Ethics In AI And The Importance Of Personalization In B2B Marketing, With Guest Mike Hockett

[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,

[00:00:20] Independent 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

[00:00:34] that impact your business the most. Mike, how are you? I'm good, and happy Friday to everybody. Yeah, and that's a great time of starting to feel a little better. You've been sick this week,

[00:00:46] which is very in characteristic of you. Yeah, I think I'm coming out a bit a little bit, but yeah, this has not been my best week of, and a while. So, see you on the right side.

[00:00:59] No more ski trips from you. You get out there in public and see too many people. We need you in your cave. I have to be above all, I'll help myself. That's right. So no, no ski trips for you next year. Just

[00:01:12] we're locking you down. Gotta keep you there. Very good. Well, good morning everybody. I'm Kevin Brown. I'm here with my lifelong friend and business partner in co-founder of Leeds Smart Technologies, Tom Burton, and our guest Mike Cockett from Modern Distribution Management. We're going to chat

[00:01:30] with Mike a little bit and just a moment we're excited and appreciative of Mike joining us today. But before we dive in, we'll talk a little bit about who we are and what we do. So, we get together

[00:01:41] every Friday morning here, both on LinkedIn Live, YouTube Live and Facebook Live. And we chat about the goings on the past week in the economy, supply chain, mergers and acquisitions, sales and marketing, anything that could impact both manufacturing and wholesale distribution. We do that

[00:02:02] as we mentioned live here where we're doing it right now but later in the day our editors will have taken all of this data and consolidated together in some show notes and we'll be available on all the popular podcast platforms, Apple Spotify Odyssey, Amazon, Google across the board.

[00:02:19] We'll be able to be available. So our show each week is sponsored by the company The Tom and I work for which is called Leeds Smart Technologies. We developed an AI enabled CRM and customer intelligence solution that brings deep insights into data that's added contributors

[00:02:34] and wholesale distributors. And manufacturers have an abundance of and we help turn that into as we set insights that help accelerate growth within organizations. So, a couple of things before

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[00:03:55] and you can sign up for the newsletter as well as subscribe to the podcast. So that's everything. Jence, let's get ready to roll. I just wanted to say good morning to the people that are

[00:04:07] coming through on the comments, Ron, good to see you again, Dave, a regular from my other show here. This is great and well and it looks like Brendan's here as well and James. Good to see Brendan now with industrial supply association

[00:04:25] Brendan's going to be coming on with us here in the next couple weeks. They've got a big event coming up in April. Mike are you going to be in Florida for the ISA event?

[00:04:32] Yeah, and if you go to the MDM homepage right now the top story is our Q&A with Brendan brain is kind of a primer for ISA talking about everything that's going on with the show and

[00:04:45] what's new and just kind of some Brendan's general thoughts about the industry so thank you for Brendan for taking part in that. Good. Well I'll be in I'll be in Charlotte for the

[00:04:54] event as well and maybe we can spend a little time together down there, Mike. I'm going to be good to see a face to face. It's been by nine months since I've seen you so that's great. So let's jump

[00:05:03] in and let Mike, let's talk a little bit more about you, MDM, some big news there recently. Why don't we start with you? Yeah it's been a couple real exciting months for SMDM folks. I'm hoping everyone has seen by now in mid January we announced that

[00:05:20] an AW which is the National Association of Policial Administrators has acquired MDM and basically it's we've had a long-term great relationship with NAW as an association and there was just

[00:05:33] a lot of synergies on both sides of what we can do for them, things that they can do to help us just do what we're doing even better. But NAW is very happy to let MDM stay independent while being

[00:05:47] a brand of NAW. So we're still getting some of the finer details hammered out as far as what this is going to look like going forward, a lot of strategy sessions, a lot of meetings this week.

[00:05:59] But yeah we're all excited on both sides. Tom Gail are who's been MDM Stewart for 30 years now. He's still on board. I know he's looking to wind down his day today with MDM but

[00:06:14] he's fully on board through 2024 and beyond. Yeah just I think we're just all excited on different collaborations that we can do with NAW and just a lot of momentum for MDM to end 2023 and just start 2024 here so yeah just a lot going on between our two organizations.

[00:06:35] That's great to hear and I'm sure that's glad you address that because I'm sure that's a big topic with many folks is what's going to happen to Tom because Tom is certainly an icon within

[00:06:47] wholesale distribution so it's great that he'll still be around. You know he's going nowhere soon so we're happy to still have him for at least the rest of this year and then probably some beyond. That's great to hear. We've got I mentioned you earlier we've just been working

[00:07:02] earlier this week and last week with some of the marketing folks related to NAW. And we've got CEO Eric coming on CRO, Dan coming on. You're here with us today hopefully Tom's coming on soon so we've got with you here today and those other three coming four

[00:07:25] folks from MDM and NAW over the next few months so we're looking forward to that further discussion about that. Tom yet another thought you wanted to share. What would you say obviously there's

[00:07:37] probably a lot of strategic reasons for the acquisition but if there was one that kind of popped out what would you say is kind of maybe the primary strategic driver for the acquisition and what

[00:07:48] do you think the outcome of that will be? I think from NAW's perspective it was two key drivers. One was they loved MDM's data analytics capabilities which is something that just really no

[00:08:00] one else in the industry for distribution either does it or does it anywhere close to MDM's level in terms of providing data analytics to distribution customers, some manufacturing customers. These data reports that really help snapshot where product demand is down to the county level

[00:08:19] on a geography scale so they love that capability that we had and now it's part of the NAW and then they love what we're doing on the editorial side. MDM has well before my time here had

[00:08:31] a great reputation of being just a neutral impartial resource of what's going on in the industry especially from the thought leadership side. MDM or NAW was had a role as a thought leader

[00:08:46] kind of going into this acquisition but they knew that getting MDM on board was going to help position NAW way more as a thought leader and just industry resource that they can give to their

[00:08:56] members. So yeah I think that that's what they saw on MDM and then from MDM we saw in a W as just additional resources that they can help us get the short out better just more

[00:09:09] you know research resources that they can help us with so really keep saying that again but there was just you know wind winds on both side of the board here for both of us so it just it kind of made

[00:09:19] sense to partner after being very familiar with each other for whatever there's been so much crossover right and and it's interesting right we as we publish our newsletter each week

[00:09:31] we do it in very similar the format of what NAW does with there. We a little bit different topics on an ongoing basis for us but they're grabbing information from MDM consistently and reposting

[00:09:45] it right so it's a nice synergy there so I have two questions before we dive into the news and today show that I wanted to kind of ask you about maybe you can give us that and we'll do this

[00:09:59] obviously when we get some of the executives from NAW joining us as well but maybe you could give us just a quick view right we've got Brendan with us today CEO of industrial supply association we've

[00:10:10] got ASA and in plumbing and pipe valve and fitting we've got a lot of vertical organizations that are associations how does that how do those then relate to NAW as a broader group.

[00:10:24] I mean NAW if you compare to MDM they cover they interact with a lot of the same industries that MDM does you know work pretty focused on the industrial commercial buildings supply hard goods

[00:10:36] centers NAW is also that but they expand even beyond what MDM's coverage capsulates you know NAW stretches into pharmaceuticals food and beverage oil and gas some of these adjacent industries

[00:10:50] that MDM you know we cover but just we don't have the you know we haven't had the resources to cover those industries maybe to the extent that we want so that's part of what we're looking

[00:11:01] from the industry and NAW is yeah like keep doing what we're doing but expanded even further right so I think that's what people can expect to see out of MDM going forward is you know maybe more

[00:11:11] coverage on some of those industries that we just haven't been able to touch to the extent we would like to be agriculture or food service or different stuff like that right so I kind of looked at

[00:11:20] it maybe you can reinforce this or correct it is most of those vertical associations that are very narrow and specific of who they serve are members of NAW as well because the broader organization across the board and wholesale so I think that's a good good fit with that.

[00:11:39] So before we dive in the news tell us just quickly about my cockat right let's know about you briefly before I don't know if you can hear nose you yeah so a lot of people

[00:11:50] don't know my background before I got into you know distribution editorial writing I was in sports writing local sports writing coming out of college and I grew up born and raised Southern Wisconsin

[00:12:01] I thought my dream job is really great of course now yeah I thought my career path was I'm going to write about the Packers and Badgers someday but I kind of quickly got burned out on sports writing

[00:12:13] the schedules terrible that the pay was terrible just doing too much for too little so I got out of that and then 2014 I saw that there was an opening in Madison my hometown here for a B2B trade

[00:12:26] publication I didn't know at the time that it was for industrial distribution magazine and my first day on the job they said hey we're putting you on this publication and now it's like okay

[00:12:36] what is distribution so I had a crash course those that first couple years learning what the industry was the key issues so things grinds the world and no one understands yeah I had no familiar

[00:12:50] with the industry going so yeah it's been it's kind of been a really cool ride these past 10 years that I've been covering this coming from no background in it but yeah outside of work life

[00:13:04] I'm a pretty avid gardener with my wife she has the greenest thumb you would ever imagine she's the mastermind I'm kind of the guy that moves things around I'm the labor part of it

[00:13:14] yeah we kind of have our own many like an urban home status what we call it on our little quarter acre here in Madison so that keeps us busy outside of work life so I'm I'm looking

[00:13:25] for my package in the mail of the maple syrup because I saw in your daughter feed yesterday your maple syrup is that farmer what did you call that yeah I don't know what the the

[00:13:36] correct term for it would be but yeah this is our fourth year making our own maple syrup from we have a couple maple trees in our yard and we just we just have five other neighbors

[00:13:46] their trees it's it's a big business and especially northern Wisconsin northern Minnesota northern Michigan but yeah now is the time of year where the trees are starting to wake up like you kind of

[00:13:57] have it's all about the weather you gotta find you want to write a lot of freezing above freezing during the day below freezing at night it just creates that vacuum effect in maple trees where

[00:14:06] saporance up and down so right now we're collecting a lot of maple sap and then we're boiling the heck out of it because it takes about five gallons of sap to get one pint of syrup so

[00:14:18] you can just imagine the amount of boiling you have to do so we're boiling saporate now all waking hours of the day through the weekend we will be I got a laugh my hair mic is not to

[00:14:28] catch off there but I don't know if you're able to see the comments here but well you're out numbered there says the big amount of fat and tear and bears fans and so forth so

[00:14:40] I probably open to a can of worms there but if you want to know what mic's up to and whether he's passionate about sports or not check out his Twitter feed because you'll you'll see the passion

[00:14:51] there which is great so that was great we're thankful for you being with us today it's good to get to know you a little bit better Tom let's dive into the news and get started huh

[00:14:59] let's do it alright so first article today from the New York Times we mentioned earlier in our news letter that we publish each week once in a while if you've looked at an article a number of

[00:15:11] times like a site psyched in New York Times where this articles from never pay wall come up if you're not subscribe or there I always just use a different browser like switch to Firefox or something to

[00:15:22] get to those articles but this was interesting this article it says are we in a productivity boom for clues look at 1994 mic on confident you were not in your career at 1994 but

[00:15:36] that was about an years old yeah yeah see that Tom puppies but Tom and I were in our career we were a few years five six years into our careers and and either if you guys have any specific takes on

[00:15:50] this article I thought it was interesting out related where we're at today with technology to 1994 yeah I mean my team was you know there was there was a lot of different points in there right it's just one thing it was multiple points that are related back to

[00:16:09] sort of okay what are we dealing with now compared to then what are the similarities whether it's remote work whether it's technology whether it's all those types of things are all those things

[00:16:21] leading into that potentially a productivity boom I know there was quite a bit in there about AI as well and there were some people that were skeptical of AI really having productivity impacts on

[00:16:35] certainly in certain industries I don't think I agree with that but that's a different conversation so but mic yeah it was anything that jumped out of use specifically that you you really and I

[00:16:45] know you have some a couple speaking of data right you had some data that I've you shared with us but I think what you were looking at as well yeah just broadly looking at the article I thought there

[00:16:54] was a lot of interesting core areas that they drew from 94 when at that time it kind of talks about how computers had been around for decades at that point but business wise you know we hadn't

[00:17:07] really figured out how to gain productivity from them how to you know do some of these processes that you know rely on computers that did make things more productive so that's where it kind

[00:17:17] of related that to this age that we're a now 30 years later where companies are just you know AI has been around for you could say decades now but companies on the business end are just now figuring out

[00:17:28] how to leverage that on a productivity scale and leverage just different forms of automation so I thought that was the grand core area that they drew there and it is pretty interesting because yeah

[00:17:39] just on the distribution side companies are just scratching the surface and in a watch and learn you know process with AI so I think we are going to see you know over these next two to three years

[00:17:51] especially as companies get their feet wet in AI they're going to start learning how to become even more productive with AI and yeah so I do think there is natural coral areas there that

[00:18:04] do make some sense I think the creaks of this though you know as I as I looked in kind of trying to always try and look at the story behind the story right is we publish these things I think

[00:18:16] what took for me what stuck out here was that basically there was an adoption curve that happened with PCs and there wasn't increase in productivity for a number of years it didn't

[00:18:30] happen right away and what they're describing as well here with you know in late 2000s and throughout the 2010s we were gaining access to well first off we got you know in the 2000s we got smartphones

[00:18:45] then all of a sudden internet connection speed went through the roof right and then we started with cloud computing later on and what they're saying is part of this is that we're just getting

[00:18:58] into that cycle of seeing in productivity increases from things that we saw a number of years ago now what we're looking at is this well yeah you know what there's we've seen artificial intelligence

[00:19:08] at some level has been around for many many years but we're seeing the same curve of this cycle of accessibility to it now the question that comes out of this will we still see

[00:19:21] that that lag of when we gain mass of productivity and I think Tom that maybe where you're disconnected might have been a little bit here yeah I think the lag will be a lot less

[00:19:33] and in the reason is that if you look back at some of the things you just talked about even cloud or piece of these or whatever the it wasn't obvious the applications weren't there

[00:19:43] it wasn't obvious how the productivity was going to occur it doesn't take long to look at AI and some of the AI capabilities to see obviously how that applications come over so in the

[00:19:55] having those different applications at the speed of which they come out so it's all about applications and I think that's why we had the lags that we've had is the applications weren't

[00:20:05] there to actually do that but anyway I would say one more point on and I know we're going to talk about remote work here in a few minutes as well they also brought up that remote work

[00:20:18] by eliminating the commute and what do they say I think eliminating having to get put on my tie and right we mean in the morning or whatever that added quite a bit of extra time to people's

[00:20:30] job or day that they weren't in a car doing other things as well which I found also interesting and certainly that's not going away yeah they brought up the point that the debate is still out there

[00:20:44] whether remote work makes companies more efficient or not I think there's arguments on both sides but they did argue that yeah like just having that's not having the commute to work and just

[00:20:54] having the conveniences at home can make employees want to stay at their job longer which in the long run can save these businesses on just the training and retraining and hiring retention

[00:21:04] all those efforts so it's kind of hard to measure but you can definitely see why there might be overall productivity gains from the hybrid work environment yep good we want to share those two

[00:21:17] a couple of those quickly and well they kind of ties a little bit into the the following article we're going to look at as well my Q and share it with us yeah just briefly touching on these these

[00:21:30] come from the lead school business at the University of Colorado Boulder which MDM partners with for a lot of our forecasting projects and what this shows right here is this revenue per employee

[00:21:42] and how it's changed year over year within wholesale distribution so as you can see here you know over this is a third year timeline back to 93 overall pretty steady but you can see the major dips where the great recession of 2008 2009 certainly at COVID with 2020 and then you

[00:22:01] see this giant spike in revenue per employee in 21 and 22 that's predominantly inflation driven that's because distributors we're seeing major year over year revenue gains because they were able to charge way higher prices which really inflated their revenue dollars then you see a crash back to earth

[00:22:20] over 2022 2023 but I want everyone to look at the very end of that chart where you're seeing you know 2023 and beyond which is really showing over the last few months we are seeing this uptick

[00:22:32] in year over year change in revenue per employee for wholesalers and it's going to take more time to see if this place out as a long-term trend or if it's just a short-term blip but in the short-term what

[00:22:44] this tells us is that now that pricing has regulated this might be a more true measure of better revenue dollars per employee so this could suggest that distributors are becoming better

[00:22:57] on the you know on the employee front of being more productive per employee and I think we have one additional chart that kind of shows the same thing just on a different scale I'll

[00:23:07] love you guys are able to pull that up so the same thing this is the overall trend line this is just overall dollar amounts of revenue per employee and the same thing you see the overall uptick in

[00:23:19] you know 30 year revenue per employee but then yeah you see where there's a couple dips where there was recessions you see the big spike there in 2021-22 and then coming back to earth

[00:23:30] with that tiny little bump there at the end that could suggest that companies have now figured out now that things have stabilized that might be a more true what actually definition of wholesale or so becoming a little more productive per employee right so that looks like 2021 dip is

[00:23:48] a big COVID dip there right yep yeah and then coming out of COVID you know manufacturing road back demand road back I and with that inflation went crazy and that just drove these big

[00:23:59] revenue per employee numbers so that you have to take look at that big spike there in 2021-22 with a big grain of salt knowing that most of that spike is inflation driven whereas yeah it's

[00:24:12] it's that very recent new bump that seems to be more like a true measure now that things have things are basically back to normal. Yeah it's not based on pricing or direct economy it's actually

[00:24:24] true productivity increases potential yeah so we we see a comment there says LinkedIn user I'm long on remote hybrid work so I reference that I think that might be our friend Brendan Green who who was made a couple comments earlier and I don't know why Brendan's CEO of

[00:24:46] Industrial Supply Association is whenever he joins us we only see LinkedIn user versus his name and face there I'm not sure if it's him or not but whoever made that comment stand by because

[00:24:57] we're going to another article today that we're going to talk a little bit deeper about some of the ups and downs of a remote and hybrid work so that's good so let's kind of jump ahead and we'll

[00:25:05] move pretty quickly we've got an article here about US business activity moderates in February any takeaways for me there are you on that quickly? No it just kind of matches what we've been seeing on the MDM research side that you know demand seems like it's going to remain

[00:25:22] to fairly flat in most industrial hard-goot sectors yeah the what we're hearing from distributors on the on the qualitative side is that yeah they don't expect a real uptake connectivity until around the midpoint of the year so I think we're going to keep seeing that moderate

[00:25:39] word and a lot of headlines these next few months. I think we're going to we've used the term simmering quite a bit here right it in one of the quotes this was an article from writers

[00:25:50] and one of the comment lead was it US business activity cooled in February and there was encouraging news on inflation with a measure of prices paid for inputs falling to the lowest

[00:26:00] level in nearly three and a half years which could all air fears that price pressures were picking up you know we've got quite a few guests that I see today that are senior leaders with industrial distribution companies and or distribution general distribution companies we've got a lot of

[00:26:18] listeners along that way said be interesting if they have any thoughts on what they're seeing in that setting as well but I think we're just just feels like you know whether it's

[00:26:28] doesn't look like March for a dip in interest rates and you know stock markets been doing crazy things and in pushing back on all of this other data and and but we kind of talk about this every week

[00:26:40] but I think your point might really live with the research that you had shared as well leads while to that first half of the year we're probably just going to see some ups and downs and

[00:26:49] movements along the way and hopefully see some strong growth and maybe some dips in interest rates as well which would suggest that pricing has come down at the same time so could be good stuff second half of the year we're certainly looking forward to it

[00:27:05] as everybody is I think so many thoughts on that before we jump ahead I was just continuing very good all right well we've got our next follow-up article there is moving to our

[00:27:18] and Mike I don't know if I shared this with you but you know we kind of did the structure of the email newsletter that we sent out every week and by the way is about the right time in the

[00:27:27] show for me to remind everybody that if you're listening on the podcast the recorded podcast versus our live show today we put out our newsletter each week it's called around the Horned wholesale distribution and manufacturing cover the topics related to those two

[00:27:41] industries or markets related to the economy mergers and acquisitions sales marketing cybersecurity AI you name it we try and talk about that each week bring guests like Mike in if you don't get that newsletter just request it very simply at hello at leadsmarktech.com

[00:28:00] and we're going to the website for the podcast which is www.arroundahornpod.com and we'll get that right out to you so personalization and be to be marketing and our new e-commerce and marketing segment

[00:28:14] are you in this one Kevin do I skip oh I'm sorry it's okay we skipped uh me in 2023 technology orders the expectations and he thought specifically on that one guys I jumped to hell I think I could just if it was that you know December and it

[00:28:34] pretty strong even though the overall year for manufacturing technology orders which really encompasses metalworking metal forming machine or reorders it showed that yeah December very strong I think it actually jumped up 20 what was a 20 or where am I looking here I think

[00:28:50] about 12% above December to sorry 22% the December was above November so a big monthly jump for the whole year 2023 technology orders were down what did I see it was like 11.2% but

[00:29:07] it sounds like the just about was that even though it was a down year it was better than much better than expected going into the year so definitely a positive note there even though it was

[00:29:17] a down year um they just kind of point to some momentum you know ending the year for 2023 say we'll kind of keep watching that going forward if it's spilled over in this year and it

[00:29:28] tight Tom thanks for keeping me honest on that one and not skipping over this one because there's good data there and I appreciate Mike you you're analysis of that because it does kind of tie

[00:29:38] into our previous two articles right about we're in this holding pattern almost right now waiting for what's next I'd like one of the quotes that it made here from the gardener not gardener but

[00:29:53] gardener business media that they produced a sentiment indicator index and it said it shows that the manufacturing sector is still in moderate contraction but improving to its highest confidence level in nine months so Mike you'd reference some of those stats earlier and it said further expectations

[00:30:11] of business conditions over the next 12 months are quite positive so same kind of thing that we talked about previous article Mike you really nailed with some of the statistics that you were sharing earlier so let's get through this next few months I guess is the key right?

[00:30:25] And I think you have one maybe the question for you Mike are you seen in any of the data statistics that you're looking at especially relates to technology orders we're talking about here

[00:30:36] but they're coming through thinking a little bit of a wait and see attitude let me see how AI is going to really impact the playing field I don't want to rush into purchasing something and having it

[00:30:46] obsolete because you know in six months are you seeing any of that? Have you ever raised a place in the most case manufacturing technology? I mean I think we've heard and I think it's the same organization association for manufacturing

[00:30:59] technology that puts out the monthly cutting tools reports they kind of run right in line with each other. I think cutting tools showed kind of the same that it was a down year but up a little bit towards the end

[00:31:13] but yeah I think in both in the last few months we reports I have seen them mentioned how capital capital spending on major projects are probably going to be a little reserved in 24

[00:31:25] not only because of this weekend demand in the first half of this year but it's a presidential election year we're companies tend to go with a little conservative so I have just seen some of those softening phrases being worded about general demand when it comes to cutting tools

[00:31:44] metal working at machinery operations so it's not a surprise to see these reports saying that it was a good month in December but overall 2023 was down but yeah it'll just have to watch what you know if the January and February number shows.

[00:32:03] Good thank you for that all right so as we jump now we're ready right? Tom or I need to jump to the e-commerce and marketing it's a great article there today from CXO today

[00:32:14] about personalization and B2B marketing. I think this has been a trend for a lot longer than 2020 for but in the industry that we discussed things about in wholesale distribution and manufacturing

[00:32:27] it's really an important topic to be thinking about as we look to serve our customers and are looking to buy differently. It's a good article. Yeah I mean obviously this is a very passionate

[00:32:40] area for me I wrote a book on the subject which is yeah yeah yeah let's say car or remember but I'll let you know I like the revenues don't that's it yeah revenue no okay but I think

[00:32:55] I had bought one good good. You know you hear the word personalization right and I hear this when we talk to people all the time they think of that as oh I put you know your name and the

[00:33:09] email so I addressed I said I like or you know it's things like that I think sometimes there is this conception of what we mean by personalization and with this article was getting into it's that

[00:33:22] personalization is first of all understanding the buyer journey and there could be multiple buyer journeys based on your your customer profile and also recognizing that the buyer journey doesn't happen in one just one interaction right it's not like there's just one transaction and right your

[00:33:40] guard so you have to be able to understand the iterative buyer journey and then look at how you would potentially personalize that for individuals based around the different channels and the different ways

[00:33:53] that they want to buy which goes away way beyond hey I I know your name so your name pops up on my website or I know your company it's really understanding how you do business first of just understanding

[00:34:05] what you are yeah that was appreciative of that you know then it did in a nutshell right it says tailoring marketing strategies content and communications to meet the specific needs and preferences of individual businesses or decision makers within those businesses and I think that last piece of

[00:34:23] that sentence is pretty valuable right it's not about XYZ company that we're trying to message to it's the constituents inside of that and then taking an understanding their journey how they want

[00:34:37] to buy and what they want to do because to your point you know time it's not enough to say dear my cocket buy my wrenches right that's that's not going to build relationships and there's

[00:34:50] some key takeaways in this right of the value of really understanding the personalization within and be to be marketing you talk about building relationships right all of us spend a way too much

[00:35:04] of our day deleting emails that are poorly written there obviously from a bulky email send and and not relevant to us right I get probably 10 to 15 emails a day thinking that our CRM and customer

[00:35:21] intelligence sass software company is a marketing agency say how do you okay I showed up on a list somewhere you certainly don't understand who I am but they talk about building relationships relevance enhanced customer experience higher conversion rates ability to make data driven decisions

[00:35:40] based upon what you're learning from that personalization strong competitive advantage because many of your competitors that are focused on trying to get those same eyeballs at that same factor here at that same distributor that a manufacturer selling to you've got a big competitive

[00:35:57] advantage when you nail this and get it right and then customer attention right that's it's not just about acquiring new customers but when we continue to meet people where they want to buy and

[00:36:08] understand how they want to buy and then market to them in that way customer attention expands dramatically at that point so I thought there were just some good takeaways from that article again it's

[00:36:19] called personalization and be to be marketing how is this an important trend for 2024 if you're listening on the podcast later it's from CXO today magazine you could probably find that online so

[00:36:31] it was a good one I just like to look out into it's all about interaction like it's you're not you should be marketing to a buyer that buys strictly online with you the same way that you're

[00:36:45] marketing to someone that only wants to buy from the brick and mortar store it's just have different ballgame and different set of expectations that they have so it's all about meeting

[00:36:54] that B2B customer clients how they like to interact with you not just treating everything as a blanket transaction so yeah it's just it's all about interaction that's it before I before we leave here

[00:37:07] I think one of the hardest things we even deal with this you know when we're working with customers on on their CRM and their sales processes we always want to do everything in alignment with how we sell

[00:37:19] or how we mark and how we sell and how we market may have a big divergence between how my customer wants to buy and if we look at that from a buyer's centric perspective it made what the

[00:37:32] aren't in it first but you really can start to quickly say okay I can influence that buyer journey I can influence that and get much better results than trying to shoehorn somebody in the my sales process or my marketing process and I think that's the mindset shift

[00:37:49] that we certainly are not seen being prominent yet but I think it is going to be inherently more in the problem. It's just so easy to want to try to lump certain customers here's all of our big customers meeting with small here's all of our geographically customers

[00:38:07] and it makes sense to do that to a point but there has to be layers to that when it comes to personalization and you know again just how they prefer to buy from you so there's just it's all

[00:38:18] about layers to that equation. All right Kevin what's in the list let's jump ahead the stumbling block in B to B e-commerce bad data from digital commerce 360 Mr data take us away you don't

[00:38:36] ever talk about data I mean this is this is more of the same I mean this is obviously in context of B to B commerce we've talked a lot about it in context of AI but you know there was

[00:38:47] a lot of statistics in there around how companies believe their data is I guess not ready and isn't usable you know we were talking a little bit before we went live I it's interesting that when I find

[00:39:03] kind of working with customers every day is that their data is actually in some cases a lot better or more useful and valuable than they think and when's yeah of course there's bad data

[00:39:14] and of course there's data hygiene issues we all you know everybody's got that but a lot of times what I see is that that's used maybe as an excuse or a blanket excuse that my data is not

[00:39:26] really good so I kind of looked at what they're saying here and I see it all the time right is that people believe and it's true right there's silo data there's data hygiene issues there's

[00:39:35] all the things that they pointed out in this article but on the other hand there's actually a lot of data that is super relevant and super valuable that can be taken advantage of right now

[00:39:46] and then over and you can obviously continually improve so I just want to make sure that you know I mean we see that there's definitely two sides to the point

[00:39:56] now I just kind of look at it right this this kind of talks about for me that take away was at the end of the article said organizations are often hindered by silo data

[00:40:06] insufficient technology and a lack of internal skills or knowledge so to your point right is let's turn this around it talks about the negatives right it starts at a stumbling block I would look at this again organizations are often hindered by silo data insufficient technology

[00:40:22] and all added at or lack of technology which is very common right and lack of internal skills are not so let's just look at that as a springboard or an opportunity for where we can get to

[00:40:35] by recognizing that because as you talk about all the time is that you know in you coming from a computer science and technology background and software background and my background in distribution of manufacturing is I think you use the term treasure trove before or you know

[00:40:57] treasure chest of data that wholesale distributor distributors typically have right and the distributor you've got all of that end user data by market segment and so forth and manufacturers have the same thing about what are the trends about what are distributors buying

[00:41:13] right in different markets and so forth and so the amount of data that's there to be unlocked is one of the terms that it used you know unlocking the door to online growth and not just online

[00:41:24] growth but general business growth by understanding in gaining deeper insights to the data that we have and that will typically take having the right technology you know it's great to have run back

[00:41:39] again. Oh my god I talked to him about this come on RP what is your term is right again. But you know somebody to get even help with getting the data usable having led

[00:41:52] Rangers product information for years had so much had to be done manually and our suppliers with our suppliers back there now where one gets that data's critical but yeah his point is that

[00:42:02] there's a lot of ways even now to get that data cleaned up that's easier and more just comfortable than what have been like oh my god what am I going to do

[00:42:12] right out of bunch of spreadsheets and try and put it through the process. So yep no that's good yeah other than that for sentence it's phenomenal our piece commentary like that a lot so

[00:42:24] very good. Like I've done this before we move on. Yeah it was just gonna say at a lot of the industry conferences I've been at you know a lot of them pull like just a big board where people

[00:42:33] can they basically ask people to write down what is your biggest initiative your company's biggest initiative in the year ahead and the most common answer I've seen is get better with data or get better with data governance because I think companies realize that's where these

[00:42:48] digital improvements start is with their data but like you said that that takes different forms and it's why we've seen so many you know chief data officer roles pop up that just didn't

[00:42:58] exist before. So yeah the industry certainly knows it's you know a top priority or the top digital priority but yes just about how do they get to there from here and AI is definitely going to be

[00:43:10] a big part of that. If it's good to hear that that's more and more of a priority all the time as far as the data here. All right Kevin what's go ahead here to technology software security and AI.

[00:43:25] Well this is an article from a cyber scoop and you know we were talking with Mike before we went live today you know we've not done a lot historically where are we at the this is 78 79. 79 so 21 episodes before 100 you imagine that I mean I'm just

[00:43:49] didn't didn't never have any thoughts that we would get this far so we had to start planning for where what island do we want to be on when we do the 100th episode in person with

[00:44:00] rum drinks or something like that. Mike's garden with some maple syrup. Yeah there we go have to think about when when 21 weeks away is but anyways one of the things that we have not

[00:44:14] talked about up until recently and put much energy into but we're starting to try and look at that much more closely has been cyber security right we talk a lot about technology, AI and

[00:44:24] economy and M&A and so forth on our show each week but you know talking a little bit more about cyber security and this article again is about manufacturers, manufacturing, bearing the brunt of industrial ransomware and kind of a there we go swim up bar that's yeah that's

[00:44:43] Will's Will's common in the day that's for the 100th episode. I think when you need to see Kevin and I swim up bar somehow you don't think that's that's nice. Maybe from the neck up? Yeah okay.

[00:44:54] Is that I like that idea though I'm I was thinking right on my track. Well it was all all good. I was kind of thinking from over the water bungalow in this out specific

[00:45:06] something like that but anyways back to the important stuff at hand here is you know ransomware, cyber security manufacturing has been extremely vulnerable that's kind of what this article tips off on about talking about 900 incidents being reported last year which is a

[00:45:25] huge increase over the previous years and so it's something that we need to be taken a close look at you know this one this particular article lots of statistics in it you know 50% increase over

[00:45:38] the previous year in the number of attacks on industrial related organizations you know and a distributor could easily think back and say well good for me manufacturing is the target but the reality of it is is one it's industrial organizations which in most settings distribution would come into

[00:45:58] as well and in addition to that is if your manufacturer gets hit in his shutdown can't get access to critical infrastructure data maybe even machinery is shut down can't get orders out we saw

[00:46:14] Henry Shine the dental distribution company getting hit twice with a threat of by third time by the same company couldn't get orders out couldn't use their e-commerce system so these are

[00:46:25] just things that we need to be paying a lot more attention to and focusing on it and you know so many of the companies we deal with day in and day out and we were talking with this with my earlier is that

[00:46:36] you know my whether you're a 50 million or a half a billion dollar your company you are well the target for somebody to want to write a check I want you to write them a check

[00:46:48] to get access to your data or whatever the attack is you would think that they would only be targeting large manufacturers, large distributors because they'd be the most lucrative but at the same time the smaller firms out there they just they don't have the scale of defense that

[00:47:06] some of these major distributors do so even if you're a small you think that you don't you're not worthy of being attacked at every one's a target at one day or another end you know these the

[00:47:16] industry sentiment is that it is just it's a matter of when it's not if you're going to be attacked we haven't done the research on this lately but I know that I've seen other industry research that

[00:47:26] when they ask you know have you experienced the cyber breach in the past year or 24 months I think it's over over half of respondents typically say yes in some form maybe it wasn't a devastating

[00:47:37] breach where you like felt like you had to pay millions of dollars but a breach no matter the scale it can cripple operations and like you said it's not just you it's all along your ecosystem

[00:47:50] of suppliers you're just every partner all your customers it's going to impact you one way or another even if you're not the one directly attacked well according to some of the statistics that

[00:48:01] we've seen not just here but in other articles we've talked about recently in your comment there about my about 50% or more of the people I think then there's another 20% or more that are lying

[00:48:13] because they don't want to acknowledge it and right you know I mean who wants to go back to their board and talk about the fact that you know we couldn't ship orders for four days and until we

[00:48:23] because even if you don't have to write a check just if there's damage done sorting through it is hugely expensive all kinds of external resources that go into that so something for us to be paying

[00:48:34] close to attention to right and it's it's not just well the cloud can help make a safer it's not just a movement of a cloud right because that doesn't change the fact that people are

[00:48:44] opening fishing emails and so forth and things like that and I don't remember the statistics I'm thinking there's anything in this article but so much of cyber attacks come in through somebody open in the wrong email right no training not and it's not just you know email filtering

[00:49:02] it's training and helping your team understand things and so forth so we'll dive into this more in future episodes and keep the conversation going. I know I'm getting right 20 emails a day from

[00:49:14] invoice is coming out of the coming out of the woodwork it's like man you saw in a lot because we're getting a lot of inventory so I'm just going to be clear. Yeah yeah and you know it's so

[00:49:26] funny is I mean some of them will have you know individuals and aims are accounting at lead smarttech.com or it'll just perfectly have the Microsoft logo in there and so forth so

[00:49:37] it's scary it's scary to think about how AI is just giving more ammunition to these bad actors to make these emails that look like they're from the legit source and just it's becoming harder

[00:49:51] and harder to know what is spam and what's you know what is a bad link so it is it does like you said it takes a culture of cybersecurity throughout the company and not just relying on a

[00:50:01] piece of software that's going to do it all for you. You have to get people to know what does you know what does malware look like what do bad emails look like? Yep that's good I think

[00:50:12] some of the simplest things you can do is look at the sender right because it has your company's name on it or a logo that you recognize start by looking at the sender is a good place to go so

[00:50:23] it may be just the thing to do is just don't don't respond any emails unless it's from Tom Burton my cockenter Kevin Brown just let's jump ahead MDM this guys are pretty sharp

[00:50:40] fourth quarter 2020 three Mike want to you take us through that since I think you either wrote this or participated in it. Yep so this report it is exclusive to MD and premium members but

[00:50:51] we do have other recent blogs that just kind of recap the year that was in 2023 and even though depending on who you ask the broader wholesale distribution like I think

[00:51:01] MDM activity was a bit down but in the hard good sectors that we cover for MDM we saw activity go through the roof in 2023 I think I think when we tabulated how many individual M&A news items we wrote

[00:51:15] in 2023 it was 433 which was way up from I think it was 263 in 2022 and about the same in 2021 so from the industries we cover you know it's Maro which electrical plumbing at HVAC Janssen

[00:51:32] law these hard good sectors deal linking went crazy in 2023 and you know we that corner three number counts distribution plus many factors that sell in the distribution but the vast majority of that four and the three count was directly involving distributor so we saw a lot of activity

[00:51:49] we kind of asked different private equity firms what's driving this and they said you know lately distribution is just looked like a safer or more long term just return on investment when it comes to private equity investment at least so there's just there's still a lot of

[00:52:07] appetite out there from private equity especially driving a lot of M&A activity in distribution going thanks for that kind of recap Mike you know it's it is the depth of the article is for premium

[00:52:20] members of MDM but I was appreciative the reason I shared this was not just that you are with us today we always try and put this out when you've got M&A data which you do on a consistent basis

[00:52:31] but just the free version of it had a lot of really good data and the appreciative of that and you know the the term was used as you talk about 400 plus articles that were written

[00:52:43] the term that was used in the article was it blew away our counts for 2023 in 2021 so wasn't just we had a little uptick it was big busy busy year I'm going to be interesting though the article

[00:52:56] made the comment and I had thought about this but it does make a lot of sense with this being a presidential election year those a reputation the article says about business is going conservative

[00:53:06] on capital spending kind of not knowing what's going to happen so what's none of us have anything other than our gut feeling on this right now to basis on but what's your gut take like you

[00:53:19] cover this closely in Tom I'll ask you the same question about M&A for this year what do what's your what's your gut tell you yeah from who we've talked to and we even did a podcast with

[00:53:29] I think was Kevin Sergeant from Brown given in line company there are a private equity firm very involved with advising distribution deals I asked him that question how does a presidential election year typically impact M&A spending or does it at all and he said that

[00:53:45] you know from an industry demand aspect you know the capital projects that it does seem to have a noticeable effect but in terms of M&A he said there he has over 20 years he hasn't really seen

[00:53:56] a direct quarterly right there like yeah I think if anything companies see that other companies are going a little conservative on their capital spending during presidential election year and they

[00:54:07] might look at M&A as a way to leave Prague or just gain some market share while everyone else is going conservative so in terms of you know product demand I can see that an election year having an

[00:54:19] impact but yeah as far as what I'm hearing is that there's not expected to be a major you know slow down in M&A just because it's an election year. Mike Tom your got quickly got take yeah I mean

[00:54:34] I and again I'm not anywhere near the industry experts the YouTube are but if I look at my background and working with technology companies for many many years I look at I think there will see an

[00:54:46] uptick for the reason we've already talked about today is companies in order to kind of shore themselves up whether it's security or it's AI or data right it's like you want to get bigger

[00:54:55] there's no different right with M&DM you want to get bigger better and stronger by you know potentially you know merging or getting acquired by a bigger company and I think you're going

[00:55:05] to have to get bigger better and stronger and so I think that's also inherently going to drive maybe some M&A activity that maybe normally wouldn't have a curve. Yep I will just say I don't

[00:55:18] think anybody's cares about that much about the election I think it's kind of like what we're seeing on Wall Street you know and in the financial markets related to inflation and other factors

[00:55:33] of the economy. I think there's money on the sidelines that are going to go into good businesses and I don't personally I don't think anybody cares so I think this is a comment maybe from

[00:55:45] a Brendan brain that's there is the idea that just up an announcement this morning it went out about a valen and west coat and so I think there is a I just caught the article I didn't

[00:56:01] read at all I actually forwarded to myself to go into the news next week but there's some good news there yeah there we go just real quick it was valen distribution acquiring the west coat integrated

[00:56:15] supply unit from west coat so yeah I think I wrote that up just shortly before logging on to the to the podcast here yeah pretty big deal in the industrial MRO space it's it really gains valen

[00:56:28] distribution they I think the purchase price was $350 million and that business unit in the press released they put out I think they said had 2023 revenue of about $780 million so that adds about $780 million to valen distribution so let's gonna definitely move up our top-to-strandvers list

[00:56:48] based on that that's the head and bottom of that part of it so you know we're in we kind of digress here quickly and we're going to talk about this article more next week but I'm glad we're

[00:56:57] doing today my assumption with that then says is west coat being big on the electrical side of things probably looking at maybe divesting a the integrated supply piece maybe isn't perfectly fitting into their you know stick to their knitting philosophy and it fits right in perfectly

[00:57:16] for valen so I have a call and actually next week was a valen folks I'm gonna look forward to hearing a little bit more about that so that's good time did you want to highlight our piece comment there

[00:57:27] I guess I have the equal opportunity I hope it did it good all right we will have spent time on that because but thank you Ron we need to jump ahead so we cover these last few articles here

[00:57:38] quick article and the newsletter today about in our people and leadership segments 2023 was the year of the strike here's what could be ahead regardless of your position union non-union great read biggest year 43% jump in 2023 of the number of strikes that went on

[00:58:02] dramatic amount of people impacted they went on for long periods of time and they impacted wholesale distribution and manufacturing it lists some potential very large strikes that could be happening this year good to pay attention to good to be aware of if we're in the

[00:58:16] wholesale distribution manufacturing world next article though was uh it came from LinkedIn is about our remote worker sacrificing long-term knowledge gains and I thought we could spend a couple minutes talking about that we had to come in earlier about somebody saying they're being long on remote work

[00:58:33] and that's a reasonable thought process these days there's a little bit of data here that throw some questions or some things to be considering this was a recap of a research article that had been done the research article had been done for the National Bureau of Economic Research

[00:58:52] and this was recap by Sean Dubrovak who's a PhD a futurist trendcaster author Sean's a good friend of mine and anytime Sean writes something on linked in or also effective that his uh book called the digital death thing he is next to me here on my desk but

[00:59:10] Sean talks about in his recap of this article some potential impacts and things to be paying attention about both remote and hybrid work any takeaways for you guys yeah I mean I thought I made some

[00:59:27] good points I mean on one hand there there just is no replicant for just the all-know what to call it's just what you gain from physically being in the same room with people and learning from them

[00:59:41] and just the little nuances that you pick up on from I don't know things that are go beyond just shooting each other messages or emails or teams calls there is definitely something to be said

[00:59:52] from that but at the same time you know I'm biased I've worked from home for I think the last three years now and I feel like I'm more productive um and things like that but in terms of

[01:00:04] what they're specifically getting at here is knowledge gains I think there's just a very delicate balance that companies that do are fully remote or even hybrid that they have to walk of how do you you know still create that culture and especially from the yeah getting knowledge from

[01:00:22] season employees how do you do that in a hybrid or remote setting and it's difficult um I don't think there is any perfect answer here in terms of that balance but I thought it did

[01:00:34] hit the difficulties involved with you know getting knowledge from a season person to a newer person how difficult that can be in a remote setting. Tom tells me all the time when we meet in

[01:00:47] person I leave smarter. So yeah I would I would wait to be a new employee coming into a company and starting a job and a new company and a new role especially if I'm early in my career

[01:01:02] without and being remote that would be brutal I think I think you learn if you go back to some of your early jobs a lot of where you got that sort of tribal knowledge was being there and working

[01:01:12] with them and kind of the hands on situation that they're along the way. The other thing started going to Mike. Those who said you think of like today's college grads and just

[01:01:22] Gen Z employees some of them may have only known the remote work at like since the time they left college 20, 20 onwards so they're entering the world where they've only known remote work. So it's just

[01:01:35] I can't even tell myself the shoes of those people. Yeah and the other thing we talked about this last week is the impact of you know AI right is AI going to take jobs. And my comment at the time was

[01:01:48] is if we get more AI centric we're going to have to be able to know how to facilitate things versus just doing things. In order to facilitate things on a business you got to know the business

[01:01:58] you got to know how the business you have to know more than your job. You have to understand your business that business processes. That's hard to learn remotely especially again when you're doing that. So I think there's it's an interesting scenario right we talked about productivity gains

[01:02:16] potentially with remote work. Obviously every job, every situation, every company is a bit different. But I do think there's going to have to be some hybrid framework. No for model maybe too strong but hybrid framework where people can get some of those knowledge games even though they are

[01:02:33] at least part of time working or what. Yeah well let me let me hit a couple as we're kind of winding down time wise we got a couple more things to review so I only hit a couple of points from

[01:02:42] this that I thought were really valuable in recapping and it was you know Sean's again if you don't follow Sean I highly recommend doing so he's good great guy and he'll be with us

[01:02:54] he just confirmed with this morning he's going to be a guest with us this summer so we're looking forward to that and in fact Sean did has done some work with Dirk Beverage he's been one of our

[01:03:04] guests as well but the point was from this research right it's the findings from this research suggests working from home offers mixed outcomes over varying timeframes with immediate benefits potentially undermining the long term professional growth of employees. That's the that's the

[01:03:26] trigger for me right is a lot of companies have moved fully remote because it seemed to be working well in the pandemic and we're seeing short-term gains. I know of a number of companies who are

[01:03:39] have gone fully remote who are now working on whether it's quarterly or monthly even getting people together and having specific meetings hotels whatever it might be that may prove to be the answer long term if you're fully remote but the article reinforces some of the things

[01:03:58] of both of you said right it's this was 22% increase in feedback particularly benefiting the younger and less tenured workers impact on mentorship they talked about career to director trajectory impacts proximity led to fewer early pay raises due to reduced output result on a higher long-term pay

[01:04:22] raises as there was more human capital development right so we're learning more from each other by being together then being away that results in a positive outcome um even talked about some gender

[01:04:34] specific issues that go with it so point being is what we like to do here is bring attention to things of people should be thinking about uh story behind the story is my big takeaway working from home

[01:04:48] offers mix outcomes over timeframes and short-term gains might not be long-term benefits something to pay attention to good so industry scuttle button will move on there to some information about motion industries expanding into Canada something kind of cool uh staff to the

[01:05:05] specialty tool ambassador distributors association partnering with uh Texas AIM on some educational opportunities it's so great to see expanding opportunities for distribution workers to get formal education on the business at their end so many folks and it's a great way to do it but so many

[01:05:24] folks start coming in the back door and end up if they're career in the front office which is a great thing to see but there's these great opportunities to Purdue Texas AIM number of different programs

[01:05:36] that are great so good to see that so Tom let's kind of jump ahead to our last article of the day we'll bypass our second look which is a little more information about what's going on in the

[01:05:46] Suez Canal and the Red Sea but each week we have a topic called Good Reads this one is seven crucial qualities of ethical leadership related to AI coming into your business take away from

[01:06:00] either of you on that you know I just thought it was I mean I thought there were some really good points in there about how to apply leadership right in an AI world so you know it's all great

[01:06:14] to talk about honesty and transparency and a lot of the things that you would talk about here but how does that apply in the world of AI and how you're using AI and your company and of course

[01:06:25] people have a lot of question that what does this mean to me and all of that kind of stuff so it's um it's I thought it was some very good a very good framework I think for rethinking about leadership

[01:06:36] in this kind of new world. Did hey Tom before we jump ahead on that any further just real quick I just saw the notes a request about could I share the I think it was related to sharing the

[01:06:48] previous article if you're connected with me or following me on LinkedIn I'll post that article there I'll also post it to the uh leads more technologies linked in page so you can see shons

[01:07:00] article about and that recap of that research because I believe that's where this question was so ahead my concern interrupted you just want to acknowledge that. That AI ethics article was really

[01:07:11] interesting MDM we just hosted on February 7th in AI summit during which we had an hour long session on AI ethics because among the whole AI discussion and distribution I just don't think there's much

[01:07:23] discussion on the ethics involved here and you know the biases that can go into AI coding that's determining what chat GPT is spinning out back to you and everything and just other on the ethics

[01:07:36] front is you know there's not a lot of just rules that distributors know how to articulate to their salespeople for you know what customer information can you put into some of these AI tools

[01:07:48] uh some of that data is very sensitive that you don't want to just throw out there into the ether so yeah I think there is a need for discussion on guardrails that distribution executives can

[01:08:01] help articulate to their staff their managers on how to use AI in a you know in a safe way in a way in a productive way but in the way that's not going to open yourself up to more risk.

[01:08:15] It's great good good recap on that I think they you know there were seven points right honest accountability care courage fairness gratitude and humility. I think people are nervous about AI in the business world in general certainly the idea about having my job or place or whatever

[01:08:33] might be so some good points out of that great time today I think we've got some updates in our news letter just some upcoming events and Mike thinks that you guys do such a great job at MDM of

[01:08:46] posting where all those events are and and we we repost that with a notice that it's coming from you we add to it but you guys do a great job and we're really appreciative one of as we kind

[01:08:58] of wind down today one you being with us were grateful for that. Looking forward as I mentioned to Tom and Eric and Dan and others from both MDM and NAW joining us soon works I'm excited

[01:09:12] personally we're just pairing at Leedsmart our expanded involvement with NAW and going to participate with some of their events later this year it's a conflicts to do the January event with NAW

[01:09:26] but even with you and Tom and NMDM involvement there all the better it's going to be good for the industry it's going to be good for both organizations and getting messages out to broader distribution

[01:09:38] networks as well so that's good stuff great time to any wonderful comments today we really appreciate broad spectrum by the way we've had a number of comments today as well from the

[01:09:54] good friend Brendan Breen thanks for being with us we're going to be Brendan on shortly as a guest talk about their upcoming events a lot of events earlier this year I think one of the things

[01:10:04] I don't know Mike if you noticed this historically we got a couple very beginning of the year maybe one or two in the spring and then the fall just you know we don't get CR wives for the fall

[01:10:16] and there's some events getting popping up middle of the year and even some time which I'm appreciative of because we can spread stuff out so anyways thanks both of you appreciate today any comments in closing Mike or Tom? Well I have a good idea already your maple

[01:10:33] yeah I got I gotta get back to it I probably got to check to make sure it hasn't burned the house down at this point but I'm in yeah this is my second time on here it's just great to

[01:10:42] chat with you guys about these issues that some of them are specific to distribution but they're going to impact it at one point or another so it's great to touch on a lot of different topics

[01:10:51] that's great well thank you for being with us thanks everybody to join us today again if you don't get the newsletter and you would like to just reach out to us at hello at leadsmarttech.com

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