:23:03] wanting thinking that because we have a podcast with a title they've never watched or listened to it right through a webcast and a podcast and and they want to you know show us here's the 17

[00:23:15] reasons why this guest would be perfect for us and I don't respond to him because I don't want to have to educate them on why that their guests probably wouldn't work well here in a format of

[00:23:26] reviewing the news so but we're excited you know if you mentioned we're coming up we'll talk more about it before we leave today but we're just a couple of episodes away from the big one the

[00:23:37] big 100 with all the all the big fancy guests so it's got to be good to bring that up. So so we jump into the next section newsletter here and again I'll just drop in the fact

[00:23:48] in Tom mentioned this earlier is that we are live here this morning on YouTube live Facebook live and linked in live but this is being recorded and later in the day John our producer and editor

[00:24:00] will take all of this data he and his team will get that onto the popular podcast platform Spotify Apple so on and so forth and we'll get that information that we do live here out

[00:24:12] onto the podcast podcast world later in the day so if you're listening on the podcast recorded later you're not seeing the newsletter that we send out each week it's called around the horn and wholesale distribution and manufacturing it goes back to about 10,000 people

[00:24:27] if you do not get that and you would like to simple email to hello at leadsmarktech.com and or just go to the website for our podcast which is www dot around the horn pod.com

[00:24:41] and you can sign up there for the newsletter we'd love to get that out to you so we have these sections we're going to move it into the next section manufacturing distribution Tom manufacturing and technology orders everyone I wanted to hit I want to hit marks

[00:24:53] comment here there we're great you know are you seeing comments or those not coming through either on your own okay I know I can't control them like you can so I think marks pointy saying near

[00:25:05] sure and we'll benefit Mexico and should change the entire relationship dynamic with the US which agree including topical matters such as immigration I completely agree with that I think that obviously the immigration issue is a hot topic a hot political topic a hot topic of the election

[00:25:23] I think it is going to change a lot of those relationships and how we work and how we the immigration laws and all of that the twice I think it's going to be one of the most interesting

[00:25:34] relationships and dynamics over the next few years of any country that we've you know obviously been involved with in a while you heard it here first and you did mark mark up this get that word out

[00:25:45] thank you we will as you said we'll keep this is something that will keep on the doc at for a bit as we go well we've been chatting about it often on for quite some time right

[00:25:55] it's I remember you might have brought it up prior to that but I brought it up two three months ago at least when we were talking about near story and and I think what's interesting about this too

[00:26:06] is watching the political landscape that you know the current front runner in the presidential campaign is shown him or election cycle is shown himself not to be afraid of busting up

[00:26:18] you know not funding NATO to the same way you know now if it's not working right you know if if the Trump administration is there there could be some risks to NAFTA okay no anyways

[00:26:32] you'll you'll hear about it here on a consistent basis assuming things move in the right direction there quick article that we had there from industrial supply magazine talked about manufacturing technology orders grow there's a report that's put out regularly by the

[00:26:47] Association for Manufacturing Technology so we had some growth in that segment which is good to see we get some important articles I want to kind of move past that I did want to mention though

[00:26:58] if you get the newsletter you can see it on our side or just go to moderate distribution management's website they have their midyear outlook that captures kind of a current snapshot they

[00:27:09] give some good information about growth in 2023 and then kind of a snapshot of where we are in 2024 so they've shared some good data that's there as well from a growth standpoint they're predicting the MDM forecast projects 2024 2000 24 only having a nominal growth of 3.3% and then 4.8%

[00:27:34] in 25 so that would take the wholesale trade revenues to 8.147 trillion dollars okay I thought it was really nice how they broke it down by category in there yeah they do great well with that

[00:27:48] yeah so everything's broken down and some some some good you know insights around some of the different categories or verticals within wholesale distribution good let's jump into a time into our e-commerce and marketing segment which we maybe we have some things that are maybe a little less

[00:28:07] little less volatile talk about now as that I know that's the right term but that's what kind of comes to my mind it's good article that we we've featured from digital commerce 360 about

[00:28:20] the B to B organizations wanting to scale revenue versus e-commerce and take away is on that one you know I I know we talk a lot about e-commerce and I think we need to get

[00:28:34] do some more drill down on this you know next year or later on this year is I keep seeing an digital commerce 360 obviously is a little potentially a little biased that more and more on more and more sales are happening through e-commerce but it's a little bit

[00:28:52] different than what I see in here we see in here every day working with our customers and prospects what I'm seeing is more and more they're looking at how do we strengthen our outside sales team

[00:29:05] how do we strengthen our inside sales team how do we strengthen our counter people how do we improve the relationship all of those things which are which are I won't say contradictory but they're they're not about how do we move everybody to self-serve right how do I

[00:29:24] know you right how do we provide a much better full serve or or hybrid serve option along the way and it's not that you shouldn't I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't have an online

[00:29:36] presence and there's not a reason to have an online channel and a solid online channel but this article was more like hey everybody's just going to move everybody to you know 53% are going to move everything from in-person to e-commerce I don't see that in the world we're in

[00:29:51] now maybe it's different companies and different verticals that they're dealing with but I just don't see that same sort of mindset I guess yeah so there's some good and I didn't take away

[00:30:04] that that's fully what they were saying but I do agree with you on the bend that that goes with that right I think that in my you know I do my little show notes each week and in my my little

[00:30:18] note here says discuss net new and what I mean by that is I think the big factor that's available the people should be thinking about is one customer journey right e-commerce is we so

[00:30:33] too it's like meeting the buyer where the one buyer wants to buy right I think when we had our our we call it our legends show but I don't think we can call the January show our legends show

[00:30:43] with the group that we've got coming so much in right but I think it was the inhaler made a comment and he said we got to meet the buyer where the buyer wants to buy right or where the buyers

[00:30:55] have and the buyers are out there V2B buyers right we know that this was 62% or whatever it is of V2B buyers or millennials now they have different buying habits they want to research in

[00:31:07] different ways two different things I always say that that buyer you know probably murder dinner on door dash and took his girlfriend to the movies a couple of days before on

[00:31:18] on in an Uber you know and so they're buying habits or difference and I think we're what we're seeing is people are trying to figure out how do I use e-commerce to serve my customer better

[00:31:30] get more information in a platform which this article talks about as well about getting good information there in one place for customers to do research but I view this as the discussion

[00:31:42] about net new right it's not and I think you're saying what we were seeing with our customers at Leedsmark but the other side of it is what people should be doing and that is embracing

[00:31:54] the e-commerce side that says I'm going to meet the buyer where the buyer wants to buy it's going to bring me potential efficiencies but then I have to look at that and say now that

[00:32:04] I have different data about buyer journey what am I doing with that data which very few people are doing which is part of a part of the big partnership that Leedsmark has with optimizy is

[00:32:17] bringing that data in to an AI enabled CRM platform where you can visualize customer journey and now we take the data that has there's two components this one is we take the data of customer

[00:32:32] journey from e-commerce what they're doing online two is we have the data from inside sales outside customer service counter people that are participating and sharing data even mobile messaging if that's connected into the right platform like we do in our platform and we bring all

[00:32:49] of that data to illuminate how we serve the customer better and e-commerce is a big component of that the other side of it though that I think is really important that people need to be thinking

[00:32:59] about it's tied to what you're talking about is the net I call it net new right how many customers can I go get in front of because I have a great e-commerce platform that I would have never

[00:33:09] gotten in front of because of my sales people just I've never stopped that but I think you have to differentiate your e-commerce platform from a research platform versus a buying platform

[00:33:23] and everything in between right so it could be a quote in and it can be a buying there can be right that's what you hit right so I think it's three right it's I'm doing letting people build quotes and

[00:33:35] orders right or I'm taking or I'm having a great platform for research from my customers really understand even more about our company and how we can serve you besides just products and then three

[00:33:49] is both net new and existing customer sales expansion but he's got to have a strategy and that's what worries me sometimes when I get out to some events in industry events talking to people is

[00:33:59] it's sometimes that you'll hear people they just they just bought a platform and now I have e-commerce yeah and there's not a lot of strategy behind it so but anyways let's say I kind of shift gears

[00:34:11] at e-commerce and go into that marketing I know you had some cool thoughts on that the articles from Forbes it was called the shifting tides of marketing and it ties kind of into that omnichannel you know customer world as well to that right yeah what I'll read the

[00:34:28] byline here it says for the last decade or so advancements in digital marketing while making huge strides and creating new opportunities have led to some less desirable outcomes as well and

[00:34:39] you know as you know Kevin I used to own a digital marketing agency and did a lot with digital marketing so I'm very familiar with the pros and the cons and I think they desire the less desirable

[00:34:53] outcomes that they're talking about there and they didn't specifically state this but they kind of indirectly stated it was you know you get what you measure in your reward and what we've been measuring

[00:35:04] in rewarding and marketing about you know how many more clicks can you get and how many more MQL is marketing quite remember we talked about this earlier we go yeah and and how many people did we

[00:35:14] you know get to visit our website and we we have been measuring in a lot of cases the wrong thing it is not very customer centric and is not very buyer centric and it's more vanity metrics on

[00:35:27] the side of the business and then even necessarily represent exactly something that's going to turn into revenue growth or sales so a lot of the bad marketing quote unquote that they're talking about

[00:35:38] and here has resulted from measuring and rewarding the wrong things we talked about this a couple of weeks ago if you really look at how do you use marketing to improve the customer experience

[00:35:52] provide more relevance to the customer and drive more revenue growth and you look at that versus all these other sort of metrics that may or may not make any sense of those three things

[00:36:04] there and you can start to reward the rights statistics on the right things that you're measuring and this article I think did a good job of reviewing that. I think that's good I think there's another

[00:36:15] factor here right and it's interesting I I sent this article this morning to an agency that does some work for Leedsmore and in one of the chat with us and our next meeting that we have because

[00:36:27] one of the things they the this article talks to it said well just said says the norms and be to be marketing channels and tactics every coming less effective due to macro economic climate

[00:36:37] content data load load data overload and buyer fatigue the focus is no longer on digitalization for efficiency sake but rather in using very these very tools for to forge authentic connections and I think that's the challenge right you referenced mqls and the world right now and it's amazing

[00:36:59] how many people want to to sell you a service right whether it you know it's a marketing agency or it's a platform for an event or whatever it might be right and talk about the Leeds that you should

[00:37:16] get right and what happens is that is it so often when you get an mql or a marketing qualified lead which just says hey marketing says this is good we're going to nurture this lead a little bit

[00:37:27] forward see if we can get some patterns out of it maybe some signals from it that says now it becomes an an sql or sales qualified lead and it can jump the fence to the sales side of the house

[00:37:38] and then it's so abstract and so um generic of a mindset because what's not happening is we're not having in it is love that the term that they use here is authentic connections and part of what this

[00:37:54] this article talks about is the opportunity that AI brings is when you're using AI to look at the correct signals now we can start and in its funny time and you have a lot more experience

[00:38:06] of this than I do but I just think about it when you we think about the difference between marketing campaigns and marketing automation right a marketing campaign and a constant contact or something like that it's just shoving out email after email after email after email marketing automation

[00:38:25] tool is saying hey they clicked on this or they resonated on that now let's trigger this next event well AI just now starts taking that to the in-degree where we can start seeing habits and

[00:38:36] movement and where these people doing other things outside of our organization and and again I'm going to toss us back to you in just a second but what my belief is and it's what something I

[00:38:48] just super passionate about is I'm working with some third parties right now on the marketing efforts at Leedsmark is using the right digital tools to get out of the world that their people are

[00:39:02] talking about with content and data overload that people are seeing just because we're doing things away we've done it for the last five or seven or ten years of if I pump out enough emails then

[00:39:12] I can get this is what the funnel's going to look like where I can say how do I take that and move that to truly having an authentic relationship with that potential buyer well and it's

[00:39:24] as much as relationship it's relevant relationship you're not going to have a relationship without relevance and value you can't right right so it's and I do agree that AI and I'm trying not to go down to people whole here but one of the things that historically

[00:39:43] in digital marketing has been a big thing is lead scoring right so you have a lead and well they did this and they open this email and they clicked on this link and you give them points for

[00:39:52] every one of those and then once they get to a certain quote unquote score you then as you mentioned they're ready to go to sales or they're ready to take the next step that's there I think the

[00:40:03] concept of lead scoring could go to another level of quality through the use of AI so you're not just looking at clicks and transactional lead scoring but you are looking at more relevant data

[00:40:17] that actually says okay now the customer you talked about the journey right right now the customer is or the prospect it makes sense to move them or to help them facilitate to the next step

[00:40:28] help to influence them to the next step in their journey they're journey not your journey their journey not your journey so I think there's a there's an opportunity for that for sure with AI and can kind of change this whole mindset of lead scoring based on who many

[00:40:43] how did they click on my email or or they open an email or they you know whatever the case may be the mayor may not have any relevance or value again to the customer and what they're doing so

[00:40:55] I think that's a great recap of that so anyways marketing is changing and keep up is the report right yeah yep so the you know and in the time before we jump I want to make a comment

[00:41:10] you see we'll note there about basically it's type by GDPR which yeah you can't you can't spam people anymore but the reality of it is and I agree with what we'll say that about you don't have

[00:41:24] an opportunity to spam people the same way you know you can get away another part to the world and in the EU with GDPR but the other side of that goes back to the fatigue because you could have

[00:41:34] an opt-in list that is fully compliant with GDPR and you're still putting out junk to them even though they've they've just not never opted out right relative in value relative in

[00:41:46] value right yeah so good all right well thanks for that well it gives you's right on on track that right there's some pretty major major issues if you violate as a company if you violate

[00:41:57] GDPR but the other side of that is you know keeping people on track with relevant stuff that it brings value to them so let's kind of jump ahead to these our technology and cybersecurity

[00:42:09] section and AI and AI yeah we'd talk about AI here what it says just following what you have in the newsletter right I'm the one who added the technology cybersecurity segment with AI right

[00:42:25] so China leads the world in adoption of generative AI survey shows you're first take away this from Raiders yeah I've read the article actually a couple times um honestly I don't have

[00:42:40] a lot of takeaways here I don't it was I was trying to kind of get the story behind the story as to and I'm and I'm absolutely surprised because there is a lot of regulation that AI regulation

[00:42:52] that is developing in China for reason obvious reasons right that you can imagine so I didn't really give a lot of insights as to why they are the leading and how they're necessarily

[00:43:05] using it so I don't I find it interesting but I don't have a lot of a lot to add to it because we just wasn't a lot of meat on the bone in terms of what was going on behind the scenes there

[00:43:16] yeah so there's two two components of that though that that really come up out of this and it's the they're leading the world right now in fact it was last week or report from the United Nations

[00:43:29] World and Electrical Property Organization the China was leading the patent race in Gen AI which I thought was really kind of intriguing to see how far ahead they are on that now is it is a great

[00:43:44] good technology as it game changing to the point of an an open AI or somebody like that probably not but it is interesting but the big takeaway for me this is besides the fact that that's great that you know there their businesses and people are adopting specifically

[00:44:02] chat GPT more so than other areas is the piece that goes with this that they talked about I'm just trying to look at the note they called it the enterprise adoption of generative AI and China is expected to accelerate as price war as likely to further reduce

[00:44:21] the cost of large language models but then they also talked about the fact that they're using far more in China which there is a big risk and people are concerned about is they led the world and continuous automated monitoring or what they call cam which is extremely controversial

[00:44:39] because it's the tool for monitoring vast amounts of data on users activities yes right so there's the risk and that's that that's the thing that people talk about being a concerned about right is you know you get nation state that starts monitoring my behavior in

[00:44:54] my communications and privacy and for that's the big thing on TikTok right that's the whole big upper arm you're right so well and it this article even referenced that one of the you know they call a tech giants that's getting behind some of these patents that are being

[00:45:10] issued in China with regarding AI is bite dance and bite dance is the own current owner of we'll see this things change but current owner of TikTok and that's exactly right it's like you know how much do people know and what's available so you know interesting too

[00:45:30] you catch rules comment thanks for that well it's we'll say we'll comment about how much information has been redacted from the large language mods yeah I hadn't thought of that

[00:45:40] right so here's what we want you this there's more data but you're going to get to see this so that would be an interesting thing to see so no I said that you you take you there's a lot of

[00:45:50] to me there's a lot of questions that come out of this article and I'm you know maybe there's answers to them they weren't necessarily covered here but yeah there's a lot of follow-up sort of

[00:46:01] discovery that would be interesting to see as it kind of goes down that rabbit hole. Well I think it's extremely valuable to see articles like these that will trigger us to be paying attention right what's next and if that's incumbent upon us to definitely bring some

[00:46:15] value to our listeners and readers to follow up on this so it's going to be interesting to watch because that that last segment there about that you know that continuous automated monitoring that's

[00:46:27] the that's the stuff that worries people right yeah that's that's the stuff that is a is reasonable to be concerned about so right let's keep a close eye on that one let's look for all

[00:46:38] both look for other articles and we can share related to that so um jump in ahead what do we have next there. Well these two are related actually want to start with the second two there's two

[00:46:48] articles here about AI and use of AI and business but I'm going to start with the second one here top priority for CFOs replaced labor with AI automation. The survey reveals at two thirds of CFOs

[00:47:03] state their top priority is automating task typically performed by employees with a significant majority planning to integrate AI in the next 12 months um again I haven't seen that a lot

[00:47:18] in our world right I have not seen a lot of but I do hear a lot of it outside of our industry a lot of chatter about companies talking about replacing their replacing people with with AI

[00:47:33] but what I also see is they have no clue of what that means yeah or how to do it and I think that's with the second article here talks about the Harvard Business Review article the six disciplines

[00:47:45] companies need to know to get out to get the most out of Gen AI right and the cap you know the district says AI requires several different types of discipline in some of the word discipline capabilities there that unfortunately most companies lack these is what it says and

[00:48:04] it's a big big a big gap I believe from and I think this is unfortunately what's going to impact the going back to our rate cut conversation. I do believe there will be a lot of I don't know that

[00:48:19] there'll be a lot of layoffs in the next 12 to 18 months but I think there'll be a lot less hiring in the right next 12 to 18 months because they're going to say well can we do that with AI

[00:48:29] can we do that with AI? Can we do that? Do we really need to hire this person or can we do it with AI? And yet fundamentally as it talks about in this article the foundation is not in place to

[00:48:41] even remotely having AI centric organization in place yeah and so you're going to end up with the worst of two worlds right where you're not moving forward and hiring to do a job that needs to

[00:48:54] get done but you're not set up in a way to actually leverage AI and one of the key the one of those key six points was system thinking was they were in there right and we struggle with this even

[00:49:05] with our customers and and prospects is getting them to be thinking more systematically about how they do sales and how they things and that's not it's just not an idea of a lot of companies but

[00:49:18] it's going to have to be if you're going to take advantage of AI. I think you're right on about the idea about if you want to take advantage of AI and this setting I think you know I

[00:49:30] you know I talked to our customers typically on the on the front end of their relationship with us and your team gets them implemented and you get to meet with strategy meetings with

[00:49:40] customers I don't I can't think of conversations of you know whether it's a you know a small regional distributor or large national distributor that we work with that has deep focus on

[00:49:55] where are we going to replace people. It's the the top it is and this is you know what I focused on it's just kind of related what you're talking about is maybe I need to hire fewer people

[00:50:07] right maybe I need to re-skill some people but the idea of trying in and some of the results out of the survey were surprising to me and thinking about the idea how many people do I have now

[00:50:20] how how could I reduce my head count by 20 percent with AI I would suggest into your point right it really ties those articles together nicely is because from that standpoint is you need to have

[00:50:33] a strategy and if you don't have whether it's the six disciplines that the Harvard Business Review article talks about or it's things that you've put together on your own. If you don't have a strategy

[00:50:43] of how you're going to use AI forget about the idea I mean the damage you could cause your organization by saying oh I've bought one piece of technology or I hired and you know somebody that says they

[00:50:55] know a lot about chat GPT or opening AI but you're going to start changing your organization I think that puts you at much more risk. Yeah well you're making organizational resource important organizational resource decisions that are not really based on any reality

[00:51:15] but I'd agree with you I don't I don't ever hear anybody talking about that in our world but I hear about it outside of our world all the time from other friends and people that I know

[00:51:25] that have businesses I have a friend who has a business system well I have a friend that is you know that has a pretty large electrical you know B to B commercial electrical it's a contract

[00:51:37] yeah contractor electrical service he's talking about it right he's talking about how to he believes that he could reduce his his non-electrition staff his internal staff that do estimates and quoting and customer service and whatever by over 50 to 60% by using AI but again the big

[00:52:03] but is he have absolutely no idea how that would actually occur right right and and the systems and he's probably more system oriented than a lot of people that that I've heard this from

[00:52:15] that are there or if you again if you look back to the Harvard Business Review article and you use that as an assessment and go okay how is my organization as a relates to those

[00:52:24] six key points that are there and then go back and then balance that against where are you really ready to be thinking about higher reducing 50% of your customer service staff. The my my question for your friend and you've talked to me about him many times is when

[00:52:43] Walters electric or CED or whoever he buys all of his supplies from moves in that same route where everything that his interaction with them now is AI is what are his thoughts on that

[00:53:00] good question right and it's interesting hey me go question will be if it works I'm probably for it if it doesn't work I don't want it right yeah yep I could provide a better experience for me

[00:53:11] or worse experience for me yeah it's really helped me get things on time does it help me you know he it is interesting I listening to him from the other side because you're right he gets stuff

[00:53:23] from distribution and a lot of times he doesn't get it when he needs it and there's you know the usual issues the downstream issues there yes so does he want a bot telling him when the

[00:53:35] count stuff's going to be ready at the counter that he needs to pick up right does he want I mean and then trying to throw any rocks at him but I think he would if it worked okay

[00:53:47] right it's it's getting against because it work when I mean it work is is it giving me a good as good or better experience and I get now by doing things with live people mm-hmm good but if it

[00:53:58] doesn't work no you don't want it so not shell on on these multiple articles here is you need to plan you need to be focused on their stand what you're doing with with it you need

[00:54:11] to roll out a plan and adoption within your organization and you're probably going to be better off if you're looking to find ways to enhance the people that you have versus get rid of the

[00:54:22] people that you have and and I think what we're going to find is over the this will be an interesting look at this snippet of today's show on you know July 12th of uh

[00:54:34] 2024 to talk about this in 2027 and get a real look back and say you know what and I would prognosticate you know or or pontificate at the moment here what we might find in the typical

[00:54:50] let's just say a 30 branch HVAC distributor or plumbing distributor or food service equipment distributor that they might have reduced their head count by 3 to 5 percent of existing but maybe found

[00:55:06] a way to do better at things and not need to hire more people that's my take away in a high-tech service level industries like we talked about I would tend to agree at least over the next couple

[00:55:19] years for sure yeah looking out five years maybe but again even of all the technology existed today and it was bulletproof and me all of that it still goes back to those points in the

[00:55:30] Harvard Business Review article organizationally you've got to be you have to re-engineer a bit your organizationally mindset your philosophy how you do things in order to take advantage of it right you know we're missing both the technology and so forth well you did see interesting

[00:55:48] let's roll into our sales and M&A section that we have here because I put a link to termengageselling.com it's a short short video clip in there I kind of like some of the stuff

[00:56:00] they come up with it's I don't always agree with it but I like seeing it but this one is it says is there such as thing as a low quality customer conversation or a poor quality stakeholder

[00:56:11] and you know I want to tackle this for just a second because I think it ties into what we've just been discussing about your friend what's your friend the contract is named you know I see

[00:56:19] my my electrical but John John all right feeling I know John but not met John we will see next week me we'll see you might you might meet him next week yeah okay I'll be up with you for a couple

[00:56:30] of days in Santa Barbara so anyways what I thought this article was neat about is it talked about you know as sellers you know sales trainers and coaches right well I was talking about people

[00:56:40] about you know knowing the decision makers and are there multiple decision makers in an organization make sure we know how they're buying process and so forth goes and and I thought this article

[00:56:50] went in and talked about it didn't say that those things aren't critical and important but it says basically there's no such thing as a low quality customer conversation or poor quality stakeholder

[00:57:01] and the idea behind that is understanding your customer and the value that and I talked about this all the time with our customers and I'll give you the you know the simple example is right well we'll talk

[00:57:12] to distributors you know mostly in the setting you know and they'll question as they look at bringing on a customer intelligence and and CRM platform like ours let's see well might my counter guys don't need it right my counter guys that they're they're not important in this part

[00:57:30] of it and in some people stick with that decision but what we're really finding with most customers is what they're realizing is is that the salesperson is only talking in a consistent level to a leadership person and owner and executive at the contractor that they sell to

[00:57:48] the building owner whoever it might be and the amount of data in info that is available from Joe that stops by at a branch to pick up some pipe or wire or whatever it might be

[00:58:03] about how a project is going or the fact that they're getting ready to bid this big new project our things that when a sales guy is calling on that company at a different level and twice a

[00:58:15] month versus the guy that stops the counter that it just I'd love it because this article just sets right into that thinking is there's no bad stakeholder or no poor quality conversation

[00:58:26] with any stakeholder in a business. Yes and I and I also this kind of comes back to our marketing conversation earlier right yeah what better way to understand how to provide relevance and value conversations at all levels of your of your customer your base there. Well if you

[00:58:49] if you think about it from the standpoint of sales guy his reviews his notes or gets a you know in our case a genius feed AI alert to him but says hey xyz company just told us that at the

[00:59:03] counter and and they need to do x in their organization or their work on these projects so have good stuff that if you get the newsletter check out the video and if otherwise you could find

[00:59:17] it an engage selling dot com so moving ahead a little bit staying within that segment there's we talked about sales and M&A there was a merger that was discussed last month between the i mark

[00:59:30] electrical group and bringing just the electrical group out of i mark into the 80 group and so that was approved earlier this week I got an email from from a d and so it's um looks like

[00:59:47] that's going to move ahead and that'll start at the beginning of next year um that those groups will be combined which can be powerful that takes 80 up to I think when you look at cross organization

[00:59:57] it takes them up to probably over 1500 members within 80 which is super powerful so congratulations both the i mark electrical team and the and the 80 folks so uh people in leadership next segment

[01:00:09] will kind of jump in good article there about this was from mdm as well about labor market and warehouse labor market improving now this is something we do here constantly from our customers in

[01:00:21] discussion and an industry events that we may attend and so for this how tough it has been prior to the pandemic and they've been more so after the pandemic to get good people um there's some

[01:00:33] statistics exceeding that they show here that it's that's easing up a little bit and that's great to here so yeah it was interesting on on you know some of that saying is that even though there has always there has still been a struggle to meet demand

[01:00:52] you know right that most people are finding that it's and again I'm wondering if it comes back to some of the economy thing and stuff is that our people willing to take jobs again that they weren't willing to take six months ago don't know yep yeah that's well

[01:01:07] and could tie back to the economy as well right back to our snakes that's where all related so I'll come back to it all things relate to uh red meat and red wine right at the end of the day

[01:01:20] uh it's anyway that just that was a nice little bump of news there that that sees that because it's just look you can't grow your business if you can't find the people to support it so

[01:01:31] whether it's you know warehouse for cliff top orator or a box pack or whatever it might be gotta be able to get the people there and you know when it transfers inside the the building is

[01:01:41] well and the carpet you know side of the building from from the concrete side of the building as we we laughingly say is um it goes to customer support it goes the inside sales it goes all of

[01:01:52] those things so that's good if we can see that free up a little bit um good follow up article from uh incomagazine here as we stay in the section about people it says keep at the key to better work

[01:02:03] life balance might be AI and I put this in there but for me and the the concept behind it was right showed some research and some surveys of talking about the potential of reducing 12 hours

[01:02:19] of of work out of your week using AI I have my thoughts to take ways on that I'm gonna ask you about yours first well I think there's two parts of that one could AI reduce 12 hours of work

[01:02:33] out of your day to paint upon what your job is not right the second but could it in a year or two yeah I completely agree with that but the other side of that coin is will those 12 hours get filled up

[01:02:45] with something else? bingo and I think the I think that's maybe the bigger issue right is the work life balance aspect of it is kind of a decision with yourself and with the organization as to

[01:03:00] whether or not you decide to fill up those 12 hours with other great work related things yeah yep I do think that a lot of things though that a lot of administrative stuff that kind of

[01:03:14] hey we got to just get this done before I go to bed or I want to I don't want to have to deal with this in the morning and all of that could very well be taken off the plate of a lot of workers

[01:03:23] but again it just doesn't matter are we gonna willing to to use that time and more unless work related waste that remains to be seen so I think you you kind of nailed it there and I

[01:03:35] think this might be a generational factor because I mean in and I see this and struggling is and it maybe it's you know being an executive and in an organization as part of it as well but

[01:03:47] I might be able to find a way to reduce these three things over here but that doesn't mean that the 27 other team's messages or emails that came in I'm not gonna be still back of my desk later in the

[01:03:59] day so I think you nailed it the thing that I've been thinking about is this will take a discipline because I am I might do some great things to reduce some of the mundane tasks that we have

[01:04:11] but do we fill that time and you know you and I come from a generation that I should be to my desk by you know if what was the old um so football coaches name and green base said

[01:04:24] if your five minutes early is on time and on time is late something like that you know if we think about I need to be at my desk by age 55 or 755 working

[01:04:36] you know and I've got these timeframes and then the idea of not working till five right that's generational because you know I don't think any of my kids think about you know that are all in the

[01:04:46] work world think about uh think about that from one for one second right is what are the hours I'm supposed to work I just do go ahead stuff done so interesting thoughts yeah um good we can kind of

[01:04:58] bounce past that that was last article there about uh the FTC working and banning non-competed agreements I know any W file debris against that and uh there's a partial block to that at least

[01:05:11] for the moment so we'll see what comes out of that industry scottal bet section um you know another acquisition for corn and main um industrial supply association just uh released information

[01:05:23] this week on their updated uh board of directors uh Jim Biel from Blackhawk is now on the ISA boards are congrats Jim is great guy great organization there at Blackhawk and then uh big announcement just

[01:05:38] two days ago about global industrial the public we traded distributor or their CEO has an announcement where he's going but he's leaving which is kind of a big deal there so we'll watch and see if anything

[01:05:48] significant comes out of that and then lastly we have a feature each week that we talk about uh it's we just call it a good read and this week it's an article that came from Inkamehagazene it says

[01:06:00] every business can learn from this one phrase in Netflix's new culture memo and I think it's pretty valuable in life not just in work yeah we take away our thoughts on that kind of

[01:06:14] ways of a disagree or disagree action or disagree what they're saying the whole thing behind it was is disagreement is fine until a decision's made yeah and then then get behind the decision

[01:06:28] yeah I had a boss many years ago back in my early part of my career and he was very into the CEO of the company was like if we get into a meeting we can disagree all we want but once we make

[01:06:43] that decision you can't bitch about it right doesn't mean and then so don't go and say oh I wish we would have done you have to be on board with that decision right once we make that decision

[01:06:54] doesn't mean we won't change the decision down the road but once we make a decision everybody in the organization needs to be behind it and I thought it was very a very healthy way because it gave

[01:07:05] everybody an opportunity to express their opinion but at the end of the day once the decision was made as a group or whoever made it right where there was an executive decision there was a group decision

[01:07:17] is that your job was to tow that line and push it forward and I think that's pretty much what Netflix's well that's incorporating here and it seems almost common sense right but it's not human nature

[01:07:28] when we have a strong opinion on something and I think it's powerful kind of ties real well into the entrepreneurial operating system or EOS that we operate our company on right is you set the

[01:07:40] set the rocks and you work the rocks accordingly and there may be modifications or adjustment along the way but you know I do a lot of I'll just call it faith-based volunteer work and I'm

[01:07:52] on as an elder in my congregation I sit on a lot of meetings and committees and so forth and we use the term yielding right it's you have to be willing to yield your strong thoughts on

[01:08:06] something to the better good or the decisions of the group and once the decision the hands have been raised and the decision has been made get behind it yield and because the work and it can happen

[01:08:18] is if you become divisive and can you to politics and play games behind the scenes about your decisions right so powerful stuff good anyways interesting discussion good discussion in general today you know a lot of things tied kind of tied together from all of

[01:08:35] the different sections as well yeah all comes back to the stake that I'll be happy later on this year so that's the what we're I'll see you late Monday afternoon when I get up to Santa Barbara will be

[01:08:49] together Tuesday and Wednesday um you think I'll be buying the stakes this week that's uh yeah we'll see and we and we work for a good company that can can help us with that but but the other side of that is

[01:09:05] um you're moving and uh you're moving about uh next week and we're moving our office and get ready to open another office down here in in Irvine closer to me which means you're going to be driving

[01:09:17] down here a lot more but um the bummer is your you're moving moving away from our our favorite stake place in my tiespot yeah well there's others there's others I don't know they don't have

[01:09:28] but they don't have one in Ventura so um you're got to spend your time in Ventura and get back the Santa Barbara just for my my my tie and take so I'm kind of looking there so I'm closing on

[01:09:39] that that though great great segment segue into uh we have our um what I'm referring to as our Aloha Friday hundredth anniversary episode coming up in two weeks so if you're listening

[01:09:57] on the podcast and you haven't joined us live before uh and you get a chance to join us live YouTube live LinkedIn live Facebook live on the 26th I believe it is is that right time um

[01:10:10] it's X2 weeks for today yeah 90 in Pacific time uh on the Leedsmore Technologies channel on YouTube Facebook or LinkedIn we have a cast of characters uh that will be it could be absolutely

[01:10:25] mayhem or it could be just the best episode ever yeah no and I've seen a couple or heard a couple people say ham I've canceled my Friday lunch appointment yeah right make sure I can I think

[01:10:37] if one that it would be worthwhile to be at live I just think there's going to be a lot of chat or a lot of conversation um not that it wouldn't be worth relisting to on the podcast but I think

[01:10:49] this is one to definitely to get their lives so it makes me think back the last time Mike Marks was on our show from being in river consulting Mike you had made a comment about something in

[01:10:59] Mike asked you how much drugs you did in high school you never know what you're going to get with with Mike and a few others no yeah but we're also having you know uh Dan Schubert is joining us

[01:11:12] for the first time which is from any w which I'm excited that Dan's going to be joining us um and bringing some relevance too but I think it's going to be a lot of fun so but with you

[01:11:21] the biggest issue I know this important and we'll wrap up here some momentarily is you know this hundredth anniversary episode it's not about Tom and Kevin and it's not about you know just around the horn it's really who developed a great audience 100 episodes is pretty rare for podcasts

[01:11:39] unless you have huge budgets and you know huge teams behind you and we do this with a small group of people but it's only a relevance because people listen and care and you know I'm getting coming

[01:11:51] into the time of the year where I'm going to be traveling a ton to you know industry events pretty much nonstop from September and as late November and every time I'm at one of these

[01:12:01] events I meet somebody new I've never heard of them and I've never heard of their company and they will come by the booth or I'll meet them at a reception and they'll talk about the podcast

[01:12:12] you know I'm thankful to those people some of whom are our customers some of them are maybe our customers and some maybe great customers are competitors but they enjoy what we do so it's

[01:12:23] because of those folks were able to do this. All right let's wrap up. Let's call it a day so we wish everybody a fantastic weekend as we always like to end with be kind be safe and do good things.

[01:12:37] Have a good weekend. 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

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[01:13:20] 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