How Distributors Can Profit With Connected Data

[00:00:04] [SPEAKER_00] Welcome to Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution with Kevin Brown and Tom Burton. Sponsored each week by LeadSmart Technologies, Tom, Kevin and their guests review the news of the week and dive deep into the topics impacting manufacturers, wholesale distribution, independent sales agents, and the global wholesale supply chain.

[00:00:24] [SPEAKER_00] Whether it's M&A, SaaS and cloud computing, B2B e-commerce, or supply chain issues, we peel back the onion with our guests into the topics that impact your business the most.

[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_02] Welcome back everybody. Happy Friday. What's happening?

[00:00:45] [SPEAKER_03] Happy Friday. Happy Friday. 2-0-7.

[00:00:50] [SPEAKER_02] It doesn't feel like I'm on the downslide into a weekend. It feels like I'm on the upslope to a really, really busy day after this. Yeah. Well, that's the way it goes. I think at this stage of my career I'd be off on Fridays. Well, you're not. So... Get over it. Is that it? Get over it. Get over it. Yes. A pretty busy day ahead. How are you doing today, Tom? I'm doing okay. I'm doing okay.

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_03] Happy to be here. You got a big smile on your face? Yes, I am. I am happy to be here. Perfect. You know, you were bitching when we got to episode... No, no, no, no, no, no. Come on out. I don't do stuff like that. You were bitching when we got to episode 200 saying, I don't know that we'll... 300 seems so far away. We're already seven episodes towards it. It's like it's just going to be here in a minute.

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_02] You know, I think you're maybe hyperbolizing. I was questioning that. I don't think I was complaining about it. It's like an opportunity.

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_03] You're like 300. Oh my God, I can't imagine.

[00:01:53] [SPEAKER_02] Well, it was just during that celebration show. Everybody kept saying that. I'm like, oh my gosh.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_03] You know? So... Anyway, so we're already almost 10% of the way there. We're 7% of the way there. Okay. Right. So...

[00:02:07] [SPEAKER_02] Rock and roll. I'm confident we'll get there. How's that? I think it'll happen. Yeah. My blood work looks good. My heart's strong. You know, I think I'll be alive for it. So I think that's a good one. And we'll plan on being there for that. In fact, I saw this... Well, talk about digressing, but this is good because a good chunk of our audience is, I'll say, middle-aged. And are we still middle-aged? 62? It's a new 40. It's a new 40. Right.

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_02] It's funny. I was having lunch last week with one of our board members and he thought you were a lot older than I was. I was reminding him, remember we went to kindergarten together? He's like, oh yeah, yeah. And he said, we were born in the same hospital just like seven months apart. So it's pretty funny. Well, I was having to remind him about that. And then he went on in a long laugh about...

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_03] He kept saying, you know, Tom seems so much more mature. I don't understand.

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_02] It wasn't what he was saying.

[00:03:04] [SPEAKER_03] Okay.

[00:03:04] [SPEAKER_02] He was talking about looks.

[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_03] Okay.

[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_02] I don't know. No, what was interesting is he made a funny comment. He's like... He asked me how we're getting along. And I was like, what do you mean? How are we... How we're getting along? And I said, what does that mean? He goes, well, you guys seem to rub once in a while in some of our meetings. And I said, that's what we do. I said, Tom's a computer scientist and an engineer. I'm a sales guy, right? I said, Tom is looking for the hole in the bottom of the glass and the quarter-fold glass for me is overflowing from my rosy colored glasses.

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_02] He just started busting up. And he's like, I guess that's why you guys work out okay. Right? And I told him, I said, Tom says he's an optimist. I says he's a pessimist. I say he's a pessimist. So we settle on pragmatic. Yeah. Pragmatic.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_02] Which is a stretch. Bob wants to know how your mental health is doing. Why don't we see what Bob thinks about it? He can go ahead and comment right there what he thinks about my mental health. Because I would say there are a lot of different viewpoints on my mental health.

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_03] So what does Arlene think about your mental health?

[00:04:07] [SPEAKER_02] I don't think she's listening this morning. So Mrs. Brown goes in spurts of how she thinks about my mental health. Okay. But you know what? That's not helping anybody here today is my mental health. But I did want to say this because it's really powerful. I follow this guy on Instagram. He's a neurologist. I think he deals with a lot of things about aging and dementia, Alzheimer's, things like that.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_02] And you know, that's some things my mother's battling being in a nursing home. And so my sister sent me something about him a while back and I started following. I wish I could remember his name. If anybody wants to know, send me a note and I'll get it out to you when I see it next. But he talked about a test for how well you would age and both physically and mentally. And he had five things that were important. And the first one was, was it grip strength?

[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_02] The next one was the pace that you walk at. Do you walk really slow? You're talking about grip strength like when you shake hands? Like shaking hands, grip strength, right? Then the pace that you walk at, are you, you know, not, not, are you racing or a race walker, but are you walking at a good clip? Can you do that continuously? The third one was, can you stand up out of a chair without needing your hands and pushing on it? What was the fourth one? There was one other one.

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_02] And then the last one was how well are you connected to community and a group of friends that you rely on and that rely on you? And those factors from, he had multiple studies from major universities that were talking about those five factors. So I was like immediately, you know, can I get up out of a chair without my hands? You know? And then I like squeezed my other hand and like, okay, I'm looking good. So I'll be around for the 300th show is what I'm saying. Okay, good. Yeah. So very good.

[00:06:01] [SPEAKER_02] Hey, Kevin Brown, Tom Burton, Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution Podcast. We get together every week on Fridays, unless somebody's, let me say, on a plane in a hospital or on a planned vacation. And sometimes it's from an airport and sometimes it's from a planned vacation. But we get together and we look at the news of the week and we talk about the things that

[00:06:26] [SPEAKER_02] are relating to the economy, supply chain, manufacturing, distribution, AI, robotics, technology, people and leadership, M&A, some discussion on M&A today, some AI discussion today. We get together and we talk about those things. But more importantly, we try and relate those back to how they impact wholesale distribution and manufacturing. So as Tom said, we've been doing this 207 weeks. This is show number 207. We're grateful for those people that are commenting and listening in and joining us live today

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_02] on YouTube Live, LinkedIn Live and Facebook Live. Those of you that might be listening on the recorded podcast on Apple or Spotify or whatever that might be. And we have dramatically larger audience there than we have here. You won't be seeing the newsletter that we look at each day. But if you'd like to get that around the horn in wholesale distribution manufacturing, newsletter, we would be more than happy to get that out to you. Three quick ways that you can do that.

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_02] Simplest and fastest is hello at leadsmarttech.com. We'll send that out to you. Get that to you right away. Additionally, you could go to the website for the podcast, which is www.aroundthehornpod.com. We'll get it out to you that way. And then finally, if you're active on LinkedIn, you can find us on LinkedIn. And if you follow the show there, then you'll get an alert each week as we go live. The other thing is if you'd like to connect with Tom or I on LinkedIn, certainly do that. And we usually, certainly I do every week.

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_02] Sometimes Tom can't because he's the admin on the back end of the software that we use to manage the show. But I put a note out to my LinkedIn network that we're going live. So we'd love it if you would share some comments, some thoughts, some ideas. But the last thing before we get started, second to the last thing before we get started is a favor from Tom and I is that if you like what you hear and you enjoy being with us each week, please jump on to, if you're listening on LinkedIn, make sure that you follow the show.

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_02] If you're on YouTube, please make sure that you subscribe and ideally leave a review for there as well. But as I mentioned, the majority of our audience is on Apple and Spotify and so forth. And most importantly, Apple, because it's the one that really has the opportunity for reviews. The reviews are what really pushes this show out to more people around the world. We usually get six to eight countries now with people that are downloading the show each week and we'd love to expand that out further.

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_02] So if you have the newsletter, share it with some friends, get them to subscribe to that. And if you're listening in on the podcast, please hit that, not just the subscribe button to the show, but leave a review. And that helps those algorithms and push that out a little bit further, especially on YouTube and Apple. So then we get to the critical stuff, Tom. Okay. The stuff below both of our names, leadsmarttech.ai, our company that sponsors this show, the company that dominates.

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_03] Look at this cool new graphic we have here.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_02] From our cool new marketing director.

[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_02] Right? So Dana did some quick work yesterday. So at LeadSmart, we've been historically known as a CRM company, but over the past few years, we've been building dramatically more tools and more systems that enable wholesale distributors and manufacturers both to understand their businesses more than just traditional CRM. And we've recently launched our Meridian 360, which is a system which is what we call an enterprise growth platform.

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_02] So our company still leads smart technologies, but the product offering that we have is now called Meridian 360. Beautiful logo that the team has worked on. But we're the industry's first enterprise growth platform. And why do I say that? There was a day around 25, 28 years or so ago that there was no such thing as an ERP. There was MRPs or some other solutions out there. There was a day when there was no such thing as CRM. Those all launched because somebody came up with a better way of doing something.

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_02] And we believe we've come up with a better way of understanding the data that you have across your business. So we align ERP data, CRM data, marketing automation data, quoting data, digital commerce or e-commerce data. We bring all of those data sources, including data warehouse and other tools that someone might have. We bring all of those things together into a single platform. And that's where we apply the AI and the tools that go with it.

[00:10:43] [SPEAKER_02] The risk that a wholesale distributor or manufacturer has is that they start buying one-off AI tools. And then they try and apply AI to their ERP and maybe apply AI to their e-commerce system. And they have the exact same silos that they had before artificial intelligence and eugenic AI became available. So we bring all these tools together so that we can understand all facets of our customer. We can see what's going on at risks, opportunities, things that we're not selling to a customer,

[00:11:11] [SPEAKER_02] risks where they might not be buying something or potentially might be moving their business. And what we try and do is take all of that data together and give people better insight into the customer, their teams and their overall business. So if your company is looking to digitally transform, to see more in their business, to identify better opportunities, to drive growth across your business, not just revenue growth, but business growth across your organization, we would love to talk to you. You can jump onto our website, www.leadsmarttech.ai

[00:11:40] [SPEAKER_02] and take the blind spot survey that has been developed that's right there that will give you a quick overview. Don't have to register. Don't have to do anything to take that survey. So Tom, you want to dive into the news or comment on all of my rhetoric there? No, you were very well, very well. Okay. I'm going to take that as a compliment.

[00:12:00] [SPEAKER_03] Okay. Yeah, of course. One thing I am is a compliment machine. So that's not true.

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I'm going to walk down the hallway as soon as the show's over, knock on a couple of doors and say, Hey, is Tom a compliment machine? Yeah. An optimistic compliment machine. You know what the response is going to be? Did we hire someone new named Tom? I haven't met yet. Yeah. You are complimentary, but you are also a engineer who is heads down, get your work done. That's true. There's a, there's a balancing act and we, we all need it. So.

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_03] All right. So let's start off this first article here. When I saw this this morning or last night, actually, my first inclination was, this is like, you know, political clickbait. What's the title and where is it from? So it's from CNBC. The title is inflation on many everyday items was entirely, no, entirely the word there due to tariffs. New York fed says.

[00:13:03] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. And what you're suggesting is that there may be some political bias from anything related to somebody called NBC, something or the other.

[00:13:12] [SPEAKER_03] Yes.

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. Okay.

[00:13:14] [SPEAKER_03] Hard to argue. Well, it wasn't even so much CNBC, but it was just, it just seemed like it was, I mean, the headline, right, seemed very click baby, you know, political. Oh, look, you know, look at what the, look at what the tariffs have done. They've created the inflation and all that stuff. So my first, that was my first inclination. Um, so let me kind of go through what I actually discovered on this and then definitely jump in, of course.

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_03] So this was done. This was a study that was done by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Um, it was done by three pretty well known economists that have not, do not have a history of being partisan. So they have a history of being more bipartisan, which was good. A woman named Mary Amidi, Sebastian Heiss and David Weinstein were the primary offer authors

[00:14:12] [SPEAKER_03] of this and the research and the study of this. So that was one of the New York fed, right? Of the New York fed. Yeah. That was one of my first thing is who did this, you know, and where did it come from? So what they did is they analyzed 67 consumer good categories. They didn't say exactly what those categories were, but from what I can tell, it fell into like clothing, household essentials, you know, appliances, furnishing, and then tech, right?

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_03] Electronics and tech. 67 different types. So they, and again, they didn't publish those categories, but there were 67 different categories that were there. Um, and so then they looked at those and then they also looked at areas where like, you know, big, big ticket purchases, automotives, you know, things like that, larger ticket type items there. And then they also looked at AI related, you know, computing software and stuff like that. Although that's not really consumer.

[00:15:11] [SPEAKER_03] They did look at that as well. Cause that's more B2B that was there. So what they did is they then went, and this is what I really, okay, great. Well now how did you determine this? Right. Like how would you know what would be driven by tariffs and what wouldn't? So what they did to isolate it is they compared products that received high tariffs against products that didn't have any for low tariffs.

[00:15:41] [SPEAKER_03] So basically looked at the product sets of things that were coming into the U S or that were being purchased in the U S. Some of those were more prone to tariffs than others, right? Some categories that were more prone than others that were there. So basically what they came up with when they looked at that is that, and there's some other stuff I'll go through in a minute, but basically tariffs added almost, well, three, 2.9 percentage

[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_03] points to the price or to the inflation. And so the products that didn't, that were not subject to tariffs that were there. Does that make sense so far? Yeah. Yep. So they also compared customs data. So they went and looked at customs data and then compared that the point of sale pricing. Yeah. So what was the, you know, things that came through that were tar or that received tariffs from the, from the border and from the customs control.

[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_03] And then how did that translate to the retail level? And they found that in that case, it usually on average was about a 5.6% increase in consumer retail prices. So in both scenarios they saw, and then they also did look at some supply chain stuff and some other things that were there. But bottom line is that they found that through again, this research products that were more

[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_03] subject to tariffs and that were more tariff centric or in the crosshairs of tariffs overall probably raised prices between three and 4% compared to products that would not. And I'll stop right there. Hopefully that made sense.

[00:17:23] [SPEAKER_02] It did. It did. So final takeaway on that. I've got a couple of things to throw into this, but.

[00:17:30] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, no, go, go for it.

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_02] Well, I just, I was kind of looking at this too. And I think that, you know, it's interesting timing, right? For all of this. That's, I certainly don't see this as like a, you know, a hit piece or overly biased, but it is interesting that you've got a fed that's kind of struggling right now. As we talk about regularly, we've got articles that we'll talk about in a moment about tariffs and so forth. You've got a lot of pushback right now against the administration coming into the midterms

[00:18:01] [SPEAKER_02] on these things. I think where the rub would be in this though, potentially is that they don't in this take into control. Well, first off, they don't share with those products and categories are fully right. It would be nice to have a much better understanding that because you're thinking about our audience here, right? If you're a wholesale distributor. Well, okay. If they're, if they're measuring the effect of, you know, denims being sold at Kohl's or Nordstrom's, then, okay,

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_02] how does that fully impact me? And then there's a whole, there's a product category. There's a whole nuance of what happens in different organizations, depending on the size you are and, and how those things happen with it as well. And then the, the, the timing of it is just kind of interesting. Um, you know, I don't, I think there's something of a ripple effect that goes through these, you know, and some people have direct supply chain, some people have multi-level.

[00:18:58] [SPEAKER_02] So I just, I think there's, I like it. I like what they did. It seems reason I'm not suggesting it's not valid. I think they might be missing some factors that go with this that could really have a better understanding out of this for a wholesale distributor or a manufacturer is tied to this just random thing. That's taking, it's pretty, pretty linear, I guess, in how they're looking at this with, they decided, uh, how do you decide on 67?

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_02] Um, and how do you balance that if you're a B2B person or a B2C person? Those are the things that just kind of came up. I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm not saying it's bad.

[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_03] It's just, and I don't think, I don't think it was written from the viewpoint, predominantly from a B2B vantage point. I think it was. And here's unfortunately where I think this will end up going is, you know, where the media and if you want to put bias on it, we'll be, we'll see if it wasn't for the Trump tariffs, we wouldn't have had any inflation in the last two or three years.

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_02] Well, that's what, that's, what's going to be used to, this is a, we would be below the two bullet for, yeah, this is a bullet for the midterm. It's a bullet for somebody, right? Yes.

[00:20:06] [SPEAKER_03] Yes. Now the timing, yeah, the timing of it is a little interesting. Um, but like I said, it's, it appears now again, we, who knows, right? I don't know these people. It appears that the people who wrote it were, you know, certainly more bipartisan and not really partisan on things. Who knows who influenced it or pushed it or whatever. And yes, it would be very good to see the other 67 categories. Now that all said, right? Take a step back. Maybe there's some truth to that. Right?

[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_03] So, you know, if there's, if the tariffs were adding two to 3% to our cost of our price increases over the last two to three year, which is I think 2025 is when I started. So over the last two years, um, you know, that's significant in the overall, I guess, fight for inflation, right? To people of the 2%. Right. It's there. So.

[00:20:58] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Um, I think we, you know, had a, um, comment here. I also long for November 4th. I think getting these midterms behind us is going to be really important.

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_02] I, I, I struggle with, you know, I mean, look, I don't think all of the economic challenges, we have a few important articles to look at about, you know, World Trade Organization has been taking some action this week, right? There's some pretty big things going on there right now. There's, I saw an article this morning. In fact, it was, I was looking at Wall Street Journal and Yahoo and, uh, finance and, uh, CNBC as well this morning.

[00:21:36] [SPEAKER_02] But, you know, there was a whole level of discussion about, um, you know, this, um, the writ, the risk of, uh, what are they saying? The economic signs right now, I didn't look into it or spend too much time on, but some of the economic signals right now are very closely aligned with what we saw in the last recessionary period and the challenges that went with that. So I think we're at this kind of tipping point that, you know, we're, some people are trying

[00:22:05] [SPEAKER_02] to blame, you know, everything on the president right now or the administration. The administration is saying everything's going to be fine after the war ends and the war ends, the war is going to end right after the midterms. Like, well, if the war is going to end right after the midterms, right? Why wouldn't you want the war to end before the midterms? Or, or, you know, and, and the challenge with this, and I've not been staying on top of this as much as I did early on, but you know, one of the challenges here is that you've

[00:22:32] [SPEAKER_02] got, um, um, I want to put this, you've got so much pressure being put on this within the economy that, you know, Hey, all, all part, part of this thing you're hearing is, well, diesel prices aren't entirely, you know, tied to the Hormuz trade and fuel getting out of there. We actually have an article about some of the president's thoughts on that in the newsletter today. But, um, there's all of this like, okay, the war is going to end. Well, okay, get the war over. And then what is it next?

[00:23:02] [SPEAKER_02] What are we going to do to get back to some of these things, getting interest rates down and so forth? Those are pretty darn powerful. The worry is I don't know how you're going to end the war with either, without either capitulating on things that the administration has said were critical, right? Which was, and it almost looks like capitulating at some level on the nuclear scenario, right? Because that's the big stumbling point for, for Iran here or going in with boots on the

[00:23:31] [SPEAKER_02] ground, which is probably has never been, and he's never been as unpopular as us doing that right now as a U S country to do that since probably Vietnam. Sure. So, you know, what, how does this get solved? I don't know, but I, what I know right now is interest rates are going up, right? Um, bond rates are going up and those two things do not buy, bode well in general and provide quite a bit of risk for the economy.

[00:23:58] [SPEAKER_03] Well, remember those are, are indicators. Those are not things that are the act. Those are the things that are supposedly indicating what's going on underneath the scene. Right. Jonathan commented here, M2 has increased money supply. M2 money supply has increased 10% since Trump, Trump took office. Right. Now that's actually real new money in the system. Right. And inflation is often driven by new money or more money added to the system, you know, which happened obviously during COVID.

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_03] Right. Right. Um, but that in my, I don't know the, the 10% probably is related to government spending and, and all of those things that are there. So you still have government. Which is a third of GDP, right? Right. Something like that. Yeah. I mean, it's very, it's out of control. It hasn't changed, you know, Doge and all that stuff never really effect did anything. And in fact, it's probably gotten worse that are here. Remember that the war and even the tariff thing is not an inflationary action. It's a price.

[00:24:58] [SPEAKER_03] It's increases prices. Yeah. It's not necessarily adding more money to the system. It's just increasing prices that are there. So no, it's, it's not any one thing that are there, you know, but, um, yeah, I don't. And even if the war ended tomorrow, I don't know that we would see fuel prices drop back down on the, at least here in Cal, I don't know what you're paying, but I paid 609 yesterday or something six. And when we were, when I was in Dallas earlier this week, it was only 337.

[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_03] So.

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_02] It's an interesting conversation. You just started there.

[00:25:32] [SPEAKER_03] What's that?

[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_02] Well, I, uh, I plug my car in at night, so I don't pay anything at the pump.

[00:25:43] [SPEAKER_03] Okay.

[00:25:43] [SPEAKER_02] You know what my first month with my Rivian cost me? What's that? Take a guess.

[00:25:51] [SPEAKER_03] Well, with all that you mean the electrical that are electric, my electric bill. I don't know a hundred bucks.

[00:25:57] [SPEAKER_02] Uh, somewhere between 75 and $80. And I drive 12, 1300 miles a month.

[00:26:03] [SPEAKER_03] Okay.

[00:26:05] [SPEAKER_02] So. Could you cut some savings here? The reason, the reason I, the reason I digress with that is.

[00:26:11] [SPEAKER_01] Tesla. Tesla Tom. Okay. Get your Tesla Tom. Get your.

[00:26:18] [SPEAKER_03] I filled, I filled my tank yesterday for. Get your Tesla Tom. I filled my tank yesterday for $12.

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_02] Get your Tesla Tom. You're going to get a Tesla Tom.

[00:26:27] [SPEAKER_03] Okay. All right. All right.

[00:26:29] [SPEAKER_02] You're going to get a Tesla Tom. Let's move on. Just to read, just for those of you that might be new to this discussion is Tom and my wife and I were having dinner a few months ago and we were looking at sitting out on a patio in a restaurant and looking at all the Tesla's going by and Tom had been talking about a Tesla and his neighbor has a Tesla and he's looking closely and he'd actually built one. I think on the, on the website of look was looking at it.

[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_02] And so over dinner, my wife was pushing him on it and which, you know, my, my wife likes to make fun of, of both of us when we're out to dinner. And then my struggle is when Tom's in town and out to dinner with my wife and I together. Um, and then they pick on me, but, uh, she's an equal opportunity poker. And, uh, so she made Tom commit to a little bet and Tom said, as soon as Kevin gets this particular deal, we're working on closed, then Tom's going to buy a Tesla.

[00:27:24] [SPEAKER_02] Well, we just got word the other day from the legal counsel of the, the other party that we're partnering with on something. And the legal department had finalized all of their requirements and their red lines. And that now they're waiting on the, uh, the, uh, rec product requisition to be able to finalize the deal. So I'm just reminding Tom, the commitment that he made to my wife. So my wife's big on people keeping their commitments. Okay. Well, I'll take that up with her.

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_03] I'm not concerned.

[00:27:54] [SPEAKER_02] She's going to take you down, man. You better just get ready.

[00:27:58] [SPEAKER_03] So anyway, I was, I was saying I was pleased cause I filled my tank for $12 yesterday, but that was my, that was my lawnmower tank.

[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_02] So go ahead. Hit the button. The boom. Can you have that button right next to you? Push it. I don't push it.

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_03] I don't have it right next to me, but, um, but a boom.

[00:28:21] [SPEAKER_02] No, that's Hawaii five. Oh yeah. Yeah. All right. Whatever. All right. So let's continue on the economy, right? We've got these challenges. Now trade deficit hits 105.6 billion, the widest since before the tariffs enacted last year. Thoughts on that one.

[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_03] I don't have a lot of thoughts on it. Um, they said it's related predominantly to artificial intelligence build out and you know, stuff, I guess coming for data centers and for computer servers. Um, so I don't know if it means anything really much of anything other than it is high. If there, if that, you know, that's a lot of, obviously a lot of that stuff's expensive and sure.

[00:29:06] [SPEAKER_03] And, but, um, it didn't really indicate to me like, okay, well that's a big indicator one way or the other.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_02] So that's a broader conversation I wanted to do. Maybe this can tie a few of these articles in, right? There's an article that we posted as well from, uh, CNBC about the, you know, fed kind of pointing towards another increase still this year. A lot of pressure to do that. A lot of pressure not to do that. You've done a really nice job in the last few months as, uh, you've talked about the, the, what's the point kind of, if you're only going to do a quarter percent, just if you

[00:29:40] [SPEAKER_02] really want to make a hit, go do a half a point, do three quarters of a point and see what happens. But you're probably not going to see a lot. And I don't know, we're not seeing any good news after just having a quarter point raise, right? So there's nothing of significance to that, that we're seeing yet. I don't know how long that'll take to come in, but there, there's a factor here, right? And we have another article that's from, um, well, this one happens to be from the, uh, uh, uh, South China morning news.

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_02] Cause we get business news from all over the place, but the same article was in a ton of places, but they talked about the world trade organization nearly doubles trade volume forecast as AI surge counters, Middle East disruption. So, okay. So we got things humming along because AI trades. So we got that, um, all of the challenges that are going on with not all of it, much of the Middle East disruption, some of the other challenges that are going on in the, the economy

[00:30:37] [SPEAKER_02] takes, you know, pricing, uh, shipping issues and supply chain, all of those things that are hitting now. And that, um, um, that impact that pressure, right? And we're looking on this in the, this discussion about raising interest rates. So we've got all these things and there's this fever, you know, a feverish, uh, enthusiasm, exuberance tied to the stock market about the AI trades.

[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_02] Well, the AI trade, AI trades and the things going on and the infrastructure needed for that are tied to data centers to get the power and so forth. That's needed all of that. But now we've got all of this happening and I think we saw something this week in the stock market. So open AI missed their earnings and the world looked like it was going to stop for a few hours in the, in the technology world and the stock market just took this major, major

[00:31:34] [SPEAKER_02] view of it all until it became clear that it was how they were accounting for their sales figures, right? They were taking out some of the cloud services and customers and so forth. So when you looked at it, it was just, it wasn't so much of a miss compared to one projections and two, to what they're, they're comparing themselves to their competitors at Anthropic and so forth, but it was an accounting adjustment, but you were going to interject something there. Go ahead.

[00:32:03] [SPEAKER_03] Well, remember, I just want to make it clear. Open AI is not a public company, right? They're not required to disclose their financials or have audited financials.

[00:32:12] [SPEAKER_02] But they disclosed where their numbers were going to be. And, and...

[00:32:17] [SPEAKER_03] Right. They have disclosed through different parties and things like that. And they've used different accounting techniques and strategies for doing that. Right. So...

[00:32:26] [SPEAKER_02] But, but, but it, they, that, that news might've well been a, been a filing with the SEC for a publicly traded company with the impact that it had.

[00:32:36] [SPEAKER_03] Sure. No, I think the market dropped 400 points or the whatever, but, and there's not to go off track, but you know, the, the hyperscalers, right? The Microsofts and the, and the Googles and the Oracles and all of that, right? Right. Almost 70% of their business is coming from open AI and Anthropic. Right. So think about, I understand the sort of nervousness, right? Related.

[00:33:05] [SPEAKER_03] If you look at the tip of the spear, right? Anthropic and open AI are driving the majority. Sure. Of this spending all the way through the process, right? Where you end up with the spinning of the hyperscalers, which are the servers and the clouds and all that stuff. Then you have the GPUs and all of the other infrastructure that's required for that. So if one of these companies either disappeared or had significant, significant, you know, changes

[00:33:34] [SPEAKER_03] in their growth, right? There's a lot of potential ramification downstream. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, yeah.

[00:33:42] [SPEAKER_02] Well, I, that's where I'm headed, right? With this is the ramifications, right? Right. So let's look at this from a global strat point, right? This article in the World Trade Organization is looking at this as a huge issue related to, you know, the AI world offsetting much of the, being off, all the challenges with the Middle East and so forth being offset by AI. So let's look at this though.

[00:34:11] [SPEAKER_02] And I wanted your, really on your take on this is as we think about this, right? Now data centers is a huge boom right now for many of our customers that are not just in the electrical world, but in the HVAC world and the plumbing world and the building material world and so forth because of the, you know, what these places are going to take to build. Great opportunity. Well, now you have, you know, the not in my backyard, the NIMBYs, right? Of the world that want to slow these things down.

[00:34:38] [SPEAKER_02] You've got many senators now that are saying, no, no, no, no, no, you can't build these. One, you can't build them in my state because they believe that it's going to disrupt the energy prices, the water that it's going to take, blah, blah, blah. And then no matter what these organizations come back and, you know, agree to offset any, you know, electrical costs. And I mean, some of these organizations wanted to build in the data centers are coming in

[00:35:03] [SPEAKER_02] and saying, look, we will offset energy costs beyond what your energy costs would be to supplement you right in this. Tons and tons of jobs created. They can show all the research and the data and so forth that says, no, no, they have a captive water system and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of these things. But there's enough negative hype that it's slowing down to the point that in all places of Texas, their governor is wanting to slow things down on building data centers.

[00:35:31] [SPEAKER_02] So we have this delicate right now, I think, I don't even say delicate, extremely fragile and take the other side of this if you don't fully agree, Tom, please. But I look at this and see you have this extremely fragile economy right now with the challenges that are going on with tariffs, with getting things across an ocean with supply chains, with the things going on around the Red Sea with the Houthis, the things that are the risks

[00:36:00] [SPEAKER_02] that right now could be in the Panama Canal that we've talked about many times on the show. And then the Strait of Hormuz issue, the war, got all those things. And then we're coming into, we're in hurricane season in the Atlantic and we've got a crazy potential impact of El Nino coming that can hit the West Coast oil production.

[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_02] And we got a hurricane headed towards probably Alabama right now and the Florida Panhandle that looks pretty significant this week. But if that took a minor left-hand jog, we're shutting down potentially because of evacuations. I think there's been tons of oil rigs already evacuated because of that in the Gulf, right? We throw some of these, some extra curveballs at this fragile economy. We could be in for some challenges.

[00:36:54] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, I don't, I don't maybe believe the economy is as fragile as you may, or the way you're putting it there. Again, you have to follow the money and there's money, right? There's a lot of money going through the system, whether that's through the build-outs of the AI trade or even just our overspending by the government, right? There's still a lot of money flowing through the system. Um, wages are generally increasing.

[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_03] Um, the consumer continues to spend all of those things that are there. So I don't, I think that's, you know, that would be their legitimate reason for these quote unquote rate hikes is we're, you know, going to try and slow all this stuff down. It's happening that's there. So I think we have issues, obviously we've covered a lot of those. We don't need to revisit those and there's going to be more challenges and more things that are coming out, but there's still a ton of money. And even though you hear all this rhetoric about the data centers,

[00:37:52] [SPEAKER_03] there's still a lot of them being built, right? There's a lot of nowhere near the need, right? Well, no, no, no, near the need.

[00:37:58] [SPEAKER_02] And we don't have the ones that are on the books and either for in for application or have been approved or a fraction of what the needs are to achieve what the goals of the AI driven, whether it's Nvidia or it's open AI or it's meta or whoever it is, it's a fraction of the energy that they'll need. And then you've got this guy, you know, that builds cars and rockets and wants to do data centers and on Mars, right? All the data centers that he's going to need just for what he wants to do in one business. Mm-hmm.

[00:38:28] [SPEAKER_02] Right? So I don't know. I would suggest right now, you know, I don't want to say perfect storm, but, you know, if we had an issue with oil production, our own domestic oil production, with all the other things that are going on, there's some, some, I think there's some challenges out there that need to be paid attention to right now. Now, to your point, right, follow the money doesn't mean that the stock market's not going to keep trading, but there could be, you know, there's plenty of people putting a good chunk of money into cash or,

[00:38:55] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, I heard a really interesting discussion with the guy. I don't know if I fully agreed with it all. You know, you listen to CNBC or some of the interviews out there on the finance channels, Bloomberg or whatever, and just like everything else, you really have to stop and look at, where is this person from and what is their agenda? You know, but there was a guy on there that was, he was, you know, worked for a very large company that was a financial, they had financial analysts, part of their firm, and then financial planning for companies and individuals.

[00:39:25] [SPEAKER_02] He was talking about the number of their customers that he's guiding towards putting a large chunk of their dollars into the 10 year, right now into treasuries. Right? Because I mean, you've got these instabilities out there in the market, the instabilities in the world right now. And, you know, why not rely on the Fed? Because that, if the US, if the US Fed collapses, the world collapses, right? Pretty much. Sure. Yep. Yeah. So it was an interesting discussion.

[00:39:54] [SPEAKER_02] So I just, I think there's a, I think there might be more volatility in this particular market than we realize. So I'm going to...

[00:40:02] [SPEAKER_03] I guess, and I know we need to wrap up out of this session, but I guess my question is, even if you had, you know, impacts from the hurricanes, or you have oil, or we have a drought in the Panama Canal because of El Nino and all of those things. What do you think that's actually going to change? I mean, it may increase prices, but is it going to change the behavior of the consumer? Is it going to change the behavior of the business person drastically?

[00:40:28] [SPEAKER_02] Well, I think when you put, if you put a series of those things together, and the reason I'm kind of rolling my eyes right now is because you just brought up another very significant issue. I think it could, well, in the piece you missed there is the Fed, right? Right.

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_02] So if interest rates continue to rise and you see a bunch of these things together, what it really impacts, I think, the most is what I'd say right now is the expanding K-shape of the economy.

[00:41:00] [SPEAKER_02] I was actually having a talk with Meta's model in my AI glasses driving back from San Diego the other day from the affiliated distributors' PHCP event about the K-shaped economy, right? And if you start thinking about this, and if, you know, the K-shaped economy means, right, we're looking at this, and there's a broader spread between those who have and those who have not, basically, is the easiest way to look at it, right?

[00:41:28] [SPEAKER_02] And that spread is widening of how these impacts of fuel prices, prices at the grocery store. Look, I'm probably at the lower end of the top line of the K. Does that make sense? Not wealthy, but doing fine, right? So I'm probably in that upper arm of the K. But, you know, did I go buy an EV because of fuel prices? No.

[00:41:57] [SPEAKER_02] I bought an EV for three or four reasons, and one of them was very much of fuel costs, right? Because I was spending, at the time, I was spending $450 a month on fuel, which is what I drive, and now that would be easily $500. My wife wants to take my car everywhere we go because we plug it in, and it's a fraction of the cost. But the stuff at the store, I'm paying it to me. I mean, our Costco bill is dramatically different. Our grocery store bill. Does it impact us?

[00:42:27] [SPEAKER_02] Are we having to cut back? Probably not. But it does. It has an impact. But then you look at somebody who has a job that's $5,000 a year above the poverty line. This is big stuff, right? And so the lower part of that K, I think, was some of the things that you're describing. When you look at it, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Tom, but I think the position you were taking is, hey, follow the money. The stock market's going to keep kicking along.

[00:42:55] [SPEAKER_02] It's done well through all of these ups and downs. But do you remember there was a whole thing recently about how few Americans are actually have money in the stock market? Sure, sure. Right? It's like less than well under a third. I think it's well under 25%. So let's just say it was 20%, 25%. That means you've got 75% of the people in this country that are probably on the lower part of that K.

[00:43:22] [SPEAKER_02] That K is shifting, and it's impacting dramatically that lower end of that. So I'm not suggesting anything about doom or gloom here. I think some of this stuff needs to settle out. A couple of these things need to settle out.

[00:43:38] [SPEAKER_03] I don't disagree with you, the impact, right? I'm not suggesting there's no impact, especially to lower income or even any income, right? I'm not suggesting there's an income. What I'm saying is I don't think there will be a massive consequence at a macro level, right, to our economy at a macro level. You don't think there's a recessionary risk? I don't. Well, I mean, there's always a risk. I'm not saying there's no risk, right? But I don't see it.

[00:44:04] [SPEAKER_03] Now, I could ask me in a year, right, from now, when we sit at the end of 2027, may have a very different answer. But if I look ahead over the next 12 months, no, I don't see it. There's just way too much money still flowing in the system. The AI infrastructure and build-out is still in its early innings. It's still a lot of money still going into that regardless of whether the analysts like it or not.

[00:44:28] [SPEAKER_03] We've really just started to kind of scratch the surface of even the application of AI and so forth. As Jonathan pointed out earlier, money is still flowing into the system. Yeah. Big time from the government. I don't think that these rate hikes are going to have any real impact on any of those things that are there. So, again, I'm not suggesting that there are not people that are going to be impacted and hurt and cause strife. No, I'm not suggesting.

[00:44:54] [SPEAKER_03] But at a macro level, I don't see anything in the next 12 months. I don't see a major risk. I see a very minor risk over the next 12 months.

[00:45:04] [SPEAKER_02] Okay. And I'm not suggesting that we're in for a recession or we're in for anything. I think there are more factors that are in there right now than we've seen in a long time that could put some definite stress and risk on the economy. Okay. I think right now we're looking at more things coming together at once. Okay. Yep.

[00:45:32] [SPEAKER_03] I hope we're smart enough and intelligent enough to navigate them.

[00:45:36] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:45:37] [SPEAKER_03] If we're not, then we can have AI help us.

[00:45:40] [SPEAKER_02] Okay.

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_03] Bob says he's on Team Tom. All right, Bob. Good.

[00:45:44] [SPEAKER_02] You know, Bob made a comment earlier, though. He said about he longs for the days before CRM as well. Yeah.

[00:45:51] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:45:51] [SPEAKER_02] So I'm not sure where Bob's credibility is. And he's going to, Bob's going to leave the show in just a couple minutes because Bob's a regular valued team, right? We need to send Bob a shirt next time we do around the horn shirts. But we're going to talk about AI in just a minute, Bob, just in case you want to go get some popcorn or, you know. Yeah, exactly. Go take the chicken out of the freezer for the barbecue tonight. Right. So, again, I'm not doom and glooming any of this.

[00:46:20] [SPEAKER_02] I'm just saying I think right now we have some more factors that are aligned that could cause some problems. And any time you're at war, there's that case. But, you know, I think you look around here, there's going to be, if you, hey, look, I don't know if you've seen on the news this week, just the neighborhood that we grew up next to, right, in Long Beach, California, they have neighborhoods that are getting huge damage

[00:46:50] [SPEAKER_02] right now just from, we don't even have El Nino hitting yet, just from the remnants of a couple of these storms. Tom, the boardwalk that, you know, we used to ride our bikes down where our bikes would go brrrr because the wood was so old and worn. That's getting torn up right now. Yeah, no. The water, there's no beach there anymore, right? So, and I'm just saying that the economic factors that go with some of this and what's coming this winter already, if you look at the Western US, there's going to be areas of

[00:47:17] [SPEAKER_02] huge drought and there's going to be areas that are overwhelmed with flooding and damage, right, from this El Nino. We don't normally have that, right? So, anyways, get to work.

[00:47:27] [SPEAKER_03] I'm just saying despite all of that, the show will go on because there's just so much money still flowing into the system.

[00:47:33] [SPEAKER_02] For some people.

[00:47:35] [SPEAKER_03] At a macro level, I'm saying.

[00:47:37] [SPEAKER_02] At a macro level for some people. Yeah. Let's just, before we go too far, let's just kind of look at our supply chain views and news. And I want to jump in the manufacturing distribution segment of our newsletter. But two articles there, one from industrial distribution, one from MDM, one about Trump's executive order on dyed diesel will offer a little relief. So we were just talking about fuel prices, diesel prices are just even worse.

[00:48:04] [SPEAKER_02] But there's a good article there from Modern Distribution Management, our friends Mike Cockett and the team over there about AI helping distributors cut fuel costs. They're doing a lot more with routing. I haven't read all of the article. I read a portion of it. Mike forgot to mention how important it is for wholesale distributors to, even if you have routing software, which is great for your delivery trucks, but for your sales team to use tools

[00:48:30] [SPEAKER_02] like the GeoPlanner that's part of the sales compass solution within the Meridian 360 family of products from LeadSmart. The GeoPlanner looks at where your customers and your leads are and maps them and gives you an idea of who it's most important to see that day.

[00:48:47] [SPEAKER_03] Maybe we need to add in like a little tool in there that is a fuel economizer or something. We put that in there and we'll show how to maximize your fuel costs and maximize your sales results. How's that?

[00:49:04] [SPEAKER_02] It's great. Well, you know, there's like, what is that, Gas Buddy or something, the website? We probably get an API to them that shows where the lowest price fuel near you are. But we have a lot of customers that use mapping software for their delivery trucks, right? But what GeoPlanner does is show, visually show where your top customers are, where you might have issues that you need to go work on. It shows you where those are, shows where there might be leads so you can successfully plan trips and get the most...

[00:49:33] [SPEAKER_02] You can get an ROI off that fuel. That's right. There you go. All right. Manufacturing distribution, M and A. Interesting. Just a couple of articles here. Well, first in that article is our friends and valued customer at Lone Star Electric in Texas just acquired another company in Alabama. I think that is their first move into Alabama. I know I'm going to be hearing this weekend regularly from Javier Perea, the VP of Marketing

[00:50:01] [SPEAKER_02] at Lone Star, because Javier got his master's degree at Penn State and USC is playing Penn State this week at Penn State. It's a whiteout game, as they call it, at Penn State. They do, I think, a game or two a year where everybody in the stadium wears white, the team wears white, and they call it the whiteout.

[00:50:19] [SPEAKER_03] So neither team is very good. What's the... What's the...

[00:50:24] [SPEAKER_02] USC is, I think, number 14th nationally right now still. Yeah, but they lost... But anyway, what's the spread? They lost to Oregon. That's all.

[00:50:33] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:50:34] [SPEAKER_02] So they're five and one, Tom.

[00:50:36] [SPEAKER_03] Okay.

[00:50:36] [SPEAKER_02] They haven't looked impressive. They haven't looked impressive. That's my point.

[00:50:40] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:50:40] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. So... But Oregon's not in the top... Or I'm sorry, Penn State is... Maybe they're in the top 25, top 20 still, but way back there. But according to ESPN, there's like a 60% likelihood of a win. And I think a part of it is that crowd. So USC is working through the issues right now of, do we want to pay $72 million to our coach to go away?

[00:51:06] [SPEAKER_03] Okay. So yeah, the spread tomorrow looks to be USC... No, Penn State favored by a point and a half. Interesting. Okay. But Penn State's not ranked. Penn State is three and two compared to five and one. Interesting.

[00:51:27] [SPEAKER_02] Yep. All right. CalShe is saying 48% USC, 52% Penn State. So... Okay. I mean, at the end of the day, that's a toss-up, right?

[00:51:37] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. No, it's... I mean, a point and a half is nothing. You can't really...

[00:51:40] [SPEAKER_02] I think there's... I think that if I'm Penn State, I'm throwing up the middle and into the corners and just pushing hard on... Pushing hard on the weakness in USC secondary, which they just have not been able to fix, even with Gary Patterson, the former coach of Texas... I'm sorry, TCU is now USC's defensive coordinator and he is not getting the job done as we had hoped.

[00:52:08] [SPEAKER_02] So I'm not sure anybody came here to talk about USC and...

[00:52:13] [SPEAKER_03] I have a question on one of these articles here before we move on. So this first article here, it says IBC, IBC is a buying group, launches digital marketplace to connect independent distributors. And I guess they can't otherwise connect all of their members into a central buying hub. I didn't get into it too deeply, but I wanted your take because I think you probably have a better insight into this. Is that a good idea?

[00:52:41] [SPEAKER_03] I mean, it seems to me like it sounds good on paper, but it's not really... I don't know. It just doesn't seem like a really good idea. Why is that? What makes you say that? Well, there's no differentiation, right? How do you differentiate between one member to another? How do you spotlight? Are you going to spotlight one product from a member to another? I mean, certainly there's overlap and there's going to be overlap.

[00:53:08] [SPEAKER_03] How does that allow the customer to know who they're doing business with? And it's just, I don't know. I guess I haven't dug into it as much as I probably should have, but I thought you might have a take or a thought.

[00:53:22] [SPEAKER_02] Well, I mean, let's just talk about who they are, right? So they're a smaller kind of industrial buying group. They do mostly MRO related stuff. They've got 90 members and about $2.3 billion in sales goes through those groups. Because a lot of those are smaller and mid-sized distributors, they struggle with inventory issues and so forth.

[00:53:47] [SPEAKER_02] Now, they have, you know, our friends have just seen some of the guys, some Mike and Andy and a couple of the key guys from ORS NASCO at the last couple of weeks at some of the events I've been out and had lunch with Andy Boyle a month or so ago. And good folks over there, ORS NASCO, their role in the marketplace is to come in and say, hey, you know what? The products that you don't necessarily buy direct and or have strong buying relationships

[00:54:16] [SPEAKER_02] with the factory, just buy those things through us as a wholesaler and we'll get these things out to you as well. And so that is, you know, their focus in the marketplace, which is great. But what this is going on here, and the answer to your question, Tom, what IBC is looking at doing, it's only a matter of how good the technology is, right? Now, it's funny. You may remember we've had a person, he's not been on the show, but he comments regularly when he's available.

[00:54:44] [SPEAKER_02] A friend of mine for, boy, over 30 years now, Scott Leith. Scott was running a division of Airgas here in Southern California at one of their big distribution centers. And Scott, as he was leaving Airgas and I got together with two other guys that were, Scott did his, I don't know if you remember this and if it's tied to your question or not,

[00:55:07] [SPEAKER_02] but it exactly is what's going on here, is we tried to start a company in 1990, very early 1999, we started. It was called D2DNet, which was distributor to distributor. And the idea behind it was that Scott had run this group, a large sales team at Airgas, and they had a group of people that were reselling to smaller distributors at, you know, much lower margin for Airgas, but they had a whole team that was doing that.

[00:55:37] [SPEAKER_02] So we recognized this opportunity in early 1999. We raised a little bit of money. At the time, we raised a quarter million dollars, which was a ton to get started, but that was also during the dot-com boom. And we were building out that network with giving the opportunity to trade excess inventory, which was the main goal, which is a component of what they're talking about here, is looking to do all of that and trade that excess inventory. Because if you stop and think about it, right, you might have one, I'll just use 3M as an example.

[00:56:06] [SPEAKER_02] You might have a 3M distributor that buys at their deepest discounts. He's got excess inventory of an item that maybe they had a key customer for that they lost that customer. And now they have this inventory. But there might be a guy that's 100 miles away or a state away that has great use for that particular item or SKU or SKU level, but they don't buy well from 3M. So if you can match those types of things up, and there's never been a better time to do it.

[00:56:36] [SPEAKER_02] We ran out of money in the dot-com. Basically, it was the dot-com bust, and so we all went back to our jobs. But we were working on this in 1999. It's still a great example. I don't know if Scott's listening today. If he is, hopefully he chimes in. But that's basically, they're looking at doing twofold with this, right? Is, can a member help with maybe somebody? Yeah. And the other side of this, I'm probably going way too deep on this than you had planned, but something that's dear to me.

[00:57:01] [SPEAKER_02] And the other side of it is, you know, when you think about this being part of a buying group, that's one thing. But not everybody that, you know, how would I put this? You'd be a member of a buying group, but the products that are related and available to you from the buying group, they might only make up 30%, 40% of what you actually purchase. So now you think about all of the other items that you don't have the buying group's discounts

[00:57:28] [SPEAKER_02] on, and your guy down the corner that's, you know, and maybe he's 25 miles away, that's in the same buying group, he buys better from that other company than you do that's not part of your buying group. So this is their way of supporting each other as members, excess inventory, buying better. My suggestion, I think they have an existing thing they call their member market. I think this is only as good as the technology, because if the technology is not flawless, people won't use it.

[00:57:58] [SPEAKER_03] Well, I agree 100%, right? This is technologically how good the technology is and how intelligent it is, I think is the make and break point of whether or not this works. And obviously, what they have now versus what you had in 1999 are very different. I'm trying to remember why we didn't get you involved with that. You had a bunch of money in 1999. Well, you know, it's funny, I did, or you did, because... Did we talk about it?

[00:58:23] [SPEAKER_03] I remember, if you remember that fateful phone call on 9-11 or 9-10, or whatever, that was to call about a conversation related to that. Hmm.

[00:58:32] [SPEAKER_02] I remember that. I thought that... Was it about this? Because we would have been winding that down. I thought it was about... I thought that call was about inroads.

[00:58:43] [SPEAKER_03] No, it was related to this in some way. No, it's good. Yeah. Maybe you were winding it down and you were looking for some extra seat dollars from me or something. I don't know.

[00:58:51] [SPEAKER_02] Well, I'm sure the first part of it was looking for your wisdom. Yeah, probably. Right. So, and then you look at it, it took me till 2018 to suck any... Not even so much money, but time out of you to go do something. And here we are with this crazy company. So, anyways, there's a couple articles here that are really, though, good, I thought, from...

[00:59:17] [SPEAKER_02] Tied to in our manufacturing distribution and M&A segment, really tied to the M&A component of it. And I think it's... There's so much going on with M&A. In fact, I was thinking about this the other day. I need to get with you and Dana and Lily and talk about... I think we should add another section to the website that is just M&A because there's so much... Every week, there's at least four or five transactions that are relevant transactions that are going on.

[00:59:47] [SPEAKER_02] So, there's so much M&A going on right now. And this was a piece that's called a founder-first approach that industrial distribution did that's in this segment that I thought it was really good. And so, if you're thinking about bringing capital into your business, I was literally sitting down on Tuesday at lunch with a distributor who had just sold a little over 50% of his

[01:00:14] [SPEAKER_02] company to a much larger organization and was going to stick around with them for a couple of years. There's a good article about the viewpoint on relationships from a PE group. But the next one that they were talking about, this was from ASA, was talking about customer concentration and how much that matters in valuation. Maybe think about a distributor that I was talking with about a month ago or three weeks ago at an event. And his company, they're about a...

[01:00:43] [SPEAKER_02] I think they're about a $30 million a year company. No. Sorry. About a $50 million a year company. They had a $10 million a year customer that went bankrupt. Okay. Right? So, does it... Are they going out of business? No. The customer actually paid them what they were owed. And they're buying well from them now in the reorganization. So, they're going to be fine. They're actually going to be a lead smart customer very soon, it looks like, as well.

[01:01:12] [SPEAKER_02] But this article, I don't know if you got a chance to go through it, but this article talks about customer concentrations. And there is a component of vulnerability that people have when you start thinking about M&A is where is your business locked in? And it doesn't matter whether you're a technology company or you're a wholesale distributor. Is when you start thinking about what your valuations are going to look like in an M&A transaction, you have absolutely got to be thinking about that component of it that says,

[01:01:41] [SPEAKER_02] somebody is going to take a hard look at where my customers are, how those customers pay, what the risk is, what's going on in those businesses. Are they strong businesses? And then if you want top dollar for your business, they're going to push you on what's your plan to reduce the risk of your customer concentration. And I think sometimes, I've watched countless businesses that I've had involvement with on the distribution side

[01:02:08] [SPEAKER_02] that had huge components of their business that are tied to a particular operation. Now, side note to dive a little deeper on that, it's interesting to watch an organization, Fastenal, the industrial distributor is a great example. Fastenal will see a new factory open up. They'll go in, try and get a chunk of business. They'll get a chunk of business and they'll open up a 3,000 square foot warehouse nearby with three or four people in it just to serve that location.

[01:02:38] [SPEAKER_02] But when you're the size of Fastenal, that model might represent 2% of your business. But where if you're a regional player and you go to do that with a big new factory, let's just say it's a data center. Lack of a better thought, but just because of today's discussion. It's a data center in that setting. Then that might represent 18% of your business. And if you're thinking about selling your business, you're going to have an issue with your valuation.

[01:03:03] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. So I can see that. But I think it's interesting as I look at, because I look at a lot of these numbers from our customers every day. Yep. There's at least as big, if not bigger risk, I think that falls into two other categories. One is what categories of customers are you selling to? So I made by bread and butter as entirely or a big chunk as data centers. Right. Is that what is the risk of that from a category?

[01:03:32] [SPEAKER_03] The other thing I see a risk of is supplier. I see a lot of overweight sales information by supplier.

[01:03:41] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah.

[01:03:41] [SPEAKER_03] That to me looks like, and I think we even had a customer recently, right? That had a potential issue with one of their suppliers.

[01:03:48] [SPEAKER_02] Right.

[01:03:48] [SPEAKER_03] And it was like a major, major issue into that. So it seems like there is bigger risk, if not bigger, on concentrations in a category as well as concentrations with a supplier. Yep. And I think all of those things can, you know, that's why we use Revenue Expander, right? To try and see where we can level out some of those things that are there. Yep.

[01:04:12] [SPEAKER_02] Well, in closing on that article, right, they were talking as well about there is a huge push within the PE world of buying up contractors, right? Just say, you know, this organization says, I'm going to go buy up a bunch of plumbing contractors. Right. Well, if you are the main player in, let's not say a city, but a region, right? Let's just say Southern California.

[01:04:38] [SPEAKER_02] And you now, and you were working with, you know, you've got 500 plumbers that, you know, you work with in your business. And if 15 or 20 of those plumbers got bought by the same private equity group, now you're bundling those purchases under a single customer that impacts your customer concentration mix, which is a big part of this as well. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:05:04] [SPEAKER_02] So, hey, just before we jump out of this, two last things before we jump into the AI segment and do a couple more topics today before we wind down. Congratulations, folks. Pete Haberbosch at Singer Industrial spent some time with Pete and some of his leadership team a few weeks ago in San Diego at an AD event, but they just acquired another filtration and hose company. They've been on the, I mean, Singer is known for their acquisitions, but they just did another one.

[01:05:32] [SPEAKER_02] And then we've talked about on the show the challenges in the office products market with Ascendant going under, and the folks at ORS NASCO picked up a few of those brands, but they also just did a couple of more acquisitions related to welding supplies, both in the U.S. and Canada. And so ORS NASCO as a wholesaler is really doing a lot of acquisitions and then picking up some pieces in some areas of markets that need to be served.

[01:06:01] [SPEAKER_02] So, Kevin Short, Andy Boyle, and some of the team over there, congratulations to the work that they're continuing to do. So, on to AI, the latest news updates and tools. Trump named superintelligence force to coordinate AI policy. Tom, thoughts on that? Good idea, bad idea?

[01:06:22] [SPEAKER_03] Well, I think we have to take a step back because I think the week that they had the summit, the big summit in Washington, D.C. It was early last week. I think we were off or we didn't do a show or something. Anyway, we didn't get into it. But they had this big summit, right? This big AI summit that Trump pulled up. Much to do about nothing? Well, I don't think so. I think that they actually... Go ahead. I'll clarify that after you. I think it relates to this, right?

[01:06:50] [SPEAKER_03] So, what they did is they pulled together a lot of the... I mean, basically everybody, the who's who. CEO of the model companies, of the hyperscalers, of the cloud companies, of security, right? They had some government people there. And the whole idea was, you know, this was right when the whole Amthropic thing came out and the employee had come out and said, I'm leaving because Amthropic could, you know, basically kill all humanity and all this stuff.

[01:07:18] [SPEAKER_02] The employee that had been there for less than six months or whatever, yeah.

[01:07:22] [SPEAKER_03] And was working for a PR firm and whatever.

[01:07:25] [SPEAKER_02] No, he wasn't working for a PR firm. He was employing a PR firm. He was employing a PR firm. And the Wall Street Journal had the article ready to go before he made the announcement. Right, right. If I remember that all correctly. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, no bias there. No, no.

[01:07:40] [SPEAKER_03] Not planned and structured and organized. Don't worry. Right. Nonetheless, I think there was the idea, hey, is there smoke? If there's smoke, is there some fire somewhere? And so, the president pulled all these people together. What they agreed on, again, at a high level, and what they agreed on was, is that as new models are coming out, as companies are building large models that could have potential threat, there'll be a couple things that are going to go on.

[01:08:08] [SPEAKER_03] There'll be an internal review and audit on it, which is fine, but, you know, not super relevant. But also, there'll be an external audit. There'll be companies or there'll be firms that will be, much like you would do an audit on a book, right, on a financial audit.

[01:08:24] [SPEAKER_03] They will be doing companies that are going to do audits on the model and that these companies are agreeing to that, to having those external audits on their models, their safety, the security, the air gaps between where something could actually automate something or trigger something. And if you think about that, if you get an external audit and there's a problem, then the company has a real fiduciary responsibility to do something about it.

[01:08:51] [SPEAKER_02] Well, that's the kicker, right? So, you had all these guys. If I can add on a little bit of this so we can dive in and then we can talk about this article as we finish up today. But the, so you had rubber stamped, right, this agreement from all of these organizations.

[01:09:11] [SPEAKER_02] And, Tom, do you know exactly, because when all these, you know, so it was Zuckerberg from Meta and Sam Altman and Dario, what's his last name? And, Mahadeh, I think, you know, so you had the folks from behind some of the major models. You had Jensen Wong there from NVIDIA, Elon Musk, right? You had all of these folks there. And, but they sat down in a room to come to an agreement on this.

[01:09:40] [SPEAKER_02] And somebody submitted this document that they all said good enough to, right? Do you know who put that actually together?

[01:09:47] [SPEAKER_03] I don't. I think it was actually started to be constructed before.

[01:09:50] [SPEAKER_02] No, no, they sat down with a document to review and just say yes or no to, right? Right, right, right.

[01:09:55] [SPEAKER_03] So, I don't know.

[01:09:57] [SPEAKER_02] I don't know. Maybe there's a consortium from within those companies. But anyways, they all said yes to this, right? So, you've got the Bernie Sanders of the world and some of these people who just think this is crazy and the doomsdayers. It's like, no, you've got the inmates in charge of the asylum, right? That's that whole other mindset of this. That whole meeting, right?

[01:10:22] [SPEAKER_02] And what came out of this was what this article is about is this, you know, now that don't forget, you know, if you were to listen to the president, we're not supposed to talk about AI anymore. It's super intelligence, not artificial intelligence, right? I think he's going to name a lake or an ocean after it. The Gulf of Super Intelligence? Yeah, right. Instead of Lake Ontario being Lake America. Well, it's not the Gulf of America, too. It is.

[01:10:50] [SPEAKER_02] So, maybe we'll have the... Gulf of Super Intelligence. Yeah, or Mount Super Intelligence in a national park or something, right? Mount Rushmore could now be called, you know, as they're chiseling away that this current president's face into the mountain, they could...

[01:11:04] [SPEAKER_03] Maybe they need a new Mount Rushmore of, like, the super intelligent gurus.

[01:11:08] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, maybe that's right. Maybe you have, you know, you have Dario Amadei is his name. Dario Amadei from Anthropic and Sam Altman could be up there and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and then Tom Burton and Kevin Brown from Leadsmartech.ai. Honorable mention. We'll get a little picture. No, no. We can put our faces up there as well. We're up there with those guys. Guys, we have a popular podcast. Okay. Just ask us.

[01:11:38] [SPEAKER_02] No, but all those guys, you know, coming together, I think that... So, we've got now this group coming out of this, this super intelligence force to coordinate AI policy. It's good. The big reason behind this or one of the major reasons behind this is the states want to impose their own regulations on AI. Well, now, there was actually... I don't know if I published. I think I saved it for next week.

[01:12:03] [SPEAKER_02] But I saw an article yesterday that talked about what that could mean related to distribution. So, let's talk about that, right? And let's just... There are tons and tons of companies out there that use AI that serve distribution. There's more every week. Well, let's use ours, right? We have customers... As we just mentioned, right, a few minutes ago, our friends at Lone Star Electric in Texas. They just moved into Alabama. Let's just... Simple as could be.

[01:12:28] [SPEAKER_02] Lone Star Electric uses lead smart channel cloud tools right now. Some of our sales compass tools. We're then our revenue expander. Those are AI-driven tools. So, they just move into Alabama. They're in Oklahoma. What other states? They're in a couple of... Tennessee, they're in. I'm sure they'll be in other states before too long. If this country has the opportunity to...

[01:12:57] [SPEAKER_02] Somebody says here they're calling BS on the SI thing. A nomenclature for AI already exists. And Bob says...

[01:13:08] [SPEAKER_03] I tend to agree... We could have a separate discussion about the super intelligence thing. I completely agree with him there.

[01:13:16] [SPEAKER_02] The SI thing versus AI is just silly, right? Forget about it.

[01:13:19] [SPEAKER_03] But we're not at that level, right? I mean... No. We're not at that level.

[01:13:23] [SPEAKER_02] Let's just take that discussion off the table because that's... Yeah, well, we'll have another day. I don't even know if it's worth discussing, right? It just... Who cares?

[01:13:31] [SPEAKER_03] I think it is because the word's being thrown around so much. I think a lot of people don't even...

[01:13:35] [SPEAKER_02] I think that word's going to go away. So let's put the Calci... We'll watch the polymarker or the Calci on that. But let's just finish up on this today as we wind down today's show. So let's just use that example. We've got Lone Star Electric using our tools.

[01:13:56] [SPEAKER_02] If all of the states were able to have regulation, we would have to comply in that case with Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and now Alabama because maybe we didn't have any customers. We do have plenty of customers in Alabama.

[01:14:13] [SPEAKER_02] But just say, in this case, if at LeadSmart we did not have any customers in Alabama using our Meridian 360 family of products, we would have to now go make sure that we were in compliance or both Lone Star and us could have some risk to this. That's what a big part of this is about is saying, let's bring this group together for two reasons. One, about regulations. And two is let's not kill mankind, right? And so let's put some stops in there.

[01:14:40] [SPEAKER_03] Let's be practical about this, right? And let's make this something that actually can work. Correct. I do believe that... And yes, the new task force that's here is to kind of then start taking this to the next level, right? Beyond that.

[01:14:53] [SPEAKER_02] Well, I think the first component of this, Tom, is related to that let's not eliminate mankind through this or cause any major damage with... Yeah, because you had people literally that you brought this guy up, right? But there's a handful of people at Anthropic that are saying there's a 10% chance or greater that if left unchecked that AI could decimate mankind and make us extinct.

[01:15:22] [SPEAKER_03] And again, Jonathan points this out right on the comment here.

[01:15:53] [SPEAKER_02] Right. It's wonderful because now it reduces the risk. This is actually probably Tom worth a whole Around the Horn 2.0 show where it's just what we talk about one day is all of this. So I would agree with you. That's the big picture with it all, right? Right. I just think... In fact, let's just wrap up on this because I do... We're going to see a ton of articles. Let's dive through these. If we don't do a secondary show on it, which is a good idea, let's continue this conversation.

[01:16:22] [SPEAKER_02] Here's the only thing that I saw in any of that that brought teeth to it was the fact that there's two components. One is that there's third-parted auditing that's going to be required, right? That's the teeth. So literally, I am sure within the next week, if not sooner, we're going to see that Ernst & Young... Accenture.

[01:16:46] [SPEAKER_02] Accenture, all of those folks, IBM even probably will have something. They'll come out with this whole division that now is ready to go audit these people. Not that they're qualified to do so, but they're going to come out. And there has to...

[01:17:02] [SPEAKER_03] There'll be 22, 23-year-olds that are... Right. Out of college. They're well-qualified. Yeah.

[01:17:07] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. The $400 an hour people that are coming back and telling the $700 an hour person what they found. It's a whole other discussion. But anyways, long and the short of it, there's two components that put some teeth in this. One, third parties, right? Because if you look at the other side of the aisle, which is unfortunately... I think the other side of the thinking is typically the other side of the aisle, is, well, you're letting the inmates run the asylum because you're letting them self-regulate, blah, blah, blah.

[01:17:36] [SPEAKER_02] But there are some teeth to this. But here's what really matters. And then, you know, what's the other side of the aisle is that they're going to do? And then, you know, what's the other side of the aisle?

[01:18:06] [SPEAKER_02] You're bored at OpenAI or Anthropoc. You can't do well in the stock market.

[01:18:10] [SPEAKER_03] Oh, agreed.

[01:18:11] [SPEAKER_02] Right? So I think that fact that all of a sudden there is liability that says you can't get, you know, executive and officer's liability insurance for your board members if you're not complying with these things. That, in my mind, that probably puts the most teeth into this.

[01:18:28] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. No, I completely agree. And obviously, we'll see how it plays out. But yes, you have a fiduciary responsibility. If an external audit comes back and says, and you don't do anything about it or don't take it seriously, you can use your, you know, your insurance. You can use your board and lose all. I mean, there's just a lot of risk.

[01:18:47] [SPEAKER_02] Okay. Closing question of the day. Uh-huh. Because it's going to trigger lots more conversation for a future day. Is there any percentage? And if so, what is the percentage in your mind that AI left unchecked could make mankind extinct?

[01:19:12] [SPEAKER_03] What do you mean by unchecked? I guess is my...

[01:19:15] [SPEAKER_02] Well, the whole thing behind this, right, is if they're not controlling the models, if they don't have, you know, emergency switches to flip, if they don't have the countermeasures in there that, you know, artificial general intelligence or AGI would take that says, in that case, right, AI becomes recursive, just continues to make itself better and better and better. I mean... Builds on itself, moves out, takes over mankind, and we're gone. Is there any chance of that? Sure, there's a chance of that. Of course.

[01:19:43] [SPEAKER_03] I mean...

[01:19:43] [SPEAKER_02] What's the percentage?

[01:19:45] [SPEAKER_03] Well, again, unchecked is the key, right? If it's left unchecked, the percentage could be very high, right?

[01:19:50] [SPEAKER_02] What's a high percentage unchecked?

[01:19:53] [SPEAKER_03] 80%. 80%. Wow. Okay. Okay. But, I mean, but that's not realistic, right? That's not a realistic... It goes back to, remember the old War Games movie, right? Mm-hmm. Where the machine went off and basically started to learn from itself, but then it somehow had a way to actually throw the switch and give the code and all those kind of things for the nuclear stuff and all that kind of stuff, right? There's a lot of checks and balances between those three, between, you know, here and there,

[01:20:23] [SPEAKER_03] right? So... Go ahead. So, again, the word unchecked is the key word there, right?

[01:20:28] [SPEAKER_02] What do you mean by unchecked? So, reasonably... So, let me just jump on this and say, so reasonably checked, which, because we don't know what that is yet, but reasonably checks and balances there. What is the percentage of extinction then, in your mind? Very small. You're just well read on this. You work with AI every day. You build with AI. Very small. Minute. Minute. Insignificant. Less than 1%? Less than 1%, yes. Okay. It's cool. Yes. All right. Good. Good. Some great comments coming in here about this.

[01:20:56] [SPEAKER_02] There is a great point, as Jonathan mentions here, that, you know, yes, I think you brought this up, right? This is a whole other discussion about what these people are trying to accomplish, open source versus closed source, competitive Chinese models coming in the U.S.

[01:21:09] [SPEAKER_03] Well, and Bob had brought up a point here about them wanting to get sort of protection in government. Sure. Basically, a government backstop like big pharma. Trump has said that's never going to happen, right? And that's good, right? I don't think at all these model companies should be...

[01:21:25] [SPEAKER_02] But Anthropics' view of this and what Dario Amadei has been looking at with all of this and the doom and gloom of some of the things they're talking with is tied to having some level of regulation, which if they can influence that enough through lobbying and so forth, then that keeps out the open source models. And then if the open source models... And again, we should probably, Tom, go schedule. I'm hoping Dana's listening who helps us with our scheduling and then she pushes us on this. If anybody's listening and that's interested, reach out and let us know.

[01:21:54] [SPEAKER_02] There is a whole deeper dive discussion that we could spend literally an hour on this topic because if you start... And I'm just going to throw this as a teaser out, right? Because right now there are companies, very large organizations that are every day looking at things now and this is where these routers will come in, right? Routing you to the right model because right now the world is probably for everyday AI that says, what's the best place to buy my new reading glasses at?

[01:22:24] [SPEAKER_02] Or tell me about the Roman Empire, the fall of the Roman Empire and Nero, right? That type of AI search, we're probably... There's probably 20 models out there right now between open source models in China and closed source models and open source models in the US that can all answer the vast majority, including deep math and things like that. So if that's the case and now we have these open source models,

[01:22:51] [SPEAKER_02] that's why these closed source models want to keep those people out because why on earth would I want to pay Anthropic a dollar for a token? I forget about what they really cost, but a dollar for a token to do these searches if I can get the same answer to a basic question for a nickel from an open source model in another country. Forget about where it's at, right? So that's where this whole thing is going and that's a much deeper good conversation. Yeah, it's a big deeper conversation.

[01:23:20] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, but it's a good conversation because it ties back to what Tom... And this is funny, we were going to end our show today a quarter after. But I think this is important because you talked about this very early in our show today about how AI could be used in different things and then we talked about it with the economy, right? About this is all going to move forward, going to move forward. The question is, is it?

[01:23:45] [SPEAKER_02] Is it going to move forward that open AI Anthropic Meta with their main models in the U.S., is it going to move forward if I could go take a significant portion of my compute offshore for a fraction of the cost, right?

[01:24:03] [SPEAKER_03] Well, first of all, you wouldn't take it offshore and yes, it would not.

[01:24:06] [SPEAKER_02] Let me restate that, right? You would use a model from a German company, an Italian company, a Chinese company. You would use it captured in AWS or in your internal, might even be in-house servers. You would use that model here, but it's charging a nickel for what Anthropic wants to charge a dollar for. Sure.

[01:24:27] [SPEAKER_03] But I get your point, but there's a lot more to that and a lot more we could do. And yes, the idea is, is there are options, right? Yeah. And there will be other options. And yes, they're trying to put a mobile on those options, right, to make it harder for them to be left out of the conversation. But I do think, yes, that's a whole bigger... Yes.

[01:24:51] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And then our friend Bob Britton will come. He'll be the first one to register for that long AI discussion. Yeah. Because Bob loves these. So, hey, that's good. Some good, great discussion today. It's going to be a warm day today and some rain over the weekend. Are you expecting rain where you are?

[01:25:09] [SPEAKER_03] They said so, yeah.

[01:25:10] [SPEAKER_02] It's definitely cooler. It's nicer. I think that's a great reason for you to stay in and code. Okay. Just code all weekend. Okay. You're back from Florida. I'm going to token max. Just going to start token maxing. You got your back from Florida from... Were you in three weeks? No, just a couple weeks. A couple weeks. You did? Well, there wasn't a lot of... No one around here saw anything less of your production while you were away. So thank you for that.

[01:25:40] [SPEAKER_02] But yeah, I think it's a great weekend for you to just go build product.

[01:25:43] [SPEAKER_03] Okay.

[01:25:43] [SPEAKER_02] All right. I'm on it. I'm going to the beach, but you build product. All right. Let's wrap up. Busy weekend for me too. Thanks everybody for being with us. Great comments today. Appreciate a lot of the input that we had. We get a lot of comments after the fact as we close down today. We're just grateful. As Tom and I always say, 207 times we've done this. Just still astounding. Still astounding that an hour and a half in, we still have people paying attention and caring. We're grateful for that.

[01:26:12] [SPEAKER_02] So if you've got ideas, suggestions, let us know. We'd be happy to evaluate those. We've got ideas for a particular type of show or topic to cover. We'd love that. If you're listening in on the podcast that's recorded and you don't get the newsletter, please let us know at hello at leadsmarttech.com. On LinkedIn, you can find us there. Just search for Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution Podcast. We'll get that out to you.

[01:26:37] [SPEAKER_02] You can go to the website for the podcast, www.aroundthehornpod.com, and we'll get that out to you as well. We're grateful for that. Last thing is click that subscribe button. Click that download button. And most importantly, our value that we would ask you to help us with is that if you see some benefits to the show, please share this with your friends. And not only subscribe, but leave a review, which would be helpful on top of that.

[01:27:07] [SPEAKER_02] We'd be grateful for that. And then finally, last word, Tom, I don't know if you have it handy. You could pop it back up. But we've got the new Meridian 360 Enterprise Growth Platform from the company that Tom and I work for, Lead Smart Technologies. If your company is looking to get deeper understanding into your customers, your business, and your overall teams by using all of the data within your organization from across your ERP,

[01:27:32] [SPEAKER_02] your marketing automation, your e-commerce, your quoting tools, all of the other AI tools that you may have bought that you'd like to connect all that data in one single place to understand your business better, to serve your customers better, grow sales, but really grow your entire business, we would love to share that with you. You can take the Blindspot Risk Survey on the website as well. And that website is www.leadsmarttech.ai. You can find us there.

[01:28:00] [SPEAKER_02] If you'd like to reach out to Tom and I, you can do that with us from there as well. So we appreciate y'all. Thank you for being with us. We'll look forward to next week. And we'll wish everybody a great weekend. Be kind, be safe, and do good things.

[01:28:18] [SPEAKER_00] We hope you enjoyed today's episode and our guests. Each week, we try our best to dig into the topics that are impacting your business. So please reach out to us and let us know how you think we can make the show better, or topics you'd like for us to tackle or talk about more often, and even guests you'd like to see join us. We're looking forward to bringing you next week's session, and hope that until then, you stay safe, stay focused, and do great things. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast

[01:28:47] [SPEAKER_00] and leave a review to help others in wholesale distribution get access to the conversation. And finally, please check out our sponsor, Lead Smart Technologies and their manufacturing and wholesale distribution industry CRM, customer intelligence, and channel collaboration platform. That's Lead Smart Technologies at leadsmarttech.com.