ISA’s Brendan Breen on the Biggest Trends in Wholesale Distribution

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

[00:00:24] 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. How are you my friend Brendan? Good to see you. Tom, good to see you as well. Good morning. Good afternoon. Yeah, afternoon to you Brendan. Cold and white outside in New Jersey?

[00:00:48] Well, the groundhog was not nice to us this year. So yes, it is still a little bit cold. But we're keeping our eyes on the buds on the trees. They're coming. Very good. Very good. Brian says he's spinning in his chair as well. So, you know, it's catchy. It's a catchy thing. So, hey, before we dive into the depth of our show today, let's do a little bit of an intro. We just introduced Brendan Breen saying hello, CEO of the Industrial Supply Association.

[00:01:18] I'm Kevin Brown. I'm here with my lifelong friend and business partner, Tom Burton. And we get together every week and we talk about the news of the world and North America focused typically, but a lot around the world as well. And what we talk about is the happenings in mergers and acquisitions, the economy, supply chain, obviously a lot to talk about with that, sales, marketing, AI, technology, and all the things that are going on around us.

[00:01:45] And what we try and do is unpack all of that, as we say in our intro, as well as we peel back the onion on what is going on and how that relates to wholesale distribution and manufacturing. So, we do that through the means of a newsletter that we publish each week. That newsletter, again, is called Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing. It goes out to over 10,000 people each week.

[00:02:06] And if you don't get that and would like to, three simple ways to do that. You can get that from us by sending a simple email to hello at leadsmarttech.com. You can, if you're active on LinkedIn, you can just search Around the Horn podcast and that will get you right to that as well. And then you can sign up for the newsletter there and get it through LinkedIn. And we also have a website for the podcast.

[00:02:31] And that is www.aroundthehornpod.com. And that will allow you to reach out that way. So, again, we do this every week. If you're listening on the recorded podcast, you won't see the newsletter that we'll have up on the screen, nor will you see these handsome three faces. So, again, if you don't, if you're listening on the podcast, just reach out to us directly and get a copy of that newsletter coming to you. So, we couldn't do this each week if we didn't have the sponsorship of the company that Tom and I both work for.

[00:03:00] That's Lead Smart Technologies. We are a, I've developed an AI-enabled smart CRM and customer intelligence platform that allows wholesale distributors and manufacturers to gather data from around their organization. We call it silo data, ERP, marketing automation, e-commerce, and other places. Bring that together, make intelligent decisions on how to accelerate growth in their business. So, that's what we do at Lead Smart. That's our main sponsor. But, Tom, let's dive in and talk to our good friend here, Brendan Breen.

[00:03:29] Yeah, and I want to say good morning. I think good morning to Bob. Good morning to Brian. We have Paul Kennedy here. We have Will Quinn here. Brendan, Paul is sitting there excited to hear what you have to say. So, the pressure is on. No pressure. And I'm sure if there's others, if there's others of you out there, I'm sure, please could say good morning and let's put some pressure on Brendan. There we go. I'm ready for it. Well, that's kind of friendly of you. That's right. Hey, you know.

[00:04:00] Well, let's kind of dive in and just start talking about that as well and dive in here with Brendan. So, Brendan is CEO of the Industrial Supply Association, wonderful organization that's leading the way for industrial supply distributors and manufacturers on the industrial side of the world. So, Brendan, why don't we kind of dive in and maybe you can tell us a little bit, one, about the organization and two, about you.

[00:04:25] And then, of course, we want to talk about the big upcoming event, which is a big reason that we wanted to have you with timing today as well. And we've got another event coming up where we're going to get together and solely talk about ISA. Today, we've got you as a round-the-horn guest. We're going to do another broadcast here very quickly where we're able to talk to you specifically just about ISA. So, we're going to do that in the next week or so. So, why don't you dive in, share a little bit about it, not just about the organization, but about you. Sure.

[00:04:54] My two favorite topics, right? Talking about me and the place where I work. So, thank you guys for having me. Love this show. It's a great format and a good opportunity for people to talk about a bunch of topics. These are the types of conversations we have all day anyways. So, you're just aggregating a bunch of smart folks in one place so we can all listen to it at the same time. So, appreciate what you guys are doing.

[00:05:16] But ISA, so the Industrial Supply Association, we have been around in some name, shape, or form for 125 years. Almost 123 years. The purpose hasn't really changed. The reason why we are here to exist is to bring together supply chain partners in the Indirect Materials, MROP channel, to collaborate, to learn, and to grow this industry together.

[00:05:46] And so, when I say supply chain partners, we're unique because we have both manufacturers and distributors as equal stakeholder members. So, we're not a distributor-focused organization or a manufacturer. We are about the health of this channel. And we want to create a platform or multiple platforms for connections between channel partners, be it decision makers or even your employees, so that they can connect and grow their own networks and learn together about where this industry is going.

[00:06:15] So, we do a lot at the association. You mentioned our convention coming up. I know we're going to touch on that in a little bit. But we also have a bunch of great educational content, some really solid professional development, both in person at our fall summit and then also virtual and on demand. We've got some great business analytics tools. Topline Pulse is one that I love giving demos for.

[00:06:40] So, if anybody out there is interested in understanding how to navigate business cycles, it's free with your membership. And it's super easy to use and very powerful. We also, you know, aggregate some industry information through partnerships with ITR Economics and Cleveland Research and a few others to really, you know, give you a well-rounded look at what's going on in the economy, what's going on with your peers, and really a way that you can confidently make your next move.

[00:07:08] So, that's a quick snapshot of ISA. We're also going to be talking about a brand new initiative that we just launched. And I think, Kevin, you've got a prompt for me there coming up. But a quick note about me. I've been with ISA for about seven years in my role as leading this team, this small but mighty team. We have eight and a half individuals. We have a seasonal employee that accomplishes all that stuff I just mentioned.

[00:07:36] And they are truly a phenomenal team. But I've been leading them for the last three and a half years. And I'm truly in the best position I've ever been in. This is my dream job. I love working with my team. I love working with this industry. And I get to wake up and try something new or talk to fine gentlemen like you every day. Who did he call you, Tom? Fine gentlemen. Yeah, wow. Awesome. You can come back anytime. You know, Tom? That's the first time somebody said, Kevin, you are just need to be nice. Not about me, about Tom.

[00:08:05] Yeah. So my background, before ISA, I was an association guy. So this is probably my seventh association working with. I used to manage multiple associations. I worked for a consultant company. And that's actually how I found ISA. They used to be managed by a management company. And I was their account person.

[00:08:28] And so once they went solo and decided not to be managed by a management company, that's when I was brought on and left the management company. But it's been a great ride and looking forward to the rest. Have you been CEO for three years already? Yeah. So I've been leading. You know, small title changes here and there. I know. It happens quick. I mean, I remember having breakfast with you in Princeton when you were interviewing for the job. I mean, that was all during the pandemic.

[00:08:56] And that's a wash of amount of time. I mean, it's that that was the pandemic was five years ago, Kevin. Isn't that crazy to think about? No, no, no, no. I'm still 35. So, OK, well, tell us. You've got some amazing speakers and panelists. I know coming for the event coming up at the end of the month. So like I did that. Why don't you talk a little bit about ISA 25?

[00:09:22] And I'm going to share a few of my thoughts before we dive into the news and get into things today as well. So so I think what Kevin is alluding to is there is a phenomenal speaker coming out of the West Coast these days who just is one of the most insightful people I've ever met. His name is Kevin Brown. Jack is on the way. Are you drinking at lunchtime, Brendan? Brendan, what's going on here? This is good.

[00:09:45] In all seriousness, Kevin is going to join us on a panel discussion to talk about, of all things, technology and how that's evolving through AI. He's going to be joined by two, three other technology leaders. No, two other technology leaders. Two others and Mike Hockett. Mike Hockett is going to be facilitating that conversation. We just got his notes of the question. We saw those. We had a tech check with these guys just to and it was supposed to last, I think, a half an hour. And I think after an hour and a half, we're like, all right, guys, let's save it for the show.

[00:10:15] But this is going to be that's just going to be one of many sessions that we have. That's going to be phenomenal. And we're happy to have Kevin help us out with that one. It's a good group, too. It's a fantastic place. Chris and Paul Veruzin and Chris from Conexium. It's going to be a good group. And it's three different technologies doing different things, which allow, you know, have a pretty well-rounded perspective on things. So that's going to be a good education session. But, you know, other sessions we have.

[00:10:41] We have a state of the channel given by John Gunderson. He's going to be looking at this in a couple different ways. John Gunderson from Channel Marketing Group, formerly or still does editorial work for MDM and was with the Dorm Group for a little while. He's going to be in the show here soon, too. Yeah. Industry Vet has a ton of, you know, original research to share. And he's going to be looking at the state of the channel through two perspectives.

[00:11:08] One, assessing how end user trends have evolved and where they are going. And then two, in his second session, he's going to look at scorecarding between manufacturers and distributors and to understand how stronger relationships can be built given all the complexities that we're facing in today's model. So good education sessions there. We're also going to highlight some of our programs. This is a newer thing for us. We've got this great audience and a captive audience there. And we're doing some really good things at ISA. And so we want to talk about them.

[00:11:38] We want to bring on panels of experts to talk about our networks. This is our Women in Industry Group, our Emerging Leaders Group, and our newest group, our Veterans Empowerment Network, so that companies can understand how they can get more benefit from engaging in those. We also have a panel session on our Emerging Leaders Channel Certification, which has been a home run of a new program for us. This is taking your very best and brightest in the industry and getting them ready to take that next step. And it's not soft skill development stuff.

[00:12:06] This is industry-specific channel framework and alignment coaching and in-depth education, instructor-led education that really gets those folks ready to take that next step in leadership. We also have, count them, four keynotes this year. He used to run two. Now we have four. We're kicking it off with a name everybody knows out there, Herm Edwards, coach. I just talked to him the other day.

[00:12:34] And man, he's super down to earth, but he has a million great stories. If you enjoyed, he reminded me of Bill Walton. We had Bill Walton a few years ago. And same type of vibe. He speaks from the heart. It's not a rehearsed thing. He just tells stories and he connects with the audience really well. Bill Walton in Phoenix a few years ago was probably one of the best keynotes I've ever sat through. And it surprised me, but I was hanging on every word he said. He's a magnetic kind of guy.

[00:13:05] And rest in peace for sure, Bill. But he set the standard really of what we're looking for in new keynotes. So really excited about Herm Edwards. We also have an end-user roundtable. So we are inviting on the stage four end-users. And these are real live manufacturers in the United States that are buying our products through distribution.

[00:13:28] And we want to understand what's moving the needle for them, what's keeping them up for night at night, what's influencing their decisions to buy. So that's going to be a really good one. So after that, we have Brian Wilde coming on to do a legislative update. And then we're going to be – that's not one to miss. Brian from NEW is going to – I can't wait for the questions. Well, and that's another one. We checked in with Brian the other day and said, well, what should we talk about?

[00:13:55] He's like, we should probably talk the day before because he wakes up every morning with his inbox being filled with new news and new stuff coming out of the White House. And so we did the legislative update for the first time last year, and it was really successful. We got great feedback. So that's going to be a staple. And then to end the event, as always, we're going to end with ITR Economics with a little bit of a twist this year.

[00:14:21] Not sure if everybody caught the news, but Alan Bolio has decided to retire a bit earlier than he expected due to some health concerns. And so although we were contracted to have him come out for his last and final show with ISA, we had to go with his successor, Taylor St. Germain, who is phenomenal. I mean, if you've not heard Taylor, he is almost as good. If not – it's all still the same presentations. It's all still the Bolio Brothers stuff. But that's going to be a great way to close it out.

[00:14:50] So tons of education in there, lots of great speakers and topics, and we're covering it all. Lots of value. That's just the education portion. The networking and all the other stuff, that's always a good thing. When you get 800 of your closest friends all in the same place, this is where you want to be. Looking at sponsorship stuff, the one at that event I always wanted to avoid was the host in the bar or host in the happy hour.

[00:15:20] Don't give us a bad name there, Kevin. We are very – No, no. It's just a great group of people all getting together and enjoying some time together. I commented to a couple of people in the fall event. I got more done between sessions, not even at the receptions, just between sessions than I had expected for the whole event. And just running out to sit down and do a few emails and someone walks by and sits down for a minute. It's a fantastic event.

[00:15:50] So if you're remotely involved, even tiptoeing in the edges of the industrial world, this is a not-to-miss event. So, gents, let's jump into our news because there's so much to talk about. And we'll revisit the upcoming event. But I think we've got – obviously, we're going to start off with talking about tariffs because I just don't think there's any way around that, right? With what we're looking at, we're facing. It's been a crazy few months.

[00:16:17] And I say few months because of the idea behind hearing about these things even prior to the inauguration and then this fast and furious last 40 days or so. So we just saw some significant changes this week with a big push at the Canadian and Mexican markets. They were delayed. Now they came back and now we've got another pause.

[00:16:46] So any thoughts from either of you on what's gone on in the last couple of days? I mean, I knew that this was going to be the topic we were going to lead off with and we could probably spend the whole time. But I know that there's other things we're going to talk about. But it's 90% of the phone calls I'm getting from my members is related to the frustrations and just wanting to talk it out. They know that I, like anybody else, don't have really great answers.

[00:17:15] You can call Brian at NAW who gets White House briefings every single time they come out or a lobbyist who is sitting down there on the hill and they don't have the answers. I think that there is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of frustration around that uncertainty that is a challenge.

[00:17:38] I mean, and this is just another example, I think, of an administration that just does things so differently than what we were used to. And maybe they're going in, although we heard that the scalpel approach might need to be used a little bit more from our president, which is encouraging. But up until this point, it's been that big, huge chainsaw that has really attacked some of these problems. And that's hard.

[00:18:06] When you're trying to predict your business or when you're tied very strongly to these trading partners in North America, it's hard because the contingencies are just too great. And they have ramifications on relationships, too. You know, if you have Canadian trading partners and they're long-held relationships, but that is rocky right now and you need to fulfill demand. You might need to go to a different source partner.

[00:18:34] But the reality is, is that agreement might snap back. You know, it could. Everything could go back to somewhat normal. We just don't know. So it's hard. Yeah. We talked about this quite a bit in the last couple of weeks on this. I think it doesn't change the fact of what is happening. But, you know, when we look at this is and it's interesting, there's a nice comment from Bob there. It says tariffs are a tool, not a state of being.

[00:19:02] And I think, you know, the reality of this is that traditionally what we see in administrations is that I was joking as we were talking before we started the show today. You know, as we fly around the world and we go to amazing resorts or, you know, the palaces or whatever it might be. And we sit at the 30-foot-long conference tables and there's, you know, gold-leafed Kleenex boxes. And everybody sits around the table with a name card in front of them.

[00:19:30] And they talk about a lot of stuff. And that's diplomacy. And this administration is, their diplomacy is tariffs as one of the tools is I will beat you into submission. And I mean, that's a huge statement I just made. But at the end of the day, right, is I'm going to hold an iron fist with tariffs. I'm going to find an equal playing ground for those countries that we're not equal with, but those countries that I expect you to do something with. Right.

[00:19:57] And it was said in the, not State of the Union, but the address of Congress the other night was that, look, you know, this is ultimately about balancing trade as a component. But the bigger picture from a diplomatic side of it is tighten up the borders and stop the drugs and the people from coming into our country illegally. And this administration is choosing to use that hammer in that setting.

[00:20:21] The struggle that I see for manufacturers and wholesale distributors is we've just spent the last, you know, three or four years with battling with interest rates and a simmering economy that makes it very difficult to make decisions. And now we've got the tariffs issue on top of all of that, which makes making decisions even harder. Right. Yeah. So I think that it's not that people are disagreeing with Bob. I think he makes a really good point.

[00:20:52] But, you know, on this show, we're here to talk about wholesale distribution and the B&E market and the collateral damage is there. I mean, people have to run a business and U.S. manufacturing companies are worried, you know, and so. Well, and their distributor partners are as well because you've got the, you know, they're the ones that are touching the end users that are being impacted by all of this as well. Right. Have you any takeaways on this? Yeah, I do.

[00:21:18] Brendan, do you think that the anxiety and worry is more about the uncertainty at the moment or the volatility at the moment? Or is the worry, oh, my God, these are going to be tariffs that are going to be around for a long time and are going to majorly affect our pricing piece there? Is it the uncertainty or the actual financial, longer term financial concern? I think it's the uncertainty. That's what I'm hearing more of. I tend to agree with you.

[00:21:47] I don't want to, I'm not, I'm not saying ISA's position or my, even my position. I'm saying what I'm hearing from people is that, look, you can build a model around something you're certain of. If you know something is going to be a certain way, you just build that model and you understand how you go to market that way or how you figure out how to incorporate or talk to your channel partners around pricing and whatever you need to discuss in order to make sure that there's some predictability in the business.

[00:22:14] But it's that uncertainty that, you know, people are thinking that they have to make a move right now or do something when there's uncertainty on whether this really will happen or not. I mean, we've delayed it now twice. They're making exemption for automakers. But again, for my members out there, not all of my automakers sell directly to Ford or GM, but they sell to people who sell to them. And those are not exempt.

[00:22:41] And so I think it's the, it's those nuances that I think keep popping up for this administration that they're like, hmm, maybe we need to break out that scalpel and understand the carve outs here because maybe the collateral damage is piling up a little bit too high. Well, you look at that, it's that, you know, Jack Daniels, you think about Canada, right? Jack Daniels said they could lose five to 10% of their overall sales because Canada's pulled everything from the shelves.

[00:23:09] And I think what's interesting, and I haven't talked to any of my contacts in Mexico in the last week or so, I may reach out to some later today now that I think about it further. But I've talked to a number of people in the last 10 days or so in Canada, and there's varying degrees of, what would I call it? I want to be careful here, of concern all the way to vitriol or venom to the US. And it's really quite interesting.

[00:23:39] We already have a big issue for people doing business in Canada with the discrepancy between the dollar and the Canadian dollar, right? That's already a big factor that goes on in that setting. But it's very interesting with that. I wanted to share a few points. I was text messaging yesterday with a good friend who's a senior executive from a large national industrial and industrial safety distributor. He was sharing with me, he said, you know, they started getting some price increases as soon as this came out from China.

[00:24:09] But then they had some Chinese companies that were coming back and giving them some concessions already in other places to balance things out. So some Chinese manufacturers are raising prices. Some of them are coming back with discounts and rebates and other reductions just to do a balancing act with it already. You know, we've talked about it on the show. And I'm trying to remember, we had a guest a couple weeks ago that brought this up.

[00:24:34] You know, there's the likelihood is on the Chinese side is that, especially with this, probably going to drag out much longer with them than it might with Canada and Mexico, is we don't know what the state there is going to do, right? Are they going to backstop with currency? Are they going to backstop manufacturers there and support them in a different way than you would see in Canada and Mexico? What was interesting, though, is this particular gentleman was sharing that they had all of this activity going on with the Chinese suppliers.

[00:25:04] And then this week it started with the Mexican and the Canadian suppliers, you know, changing some and adjusting some pricing. He talked about the struggle, though, is that he's got some manufacturers that are being super transparent and some of them who are raising prices, even though they've not justified or explained how and why. And it appears that they're just doing it to raise some margins.

[00:25:32] And that gets a little bit frustrating when you're a distributor from that standpoint, when you're doing everything you can. And the one piece that we've never talked about with this is, and, you know, we've got some great guests here that, you know, are in the distribution world that are listening in today is, you know, what we've not talked about, I don't think people really talk about at all, is there's a huge administrative cost to all of this.

[00:25:56] When you're managing price adjustments and so forth, and this particular distributor I was talking to yesterday was saying, they've had to go back and do all kinds of work. Now, probably it's good long-term value to them. They've had to go back and recategorize a lot of vendors that they've not necessarily categorized of country of origin. So, because now they're having to share some of that country of origin stuff with their customers to justify the price increases they're passing on.

[00:26:25] So, there's a lot of administrative pieces that go beyond that. Yeah. I think that, you know, if he's tuning in and listening, President Trump, my advice to you is, you know, try to share some transparency.

[00:26:40] I mean, there's been moments in U.S. history where the United States manufacturing economy has supported our administration's efforts to rebalance the world or to support a national initiative. And I think you'll find a receptive community. It's just the uncertainty, to Tom's point, is not being in the loop and maybe being fed some information that isn't the whole picture is a challenge. And so, these guys have employees.

[00:27:10] They have employees' families that they care about, you know. And so, some of them are so tied in to maybe one or two customers that if, you know, like think about automotive, for example. You know, if you have a big automotive customer and they're just coming to you and saying, I have to cut, you know, 25% or I have to, you know, I'm not going to buy because it's 25% more expensive. You're firing some people.

[00:27:38] And that's really important for the small to medium-sized manufacturer. So. The job report came out this morning and it wasn't what it was supposed to be. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is just my opinion, but I think, Brendan, I think we are going to see more transparency. You know, the one thing about the Trump administration, there's a lot of business people surrounding him, right? These are not politicians. These are business people that are surrounding him.

[00:28:05] And these business people know from firsthand, right, what uncertainty can cause for a business and what you're in. So, I think there's going to be a lot of internal pressure to get more transparency. I know it may be hard, right? Because a lot of this develops in real time. I do think this is going to happen. I guess my question is, and there's a lot of great comments. I wish we could hit some of these, but I don't know if we're going to have time, Kevin. But is, you know, in 30 days, are we still going to be talking about this?

[00:28:33] In 60 days, are we still going to be talking about this? You know, I think that's, you know, I think right now it seems like we're in the middle of the category five hurricane, right? But is the hurricane going to pass and the sun going to come out here sooner than we think? You know, obviously that's, we all would like to know that. What do you think, Tom? I think in, it's hard to say, but I think in 45 days, we're not talking about this anymore. That's a big statement. I know.

[00:29:03] It is a big statement. It is a big statement. I feel like he's found a tool that catches a lot of eyeballs right now. And this president, like him or not, loves eyeballs. Right now, he's bringing a lot of people to the table to talk because of this. Like Bob mentioned, is that this is a tool to bring people to the table. And until this gets sorted to his levels of satisfaction, I think we're going to be talking about it.

[00:29:28] So, yeah, I would almost take the exact opposite and say that we could be having a similar discussion in a year. Ooh, hot take. The lead smart guys are going at it. Yeah. No, no. I mean, hey, look, Tom has lost a stake last year on interest rates. So, I think I would agree with Tom in that setting if it was all about economics.

[00:29:56] But there's a political component of this, and the political component is probably more powerful than the economic component of it. And so, you know, it remains to be seen. Would I like to see something balanced? Because our customers at Lead Smart and the people that listen to this show on a consistent basis need some, you know, I don't need this to be fodder for our discussion on this podcast. Right? We have plenty to talk about each week.

[00:30:24] But I would like to say that point is it is political. Right? Which is why I would say that. If it was economic, I wouldn't say that. I think that if he gets a lot of these people to the table. And in China, China is its own animal. So, I feel less confident about China. But as it relates to Mexico and Canada, I believe if the discussions and what the Canadian administration is what's changing here in two days or a week or whatever the case may be.

[00:30:51] I think if there's discussions and things happening that are moving in that direction, then either it's going to be delayed or there'll be transparency that, okay, it's not going to be 30-day delays, but it's, you know, evaluated in a year or six months or whatever. I think the leeways are going to get longer. So, I do think my point is based on exactly what you're saying, Kevin, is that it is political.

[00:31:17] And like I said, if you surround, and he is surrounded with some very bright business people. Yeah. Right. That know firsthand the problem that this is causing. Right. And obviously, the stock market is having a tantrum around all of this as well. Right. So, I don't. Anyway. I hope you're right. I hope you're right. Like, that's what I'm saying. We'll see. Right. By April 1st or whatever it is. Or not April. May 1st. Right. That would be give or take. Right. I do. And I do hope you're right.

[00:31:45] Because if we find some balance and some, you know, centered, becoming centered on some things, it's going to be good for the economy in general. Part of the reason I take the other side of that is, you know, we had a month ago, right, the big squeeze went on Mexico to hit pause. And as soon as the threat of the tariffs or the announcement was there, I shouldn't even say the threat, the announcement was there.

[00:32:10] What quickly happened is that things went, what did Mexico do? The next day, 10,000 soldiers permanently assigned to the U.S. border. Right. And that we still came back with the tariffs. Right. So I wonder if, and to your point, the balancing act is probably the good, the sharp minds around the administration and the business people that have input to this.

[00:32:39] But I think we may not be talking about it with Canada and Mexico like we are today, but EU is coming next. Right. So I think we've got to get through more of this than just what we're talking about today. But we'll see. Like I said, I agree with you there, right? There are other geographical areas that could pop into the equation. So we don't have a wager on this, but let's just be clear. Are you saying we won't be talking about Canada and Mexico or we won't be talking about tariffs? No, I was really saying I was really focusing on Canada and Mexico when I was talking about

[00:33:09] that. See how kind I am, Brendan? I just let him walk it back without calling him out on it fully. But I certainly don't think it's going to be the turbulence, if you want to call it that, that we're experiencing today. I would agree with that fully. I would fully agree that we will not have... It's not a black and white issue. It's a lot of shades of gray. But right now it's very turbulent. The Mexico-Canada thing, I believe, will be settling in.

[00:33:36] I don't know if it's 30 days, 60 days, whatever it will be. But I think the tariff discussion we're going to be having for a long time. So good. Well, that kind of ties into the next article. And we're half hour plus into the show here. And we're on our second article of the day. But this just really ties in. This is an all-day show. Yeah. Clear your calendar because we're going to dinner. Yeah, that's true. We're going until dinner time.

[00:34:04] But there's obviously big talks now, not just about tariffs, but what comes out of tariffs. National Association of Business Economics talked about in an article. This is from cfodive.com. They talked about the risk of inflation accelerating again. They said minimum of 2,027 above the 2%.

[00:34:28] I've said on this podcast for two years now, I'm not sure that 2% is the right number anyways. But what they're describing there is that with all the things going on, that we have some risk of recession and we have some risk of inflation numbers going up significantly. So any thought, takeaways or thoughts from either you on that?

[00:34:50] You know, it's interesting that you brought up about the conversation you were having where prices were being raised because they can. Yep. Right. I'm wondering if the inflationary pressure may come more from that scenario than it comes from the actual tariffs themselves. Obviously, the tariffs are pretty much excuse, if you will, for it. But I do think that, let's face it, right?

[00:35:19] People will exploit situations. And definitely, I'm interested, Brendan, in your take on this, but is that going to be more of an inflation driver than it is? I mean, it's just, you know, think about what we had before when coming out of COVID and some of the other things, right? It was always an excuse to raise prices, whether or not your costs went up or not. Yeah. I mean, look, people will. The term exploit is a hard one because it sounds bad.

[00:35:49] But, I mean, this is a capitalistic society and really, you know, what people will pay is the fair market, right? And so, what it does, though, is it does create a lot of opportunity for share gain. And I think that's the activity that you're going to see ramp up.

[00:36:11] This number, you know, I think that everybody, to me, it wasn't a big surprise when this came out, when the miss was there. I think that it was, you know, even on a very personal level, go out and try to buy a car right now or go out and try to buy a home. Either of those things are outrageous. I think that the median car price right now is over $50,000 or something close to it.

[00:36:40] Like, that's outrageous, you know? And so, when you look at this, it's not a big surprise for me. And whether it's driven by greed or, in some cases, taking advantage of the situation, I couldn't tell you, Tom. But I know that people are going to do it. Nobody's going to be altruistic about this and say, I don't have to raise prices when my competitor does. I'll just raise it a dollar less, you know, than they have to. And then I'll steal some share.

[00:37:09] Well, Brendan, you talked earlier, too, about, and I think it was more related to U.S.-Canada or U.S.-Mexico relations. But I think all of this stuff right now, and it ties to interest rate, it ties to everything going on, is we're in a world, and this really impacts your members a lot as well. We're in a world where, you know, what has probably been 30 years now that Friedman wrote the World is Flat book, right?

[00:37:38] Well, between the internet, AI now, and other tools is there's a lot of transparency now that wasn't there before. There's a lot of ability to shop and find other sources and so forth. That whole world that we've lived in, and Tom and I live in this every day with our business at LeadSmart, talking about distributors and manufacturers, because at LeadSmart we have a portal that we've developed that allow distributors and manufacturers to communicate there.

[00:38:09] And bringing manufacturers and reps and IMRs into that as well. And the walls are starting to come down a little bit in that level of communication, but nowhere where they should be at this day and age. And so I think that the comments that the distributor I was talking to yesterday made and what we're talking about now is, this is an opportunity for partnerships to get stronger. And the people I think that right now want to try and maybe take advantage of things or aren't communicating well.

[00:38:40] Now is not the time to hide. Now is the time to communicate. Yeah. On these things. That's one of the most insightful things, Kevin, I think I've heard you say on this show. It's really well done. It's really a great take. Didn't you guys say you like him? You guys enjoy each other's company, right? You guys are mean to each other. This is fun. All right.

[00:39:03] So the last 131 episodes, you've just had me along for the ride. Is that it? I just said this was one of the best ones. This was great. That's what I was saying. It was a great take. So, yeah, I'm glad you brought this up. It was a compliment. It's a good one. They don't come very often, Brandon. They don't come very often. Take it. Take it and run with it. Bank it for later because he's going to say something that is not nice. This is recorded for perpetuity. There you go. And it's recorded.

[00:39:32] Yeah, this is great. Exactly. So when you do the editing on this, let's make sure we have that clip. It's going to be all over social media. You're never going to be able to get away. All you're going to see. Right. Right. Kevin was right. That's the banner that comes up, right? Yes. No. So to your point, Kevin, I think that this kind of was illuminated for us too. We had an end user roundtable, a virtual one about maybe a little over a month ago or under a month ago.

[00:40:02] And we had like eight end users from a bunch of different channels. And we talked to them about tariffs for the bulk of the conversation and about the ability to absorb a price increase. And none of them, I mean, they joked a little bit. I'm like, just don't bring me a price increase. But all of them to a one said, look, it's all about transparency. It's all about coming to me early and often and talking to me about what is happening and then working with us to navigate it together as partners.

[00:40:32] So that ability to be transparent and show exactly the impact that this tariff has on your business, on your own supply chain. I think that's what the end user is accepting. So a price increase with all that information, they're saying at least the eight that we had on the show, we're saying, that's OK. We don't love it. Nobody wants price increases. But we understand that you've got to put food on the table. And so do we.

[00:40:58] So we can go to our customers and say, we have to increase your prices because everything is more expensive. So I think that it just highlights the importance. And I think our friend John Gunderson said in an article he wrote recently, this is the year that you want to meet early and often with your channel partners. So come to ISA 25. They'll all be there. I mean, isn't that really what you're saying? And Kevin, you were saying it's more collaboration, not less. Yeah.

[00:41:26] And then you've never been in a place where it's easier to do it. Right. Yep. You know, I mean, and you've got, you know, distributors have these, you know, especially the ones that are dealing with, you know, dealing with, you know, whether it's an auto plant or it's a utility or it's a, you know, aircraft manufacturer, whatever it might be. Those long term supply chain supply contracts, they have buffers in there for price increases.

[00:41:53] And a lot of them are tied to economic factors, but also have to be proven. So if you're a manufacturer that's just trying to take advantage of this situation right now, there's a relationship issue that goes on with this. And, you know, one of the things I didn't mention that this particular gentleman shared with me yesterday as well is he said they had a manufacturer and I think it was a Canadian manufacturer that

[00:42:18] had raised prices two weeks ago, but then were able to find new sources. That weren't impacted by the tariffs going to be impacted by the tariffs the same thing came back 10 days later and lowered the prices again. So two components with that. The first one is bravo that they, that they did that. Right. But the second part of it is you got to be thinking too about the impact it has on your distributor partners of the administrator.

[00:42:47] I mentioned this a few minutes ago, the administrative components about that. Right. Somebody is now going into a system and they're typing that new pricing. Right. Nine, 10, nine out of 10 times. It's some being done manually. And so there's a, there's a lot of impact for this. So anyways, you know, this, the next article, this, these things just all tie together. Right. So we've got tariffs. We've got some political instability on a handful of things.

[00:43:15] We've got geopolitical factors going on. So now we're talking about the, the, uh, survey that was done that said that, uh, the inflation could get to as high as 4%, right? So we're certainly not going to see any short-term interest rate cuts. Tom, any, any, uh, prognostication on what we're going to see this year? You did well last year with what your thoughts were. Yeah. Well, I know, I know. I'll wait and say what's going to happen. Pretty amazing. Well, I had said earlier, right.

[00:43:45] I'm, I had said earlier, no cut before September. If you remember, I think we bet a Mexican taco dinner. We did tacos on this one. Yeah. Um, you know, until you pay off the steak, we're not betting all this inflation, right? Times are tough, right? We have to go from steaks to tacos, but, um, but it's interesting. I'm not ready to change that yet, but I'm less confident in that prediction. I think we may see actually a cut sooner.

[00:44:14] Um, mainly because I think we are going to see a continued softening of the job market for a lot of reasons, right? I mean, there's certainly a lot of cuts that are happening. There's a lot of companies hesitant to hire. Can I use AI or all of those things? I think we're going to see a softening in the job market. I think we're going to see other factors other than just the inflationary one that I think will potentially result in some cuts.

[00:44:40] And let's face it, the administration wants some cuts on top of everything else that's here. So am I ready to change my September? I'm not ready to say yet, but I'm less confident in it than I was whenever we did that a month ago. So, well, the, the interesting take on that this article talked about soonest would be June. So I don't know. Brendan, any take on that yourself? Well, I mean, I think, uh, if, if we go back to the, to the question that Tom asked

[00:45:08] me about finances versus uncertainty, um, if we're leaning on the uncertainty being the X factor here, that's driving a lot of the instability and maybe even some of this inventory jumping. If Tom also believes that some of this uncertainty will be solved, then potentially, uh, some of the things like jobs come back, inventory levels out. Some of these things happen. I mean, the, the inventory article written by, uh, the folks over at MDM, I mean, their, their conclusion, and I tend to agree with it is people stocked up because they didn't

[00:45:38] know what was going to happen. Um, people are not hiring cause they don't know what's going to happen. Um, or they're letting people go. I mean, as well. So people are battening down the hatches because they are unsure of what's going to happen. Um, if that, if Tom is right and we're not talking about tariffs, maybe we're talking about something else, but if we're not talking about these Canadian and Mexican tariffs, um, maybe some of that, that, um, you know, influences that inflation rate. Um, but again, still so uncertain.

[00:46:07] I don't, I don't know how Tom is so confident, uh, but good for him, man. Yeah. And just so many things to share with that. Yeah. You really set him up for that. And he is biting. I'm just going to get ready to move on. There is a clip in there somewhere that we could get out of this. It says, Brendan saying, Tom is right. I heard him actually. So you got to be careful with what you say. You got to thank these guys. That's right. Right. That's good.

[00:46:36] Well, what is that? What is that website that you can make bets on poly market or whatever? Yeah. We need to put some of this stuff up on poly market. It's funny. That's good. So across the board, look, we, we look at, you know, inventories, you know, issues. We've got job market issues. We've got interest rate issues. We've got tariffs. It's a tough time. And it's, it's, um, Brent, Bob says that Tom is risk tolerant. Let me share.

[00:47:07] I'll tell you one day how I put my way through college and then you'll understand. Yeah. It, it, it, it includes a deck of cards and a stack of chips. That's right. Uh, but Bob, I will tell you as Tom's longtime business partner, Tom is that risk adverse or not risk, uh, tolerant, uh, that, that maybe, maybe when it's just talk, but not when it's money. Um, so lots going on, uh, lots to watch, lots for us to be paying attention to.

[00:47:37] Even there was a, another article that we posted that talks about, uh, and it goes into our manufacturing segment that's next, uh, for us today, but it talks about a Chinese factory output and so forth. And I think that we always see coming out of that is that there's a lot going on there because there's been so many orders coming in one. There's always an uptick coming back from Chinese new year, uh, that comes out of that, but we've seen this, uh, this, this factory change there because there's been so much ordering

[00:48:06] in advance. So a lot going on. And the other thing we did, we talked about last week that we didn't mention today, but it looks like this is going through too, about there being an, a, uh, a per port tax or fee that's going up to as much as a million and a half, $1.5 million per Chinese ship coming in. And so when you start thinking about that, I commented on this, I think on last week's show is it, you get a ship coming from China.

[00:48:33] It's going to probably hit San Diego, LA Long Beach Harbor, Oakland Harbor on its way to Seattle. If it didn't stop somewhere along the way. I mean, if you think about the costs that go with us now, container rates are down a little bit right now, uh, which is going to help with all of this, but a lot of impact going on there. So Tom, let's, uh, let's jump into, uh, and kind of move past that. There's a really the only article we need to catch in that manufacturing distribution segment

[00:49:01] segment was the, the Chinese factory output higher in February. And I kind of hit that real quick. Let's kind of move and just completely shift gears and go into our e-commerce and marketing. Cause we've spent so much time talking about, uh, about the economy and so forth today. Great comments from the people that are here with us live. I do want to hit real quick. If you're listening to the recorded podcast and not here with us live, uh, which we have a much larger audience that's growing each week.

[00:49:29] I think last week we were seven countries. We had the podcast downloaded and I think we have people live with us today from three or four countries that were coming in today, which is just great to hear. But if you're listening and you're, uh, wondering what we're referring to, we publish the newsletter every week. It's called around the horn and wholesale distribution manufacturing. Three fast ways to get it. Hello at lead smart tech.com. We'll send that out to you right away and get you signed up for that. If you're active on LinkedIn, that's a great way to view it.

[00:49:58] We just put that up onto as a newsletter on LinkedIn recently, just search around the horn, uh, in wholesale distribution podcast on LinkedIn. You'll see that you can follow that the newsletter. You can follow the show there. And of course, uh, each week the show is the recordings from the show are on the lead smart technology page. And then we have a website for the podcast, which is www.aroundthehornpod.com. So we want to make sure that those of you that are listening know what we're referring

[00:50:26] to because you don't see the newsletter that's up. So we're going to dive into e-commerce and our marketing segment of the newsletter. Tom, this is near and dear to your heart. So I'm going to ask you to drive this particular discussion. This is from martech.com. Brandon, you've got a great team behind you doing really. I've been impressed with the, the social content and the content in general coming out from ISA in general recently. And it wasn't that it was bad before.

[00:50:52] It just seems to be moving to a higher level, but this talks about MQL or marketing qualified leads is failing B2B marketing and what to use instead. So Tom, you want to fire off on that? Yeah. I mean, so what is an MQL, right? I guess in the tech world, it is a lead that somebody, you know, think about somebody coming to your website and downloading a white paper or downloading an article or maybe even attending a webinar.

[00:51:22] I think the MQL that I see a lot with our customers and wholesale distribution and manufacturing is they go to a trade show and they hand out, you know, maybe some candy or some swag at the booth and some, they go and scan badges. Right. And then that becomes quote unquote, a lead. Well, that would be a, an example of these quote unquote MQLs or marketing qualified leads. I think a lot of us in the marketing world or a lot of the, a lot of companies in the

[00:51:50] marketing world have judged themselves based on the volume of these quote unquote marketing qualified leads. Right. I mean, you've seen this right at shows where people are literally running out in the aisle with a scanner, a badge scanner, trying to scan as many badges as possible when in fact, you know, right. There's absolutely no intent or interest whatsoever for the products that are being, being sold there. So anyway, this is something that has been certainly in the tech world being discussed

[00:52:18] a lot over the last year or so is how do you measure your marketing investment? And is it based on the volume of these MQLs or is it based around the true opportunities and the true revenue generation that is being created from it? And it's, and I'm interested, Brendan and your take, because I'm seeing more and more, especially on distribution side, more and more distributors putting an emphasis on marketing

[00:52:47] than maybe I have in, in the past, but I'm seeing some of these sort of, I guess, habits, if you will, that have carried over from the tech world and from other industries about more MQL versus really looking at, okay, how are we driving actual sales and business and so forth. But I do think we're in the early stages and I do think there's a lot of opportunity to improve in that area. But anyway, interested in your take on it.

[00:53:17] Yeah. I mean, look, this is a, I should start this whole thing by saying I'm a person who believes in marketing, you know, is somebody who didn't work in marketing myself. And so my, my journey to where I am today didn't go through marketing, but I have a respect for it. And that said, it's super hard to justify, you know, spend and to understand what's valuable

[00:53:41] versus what's not, especially since marketing departments are one of the more capacity constrained departments that exist. I think everybody who is trying to say, well, what does marketing really do for us? How do they add to the bottom line? But by the way, marketing, I need you to do these 15 things by tomorrow morning, you know? And so I think that it's balancing that and understanding the role that they play. Um, but as far as I really liked this article too, because it's, it's something that we're

[00:54:10] studying at ISA is, is trying to understand, um, exactly what, what the value of a lead is. Um, you know, from a sales perspective, what's the value of what's been given to them? And then from a marketing perspective, is it a check the box exercise? Like you said, is it a, you know, I captured it. Um, it's, it's, I, you had told me to get 100 leads and here are the 100 leads. Um, you know, and I don't care whether you convert them, you know, I hope that you do.

[00:54:39] Uh, and you should, if you don't, it's sales fault, you know, like that's, I'm not saying that's what, what's going on in my, it might, it does. It does. So I think that what, what I like about what this exercise and what this article laid out is it's opening up a different way of looking at this, that really scraps this model and saying, what can we unify on, um, in sales and marketing to help us get better aligned

[00:55:03] or in finance or in all of these it, because it's all playing into this and everyone should be governed by that almighty revenue dollar. You know, that's my feeling is that your business model has to thrive. Um, and you know, you might do things that have a hard time, um, having a straight line to revenue. Um, but you have to at least all be aligned around that or else there will be that infighting and there will be that attribution matrix. That is a nightmare.

[00:55:32] Um, you know, so, um, yeah, I, I think it's, it is early stages and maybe the code hasn't been cracked, but it's encouraging to see that both technology and professionals are willing to explore a new way of doing this because I agree it's broken. That's a great, that was a great point. So there's a few things that go with this. I think that are important to kind of look at with this is one is in Tom was referring to, you know, tech world does so much more digital marketing, right?

[00:56:01] And there's a mix in wholesale distribution manufacturing of digital and in-person marketing that goes with that. So we've got events to Tom's point. We go through people scanning badges. We've got, you know, uh, distributors, you know, we have a lot of lead smart customers do, you know, barbecues and, and, and branch type events and so forth, but they're tracking and they're managing that. Well, what we know too now is that things, and this is another, it has become a van, the

[00:56:30] term vanity metric is really where this ties into, right? Is the days I don't even look anymore, you know, at the open rates of the newsletters that go out because it's just, you can't track these things well because the apples and the Googles of the world have kind of gotten in the way of that. And, um, through that standpoint, so we've got this vanity metric thing, but I do think Tom to, I'm going to push back on you just slightly, um, on this.

[00:56:56] I do think there is, the tech world does a lot more of it from the digital side, but I am very impressed with some of the, some of our customers in particular with some of the digital marketing that distributors are really starting to do. So I do think we could lump all of this together, but I think it's important, Kevin, though, to say that the problem is not the marketing, right? The problem is not doing the marketing.

[00:57:21] The problem is, is how are we measuring and evaluating the marketing that we're doing? And are we leveraging the marketing? Right. Yeah. So, so great point. So I think what this really boils down to, Tom, get ready. Cause I'm going to say something extremely insightful right now. You ready? This might be a two in one show. Yeah. And it's something that we talk about internally because we don't, we have some, maybe some

[00:57:47] titles related to that in our company of sales and marketing, but the mission, the mission that we need to have in, and this is, I'm going to see the soapbox. I'm going to stand on here for a second. The mission that wholesale distributors and manufacturers, cause that's our audience here, but I'll say businesses in general need to do is shift away from sales and marketing and have a go-to-market team or a revenue team.

[00:58:17] This article calls it go-to-market teams, right? Shift towards that revenue centric metric that says we are one in the same. And Brendan, you mentioned it earlier because the historic fight has been as long as I've been in my business career, which is long, long time, is marketing says sales sucks because we give them great leads and they don't close them, right? Sales says marketing sucks. The leads are no good because people took, you know, did Bob's point here is his comment

[00:58:47] here in the, in the notes about, you know, the more swag a person takes, the more qualified the lead. Well, jokingly, of course, but you know, sales doesn't consider the guy that took a, you know, a baseball cap as, as really a lead, right? Or how many times have I seen the same lead? Tom's team has developed within lead smart. We track and manage leads within our smart lead center within lead smart channel cloud.

[00:59:13] We track not just as a lead, but where did they come from and how many times have we seen them and what's been done with them? We track all that within a smart CRM. But I do believe in, again, soapboxing here for a moment is if you're still on Friday, March 7th at 10 a.m. Pacific time in 2025, looking at sales and marketing and not having a go-to-market or a revenue team, it's time to rethink.

[00:59:40] So question for you, Kevin, who leads the go-to-market team? Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the challenge is you have two alpha dogs. That's the beauty of this. Yeah. They believe so strongly, you know? That's the beauty of having a CRO and it doesn't need to be a C-level title. But if you have, and we're seeing more and more of this with distributors in particular, much more than manufacturers, that you're seeing a chief revenue officer and sales and marketing

[01:00:09] reports to that. And I think, and you don't need, you can call it a VP of revenue or a VP of growth, whatever that title is. But I believe in answer to your question, that's where we need to be to have a VP of sales and a VP of marketing. Unless they're reporting to a chief revenue officer, you're continuing the divide. And now is the time to be thinking about bringing those.

[01:00:37] We just, we just rolled out something this week to one of our customers where they have a marketing promotion team. So they're doing like, you know, specials and promotions around product lines, but the sales team had no visibility prior to what was being promoted. So we've tied it together now so that when marketing does a promotion around a certain product line or a price line, the sales team is actually alerted of customers or prospects that have purchased

[01:01:06] or expressed interest in those and are given cues and a roadmap to actually follow up in concert with what's going on with that. That's using marketing and sales together, right? And that's one of the most innovative, this is a large distributor and not far from you, actually, Brendan, in the HVAC and plumbing and electrical space. Probably one of the most innovative things I've seen done at a distributor in a long time. Really, really bringing those two pieces together.

[01:01:35] And the beauty of it is they're taking ERP data that's in the CRM and they're using our smart CRM to identify who those people are. Scheduling tasks for the salespeople and sales and marketing are literally in this case, and you can tell my passion about this topic is, in this instance, sales and marketing are lockstep. It's incredible. Within their organization. So there is the opportunity to do that. That's the dream. You know, that's the dream.

[01:02:03] You know you unlock multiplier value if you have that. One plus one equals five. And let's go back full circle and then we can move on, Kevin. Especially in this age of turbulence, right? And uncertainty related to prices and costs. What's one way that something you can do about stuff right now is be more efficient in your marketing. Go figure out how to drive more organic growth, right?

[01:02:28] These are all things that you can control versus focusing all the things that maybe we can't control or we don't have all the answers for. Well, that's a really great point. It makes me think, be careful to not plug our product too much. But that's like the revenue expander tool we have that illuminates and uses AI to go say, are we selling all of our product categories to our customer? Because now there might be a point in time where we can say, hey, look, you know what?

[01:02:57] Here's my Canadian made products and my Mexican made product and my Chinese made products. But I've got these other products from Southeast Asia. And here's all the customers that don't even buy those products. It's the technology. I think there's a lot of things that we can do that we can control. And then there's a lot of things, right, that we maybe can't control so much. Bravo. Good. Anyway. So moving through this segment, e-commerce and marketing, another great article. This is from the Search Engine Journal.

[01:03:27] Leveraging AI for buyer-centric B2B engagement. Ties right into this, right? There's so much more we can do now from attribution standpoints and so forth. AI is helping us with that. We just used a great example of that as well. I want to kind of push through this because Tom or Brendan, we have multiple other articles here about data-driven multi-channel prospecting. Any key points from either of you on either of those before we jump to technology?

[01:03:55] And we're going to watch a super cool video in a couple of minutes. So anything on either of those you want to hit before we move? I mean, I love super cool videos. So let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. Tom, are you cool with that? Let's jump into... Let's go do some super cool videos. Super cool videos. So we'll kind of start with Opera. The first, this is... I mean, we're moving on into our technology, cybersecurity, and AI segment. And we'll kind of probably close out today's show in this segment.

[01:04:24] But from PR Newswire, there's this really cool thing of a new browser that's AI-based agentic browsing. So to kind of preface that, right? So we think about agentic or AI agents. And we also have an article at the end here. And the last piece that we have in our newsletter each week is our... We call it a good read or a good listen, which is either an interesting web podcast or an article.

[01:04:54] And that has the founder of Salesforce.com, Mark Benioff, talking about the future of hiring and managing people, which is we're going to be using agents more and more. And an agent basically is a tool. Might be an agent in your... Using an LLM that is helping us do our job better, saving us time and doing those digitally instead of by using AI than having to do manual processes.

[01:05:22] So now we've taken AI agents and we've merged them in this setting with Opera, which is this new announcement of this week. And we've brought that together to our traditional web browsing. So, Tom, you want to just play a couple of snippets out of that? Do you have that one ready? Before we play it, right? Yeah, please. OpenAI released Operator, what, a couple weeks ago, three weeks ago. But it doesn't run directly in your browser.

[01:05:48] It runs in kind of a proprietary OpenAI browser, so to speak. This is, I believe, I haven't done this or downloaded, but I believe this is actually running directly in the Opera browser. So think about that. Now, there's the reason OpenAI didn't do that is because there's some security potential issues. I don't know what Opera is doing about that. But anyway, we can take a look here.

[01:06:12] And I shared this more about what's coming versus today, the world we're moving to. This is pretty cool. So what we're seeing here is a browser where somebody is kind of hard for me to see this. I'll pop it up a little bit. There we go.

[01:06:36] So their browser, right from a quick question and a prompt, which was what they wanting to buy some socks, it's taking them through an entire process. And now they're moving of where to buy it, where to look. And it's doing it for them. And it's kind of thinking ahead. Now they're moving to wanting to buy a Premier League soccer ticket. And it's expressed. Tell me, hit pause for just one second.

[01:07:01] What it's doing here, for those of you that are listening on the podcast, I would encourage you to just go search the Opera browser. AI would bring this right up for you to watch it if you're listening on the browser. But what they typed in is instead of us historically saying, hey, I want to go to a ball game, I need to go to an online ticket master or whatever it is.

[01:07:21] This is giving the example that says, I want two tickets to Newcastle's next Premier League game in April, that particular stadium. I want hospitality tickets are okay if regular tickets are not available. And it's saying exactly where they want to sit. You could say what they want to eat. So this is where we're going from a browser standpoint. So Tommy, what do you want to do?

[01:07:45] So the AI, as you'll see here, is driving the browser interaction versus me sitting there typing and doing it myself. Perfect. So those of you that are watching will be able to see this further, what it's doing. He told it, gave it an instruction of what the pricing should be. And it's moving through all of this, basically knowing what the person's expectations are.

[01:08:12] And then from there, it was like, next, we need to go get you a flight. So it says, can you find me a flight? Tickets from and so forth. So, Tom, we could probably stop with that because, you know, a large part of our audience can't see us. But the point is, we've talked about on this show a number of times about agents and what they're going to be able to accomplish for us.

[01:08:36] And, you know, I used the example a few weeks ago when we were talking is just about the idea of being able to say, I think we are talking with, on a LinkedIn post from my friend. Like Brendan knows him as well. Nick Pericle put a great post on about, you know, travel and the things that we're going to be able to do. And I look at this as a place with a browser like this. It's going to know my preferences.

[01:09:03] It's going to know all of the different agents that I have for travel, for entertainment, for different things. And in one browser, we're going to be able to even talk to it. And it's going to be able to go take all of these steps for us versus me going flights, cars, tickets. And I take all of those steps. And it will learn, obviously, you and learn what you care about and learn how you do things and go through here. Right.

[01:09:29] Again, it's trying to automate a lot of things that are maybe doesn't appear like it takes a lot of time, but could take a lot of time and a lot of those things that are there. Yeah. Nope. So very, my. Very cool stuff. So I think this is going to be neat. I'm surprised that we didn't see this first from Google for Chrome, but this could be actually running in Chrome fairly quickly. Yes. So good.

[01:09:58] So now talking about the future, Brendan, any thoughts about that browsing idea? I try to flip it to how it will impact. I mean, I see how it could impact me personally. You know, nice little personal assistant for me. Sure. But thinking about end users, what if they said, I'm looking for this part and it needs to have this and it needs to be available within two days?

[01:10:24] How does that algorithm going to spit back something that isn't just going to lead to, you know, I don't know, something like the negativity is going to say it's going to go to Amazon or Granger or something like that. And not to take anything away from those guys. But, you know, there are other attributes.

[01:10:45] And I wonder how the model learns, you know, and what you can put into that model that really gets to the heart of the value of the independent distributor or the local distributor, the specialty distributor. Because end users might use this to buy things. I mean, if they're using it to buy plane tickets or socks or whatever, why wouldn't they do it to buy machine tools? Well, I think that's a great, great point.

[01:11:09] And I think the key thing is, is if we take a step back to your comment and we talk about agents, is agents have to be built, right? And so agents will then know our preferences. So when we were building that, to your point, right, are purchasing my cutting tools or my electrical reels or whatever it might, wire reels or whatever it might be, is that with that, we would have built the agent that says only look at these resources, only look at this.

[01:11:37] And then we could also have an agent that's also scanning other prices. So what this would be doing is knowing us and learning about our preferences, right? The agent could literally have the contract that you have with XYZ distributor in the agent at that level. So I think this is going to be, and your point's very good. I think the key comes to this is knowing that this is all going to be tied to how we build agents.

[01:12:04] And the beauty of building agents is agents will coach you through how to build them best. So I have right now within chat GPT, they call it GPTs or agents. I have six or seven different agents for our marketing team, for sales coaching, literally can be dropping recordings of meetings in and transcripts of meetings in to get guided on coaching, internal training, personal research that I do.

[01:12:32] So as we build those, we're going to have organizational agents, we'll have personal agents that will tie to this. But I think this is where we're moving. And the key to your point, right, is who's going to be buying the ads on the other side of that to support it, right? Yeah, I think that, look, we've seen this all the way along, right? Our consumer behavior influences our business behavior. Sure.

[01:13:04] This is what's coming. This is not today. This is like another early stage, early adopter thing. But will it become mainstream? Yeah, it will become mainstream at some point in time here. They'll work through some of the kinks. And as it becomes mainstream, I think on the plus side, Brendan, I think you're right. I think there's, if you go at something a little bit more broadly, you could have run into what you just said is all of a sudden it ends up on Amazon and Granger.

[01:13:30] But if you specify more specifically in a B2B setting what you want it to do, and especially being able to go into gated e-commerce sites or logins or whatever, which it will be able to do, you'll actually be able to tune, if you will, the buying process actually even more efficiently over time if you tune it properly.

[01:13:51] The key, I think, is going to be the e-commerce sites and the websites that are part of this are going to have to be designed to be more friendly to accommodate and be compatible with these types of agents. So there's going to be quite a bit of technological change. But, yes, I mean, this will eventually get to this point. The Quinn, I'm not sure. I'm not willing to bet on the Quinn at this point. But it is interesting to see kind of where this is, where it's going.

[01:14:19] Well, and I think just to close out on that before we go talk about the robots that are going to be weeding my yard soon, is, you know, Stephan with DSG just made a comment earlier. This is also the new, he's the chief digital officer at DSG and good friend. And he said this is the direction that Alexa, the model that's in beta right now.

[01:14:45] The blue light on that digital assistant next to me on the other desk in my office is lighting up as I say that. But that's the direction they announced. I think it was either late last week or early this week. I think the digital assistant piece is going to go really great. What we were showing earlier is what we're looking at, you know, from a browser based component. I think what's going to be interesting to go along with Stephan's comment, though, is where will that crossover?

[01:15:13] And we talk about this a lot here on our show is that gray area we're at right now. And you mentioned in a moment ago, Tom, and the crossover of our personal life and our business life with digital assistants and so forth. I think they're just those those gray lines are just going to become it is just one place. Sure. We always have to be looking ahead right to how that's going to influence the experience that we want on the business side. So, Brendan, before we jump ahead here.

[01:15:42] What are your thoughts about robots? I mean, look, I've on a personal level, I have I have I'm not shy about talking about my my kids. I've got three little kids. I can use all the help I can get if the technology is there and they can change a diaper while I make dinner or do all of that. And I can do stuff. And great.

[01:16:06] As it relates to businesses, I think that we just my fear is that maybe companies aren't ready. Good companies, really great companies that have been the backbone of of U.S. manufacturing and have supported, you know, our end users so much and problem solved and have all this technical expertise and can can build relationships. They might not be ready to become agentic ready.

[01:16:35] And so they might have just invested in that shiny new e-com website. And now they're like, now you need to now you need to scrap that and start, you know, making sure that your API can handle that. And they're like, what's an API? You know, so I think I'm nervous about robots, agentic AI and all this. I do agree with Tom that it's coming. I just think that some will be lost.

[01:17:02] And I think ultimately our end users won't get the same level of support from this channel that they will get as of today. They might get things faster, might get things a little cheaper, but they won't get that technical expertise. And at least in my channel, that technical expertise is absolutely critical.

[01:17:22] I mean, we're talking about, you know, a very complex machining or specific use cases or even custom made tools that people that end users need. And those are really based on a relationship between two individuals.

[01:17:40] So I worry that the shiny object here might be something that either causes some people to just fall dreadfully behind or it makes people jump into deep water when they don't have their swimming zones. Yeah, that's very reasonable.

[01:17:57] Well, I mean, I'll just compare it with, you know, with our company in our day to day is, you know, we probably 70% of our customers and or prospects at LeadSmart have never had a dumb CRM in their business, let alone a smart CRM. Right. So I think your point's right on track. I think the world is going to move at the world's pace.

[01:18:21] You know, we have a lot of people that talk about, you know, what AI and other tools and that distributors are going to be out of business. I look at all of these technology changes as I don't look at, you know, XYZ distributor with Y number of locations is going to be gone.

[01:18:40] One, what I do look at is the guy down the street that was in a Quonset hut that is, you know, maybe a little gnat bothering you here and there, that if he jumps ahead of you with some of these tools that are available specifically, just, I mean, I think I made this comment a few weeks back. I said, you know, the guy in the Quonset hut that you drive by, that's got a little sign could tomorrow have a Starlink connection though.

[01:19:06] So his internet's never down when yours might be because of Cox or whoever it might be. And he pops up a Shopify store that's using AI tools and could start running circles around some of our more antiquated, your members, AD members, Hardy members, ISA or ASA members, whoever it might be. There are these opportunities. So I, well, I don't think some of the folks are going to go out of business.

[01:19:32] I think the business as they know it today may be different and it might not, they might not be the market leader that they had been for so long. Yeah. That's the risk there, but we're getting to this place where, and we've always thought, I, I, I, a lot older than you are, Brendan. So, uh, you know, you may or may not remember the Jetsons, but, uh, they had Rosie that cleaned their house. Right.

[01:19:57] So I said a while back, my wife who made a comment earlier on the show here is Darlene is a, as a marketing design and print company. I told her a while back, 18 to 24 months, we're going to have at least available to us. For under $20,000, somebody that can, or somebody, a humanoid robot that can clean the house better than we can. So this is an article from tech crunch, a video.

[01:20:24] Are you suggesting that by the end of say, 2026, you will have a robot in your house clean? I am not. I'm saying there was, I prefaced that a moment ago. I, in fact, I stopped and caught myself and said available. Send it, send it over to my house. I'll take it. Brendan, will you have one in, in, in, by the end of 2026? Uh, it depends on the price point. If they work. Yeah. If they work. If they work.

[01:20:49] I mean, look again, um, people are trying to do more with less than the pressures on profitability and, and time as a constraint, uh, are very, very real. And so where you can create an extra, not warm body, but body, uh, to help accomplish the mundane or the things that, that, um, don't require, or the things maybe you're outsourcing to another person. Um, you know, cleaning lady, uh, or something like that. Like, yeah, sure. People will go for it.

[01:21:18] You'll start doing the math and saying, I could buy this and then it'll be worth it in, in 12 months or in 16 months. I think that's a great point about, and this is personal and in business, the ROI will be looked at. But I think before we watch this video and to talk about this a little bit further, right? Every day things are getting better. And this happens to be a fig, uh, a video that we're going to show in a minute from figure with their helix.

[01:21:43] Uh, but there's multiple Chinese companies that have robots that are, uh, really, really amazing from the dexterity that they have, the things that they can do. We've got, um, what's it? Uh, Boston scientific. I think it's called here in the U S that's, I just watched a video yesterday, some crazy things that they're doing, but what I want to do in prefacing all of this is the idea that says, you know, we think about cleaning our house.

[01:22:10] Let's just use our homes as a model, but translate that over to, uh, within the business idea is the goal of technology should be to free us up to do better, more powerful things and improve our lives. So I'll use Brendan back to the discussion is if you could reduce some things that you and your wife need to do around the house to give you more quality time with your kids, because you don't have to go trim a hedge or whatever it might be.

[01:22:40] That's bettering our life, right? If we can look at, into a factory situation where we have a dangerous job, right? That, uh, whether it's, you know, fume hazards or heat or whatever it is, and we can have a humanoid robot doing that versus a human doing that. And we can use that same human to oversee and manage those activities.

[01:23:04] That's where we start really seeing the return on those investments is it's better and improves people's lives. So I think that's the thing that we want to be considering with, with these, both of these. So I know we're well over time here, but one thing that just popped into my head, and I think that there's, there's some, some robot bias too. I think if it was the, if the difference between let's, let's use the hedge trimming was not a robot, but a magic wand, everybody would go for it.

[01:23:32] But I think that there's the notion of a actual physical robot coming out and doing the thing that a human could do. I think that that makes you think of other things. It makes you think of the person that might've had that job or the satisfaction of getting a job done yourself. Whereas you wait for that magic wand, everybody takes that, right? Great, great point. Tom, let's play this quickly.

[01:23:54] This is a, for those listening and not watching, this is a video of two humanoid robots in a kitchen and the sound will kind of tell us what's going on. But imagine this in a manufacturing plant or distributor warehouse. Okay. I'm going to turn something new. Even though this is the very first time that you've ever seen these items, you use your new key with second.

[01:24:24] And track reasons for where you think they belong. See? And then work together to put them away. Does that sound good? Tom, can you hit pause real quick? So it's a little hard to hear, so I'm going to kind of recap this. So this was a gentleman that walked into a kitchen, crossed a counter from him with a refrigerator next to him, next to one of these humanoid robots. There's two of them there. He sets down a bag of groceries and he asks both of the robots.

[01:24:54] And I think the critical factor is this is he asks them to work together, right? So there's agents and AI within both of them that are able to, those agents are able to communicate. And he wants them to sort what's in the bag of groceries. So we have a little bin that can be used. We have a fruit bowl and we have a refrigerator. And on the counter, we have cookies. We have an apple and some other produce. And I think a thing of ketchup. So I wanted to kind of preface where this is going.

[01:25:24] Tom, why don't you hit it again? I've turned off the sound because the sound is not really... Maybe you want to describe it a little bit, what's going on here? Yeah. I mean, so they're basically looking at the items that are on the table. And then they're trying to identify, are they going to go in the refrigerator? Are they going to go into a drawer? You know, where they're going. Obviously, they're not moving at warp speed through this process.

[01:25:48] But again, they're using the intelligence and the sort of multimodal, whether it's touch or visual or whatever, to go through the process. You'll notice there they just handed, one just handed something to another one because it needed to go in the refrigerator. Yep. And the other one is putting it in the face there. So I think you get the idea, right?

[01:26:10] Is basically they're learning, they're taking the steps that they need to do, again, without a whole heck of a lot of training, right? They didn't have to be trained on how to do this. They're using their AI, quote, on knowledge to be able to run that through. So this is good. So basically, you know, to Brendan's point, we're kind of getting short on time. So we're going to cut to the chase on this.

[01:26:36] Imagine, though, what we're seeing here is and Tom, you made a great point, right? About, well, they're not moving real fast. Does it matter? Because you're sitting in the sun by the pool, right? While this is happening. No, I think it does matter, actually. And I think I do. And I think, look, we don't, your point about bias, Brendan, is, I think, spot on.

[01:27:00] I think people are very, if you said, if you could just wave a magic wand and everything was put away, that's one thing. But having these things that are, you know, at least appearing part human and how they operate, the speed of which they operate, the how they handle things, all of that is going to be a very, very big part of this. It's way more so than the actual actions that they actually do.

[01:27:28] I think there's fascination and people nerd out on it. They're like, I can't believe it can be done. I can't believe I can be done. The other side of this is that someone's like, I could do that faster. It's the same reason why I'm sitting in my living room, you know, reading or something like that. And I watch my Roomba come by and I'm like, it's not doing that good of a job vacuuming. I can do a better job. It's getting stuck in a corner and it's missing that little piece. You know, I think we analyze our robots and try to compare them to what we could do.

[01:27:55] And until they can do everything better than us, I think we won't accept them fully. So we're going to close on that for this topic here is a very valid point about we have a, it's a 2x the cost of a Roomba that my wife found a while back that mops and does all kinds of other stuff.

[01:28:18] And, but what we're missing with all of this, and if we were to make that comparison is there's no sensors, there's no vision and there's no AI, right? There's, I shouldn't say there's no sensors. There's sensors in a Roomba. But what we're talking about here is AI where these devices are talking to each other. These, I'm going to call them devices versus humanoid robots.

[01:28:39] It's because, and I, frankly, I, I would rather have not have them look like a person is it makes, gives me a little bit of the EBGBs. And some of them don't, but it's a, it's, it's something that can go. And this is, I think important as we go back to talk about manufacturing and distribution, right? When these things have a carbon monoxide sensor in them and they have a fire sensor in them and they have moisture sensors in them. And they have the ability to have vision to see what's going on.

[01:29:09] And they use all of these AI tools. I think these, these pieces are going to revolutionize us, our lives. What I shared with, with Darlene about this recently was, and she said, well, I could never do a better job than I could. If it has a sensor in its eyes that can sense dust that we don't even know is there, or it can find mold in our house that we would have never known about. Big, big difference in what we can do. So we share these things on the show, not to say it's, you have to do it tomorrow.

[01:29:39] We talk about it because of what's coming and where the opportunities could lie with it. So the last piece we wanted to talk about in this segment is there's a great article from Cybersecurity Dive that we covered in this, this week is cyber attacks targeting IT vendors. It's intensifying. And there's a point that I wanted to make about this.

[01:29:58] And Tom, you may want to add to this is we see this every day in our business at LeadSmart is that there's, there's a company that we bump into in some deals here and there that has a, that serves the manufacturing distribution market with a CRM and a BI tool. And they just came out of having, you know, almost a month of their users not being able to log into their system.

[01:30:23] Surprised none of the news covered this, but there, some of their customers came to us is that they underwent a cyber attack. They had horrible communication distributors and manufacturers using their system didn't know where their data was and if it was secure or not. And they couldn't access any of the tool that they had paid for. The reason I shared this today is I, and I really want to share this with our audiences. There's more to be thinking about with cybersecurity than just your data security internally.

[01:30:53] It's who are your vendors and what are your vendors doing with your data and what are they doing to protect your data and their business to ensure that they've got a lot of uptime. So that's all I kind of wanted to hit with that. So let's kind of wind down, Brendan, before we close out for today. I think Brendan has to leave. So can you give us 30 seconds to close out and give us the reminders of the show? Sure. So first, thanks for having me, guys.

[01:31:19] And just you need to, you have too many awesome articles to discuss. And there's too many interesting things for us to discuss. We could have talked for another couple of hours. But thank you very much for having me. The show in April, again, this is with everything that's going on. It's March 31st, April 2nd in Nashville. With everything that's going on, all this stuff we're talking about, you need to stay close to the people in your industry. You need to be talking to them as often as you possibly can.

[01:31:47] And so if you haven't seen them in six months since the last show that you saw them at, go and see them again. It's worth it. So we still have a few booths available for your manufacturers out there and distributors. You know, we have got plenty of spots. So IMRs and service providers, if you'd like to get in front of our audience, service providers, this is a great opportunity. We still have some good sponsorships available. Please reach out directly to me and I'll help triage it to the right person on my team.

[01:32:15] But very excited about this. So closing with that, the one thing we missed earlier, probably the most important part of this, isapartners.org, correct? Isapartners.org, that's correct. And then if you're not connected with or following Brendan on LinkedIn, Brendan Breen, B-R-E-E-N, should certainly want to do that. Great team behind him. Can't wait to see you. Also, if you're a regular listener, we're getting ready to do another session that'll just be one-on-one and not about the news that will be coming up.

[01:32:45] And so we'll alert everybody to that with Brendan. We're going to do a deeper dive into ISA and the show. So we'll talk about that, but I'll see you in less than a month and we'll look forward to that. And thanks for being with us. Everybody, thanks for joining us today. We wish you a wonderful weekend. Be kind, be safe, and do good things. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye. We hope you enjoyed today's episode and our guests.

[01:33:13] Each week, we try our best to dig into the topics that are impacting your business. So please reach out to us and let us know how you think we can make the show better or topics you'd like for us to tackle or talk about more often and even guests you'd like to see join us. We're looking forward to bringing you next week's session and hope that until then, you stay safe, stay focused, and do great things.

[01:33:36] If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review to help others in wholesale distribution get access to the conversation. And finally, please check out our sponsor, LeadSmart Technologies and their manufacturing and wholesale distribution industry CRM, customer intelligence, and channel collaboration platform. That's LeadSmart Technologies at LeadSmartTech.com.