Has Inflation Reached Its Peak? A Look At The B2B Wholesale Economy.

[00:00:46] B2B Wholesale, The Changes in Wholesale, The Changes in Wholesale Distribution Podcast, Kevin Brown amp, Tom Burton, John Jones, Jeremy, and Adam

[00:00:58] I thought I was going to miss it again.

[00:01:01] I'm not dancing, I'm playing the drums today.

[00:01:04] Whatever you want to call it, whatever you want to.

[00:01:06] Just embarrassing, huh?

[00:01:09] You're pretty deep in this.

[00:01:10] You're pretty deep in this.

[00:01:11] It's even in your public.

[00:01:12] It's Friday, it's Friday.

[00:01:13] I'll let you slide.

[00:01:14] All right, thank you.

[00:01:15] I've been behaved all week, so it's pretty good.

[00:01:18] It's what's happening.

[00:01:20] Not much.

[00:01:21] Got some good stuff today, so.

[00:01:22] Yeah.

[00:01:23] Yeah, it's a rain.

[00:01:24] It's just thinking about it.

[00:01:26] I don't know if it's raining.

[00:01:27] Yeah, it's raining.

[00:01:27] It's going to be nice.

[00:01:28] So usually get it first.

[00:01:29] So it's going to be good.

[00:01:31] Go ahead, I'm sorry.

[00:01:32] Guys, post to rain this afternoon, I think.

[00:01:34] Yeah, that's what we're supposed to get later tonight.

[00:01:36] You know, just I really want to let our friends and the Midwest and the East and other parts of the world that are joining us were, you know, they've got struggling weather feel for us.

[00:01:47] It was 49 degrees when I woke up this morning.

[00:01:50] Yeah, that's cool.

[00:01:53] Yeah, yeah.

[00:01:56] Did you have to blow out the sprinklers and make sure they don't freeze or anything like that?

[00:02:00] No, how I recognize is I checked because my wife who has a broken thermostat had the door cracked.

[00:02:06] Okay.

[00:02:06] All right.

[00:02:07] You know, it's just deal with these things as you go, but you know, we've got listeners and

[00:02:14] you're up in eastern Europe and Latin America on with us today and the UK and certainly across this country.

[00:02:21] So feel for us in California.

[00:02:23] It's quite cold today.

[00:02:24] Yeah, yeah.

[00:02:25] All right.

[00:02:26] So yeah, lots going on in the news today.

[00:02:27] We're going to talk about quite a few different things before we get going though.

[00:02:32] Why don't we do our little housekeeping that we do every week?

[00:02:35] I'm Kevin Brown.

[00:02:36] This is my good friend at business partner Tom Burton.

[00:02:39] We are the co-founders of Leedsmark Technologies.

[00:02:43] Leedsmark is a AI enabled CRM and customer intelligence platform that's solely developed for manufacturing and wholesale distribution.

[00:02:53] So we are the company that you turn to when you want to digitally transform and work your business ahead.

[00:02:59] So all good stuff there.

[00:03:01] We get together though every Friday morning and discuss the happenings in the week of technology,

[00:03:07] M&A, sales and marketing economic issues that may be going on.

[00:03:12] But we try and kind of as we just sometimes say peel back the onion and look at the story behind the story about how those relate to manufacturing and distribution.

[00:03:22] What we'll be talking about today is though the newsletter that we send out every Friday morning.

[00:03:26] It's called Around the Horn and wholesale distribution surprise surprise that goes out to thousands of people.

[00:03:33] And that's where we publish all the articles that we'll be talking about and reviewing.

[00:03:36] So if you don't get that newsletter each week and you would like to two simple ways to do that, you could send us a quick note.

[00:03:45] And letting us know you do that and by email at hello at leedsmark tech.com.

[00:03:50] Hello at leedsmark tech.com or you can go to the website that we have for the podcast which is around the hornpod.com.

[00:03:58] You can see all of our previous or not see but listen to all of our previous episodes there and sign up for the newsletter.

[00:04:05] So we got to appreciate it if you would do that and get that out to you.

[00:04:10] So two little final things to cover regarding our housekeeping and trying to make this quick is number one.

[00:04:16] Our larger audience then we have here on Facebook live linked in live in YouTube live this morning.

[00:04:21] Our much larger audience is on the recorded podcast.

[00:04:24] So what we do here every Friday morning is recorded. It goes through an editing process through an editor that we've brought into help us with this.

[00:04:31] And later in the day this is up on all the popular podcast formats and Apple podcast Spotify Amazon Odyssey across the board.

[00:04:40] It's there on all of them.

[00:04:41] If you happen to be one of those people that's listening versus watching what we're referring to in these discussions and these articles today is what's up on a screen that those that are live with us can see that are the articles that we talked about in the newsletter.

[00:04:54] So final point of our housekeeping. If you like what you hear in your enjoying being with us each week, please follow us on linked in the lead smart technology's page YouTube Facebook.

[00:05:08] The same thing hit the like button if you are listening on the podcast. Please leave a review so others can see this as well.

[00:05:16] So all right Tom I'm done. So let go ahead.

[00:05:18] Man I feel like the house is really clean now.

[00:05:21] Got to do it.

[00:05:23] So yeah, it looks like we have Ron and another from Chicago. So we've got Chicago well represented and yeah, if you're if you're online and with us, please jump in. We'd love to hear from your front where you are from and join in the conversation. So let's get started with nothing better than getting some feedback from those that are listening and you I talked to people regularly who listen and sometimes they're on their phone listening and doing other things that's hard for them to comment but if you're actually keyboard.

[00:05:51] You know, I've heard from people that people like the comments better than they like what we're saying. So let's let's let's balance that out.

[00:06:00] Next thing you know some of these people are going to start their own podcasts and there goes our audience.

[00:06:05] Yeah well, good happened.

[00:06:07] All right.

[00:06:08] First article.

[00:06:10] Jobless claims increasing again seems seems counterintuitive that that might be good news, doesn't it?

[00:06:18] Well, I think they consider a good news for inflation.

[00:06:21] Right. Exactly right.

[00:06:23] And obviously as you've seen in the last two weeks that the stock market, I think is up 10% and two weeks is kind of a relief quote unquote relief rally that maybe the inflation is on its way down and the rates have reached their peak.

[00:06:40] That may be true. I think there's a little bit of what do they call it irrational exuberance has the word that was used before.

[00:06:46] Greens fan right?

[00:06:48] Yeah, one of those on all of that but yeah, I think this just you know further I guess aligns about that. Okay, if you are people are being hired more people or out of work. There's less job more jobless claims that kind of stuff. So

[00:07:07] inflation of decreasing could be but as it also foreshadowing some of the other things we've talked about in the past related to you know down turns and all of that. I think it's obviously not enough data here to really say one way or the other.

[00:07:19] Well, they meant they actually speak to that a little bit in this article and they talked about it is that this this rising number is not enough to trigger a concern about employment rates. It's right now they mentioned it you know if they added it and as a sign note right.

[00:07:36] The good news about looking at this particular data set and we look at different data sets each week words is manufacturing indexing or or supply chain issues and things with that another economic factors but the nice thing about this one is we see it every week.

[00:07:51] And you know we talked about that it's the was either last week or the week before very briefly about jobless claims.

[00:07:58] There was a factor in there that worried me and I didn't think about it when we were talking on podcasts thought about it later was you know what auto workers were on strike at many plants.

[00:08:10] We had the Hollywood walk out we had they had just solved the writer strike and not the actors strike will now all of those people are I shouldn't say all of them but many of them are back to work.

[00:08:22] So what could have been potentially an artificial number here about people that are on the unemployment roles and going back.

[00:08:31] I think this is a much better number than like we saw a couple weeks ago.

[00:08:35] Yeah, I mean the other side of that coin is that this is the holiday season and there's a lot of hiring that tends to happen around the higher holiday season.

[00:08:42] You think that's happened yet?

[00:08:44] Well I think it would have happened or could have happened but I don't think it has happened to the degree that it hasn't previous years based on you know again whatever little data that I have on this so.

[00:08:54] Right.

[00:08:54] Yeah.

[00:08:55] I thought it was interesting you know this this data that comes out you know each week like this is you know they talk about it's the most timely data on the economy's health.

[00:09:06] So I thought that was kind of interesting.

[00:09:09] You know the type of labor market is slowing as higher interest rates curve demand that's consistent with slowing economic activity so.

[00:09:18] You know the other side of this is that we've also seen I think we're either on the second or third week in a row that mortgage rates and interest rates are following.

[00:09:26] So there's kind of some I don't know I'd like to see some things not not expecting us to get back to you know 2.8% mortgage rates but seeing some freeing up to some capital in the markets and.

[00:09:38] And letting I think the bulls want to run right we hear that from our our customer base and that have you know their businesses are strong.

[00:09:46] I mean they're cautiously watching what's happening the businesses are strong Wall Street's wall has never really cared about any of this all that lives there's been.

[00:09:55] Dips but you know charge charging ahead historically so I think it's going to be a good thing to continue to watch the reason I popped this article and though.

[00:10:03] Made me feel good that you know maybe we're going to come out of this Jerome Powell era for you know fairly soon.

[00:10:11] We'll see yeah hope so all right let's jump ahead there's going to article here in Forbes magazine about improving supply chains to ensure manufacturers long-term viability quite a few good points in there about you know some best practices and so forth but they start talking about you know the AI tool going into that as well.

[00:10:31] How do you know how these physics thoughts on that time.

[00:10:34] Well it was I was interesting when I was reading that article as like wait a minute I could substitute the word supply chain here with sales or revenue processes and you know supply chains right are all based around process to a large degree right how things move from one thing to the other and how they're progressing and so forth.

[00:10:55] And more and more and obviously this is what we do for living is we work with companies on how to build a sales or revenue generation process in their business.

[00:11:05] And a lot of times those processes have multiple steps as data for multiple sources and we want to use AI which I just found interesting is I'm not a supply chain expert by any stretch the imagination.

[00:11:15] In fact I can barely spell the word but when I started to read that article I could see a lot of similarities in terms of the things that you would do for managing supply chains that we do for measuring or you know monitoring and automating the revenue generation process.

[00:11:32] Well I think you've spot on with that right and they talk we'll talk about this in a moment they put some very specific bullet points and you could push those on either side supply chain or what all call the revenue chain right.

[00:11:44] Or customer chain on the other side of that but what I found intriguing with this is we started starting to talk about you know sharing data across and I'll just hit these key points they talk about.

[00:11:54] They talk about access to accurate manufacturing and supply chain data so they talk about real time normalized data across ERP and other planning tools.

[00:12:03] Cross functional visibility so it's visible across key parts of the organization trend detection and synthesized insights so we're seeing patterns and so forth and there's no better way ever that we found to see patterns outside of the human mind.

[00:12:19] Then with the AI tools that are going to bring this to us and they're not just going to show us by going in and asking questions we're going to get live alerts about what's going on with trend detection on things with us as well.

[00:12:32] And then you talk about a proactive decision making action based prioritization and do your point earlier right you can take this we have supply chain getting stuff into a building and the revenue chain with it leaving the build.

[00:12:44] And both sides of these need all of those same exact things right we had an opportunity you were we traveled together which is rare to the net plus alliance event last month in Denver and I had the privilege of talking to their audience or member audience about what we call the four pillars.

[00:13:03] You know of digital transformation and we talking that which is really on the revenue side of things where we talk about.

[00:13:13] You know having more making sure that we have great ERP data we have a robust AI enabled kind of modern industry specific CRM we have great marketing and market animation tools and we have an e-commerce platform and then they're all talking.

[00:13:27] Well, what we're starting to see even more now and more and more is that our customers when they come on board with our AI enabled CRM and customer intelligence tool they're actually buying licenses.

[00:13:40] For their operations people and some people in their procurement department because now they want this data moving across all facets so I think that line of supply chain and the revenue side of the business are blurring and going to go away soon and now just we have data about our business.

[00:13:57] No, and I it's exciting to me anyway because I think in my whole career revenue sales even marketing to a large degree has been maybe more art than science.

[00:14:08] And who's the great sales person who's the great you know networker who you know whatever and it hasn't been systematized.

[00:14:17] As well as it could have been and I think that the opportunity that we're seeing again using data AI.

[00:14:24] The same way that we systematize supply change or manufacturing lines we can start to systematize the revenue generation process as well.

[00:14:32] And it doesn't mean that you're replacing people by means that's not that at all but you can get you can get a lot more efficiency from the people and the people can be more successful.

[00:14:42] But then we're going to talk about some new AI tools have just been released in a little bit, but.

[00:14:48] I was doing some testing last night with some forecasting again doing some AI with forecasting and how to do that more again consistently and predictably which forecasting has always been generally an art right in that.

[00:15:02] And the second.

[00:15:03] I can't even reach.

[00:15:04] I didn't look that way.

[00:15:07] But like you needed to work harder is what it came back with but anyway my point is is that I think there when I looked at this there's a lot of similarities and parallels and whether supply chains or otherwise.

[00:15:20] There's an opportunity to really systematize things that have historically been difficult if not impossible to see.

[00:15:27] Yeah, so.

[00:15:28] Yeah, I think it's a great comment from our pee here.

[00:15:31] Yeah, yeah, once in our piece says in his experiences never been a time when all of this data is so connected.

[00:15:38] He used to be all about product information that fueled how products move through the supply chain and now the same focus and leverage is being used on customer data.

[00:15:46] Order to cash and every aspect where data is being used.

[00:15:50] You know, we're going that's a great point, Ron.

[00:15:52] So thank you for sharing that.

[00:15:53] And, I was looking if you could agree more.

[00:15:54] We're talking about this a little bit later where we kind of start talking about data lakes and where we can bring all these things together right your work on some really cool stuff related to that, you know kind of hinting at that.

[00:16:06] Like with some of our, our customers of potential customers, and i'm pretty excited about where we can bring all these different pieces of data.

[00:16:13] So, let's so we're going to come back to talking more about technology and AI in a little bit.

[00:16:17] But we've just in the last maybe month or so,

[00:16:22] we've had a couple of conversations

[00:16:26] about ransomware and cyber attacks and so forth.

[00:16:29] And you know, we're trying to take a look at all

[00:16:32] of the things that are out there that are in the news

[00:16:35] that are gonna be things that,

[00:16:37] if you're a wholesale distributor,

[00:16:38] regardless of what you distribute,

[00:16:40] it could be kitchen products

[00:16:42] or home garden products or turf products

[00:16:47] you know, ball bearings or electrical,

[00:16:50] it doesn't matter what it is, right?

[00:16:51] If you're in the distribution business

[00:16:53] or the manufacturing business,

[00:16:55] you're facing similar challenges

[00:16:56] and our goal each week and really why we're here

[00:16:59] is to kind of look at these things

[00:17:02] and bring some insights into it.

[00:17:05] Typically we have guests often on coming with us

[00:17:08] we're gonna have some more guests

[00:17:09] till this year

[00:17:10] and really give you some insights and things.

[00:17:12] And I would almost say we've kind of been a remiss

[00:17:15] and not talking about cybersecurity and so forth.

[00:17:18] And you know, I think I mentioned a couple weeks ago

[00:17:20] to tell him I was at a conference a while back

[00:17:22] and I met a small, the mid-sized manufacturer

[00:17:27] doing mostly business in the US and Canada

[00:17:30] and family owned family run

[00:17:32] and they got hit about a year ago.

[00:17:35] All of a sudden all of their terminals were either blank

[00:17:38] or had messages about the attack

[00:17:41] and they spent tens of thousands of dollars

[00:17:45] and weeks and weeks and weeks to sort through it.

[00:17:48] They turned out their data was in compromise

[00:17:50] with customer data but it can be so,

[00:17:53] I think it's something we'll first do talk about

[00:17:54] and now we've got this article about Henry Shine

[00:17:57] being hit in mid-October

[00:17:58] and last week we talked about his hardware.

[00:18:02] Yeah, I mean, so I think these two articles

[00:18:03] of these two articles definitely go together.

[00:18:07] The first article was yet another somebody hit

[00:18:10] with a cyber attack and I think they lost

[00:18:12] some pretty customer data got hacked

[00:18:15] from financial information and all of that

[00:18:18] and I think it was pretty interesting

[00:18:20] when you looked at some of the statistics

[00:18:22] they were talking about about how it was a public company,

[00:18:25] how did that affect their earnings per share

[00:18:27] and what was their loss

[00:18:28] and I think what they say $60 million

[00:18:30] or something that could go against their bottom line.

[00:18:34] From, yeah.

[00:18:36] So publicly traded company,

[00:18:37] one of the largest names in medical and dental distribution

[00:18:41] maybe the largest outside of a McKesson or a Cardinal

[00:18:45] and they get hit with this

[00:18:48] and it pummels them for weeks.

[00:18:50] I mean, literally they were going to their customers

[00:18:52] and saying, please call us to place your orders.

[00:18:56] Now think about the millions of dollars

[00:18:58] that they've spent over the last X number of years

[00:19:00] to get out of having people call

[00:19:03] and the only way they can operate is to be able to do that.

[00:19:06] Now they said they were still getting orders out successfully

[00:19:08] and doing their thing but literally they had to go talk

[00:19:12] to their shareholders about this

[00:19:13] and their third court earnings report.

[00:19:17] It's interesting they talk about this group

[00:19:19] known as Blockcat, I did a little bit of reading about them

[00:19:22] and there's kind of two sides to what they do.

[00:19:26] It's the Velwork with other ransomware

[00:19:28] and cyber security companies

[00:19:29] to help them recover the money

[00:19:31] and then they do their own attacks as well

[00:19:34] and they don't know, they believe that this is the same group

[00:19:38] that hit A's hardware

[00:19:42] but they're confident in that

[00:19:44] but they also believe this is probably who hit

[00:19:47] MGM hotels and casinos.

[00:19:50] So is that group going to come after a family-owned distributor

[00:19:56] in, you know, while Keegan and O'er wherever it might be?

[00:20:00] Maybe not right now

[00:20:01] but the offshoot group of those types of people

[00:20:04] that find a way to get into some of these smaller businesses

[00:20:07] and are interested in getting $150,000 versus $20 million

[00:20:13] you have to be thinking about that at this stage.

[00:20:18] Yeah and I know we're gonna talk in a minute

[00:20:19] about how to deal with this right?

[00:20:23] There are three things I'm gonna talk about here

[00:20:27] are relevant to any size company

[00:20:30] and you're at risk if you're not dealing with them.

[00:20:33] One is just, you know,

[00:20:34] what we are dealing with here is just the security of the data

[00:20:37] who has access to one, who could get it stuff

[00:20:39] right, how secure is the data itself?

[00:20:42] The second piece is the privacy aspect of it, right?

[00:20:46] So it's who can get at it but who should get at it

[00:20:48] in the rights to it?

[00:20:51] And you can lose money just as badly

[00:20:54] by violating privacy, right?

[00:20:56] Which kind of happened here, right?

[00:20:58] They did.

[00:20:59] Well, by dees and all of that kind of stuff.

[00:21:01] In theory, right, there's a lot of potentially legal

[00:21:04] liabilities for doing that.

[00:21:06] And then the third, which no one talks about,

[00:21:08] but is becoming more and more,

[00:21:10] I believe is going to be a big issue with AI

[00:21:13] is the integrity of the data.

[00:21:16] So let's say I'm a hacker and I don't steal your data

[00:21:20] but I start putting in bogus data

[00:21:21] and I put false data into your system

[00:21:23] and all that system now correlates goes back

[00:21:26] into my supply chain AI or my customer facing AI

[00:21:30] or whatever.

[00:21:31] Think of it.

[00:21:33] Last year, Tom, last year again.

[00:21:36] Think of the liability that can be created

[00:21:38] by that process that's there.

[00:21:41] And we don't think about that.

[00:21:42] We think about, we're going to put a motor round it

[00:21:45] or a fence around it so people can't get at it

[00:21:47] but also people can they inject it

[00:21:50] and they put other false information

[00:21:52] into that system that now has other ramifications.

[00:21:54] You're right.

[00:21:55] My point being, those are the three areas of security,

[00:21:58] cybersecurity that any company at least has to be aware of

[00:22:03] in their business no matter what their size is.

[00:22:06] You and our company, any company needs to be aware

[00:22:09] of those things.

[00:22:11] Well, it's interesting too as you talk about that.

[00:22:14] In this case they lost, I believe they lost both customer data

[00:22:17] and then some major data related to their manufacturing partners.

[00:22:21] But they talk about having insurance, cyber insurance

[00:22:25] in this setting.

[00:22:27] But it's got a $60 million limit.

[00:22:30] Well, if you start losing some major data

[00:22:33] tied to manufacturing partners and that ties up

[00:22:36] into some lawsuits and some things like that,

[00:22:39] those limits are going to be really problematic.

[00:22:41] You have some big issues at hand with this.

[00:22:44] So we're going to continue to talk about it.

[00:22:46] Let's kind of look ahead at this.

[00:22:48] There's a tech radar article about building

[00:22:51] cybersecurity strategy on a constrained budget.

[00:22:55] And I don't really want to talk about budgets

[00:22:58] because I think there's a lot of people who are in our audience

[00:23:02] and our customer base, who may not even have a budget

[00:23:05] for this yet.

[00:23:06] But it could be happening to them.

[00:23:09] We've got a lot of companies that are now migrating

[00:23:13] into the cloud and that's going to be a big help for them

[00:23:15] from cybersecurity standpoint.

[00:23:18] But they've got a lot of on-premise data

[00:23:20] and so forth that's left as well.

[00:23:22] So kind of a big issue that's coming.

[00:23:25] This article is an icy gives some good kind

[00:23:28] of bullet points to talk about having strong access control

[00:23:31] into your any of your system, doing vulnerability

[00:23:34] and assessments, having a plan of what you would actually do.

[00:23:40] And this company I mentioned as talking

[00:23:43] to one of the family members

[00:23:45] and executive leadership from the company,

[00:23:48] the last thing that they had been thinking about

[00:23:50] was something like this in their business.

[00:23:53] They had to go figure out how to respond.

[00:23:55] So I think this is really the piece

[00:23:57] that I liked that, at least these bullet points

[00:23:59] that they share in this article

[00:24:00] was that you're having a plan

[00:24:02] and then also having an awareness within the organization

[00:24:05] that these types of things are happening out there

[00:24:08] on what could we do.

[00:24:09] So I liked about that.

[00:24:10] They talked about MFA or multi-factor authentication.

[00:24:13] We're just seeing more and more of that

[00:24:15] in every facet of our life about having to provide two ways

[00:24:18] that we get into a system.

[00:24:20] They talked about access management

[00:24:22] and then ongoing continuous monitoring.

[00:24:25] There's lots of software tools out there

[00:24:27] that can help with this.

[00:24:28] So I want to continue to kind of wave this banner

[00:24:33] a little bit to our audience about to be thinking

[00:24:35] about these things, right?

[00:24:37] And because the last thing you want to do

[00:24:39] is find yourself locked out of your own system

[00:24:41] and not being able to be able to do business.

[00:24:45] Yeah, and also ending up with a legal liability

[00:24:47] that no one wants.

[00:24:49] So yeah, well, I mean there's business impact.

[00:24:51] There's legal impact

[00:24:52] and there's just the general impact

[00:24:54] that it has in your overall business.

[00:24:57] So jumping moving along here,

[00:25:00] interesting article here that we posted

[00:25:04] came from Raiders, you know,

[00:25:06] Elon Musk and along with all of the other businesses

[00:25:08] that he has, he's got and it's tied to SpaceX.

[00:25:11] They've got the Starlink satellite internet service.

[00:25:15] It's pretty astounding if you look at it.

[00:25:18] Why does that fit in?

[00:25:19] And matter to wholesale distribution,

[00:25:20] we'll talk about that in a moment.

[00:25:22] But they just did a $90 million contract

[00:25:25] for the government of Mexico.

[00:25:26] It's a short-term contract, I think it was a year or less.

[00:25:29] But it's going to literally provide internet access

[00:25:33] across the country.

[00:25:35] And it's pretty cool to see.

[00:25:38] And you know, historically kind of satellite-based

[00:25:44] internet has not been that solid or that reliable.

[00:25:47] But what they're putting together now is astounding.

[00:25:50] And if you haven't taken a look

[00:25:51] with Starlink offers, if you live in a rural area

[00:25:55] or you're traveling to a rural area regularly

[00:25:57] or vacation home that you want good internet at,

[00:26:00] you really look into that because I just mentioned

[00:26:03] you really, my first exposure.

[00:26:05] I knew about it.

[00:26:06] Had been paid close attention to it.

[00:26:08] You know, Tom and quite a few of our listeners know,

[00:26:11] I loved to race sale boats.

[00:26:12] There's a race every year across from Southern California

[00:26:16] here in Los Angeles or Long Beach to Honolulu,

[00:26:19] Hawaii, 2200 plus miles.

[00:26:22] When I was single and racing consistently,

[00:26:24] I couldn't do the race even though I had many opportunities

[00:26:27] to do it because I couldn't be away from my business

[00:26:29] for what could potentially be two weeks.

[00:26:32] Because you had no access.

[00:26:35] Let me rephrase it.

[00:26:36] Very limited access and it was extremely expensive.

[00:26:40] This year's Transpac race across to Hawaii,

[00:26:43] I had multiple friends that were doing the race on boats

[00:26:46] where they were broadcasting live from about doing 20 miles

[00:26:50] an hour, blasted across the Pacific

[00:26:52] and then, you know, 1500 miles from shore.

[00:26:56] And their Facebook live feed is like, we are right now.

[00:27:00] So this is a cool technology that's coming around.

[00:27:05] That's worth taking a look at.

[00:27:07] The value of it, I think to our customers all

[00:27:09] that you come in on this first before we talk about it.

[00:27:11] But I think it's an important thing

[00:27:12] to watch for our audience here.

[00:27:16] Yeah, I think we're going to see whether it's Starlink

[00:27:20] or whatever.

[00:27:20] I think we're going to see the adoption

[00:27:22] of more satellite based always on connection

[00:27:26] become more and more prevalent even here in the US.

[00:27:29] Right, if you look at our connections,

[00:27:30] the way that we do things in the US

[00:27:32] is we connect from one network to another

[00:27:35] and, you know, to paint upon if you have a good cell connection

[00:27:38] or whatever, it's actually not really good

[00:27:42] when you think about it.

[00:27:43] Our horrible technology.

[00:27:44] It's a horrible right now.

[00:27:46] Yeah, it's a very flaky and very inconsistent.

[00:27:49] And when you start to look ahead again,

[00:27:53] you know, AI and Internet of Things,

[00:27:55] you know, the whole Internet of Things thing,

[00:27:56] which is kind of bit of a, I would say an underachiever

[00:28:01] in terms of its original hype.

[00:28:02] I believe it's going to be an consumer level for sure.

[00:28:06] I don't know what it is.

[00:28:07] It is in other areas that you're right.

[00:28:09] Yeah, but I think the opportunity for it

[00:28:11] goes up exponentially when you start looking at it again.

[00:28:14] That's a data source to help drive AI actions.

[00:28:18] And so having that sort of always on always reliable connection

[00:28:23] is going to become more and more of a need,

[00:28:25] not just a luxury.

[00:28:28] And I think we're going to see more of that, whether or not

[00:28:31] we end up giving away for the Internet,

[00:28:33] everybody in the country.

[00:28:34] I don't know.

[00:28:35] I wouldn't rule it out because I think there's a lot of benefit

[00:28:39] for doing that.

[00:28:40] You know, if you look at the cost of that,

[00:28:43] compared to the other things that we're spending money on,

[00:28:45] it's really relatively small.

[00:28:47] But my point being is that I think we're going

[00:28:49] to see more of this and my hats off to Mexico

[00:28:52] to making this move.

[00:28:53] Yeah, I think it's fantastic.

[00:28:54] And so it's interesting if you look back

[00:28:57] at the history of some of this stuff, right?

[00:29:00] Is, you know, Mark Zuckerberg was talking five years

[00:29:04] ago about having balloons that were floating over parts

[00:29:08] of Africa so that other parts of Africa

[00:29:12] that don't have Internet service can get it.

[00:29:15] And wanting to have the connected world.

[00:29:17] Now, obviously there's an economic factor

[00:29:19] to that with these businesses wanting to do that right

[00:29:22] more people in Facebook and you can sell more hats.

[00:29:24] You know, those types of things that didn't come together.

[00:29:27] But what we're looking at here is super valuable

[00:29:29] and I want to expand upon the comment that you made, right?

[00:29:32] Because, you know, Internet of Things,

[00:29:34] AI is we're talking about all of these pieces.

[00:29:37] It's, look, I mean, we talk to people

[00:29:39] in our business every day who have salespeople

[00:29:43] are out in rural areas and they're without sell service.

[00:29:47] We're going to talk in a little bit

[00:29:49] about the value and the things that are coming

[00:29:50] with what co-pilots as we've talked about related

[00:29:53] to AI are going to be able to do to help us.

[00:29:56] But as simple as we are today, you know,

[00:29:59] when we lose the sell signal,

[00:30:01] we can't be on the phone anymore.

[00:30:02] We're also not in that area and not able

[00:30:04] to do remote update to our CRM or get ERP data

[00:30:08] from our phone or whatever it might be.

[00:30:10] You know, I make this simple drive every week

[00:30:12] to see at least once a week to see my parents

[00:30:15] and I go through a mountain pass.

[00:30:18] And half of that drive, it happens

[00:30:20] to end up being good podcast listening time for me.

[00:30:25] But I, a lot of times, I need to be on the phone

[00:30:27] on business stuff and there's just no sell signal there.

[00:30:30] And I live in a major metropolitan area.

[00:30:32] So I think where we're headed with this is really powerful.

[00:30:36] And when we were talking offline or when

[00:30:37] you mentioned early on, people talked about 5G.

[00:30:40] It was going to be the way around all of this.

[00:30:43] But 5G doesn't matter if you don't have a tower.

[00:30:47] And so I think this satellite piece is really going to grow.

[00:30:51] The reason we, I put it in here for us to talk about today

[00:30:53] is something to be thinking about and looking

[00:30:56] at from a wholesale distribution standpoint

[00:30:58] of the value of that is going to be

[00:31:00] to our people that are working in remote areas

[00:31:02] or just having really consistent data

[00:31:06] because we're not worried about how far you made a comment

[00:31:09] earlier, right?

[00:31:09] We use an, you know, within LeedsFar as a company.

[00:31:12] We do our internal communications on Microsoft Teams.

[00:31:15] We're regularly on Teams call either you or I

[00:31:18] or other folks in the company and you've commented, right?

[00:31:21] You, when you leave the office there

[00:31:22] where you're at in Santa Barbara and get to the car,

[00:31:25] you're going to drop that Teams call.

[00:31:28] Well, it's because you're moving from the Wi-Fi

[00:31:30] and you're building out to cellular

[00:31:33] and it's a struggle, right?

[00:31:35] And if you're on satellite across the board,

[00:31:37] you don't have a lot less than that.

[00:31:39] So good stuff.

[00:31:41] All right, what's next here?

[00:31:42] Tech Talk.

[00:31:45] You're going to get excited about this, I think.

[00:31:48] There's a few different pieces we have today

[00:31:50] that we can talk about that.

[00:31:52] But Tech Talk, we're talking about some new features

[00:31:54] from OpenAI.

[00:31:55] They did the big event last week.

[00:31:57] We talked a little bit last week in the broadcast

[00:31:59] about some of the stuff that they're talking about

[00:32:02] but there's some cool stuff about the way

[00:32:05] that they're starting to target enterprise level customers,

[00:32:08] what are your thoughts on this one, Tom?

[00:32:10] Well, there's a lot of thoughts.

[00:32:13] And the interest of time, after.

[00:32:15] Shocker.

[00:32:15] Yeah, I try and be brief but...

[00:32:18] I have a customer call in a half hour.

[00:32:20] Okay, yeah, so what you were...

[00:32:23] So first of all, OpenAI, I believe,

[00:32:26] is trying to move themselves from being,

[00:32:29] hey, I got this big kick-ass model

[00:32:31] to an actual platform for developers

[00:32:35] and to people to build on.

[00:32:36] It's a very different business model.

[00:32:38] It's a business model that says,

[00:32:39] and makes sense if you align with kind of our Microsoft

[00:32:42] history has been, how do I build a platform

[00:32:44] and provide a platform for people

[00:32:46] to actually utilize this in business?

[00:32:50] So, and then of course they have the model themselves.

[00:32:52] And by the way, Sam Altman today,

[00:32:55] I believe said that they're actively working on GPT5,

[00:32:59] which there was no timeframe on,

[00:33:00] but is going to have literally super intelligence

[00:33:03] compared to what they're doing with four

[00:33:05] that's currently doing on the market.

[00:33:06] And then the founder of OpenAI, right?

[00:33:09] Yeah, but yeah.

[00:33:10] But anyway, so there's a certainly open AI

[00:33:14] seems to be taking the lead at the moment.

[00:33:17] I'm very interested to see where Apple

[00:33:19] and some of the other ones show up here in the next few months,

[00:33:21] but they seem to be taking the lead as,

[00:33:23] hey, this is the platform.

[00:33:24] If you want to build AI-based business applications,

[00:33:27] this is the platform you should be using.

[00:33:30] What they released on this call are on this,

[00:33:33] to developer day, which was a week ago Monday.

[00:33:35] So almost two weeks ago now.

[00:33:37] Was they released a new turbo version of their model,

[00:33:41] which I have tested and is working much better.

[00:33:44] Good?

[00:33:44] It's deeper.

[00:33:45] So it's cheaper to access through the APIs.

[00:33:48] They created a tool that you can kind of build your own chat,

[00:33:52] GPT, or different purposes, which is pretty cool.

[00:33:57] I've been playing with that a little bit.

[00:34:00] And then they also released a couple things.

[00:34:02] They released a thing called an assistant,

[00:34:04] which allows you to build, again, through programming,

[00:34:08] build basically your own chat, GPT using your business data

[00:34:11] and even communicate to your business applications.

[00:34:15] One of the things that's really, I think

[00:34:18] that hasn't gotten a lot of play, but I think

[00:34:20] is super important in what they released is, when you think

[00:34:26] about chat, GPT, you think about natural language.

[00:34:28] You put something in like a document or you

[00:34:31] ask it to make you an email and all that kind of stuff.

[00:34:34] But the other part of it is, is the other part of it is,

[00:34:41] is that they now have tools to really process

[00:34:43] and analyze structured data, spreadsheets,

[00:34:47] data from your CRM, data from your ERP.

[00:34:50] And what's cool about that is the way that it goes about that

[00:34:54] is if you put a spreadsheet in of sales data or whatever,

[00:34:58] it actually writes the code in real time to analyze that spreadsheet

[00:35:04] and then goes through the an analyst based around what you ask it to do.

[00:35:08] So I was talking about forecasting, if I put in a spreadsheet

[00:35:10] and say can you build me a 90-day forecast

[00:35:13] for this based on this previous sales data or the data that I have here?

[00:35:17] It'll, in real time, write code for you

[00:35:20] and then run that code on the spreadsheet and then give you the result,

[00:35:24] which is pretty remarkable when you think about it.

[00:35:27] I mean, think about how much time it can take to even go and build like pivot tables

[00:35:32] and stuff in Excel if you don't, you can take a long time.

[00:35:35] Now you have the system actually writing code.

[00:35:38] So my point being this is all new features that have been put in here

[00:35:42] that really open up the door from a business application part of it

[00:35:47] and providing the platform to doing it.

[00:35:51] And I think sometimes the model, we got more power in the model

[00:35:54] overshadow some of the infrastructure that's going into actually make this stuff really work.

[00:35:59] Well, I think that's, I'm glad you kind of refined all of that.

[00:36:03] And you know, big takeaway for me looking at this is that is the non-computer science guy on this is

[00:36:11] it just was looking at my notes right?

[00:36:13] One of the comments that was made is that the AI vendors need a solid market ecosystem

[00:36:18] for all of this right and it just what triggers for me is,

[00:36:22] you know, and the folks at distribution strategy group did a great AI event

[00:36:27] early in October about wholesale distribution.

[00:36:31] You know, and at the end of the day, I think what we're all going to try and have to find is

[00:36:37] and tell me, you know, a lot more about this so I feel free to correct this or throw some rocks out of it.

[00:36:42] In my mind, I'm going to end up having to do much of what I do today over the next few years.

[00:36:47] We're going to talk about why this will change later.

[00:36:49] But in this setting is, I'm going to have to say, am I a Google person that's using Google sheets

[00:36:56] and you know, are there Google docs and that type of stuff or am I a Microsoft person?

[00:37:02] I'm going to have to do the same thing again related to the generic data-to-day AI tools that I use.

[00:37:07] And then I'm going to have to go look on business-specific tools is which ERP system that I've

[00:37:19] been able to do.

[00:37:19] So, I'm going to have to make decisions about which horse do they want to ride through this process over at least over the next few years to get them to the next level.

[00:37:28] Because I think right now one of the big challenges that's happening for folks is everybody I talk to every day is interested in what AI is going to mean to them.

[00:37:36] But how do they get there? What do they do first?

[00:37:38] And there's countless, you know, webinars and podcasts and things going on about, you know, that to start with.

[00:37:45] But the reality of it is a guide for this through the right vendor is going to be really valuable.

[00:37:52] Yeah, and I'll push back a little bit. I don't think that if I don't think actually,

[00:37:59] I think if we look ahead we're not going to have to be picking and choosing so much as we move forward.

[00:38:04] I think for the short term, right? For short term, right? Yeah, the short term right now there's a lot of

[00:38:09] Point solutions that we, you know, try and oh, am I going to use this? Am I going to use that?

[00:38:14] Yeah. I think the proper way in this if you talk about guidance, the proper way to be looking at it is,

[00:38:20] what am I trying to accomplish? And I believe the technology whether using open AI or

[00:38:25] Claude or whatever, the technology should almost be irrelevant to you as a business user, right? You want the outcome.

[00:38:33] So it's like, you know even today we are just talking about the I have to worry about what

[00:38:39] network I'm on to run to use certain things. You shouldn't have to be thinking about that, right?

[00:38:45] That's infrastructure that's behind the scene where I should be focusing on there.

[00:38:48] So I do believe that we'll actually some of the things that are coming are going to allow us

[00:38:52] to get away from having to pick or us decide what it is but the guidance that is required is what are

[00:38:59] the outcomes. And I'll just say we had a customer meeting yesterday, we had it, you were there live,

[00:39:05] I was on Zoom and they were talking a lot about their sales goals and challenges that they were

[00:39:10] trying to address over the next year. And I was replaying that meeting in my head afterwards

[00:39:16] everything that we talked about that they, you know, we were talking about forecasting and all of that

[00:39:21] and that and the challenges, right? Some of it was like kind of overwhelming to them like, oh my god

[00:39:25] I don't know how we would do that and we don't have a resource. Everything that we talked about could be

[00:39:30] solved by the right-day isolation. Why I went back last night and started playing with forecasting?

[00:39:35] Yeah, I was like wait a minute there's got to be a way to accomplish this, right? Without all of this

[00:39:40] like oh my god this is really too hard we have too many disparate pieces all of that kind of stuff

[00:39:45] all of that so that's looking at what am I trying to accomplish and then figuring out how that's actually

[00:39:51] going to be and the good news is I am yet to find really anything that if it can't be done now

[00:39:58] won't be able to be accomplished in the business world on some of these things like that we struggle

[00:40:03] with right now related to. Right so I should have probably prefaced my comment, right?

[00:40:09] Where we're at today is Joe's supply that has 17 branches based in Omaha is thinking what do I do now?

[00:40:19] The things that you're described we're going to talk in our next article we're going to go into

[00:40:24] some crazy things about what could be accomplished and and we'll get to pet yourself on the back

[00:40:30] with Bill Gates agreeing with you. I just I'll get to my my thoughts on that in a moment but

[00:40:36] right now right today not where we're at in five years but today people are trying to figure out

[00:40:43] what do I do right and what they do today would be problematic for Joe's supply that is a $200

[00:40:50] million your company that's got 17 branches in a face to know Omaha it would be problematic for

[00:40:56] them with let's just say for people in their IT department to go I'm going to go start using

[00:41:04] chat GPT or one of the GPTs out there to go try and do what's available and could be done.

[00:41:12] And so what they need today is a guy and what they're going to find is they're going to find a guy

[00:41:17] and that was my point I probably shouldn't prepare it well but they today need a guide from their

[00:41:22] products suppliers of their I'll say there's technology providers on the basic data in a business

[00:41:29] that you're going to pick right and I think Microsoft is way ahead today right and but you're

[00:41:35] going to have to pick there and when you look at the tools like ERP and CRM and related tools like

[00:41:42] that you're going to need to find the right provider in my view it's they give you a holistic view

[00:41:48] of your business versus you use the term regularly spot for you know point software products

[00:41:54] that do a one off I'm good at this we're going to need to start looking at how can people

[00:41:59] help me get a view of my overall business now I make a comment here that is very self-serving

[00:42:03] to our company with some of the directions you're taking our team and we try and leave that out

[00:42:08] of the bit out of this podcast regularly but I think where people are going to have to make some

[00:42:13] decisions within the next today in the next two to three minimum two to three years is who do I

[00:42:21] partner with for these things does that is that all should I have prefaced out a little bit

[00:42:27] better you're gone I can't hear you Tom can you hear me now I can and I just wish I could you have

[00:42:34] that problem could regularly with your microphone and I wish I could control when it happens I guess

[00:42:39] hit a button in your microphone stop it's AI I have to do is basically say program it

[00:42:44] is a mute Tom's microphone I'm using people on your team right now asking if they could work on that

[00:42:50] so no you're right you're absolutely right and you're right okay but the the point being

[00:43:00] look I like it I recommend people to go out and start testing and exploring right now discovering

[00:43:06] learning about some of this stuff but don't take the the chat GPT or the point product or whatever

[00:43:13] as the end all be all as to how you're going to build a strategy for the next even one to two to three

[00:43:20] years on your business right all insane because A if you don't look at this holistically

[00:43:26] you're doing a disservice to yourself and you're in a frankly you're gonna waste a lot of money

[00:43:31] and you're going to find yourself in a place that you don't want to be so like you know go discover

[00:43:37] go play around go learn but when you look at a strategy to your point look at it you know find out

[00:43:43] sure you have the right guys yeah we're I like this too I enjoy it we're spending a lot of our time

[00:43:50] not implementing CRM with our clients we're still getting a lot of time talking about the strategy

[00:43:55] of how we can then use these things to grow their business now and in the future and

[00:44:01] yes so I agree that's my point well this time this time well to the next article that we have

[00:44:08] in the news letter I'm gonna hit pause here for just just a minute I usually do this much earlier

[00:44:13] and in our time together is that as we get to our good read here we'll talk about just a minute before

[00:44:20] is that if you're listening on the podcast we're referencing consistently articles that we're looking at here

[00:44:29] and the if you're not getting the newsletter right we're sending that out every Friday morning

[00:44:34] if you're not getting that newsletter you can get that from just sending us an email at hello

[00:44:39] at leadsmartek.com or going to our website for the podcast which is www.aroundthehornpod.com

[00:44:48] and so we don't want to confuse people that are listening and that can't see us we're looking

[00:44:53] in a newsletter that we talk about so time I want to bypass we'll come back to the scuddle

[00:44:57] that stuff and let's go straight to the good read because it ties right into what we're talking

[00:45:02] about each week we have throughout this newsletter series of articles we start off with you know breaking

[00:45:08] news type stuff we have some time to special feature this week our special feature in the news

[00:45:14] letters and article from our friend David Gordon at who publishes HVAC trends and electrical trends

[00:45:21] newsletter you wrote a good article about artificial intelligence and how it can

[00:45:25] detect problems in your warehouse but the good read section we put in each week this week

[00:45:31] it's an article from ink magazine it's entitled for unimaginable ways AI will change your life in

[00:45:39] five years ties right back to this discussion we've just been having so time start off with you told

[00:45:46] me so within the last ten days you've probably mentioned one of these things in particular

[00:45:52] and it's something I'm struggling to get my head around but once you dive into this first

[00:45:57] so long story short industry the article but basically what Bill Gates says is that software

[00:46:02] and technology the way that we have known it in the past is is a thing of the past and

[00:46:10] you know specifically right will be yeah will be a thing of the that's a thing of the past

[00:46:16] and specifically right think about how we do how we interact with technology today we go

[00:46:22] and we go into a screen and we enter in data or we run reports or we add sales information or

[00:46:29] I mean who knows right we even go to stream yard or whatever whatever we're using right

[00:46:33] technologically and we go and we do transactions with it we send information back and forth

[00:46:38] with the computer what he's saying is that and this is what I was saying is this is all going

[00:46:44] to be replaced by conversation you're basically going to tell or ask what you want and it will

[00:46:50] be done right so think about you know you have Siri or you have Alexa or whatever and you ask it to

[00:46:57] give you the weather or whatever and there's little examples of that but take it to a whole

[00:47:01] other level and certainly take it into business where you have your headphone on or you have

[00:47:07] whatever and you're basically using conversation back and forth to accomplish whatever you need

[00:47:13] so if I need to place an order if I need to get information if I need to do whatever it's

[00:47:19] basically saying it's going to be replaced through conversation and one thing I didn't mention

[00:47:24] with the lat with a new release of open AI that came out a month a week or two ago is their voice

[00:47:30] recognition I mean if you have not done this go download the app I think you have to have the

[00:47:35] paid version to do this I'm not 100% sure go download the open AI app and have a conversation with it

[00:47:43] about back and forth with their new conversational I mean it is absolutely remarkable the

[00:47:48] voice is amazing and that that is where we're going right and that's what Bill Gates is talking

[00:47:55] about and so the interfaces and the way that we transact with technology is going to change

[00:48:02] and so therefore going back to what we just talked about right think about your strategy you can't

[00:48:08] take away you've done it for the last 20 years and then say well I'm going to shoehorn AI into this

[00:48:13] when in fact just from a user perspective it's going to be very different so let's unpack that a

[00:48:19] little bit right and I want to use case this for our audience in a moment but I've got a

[00:48:25] couple ideas with that but you know last week is is open AI the maker of ChetGPT did their big

[00:48:34] their big conference and showing some of the new tools and things out there so you I was watching

[00:48:42] your gracious enough to send me a note to say watch these segments of it versus then trying to

[00:48:47] watch the hours of it so thank you for that but um you really what we're looking at with all of that is

[00:48:54] and I was struggling because the user interface and the user experience isn't great right in

[00:49:01] ChetGPT there's no nice graphics I don't have a warm fuzzy feeling when I'm there using it

[00:49:06] but the reality of it is we will have some when we're at our desktop we'll have some interface

[00:49:13] and that interface is what handles everything for us because everything else will be happening elsewhere

[00:49:20] in that interface uh sing it so instead of me going to open Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is available

[00:49:27] to me but I'm using it through a platform of one interface that I use and my ERP data is I can just say

[00:49:34] what do I want right show me the orders in the last two hours for three inch toggle bolts

[00:49:40] right whatever it might be that will all get fed to me from a singular platform when I'm

[00:49:45] at a desktop and when I'm remote I got a little to start with right I might have a little pot in my

[00:49:52] year um that can I can just talk to and it can give me the same feedback. I'll give you a good use case

[00:49:59] example from a real live situation that we talked about yesterday with our customer right they want

[00:50:04] to be able to do more better trip plans so when their salespeople are traveling they want to be

[00:50:09] able to proactively go in identify the right accounts they should be visiting and make sure that

[00:50:13] those go into a trip plan well how would you do that today you'd go and even with our mapping

[00:50:18] capabilities you go into the system and you start running some reports and you look at things and

[00:50:22] then you can add that to a trip plan and right it's multi step you have to go through it the future

[00:50:27] will be I'm going to Chicago right who are the top 10 accounts that I should be visiting let the

[00:50:34] AI figure out really truly the top 10 accounts you should be visiting not based upon

[00:50:40] based around data analytics and then put that into a trip plan and take care of it and book my

[00:50:45] trip and book my hotels and everything like that I need to do. I'm going to go you one better with

[00:50:50] that to add to that right because every business executive and every sales leader wants this to happen

[00:50:57] it's not just going to tell you who to go see right from by looking at your customers it's going

[00:51:04] to look who or the like customers you don't do business with absolutely and say you should go here

[00:51:10] instead of you're existing customer that doesn't buy much and Joe Smith is the guy you need to

[00:51:15] see at this bill yep yep and and but at my point and you're absolutely right the point being

[00:51:22] is you're not going to have to go through and go through 10 screens and that run five reports and

[00:51:26] get all of that then come up with your thing and create your i10 array you're basically going to

[00:51:34] that's an example of that use case that it seems very unreal right if you think about it

[00:51:40] but it's it's a lot closer than than we think it's going to take us time right it's and I think it's

[00:51:46] is going to it's going to be good that the technology will be expanding versus it all being here

[00:51:51] today because I think it's going to take us psychologically time to catch up with all of that because

[00:51:56] I you as simple example for me I have doesn't matter how many people I've had working for me

[00:52:02] could do this for me I always do my own travel plan not hotels not concerned about

[00:52:11] car rental not overly concerned about but flights for some reason I've just always wanted to do

[00:52:16] those myself now I'm sure AI can very quickly learn by looking at the past flights that I've

[00:52:23] booked that I like to when I'm doing this type of trip I like to leave it this time of day on this

[00:52:29] but it'll probably learn that today but getting out of some habits and that's just one

[00:52:35] simplistic version of a habit but getting out of some habits that we have to letting that tool work

[00:52:41] it's probably good that we're using into this agreed but the first time that you did the new way

[00:52:47] yeah and it worked and you see the beauty of it doesn't work and it's clumsy and it breaks and

[00:52:53] you end up you know on spirit airlines in the middle of the night you're not going to like it

[00:52:57] but the but the first time this type of stuff works for you no matter who you are right this is

[00:53:05] what happened with the iPhone and all that when even non-technical people got their hands on the

[00:53:10] iPhone and sound how saw how cool and easy it was for them right they were hooked right once somebody

[00:53:17] finds out how cool and easy this is and it works it'll be hooked and it will go very quickly

[00:53:22] right now it's still clumsy and it's still buggy and all of that but hey that's going to take care of

[00:53:29] itself much faster than we think well yeah well it's interesting right to think about that I

[00:53:33] I was talking to somebody recently that commented about you know they weren't confident in the idea

[00:53:38] that that AI could um could your cure cancer and if you stop and take a look at these things like

[00:53:46] we've just been talking about or other solutions for me I let's just say medical advancements

[00:53:52] you know at the AI conference I was talking about earlier Chicago recently is the idea behind

[00:54:01] it was a that cast was his name who was formerly with open AI right the developer of Chad G.P.T

[00:54:08] and he said look he goes if the software is is working as we know it to work and it is learning

[00:54:17] as we're growing from these big models it can't help but make things change because there's just

[00:54:24] going to it's going to learn and that learning is going to be come true and it's going to go exponentially

[00:54:29] exponentially it's probably not even the right word uh of being able to solve problems and so we're

[00:54:36] so far down the road already you're looking at things like cancer right that now we're going to be

[00:54:41] applying this learning model and how it's it's as long as AI continues to grow and work as we

[00:54:49] know it today and it's just going to get better it can't not solve these problems.

[00:54:55] Nope and it will and so the adoption will come when you try it and it works in your realizing

[00:55:03] how game changing it is and then it will spread like wire wildfire much like the iPhone did or

[00:55:09] rather things when that occurred anyway I know we're running out of time here. Yeah let's

[00:55:13] we're done with the newsletter today there's some good stuff there again if you don't get the newsletter

[00:55:18] then just come back to us at hello at leadsmartek.com and we'll get that out to you quickly or

[00:55:27] you can go to our website for the podcast which again is www.aroundthehornpod.com and we will get

[00:55:36] that out to you quickly. Tom thanks for today it's been a good day thanks to the folks that

[00:55:42] joined us we're appreciative of that and you being with us and again that claim that we make is

[00:55:48] if you like what you hear share it with your friends follow us at leadsmartek on linkedin youtube

[00:55:54] and our Facebook and get the live sessions that we do each week if you're listening on the podcast

[00:55:59] share with your friends give us a review and help us continue to grow this I think this morning

[00:56:06] when I looked at just the linkedin audience which is you know we have a probably about a quarter

[00:56:12] of our linkedin audience actually accepts the invitation each week right less than that actually

[00:56:17] now and I think we were at four or five different countries just on linkedin and um i think the podcast

[00:56:27] is typically hitting seven eight countries every week and growing in download so it's good stuff

[00:56:33] great to hear from our friend Amy from Hubbard supply in Michigan great to see Amy and thank you

[00:56:39] for being with us as always everybody that's joined us Tom have a great weekend everybody else

[00:56:46] as always be safe be kind to work we're going to be off next Friday right next Friday we have a

[00:56:52] by we have a by next you have a by yeah exactly right so we have a by next week in fact we need to

[00:56:59] kind of publish the holiday downtime schedule I think we have two of them we're missing in

[00:57:05] really only have I think four left this year yeah so good all right we have to end in the new year so

[00:57:11] thanks everybody all right thanks I'm gonna be kind to good things