Tariffs, Trade Wars, and the Rise of Made-in-America.

[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. Are you driving a car? That's all that I'm able to do for my dancing today. That's a weak excuse. Yeah, I know. It's pretty bad. If you're here, I'm glad the show is going on even though you're a bit under the weather.

[00:00:50] I am, I'm pathetic and a bad partner for you on this. Last week I was stuck on a plane. Today I have the flu. But we're here, right? We're here. We're going to get through it. We'll get through it. My lovely wife has got a handful of cough drops and she's got some tea for me and I'm going to get through today.

[00:01:14] Another light, yeah, as Bob says here, good morning, Bob. Another week of just light news, nothing really going on. So I'm sure we can get through this A to B. Hey, Tom, before we even dive in too far here, you're always ahead of me on getting stuff researched and done. Bob sent us both a couple of notes this week on stuff and I got to apologize. Bob Britton, thank you for that. I did not get through those, but I'm going to try and review through that stuff.

[00:01:42] I'm grateful for when we have people that join us regularly on the show that share ideas and articles and thoughts with us. And I just wanted to shout out and thank Bob for that. And I will get through those because I know they're meaningful. So yeah, no, there's one in particular that I thought was a very, very good summary of the overall strategy. So yes, I agree. Thank you, Bob, for those. And anybody coming, it really helps. That was that. Yeah, that was also my pitch for send us articles, send us thoughts, send us ideas.

[00:02:09] If you have them, you can send Bob did it through LinkedIn, which is a great method. He just sent us a message to both Tom and I. That's great. But the other part of it is you can email us anytime at hello at lead smart tech dot com and we'll get those. There we go. Well, you've got the mute button like I got the mouse is over the mute button. Yeah, there will. We'll have a few of those today.

[00:02:34] So, hey, let's there's just a few things going on in the world right now that we're here to talk about as we do each week. So, Tom, let me kind of hit that hit the highlights of our of our housekeeping, as we call it here. So I'm Kevin Brown. I'm here with my lifelong friend and business partner, Tom Burton. Excited to be here with you today is it's been a great week, even though I'm fighting something a little bit of a bug off.

[00:02:59] We've had a great business week as well. And we get together every Friday morning, as we say, unless someone is on an airplane in the hospital or on a planned vacation. And last week, as we were able to do it, as I stepped off an airplane and we still did our show from John Wayne Airport here in Orange County, California. But we get together. We discuss the news of the week. But what we do with that news of the week is we discuss how it relates to wholesale distribution and manufacturing.

[00:03:27] That's the audience that Tom and I serve in our company, Lead Smart Technologies. And so that is what we try and pull together. So what we do is we publish a newsletter. If you don't get that newsletter and you'd like to, we'd love to send it to you right now about I think it's about 10,500 or so people get it each week.

[00:03:44] And that newsletter goes out early Friday morning and we cover things like mergers and acquisitions and sales and marketing and AI and technology and cybersecurity and the economy, supply chain, all the different things that go on. But what we focus on is what does that mean to wholesale distributors and manufacturers. And we bring great guests with us on a regular basis. We have a loyal audience that joins us live on LinkedIn and sometimes YouTube or Facebook Live, which is where we're live at.

[00:04:12] But then later in the day, all of this information gets edited and organized and put together by our editor and producer John and up to the pod cloud it goes, so to speak. So if you're listening on the podcast, you will not be seeing the newsletter that everybody else will be seeing. It's live with us or watching the recording on YouTube Live, Facebook Live or LinkedIn Live. But you can get that newsletter. Three simple ways to do it. You can send us an email at hello at lead smart tech dot com and we'll get that right out to you.

[00:04:42] If you're active on LinkedIn, just search around the horn and wholesale distribution newsletter and that'll pop up for you as well. There's also a page for the show there and you can follow and like that as well on any of the platforms. But on LinkedIn, you could request it. And then we have a website for the podcast as well. It's called around the horn pod dot com. So www dot around the horn pod dot com. You can see past episodes subscribe to the newsletter subscribe to the podcast on any of the formats from there as well. So, again, we do this each week.

[00:05:11] We couldn't do it without the sponsorship of the company that Tom and I work for. Lead smart technologies is a quick little plug for us is what we do at lead smart as we help wholesale distributors and manufacturers gain deep insights into their customers, their team and their overall business doing that in a single platform. We bring siloed or what sometimes we call data that needs to be corralled.

[00:05:33] We bring it into one central location data from ERP system, marketing automation, data lakes, data warehouses, e-commerce systems. We bring that all into a central platform where we use AI powered tools to uncover opportunities for growth and even some potential risks.

[00:05:50] We do that in a way that's extremely cost effective and quick to implement and very, very quick return on investment that you're on the phone earlier in the week with a customer that is literally planning right now to get around two to three hundred times return on investment, probably in this first six months of using the system. So some great opportunities there.

[00:06:13] If your business is looking to digitally transform, use artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies to help your business grow and serve your customers better. We would love to talk with you. So I get it all there, Tom. You good. Are you worn out? Do you need to go take it? I got to go to bed now. Yeah, no. And hey, you know, good news. We we signed another very large marquee distributor this morning to lead smart.

[00:06:38] And what's cool is I'm not seeing any slowdown or or mindset of slowdown. In fact, I would say that the the speed of which we're seeing companies at least look at how they're going to incorporate technology and the things we do at lead smart in the business has picked up in the last even the last 45 days. So to me, I think that's really good sign.

[00:07:01] And I think people are looking at, hey, what are things I can do something about versus entirely getting caught up in all the things that maybe are are less. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And, you know, so yeah. Yahoo for us every time we sign it. You know, we send a lot of customers along the way each week, but sometimes they're they're large. This will have an announcement about this one shortly. But yeah, this is a large wholesale wholesale distributor.

[00:07:28] And but what's interesting, it makes me think about as you say that really quick is before we dive into the news is that, you know, we had a board meeting last month and the chairman of the board of our company was kind of I was showing some forecasts of some numbers and you were a little cautious on some of them to start with. And he brought some things up related. Yeah. But what you know, what about all that's going on and the economy and the things like that?

[00:07:49] And I thought a couple of things went on with that was in that discussion, because, you know, I'm always the bullish one and you and the rest of the board are the ones that kind of wrangle me and and slow me down a little bit. But but I'm going to bust these numbers out this year, like I was telling you guys. But I think what it is, it is intriguing to see that there is no slowdown as we look at wholesale distributors and manufacturers that are looking to leverage technology. Our pipeline is growing significantly right now, which is great.

[00:08:18] But the interesting thing, though, and we have you and I haven't even spoken about this yet, but there's an uptick more in the first quarter of this year. With manufacturers that that doesn't suggest for one second, there's any slowdown with wholesale distributors that are that are looking to expand and grow with technology.

[00:08:39] But the uptick versus the I'll say versus the second half of last year, the first quarter of this year, there's a significant uptick with manufacturers in our pipeline. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. It's an interesting, interesting thing. So good for the manufacturers out there ready to roll. So, hey, you know, nothing much to talk about today. Nothing going on in the in the week. You want to kind of start us off in our economy and supply chain segment? Ah, it's just such a dull, boring. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing happening. Yeah.

[00:09:07] So I guess our first article this week is more around the stock market. Right. Which also had a very dull week and continuing to have a dull week. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess we don't need to recap everything. I think people know what happened during the week today from the zigzag and the big jump on, was it Wednesday? I believe it was. I haven't checked. Whiplash, not a zigzag. Yeah. A whiplash along the way.

[00:09:35] I think we're up a little bit today, which is good. You know, it's the thing I think it was also on Monday. I don't know if you remember. There was a quote unquote fake news announcement. Mm-hmm. That went out that said, you know, we're going to have a 90-day hiatus. And the market literally jumped up like, I think... Fake news. Fake news. Yeah. But before the fake news, the market was literally about 2,000 points, I'm pretty sure. Mm-hmm. And then once the fake news came out and went back down.

[00:10:05] And looking at some of the statistics on that, over $4 trillion of transactions took place in about 20 minutes. Wow. And that isn't from you or I or in our Schwab account or our E-Trade account making trades. Those are the quant, you know, computerized trading, all of those things that are going on.

[00:10:26] And I think we're seeing more than ever right now as you just look at these massive moves is the effect of computerized trading that exists on what, in fact, it is basically what drives the market and what Wall Street is. And having worked for a hedge fund in a previous life that did computerized trading, I have a little bit more insight into this than the average person.

[00:10:52] But it's pretty scary because a lot of these traders are not set up to handle this large amounts of volatility that are there. You know, you hear a lot about AI and is AI going to ruin the world and is it going to go rogue and all of that stuff. But there's a lot of potential impact with some of these massive computerized trading systems that are happening. Well, we'll comment on that about wondering how many of them are AI driven.

[00:11:19] And there's even, I think, less of a – they're all moving with AI, but they've been doing some advanced algorithm work for – I mean, Tom, how long ago was it that you worked on that project in Utah, I think it was? It was – Yeah, that's going on 10 years ago. 15 years? Oh, it was 15 years ago, maybe. Yeah, I was easily 10. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:41] So it's – not to get into this, but, right, these computer algorithms are based on basically momentum, right? So as the computer senses that there's a change or the algorithm changes a sense in momentum, whether it's up or down, right, they tend to react and then they build on that, right? Well, when you get these massive – right, what we clearly had is a straight up and vertical and then straight up back down.

[00:12:06] Or even on Wednesday when the announcement was, all of a sudden you're just seeing this high volatility momentum. It's not a gradual momentum, which is more typical along the way. And as a result, it can throw a lot of – there's just a whole lot of things that can happen. Right. I'm just looking sideways right now, Tom, just because I'm looking at one – my Apple stock app on my computer.

[00:12:31] Everything that I own except for Salesforce and a mutual fund – or an ETF, I'm sorry – are up. And the NASDAQ is up almost 1%. Dow is up almost a half a percent. And NYSE is just 0.2%. So S&P 500 is up 0.63% today.

[00:12:59] So nothing staggering, but at least they're green. I don't think the market temper tantrums are anywhere close to being – No, no. Yeah, Bob was saying the algorithms had a large part in driving the 1987 crash, agreed. And obviously the algorithms have gotten a lot more sophisticated and continue to get sophisticated. But, I mean, that's a lot of money-changing hands in a very, very short period of time. Yeah.

[00:13:25] So, you know, where we sit – let's talk a little bit about where we sit, and then we can dive in a little bit more, right? So we've got basically a 90-day pause right now, right? 90-day pause except for China. Mm-hmm. Right. And then, you know, I heard a great, great point this morning. And so this is – I want to kind of reference the articles we have. So we have an article here that we referenced from Reuters about U.S. stocks, dollar drop. These are from yesterday, by the way.

[00:13:53] So we try and kind of – for those of you, if you are with us for the first time today, we – we need like a real-time newsletter that can just dynamically keep up with all the – Well, you know, what's interesting is that Lili, who manages both the podcast for us on the front end and John Rahan, which is the back end, and Lili and I were just talking about trying to – not necessarily the newsletter,

[00:14:17] but maybe have a site on the LeadSmart website where we're putting up kind of some breaking news stuff as it goes throughout the week as well. We haven't figured out exactly how to do that, but it's at least in discussion. But this is an article from Reuters. These are from yesterday. But Tom and I always try – and I both try to catch up on the news of the morning as well. But there's – let's kind of take a look at this because the next article is from USA Today, and it says latest updated tariff charts. Why don't we look at those charts real quick, Tom, and kind of see where things are at right now.

[00:14:44] So this, if you're watching with us, it shows start of the day what the tariffs looked like as of the 9th. Today's the 11th, and then what they looked at like at the end of the day. So there was some adjustments down on some things as we look across the board there. And I think one of the big impacts through all of this, though, and we talked about it last week briefly, was this issue is – I think people were thinking about, okay, Canada, Mexico,

[00:15:16] before – why can I never – just I cannot remember what they called last Wednesday. Not Independence Day, but it was – Liberation Day. Liberation Day, right? I think going in, and as I had mentioned last week, I was at – in fact, thanks for – Bart Schwartz has mentioned howdy from Nashville. I was with – in fact, I think it was on Liberation Day that Bart and I were sitting down talking at the Industrial Supply Association event

[00:15:45] before the announcements were made. Bart works with manufacturers on partner strategies and so forth, and he's a good friend of the show and of mine. In fact, I have a call with him next week on some AI strategies in his business. But as we hit that big announcement of last Wednesday, most people, including most of the people that I talk to consistently about these topics that are wholesale distributors and manufacturers,

[00:16:16] were thinking, okay, we got Canada, we got Mexico. Big hit's going to be China. What's coming with China? I might be safe because I've moved a lot of my business to Vietnam or Laos or other parts of Southeast Asia. And then, boom, out of the box comes what was the – I can't remember the total number, but there's just about everybody. What's the – what is it, fifth or sixth on the list that you have in front of you there? The Christmas Islands, right?

[00:16:45] If you scroll down, just as we start off with that, Cocos Islands and, you know – And what's interesting about that, too, is I didn't understand that at first. Well, let me finish on the first point. The first point was people were not expecting – I think we're expecting something with Europe, the Canada-Mexico thing, then China, but boom to have basically every country in the world, right?

[00:17:11] The Ivory Coast, 21%, Curacao, 10%. And people thought that was just ridiculous, right? Of the – well, wait, you've got the opposite – the opposing party now mocking the president because there is an island that there's nothing on but penguins that's mentioned, right? Well, the idea behind that is – and it goes back to – you know, this particular person has been saying forever, right? Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico,

[00:17:42] because China's already been cuddling up to Mexico to move things to Mexico. But now when we talk about these, you know, Christmas Island as an example or Cocos Islands as it's saying on this list that we have on the screen here. And again, for any of you that are listening on the podcast and not the – and can't see our screen, you can catch the podcast, the recording on YouTube, Facebook Live or LinkedIn Live if you just go to the Lead Smart Technologies page on any of those.

[00:18:11] But the idea behind that was there's already a tariff on those locations. So if any of the – we'll call them heavy offenders – want to start moving items through those countries, there's a tariff there already, right? And it's just so funny, and I think this is – I know you've got a lot of deep thoughts on this, and I want to get to those. But I'll just pontificate for a second here. I think the most important thing that's going on with all of this

[00:18:39] is that everybody takes a step back and looks at what the administration wants to accomplish versus soundbites. If you're living with soundbites, it becomes very difficult. I don't say that to minimize what's going on with distributors and manufacturers right now that are trying to figure out – I mean, a box of latex gloves, a good example,

[00:19:04] going to be, what, 145% more expensive, right, if they're coming from China. Yeah, potentially. Yep. And so those are meaningful issues, right, especially if you're stuck. I mean, nobody wants to use force majeure in their contracts because the idea of using force majeure in something really – it's just there's such a negative connotation, and it's such a – it's just risky, right?

[00:19:32] There's no other way to put that. But people are going to be forced to do it. You think about just somebody as simple as somebody that supplies latex gloves to hospitals. That's going through a buying group or a purchasing organization, third party. There's a couple of hands in the pie, right? And now you go that you've more than doubled the cost of those to bring them in.

[00:19:59] And it's a really big struggle with all of this to look at it and say, well, wait a minute. I've got millions of dollars a month of latex gloves going to this buying cooperative for the hospital chain or whoever it might be, is really a difficult thing to go in and say, okay, now I have this one little thing in my contract that says what I can do. And there's people that are going to try and stop you from implementing force majeure as well.

[00:20:26] So I think there's a lot of issues that kind of go with that that people weren't expecting when these hit across the board. So Bob says here, right? Goal, as I understand it, is to put free market forces in the driver's seat for international trade. I think that's right. I would throw out the way to look at this is, one is, and I think, I want to put this best. I think there's a myopic view one can have of all of this, which is the quick news bites.

[00:20:57] Then there is the broad spectrum view that says, I don't know whether it's three-dimensional or four-dimensional or nine-dimensional, but this administration has proven, not just with the president, but the people surrounding him, that they have a very broad view and they're playing two or three moves ahead on all of this. And my view of this is that what they're looking to do is a series of things, right? That we're pretty much very clear. One was borders.

[00:21:25] Two is fentanyl, right? That was the first set of pressures, right? Now tariffs where we get a level playing field for that, you know, instead of being detrimental to the US, we have a balance of trade. And that will then support the tax cuts that are promised in the US. And the tax cuts will then support onshoring of manufacturing and building a stronger US-based economy.

[00:21:52] And I'm sure there's two or three others that I am not aware of or haven't even been hinted at yet that are available or that are planned out there that we haven't seen yet. But those are the basics of it. And when you see that that's what they want to accomplish, and these are like dominoes that have to fall in order, right? It's a better understanding of what's going on. So let's take that, what you're saying, and move into the next article,

[00:22:20] which is the US-China tariff battle, who will blink first, right? This is from IMPO magazine. And I was reading that article yesterday, and it really kind of caused me to think about a few things that I think would be worth touching on. And so, you know, what are we... Did I just come back in like five minutes? No, you know, that's you, right? That's not me. I'm sorry. I'm a one-minute guy. You're a five-minute guy. Okay, that might be true.

[00:22:50] I'm afraid of the comments that might be coming right now. Yeah, I know. It was like realizing that was probably not the smartest thing to say. But nonetheless, we'll move on. So the... I'm going to do another... You heard it here first, right? Thanks. I think in the next 90 days, all these countries we just showed, that big list or the majority of those countries, will have some quote of arrangement or negotiation. Yep. We will probably likely collect some tariffs to your point

[00:23:20] because that's going to help offset some of the tax bills at 10% or whatever. But we'll have some sort of updated agreement on the whole thing. So I don't think that... I know there's a lot of worries that in 90 days, we're going to be right back to the same place related to all of these countries. Even Europe, I believe, is continuously flying over to Washington this weekend to work some of these things out. So I think there's going to be... Is it going to be perfect? No. Is there going to be hiccups? Yes. But I think for the most part, it's going to...

[00:23:49] So then it comes down to the US and China, right? In the next 90 days or whatever. Yeah. And this article was talking about who was going to blink first. What I found interesting about the article is that China is probably, in some ways, obviously there's the imbalance, right? We're taking a lot more from them than we're giving to them. But China kind of knows how to weather the storm a little bit because they've lived it

[00:24:16] in the previous Trump administration, right? They live... They work through... They've come up with strategies and policies to get around some of these tariff things. They weren't as large as they are now. But, you know, can they weather the storm? Yeah. At least they probably believe they can to a degree. And so as it says here, who's going to blink first? I don't know who's going to blink first. I think you have two very stubborn and, you know, there's definitely ego

[00:24:46] and other things involved, right? And who is going to actually reach out and try and do this. But the question would be, what is the outcome we want to achieve with China, right? It's like people would say, well, we want to have... You know, they want to respect our trade rights. We want to be able to operate in China without, you know, without having to have oversight or being part of companies. The trade deficit shrinks. All of those things. We, you know, there's a lot of things that we would like to happen. But in reality,

[00:25:15] some of those things may improve. But really, and I think this comes back to what we were just talking about, if we could come out of all of this with China and move away from being some sort of, hey, we're going to cooperate economically to actually we have respect for each other as strategic competitive countries, right? That would really change the game because I think, and I think we've seen this with AI and DeepSeek. There was,

[00:25:44] there's not really ever been a respect for the competitive nature or capabilities of China and then DeepSeek comes around and we're like, oh crap, we got to take notice, right? On the AI front, they're a competitive. So I think a lot of this is a mindset shift between both countries that, hey, we're going to respect each other as competitors rather than trying to manipulate and figure out how we, you know, maybe cooperate economically

[00:26:16] around some of those things that are here. And I think that's probably the best outcome that we can look for. And if that happens over the next 90 days, then a lot of these other things that we just talked about will come into play, right? I think that was only about two minutes. Seven minutes and 43 seconds. That was not seven minutes. That was not seven minutes. Excuse me. Okay. You're right. That was good. So a couple things with that. There's a few comments

[00:26:46] I want to get to. But first is there's two things I caught up on this week. One is with this impasse, right, there is the military risk goes way up because if we can't come to this agreement, what the, the, the, I'm trying to remember how it was put. I heard this two or three times this week on some things I was listening to specifically I think on CNBC was, you know,

[00:27:15] historically there's been never, there's not been pressure amongst the US and China from a military standpoint because there is so much economic, economic activity between the two countries that it'd be crazy to be in any type of or even threatening real military things, right? And so with, until this is kind of sorted out, there is that risk and it's all about the South China Sea and they just, right, and there's all kinds of things going on between, I shouldn't say South China Sea

[00:27:44] but Taiwan and the South China Sea and so forth and then there was an announcement earlier this week that there was this new, huge, new strategic undersea oil find in the South China Sea. I haven't read the article fully that I've got it saved to read over the weekend but now that's going to be an issue that's going on there as well between those other nations there and we've made it clear the US has made it clear that there's a support for Taiwan and these things. So I think that's a, there's a geopolitical

[00:28:14] factor that is now there's a lot more tension until these things get solved. I think they have, they will get solved and what we're going to see out of this who blinks first thing is I think there is going to be a, I mean this is the way you know it just came to my mind Tom. I think this almost ties to like when you, and this will be interesting to see if this plays out, that it's almost like

[00:28:44] when we're trying to deal with the budgets right and the, the Republicans and the Democrats are fighting about the budget and you know it's the 11th hour and the US budget is going to go and social security checks aren't going to go out and what happens every single time right? It's midnight bewitching hour that they come to an agreement right? And I think there's a little bit of that going on now obviously this is a big you know a big playing field and a big factor that goes with this as well but I think that that's probably how this plays out and what we see is

[00:29:17] the, I'm just trying to get his name right, Xi Jinping and in China we'll be able to go back to all the Chinese and say we won, we crushed the Americans in this agreement and President Trump is going to be able to stand up and he's like America is first and make America great again and we've leveled the playing fields and we've, they both need that agreement to where they can both go say to their audiences, let's just call them that audiences that they want right? And then this potential

[00:29:46] military piece that goes with that is, is, you know, it goes back behind us and there's less of a concern of that at any point in time. So Scott Leith, Bob made great comments. Scott says their hand is weaker this time around which really kind of ties to, Scott's, Scott fits into one of the smartest guys I know and I know a lot of people category and Tom, you're, you're in that group as well but,

[00:30:16] but I've known Scott for 25 plus years and he's just a sharp dude. He's a finance whiz as well and we've done business together over the years and he's a good friend but that ties into what Bob was saying as well. He says U.S. imports about 300 more percent more from China than they import for us. So, as Secretary Besson said, if they raise tariffs, it matters far less. This is more than tariffs though, it's about IP infringement, labor arbitrage and many other things they've been doing for the past 50 years which is a great point Bob that we haven't

[00:30:46] discussed yet and I saw, I don't know if it was just happened this week or was according from the past but Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank who's interesting enough Canadian but he was talking about the IP infringement and you make something in the U.S., you go spend the money, you get things, all of your molds or whatever it is built and you start manufacturing and it turns out that the same plant

[00:31:16] that you're manufacturing, you're paying to build your molds and you're manufacturing and this was one of his comments in this clip that I saw they make your product in those molds from 9 to 5 and from 5 to 9 the next morning they've knocked off your molds and you might even be using your same name and are getting into the market at 30-40% less. So the IP

[00:31:45] infringement, just even you Tom, you were talking about DeepSeek as well. And DeepSeek in the Chinese LLMs could care less about copyright infringement or where the data is coming from where you have other countries where the LLMs are based and they're paying attention to those copyright infringement and IP and other things that go with that. So there's a deeper set of things that are going on here. That's my point. Yeah, that was my point.

[00:32:16] Right. And there's a perfect world of what we want, but we're not going to get the perfect world. No. Right. So we got to be looking for something realistic. And I think realistically, if the mindset can, if they're willing to shift the mindset that says, okay, we'll at least look at working as a competitive something versus trying to cheat some of the things that are happening here, as we just talked about, I think that would go a long way. Whether or not that could happen, don't know, but that would go a long way.

[00:32:47] So here's a whole new wrinkle of a comment that just came in. Do you see Scott's comment there? The second one? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it said that the military risk could, actually be the president's real end game, dramatically weaken them like Reagan did with the USSR, right? Because they can't, I mean, China can, look, we know that they can prop up the currency. We know that they can back stop the particular manufacturing operations

[00:33:17] that they choose to, but not for the long haul, right? And if you go back and look at this, you know, Bob's comment earlier about 300% more that the US brings in here, if we find other sources for those things, right? It's, you know, there is no long game for China in this. They have to get this taken care of. And yeah, are we going to feel uncomfortable with our Amazon purchases? You know, I just literally, it's funny. It's because it's sitting right here next to me.

[00:33:46] I bought this little device for 30 bucks on Amazon the other day. it's a effect. I should buy you one and send it to you or when I see you next. It's a USB-C and regular USB converter, but it replaces the bigger, bulkier MacBook charger. And you can charge multiple USB-Cs from it. Does that matter? It does because I bought it for 29 bucks the other day and this morning Anchor, A-N-K-E-R, which is one of my favorite brands, announced that

[00:34:16] they're starting their Amazon price increase this week. Okay. So I think we're going to see those. It's going to be a little uncomfortable for us for a bit, but I think these things all fall into place. Well, yeah, like it said, I think whether the China situation resolved is not a right word, but starts to have some movement in the next 90 days, I think that would be a big win. And I think all the other countries were not going to have quite

[00:34:46] the same drama that we've had leading up to this week. You know, and it's interesting, I don't want to put a lot of emphasis on things that neither one of us know a lot about, but I think Bob's comment here, it is into play that we haven't thought about much before. He said, you know, and this is just a U.S.-China thing, and the tariff picture is much more bigger, but this is where the big risk is, right? He said, beat them now economically or beat them later militarily. I'd prefer the former

[00:35:16] not the latter. I just don't think we've talked a lot about the military aspect, and I think that's being downplayed quite a bit, but there is that factor. I think that's an element to it for sure. It's not simple, right? If it was simple, it would have gotten resolved a long time ago. Yeah, or we wouldn't be in this place. But I think from, again, put as American companies, right, and I'm seeing this already, even some conversations I'm having, saying, we will put more manufacturing in the U.S. It will be competitive because

[00:35:46] we'll leverage AI, robotics, things like that. The things that really made it uncompetitive, which was wages and cost of people, get replaced when you automate and use robotics and AI. So we will see more manufacturing and some of these things happening closer to home. Well, here's a takeaway, and I just heard this this morning, and I think we've been tap-danced around a little bit last week, and I commented about it a little bit, but didn't know the numbers. I heard this morning, this was

[00:36:17] on CNBC, and it was, the comment was that 10% tariff across the board is the new zero, right? So, okay, there's no... Meaning the zero tax? Zero, zero, yes, exactly, zero tariff. 10% tariffs offset a 0% income tax from people. So that's what's needed for the tax cut, let's just say not zero taxes, the tax cut plan,

[00:36:46] the Trump administration, because it's not just getting to zero for anybody under $150,000, it's other levels and it's corporate tax adjustments. That requires $400 billion in revenue. So 10% tariffs across the board covers that amount of money. We should have just put all our money in the stock market before Trump announced the 90-day thing and we could have made that $400 billion right there. You know?

[00:37:16] No risk there, huh? Yeah, and we might be insider trading or whatever, but nonetheless... Well, I just think it's an interesting number, especially when you play some of this back, right? And this is... I'm just going to go back and, you know, it's interesting is, you know, we've known each other since kindergarten so we have a lot of the same friends from middle school and high school and I'm watching on social media, specifically Facebook, people that, I mean,

[00:37:46] one buddy of ours that is a highly respected surgeon in Southern California here, chief of staff at this hospital previously and the vitriol, venom, I mean, the stuff that leaves some of these people that are highly educated and people that are just... And my point is, and it's not to throw rocks at anybody, it's just look big picture. And I talk about this with my wife,

[00:38:16] like, I'm not a political person at all. I can look beyond an individual and look big picture. I have these conversations with my wife. I said, let's look at the big picture of what is trying to be accomplished versus the individual that you don't like that's trying to do something. You have to scrutinize the strategy versus scrutinize the individual. individual. And the strategy may

[00:38:45] be created by or driven by an individual, but still, at the end of the day, it's the strategy that you maybe have issues with, or the strategy is causing whatever it's going to cause, good or bad, but evaluate the strategy, scrutinize the strategy, don't scrutinize the individual. this administration, I think, and I said this two or three weeks ago, this administration, I believe, is going to be one of

[00:39:15] the most remembered administrations in the U.S., either here or zero. I agree. I think this one is going to stand out regardless. But what's interesting is, and we'll close out on this, and let's go talk about inflation here in just a second, but close out on this related to tariffs and so forth, but it ties into the CPI discussion and so forth, with all of this, is that, again, going back to look at the

[00:39:44] strategy of all of the components versus any one action in any one event of these things, and looking at the big picture of what could come out of this, and forget about the who, right? I don't like the words and some of the things that are coming out of the administration, but look at what they're looking to get done across the board. So, that's it. Anyways, want to jump ahead and talk about

[00:40:14] inflation? I know you had some thoughts. This was an article from CNBC about inflation easing in March, slightly to 2.4, lower than expected. I know you have some thoughts on this, Tom, and I want to get to that, but I'm going to throw this out to you. I want your thoughts on this as well because we've had some pretty lengthy discussions over the last few years on this show. What number is today? What number show is this? 137. Man, it's a long time, dude.

[00:40:45] Just another week. You oversee all the finances in our company. I just look at the books at the end of the month. Are we sending all these people checks or something to come every week and hang out with us? It's really nice of them. No, I'm just kidding. We're appreciative of the folks that come every week. I can't believe we've been doing this this long. We've had a lot of discussions about inflation and interest rates. That's the component of this

[00:41:16] administration's goals that we didn't talk about was interest rates. I won't bring up the bet we had last year about interest rates, but let's get talking about inflation and interest rates as we jump ahead. I think there's two the CPI came out lower and the PPI came out today and it was lower. It's like it's gotten lost in the quicksand of the news. You've heard almost nothing about it. Yet, without all this other

[00:41:46] stuff, this would have been the biggest news of the month. Last month there was a spike in inflation. This month, both on the producer price index and the consumer price index, there's a reduction in inflation. All of these numbers are all kind of suspect to me because they all tend to change and move around. We'll get the adjustment later, right? We'll get the adjustment later, but nonetheless, it's like from a news perspective, it was almost like, huh, what? It didn't even,

[00:42:15] no one seemed to really care. Also, interestingly enough, is you've seen the bond market significantly, the rates increase significantly over the course of the week, which is counterintuitive what you would think if you were seeing inflation coming down. Is that safe haven though people are running to? Well, no, if you'd see safe haven, you'd see rates coming down. That's true, I guess, yeah. So, as more people buy and the price increases, the rates go down. So,

[00:42:45] which we are seeing it go up, which can mean a few different things. It also could mean that people are taking their money out of the U.S. and going into other places for those things that are there. But, anyway, long story short, I do think I had said earlier that I didn't think we'd see a rate cut until September. I am going to officially change my position on that. I think we will see a rate cut this summer, maybe two. And, I think that, especially, we have a

[00:43:15] cheeseburger or a tacos bet? Tacos, if I'm not mistaken. I don't remember, what was the wager? It was taco or something like that. And I agree with Stephen here, the inflation is not under control for sure. It's not for sure. But, if we continue to see some of this, and I think, again, depending on how this whole tariff and market thing plays out, I think we will see a cut this summer. Actually, materialize nothing else to add a little turbo

[00:43:44] charge into the mix and, you know, hopefully, going back to the stock market, in theory, we could see ourselves back to, you know, it's not crazy to get back to, say, 6,000 on the S&P by the end of the year, which is kind of where we started, for all intents and purposes. So, anyway, 5,337, as the moment we speak, it's up 1.3 today. Right. Right.

[00:44:14] But I think, anyway, there's a lot of variables in there. I think we could get back to kind of where we started when everything gets through here. So, I appreciate all these comments coming in today. So, I mean, there is the potential, right? And this is, I think this is the goal, right? What will be interesting is, the Fed continues, the Powell keeps saying over and over and over again that we're just only watching the number, we're only watching the number. But just

[00:44:44] like there was White House pressure last year coming into the election to pressure there to cut rates, but the numbers were appropriate to do it. I think where we're at this year is now we've got pressure from administration that says, you know, regardless of what the numbers are looking like, we need rates lower because if, I mean, imagine the scenario that I think could, and I think it's a reasonable likelihood we

[00:45:14] could see all of this, right, is we are onshoring tons and tons of manufacturing, we are offsetting tax cuts because of balanced tariffs, maybe not what they're looking like today, but balanced tariffs, right? There's major tax cuts specifically to the middle class, there's corporate tax cuts that makes it, there's great incentives to do business in the U.S., which means lots and lots of other countries are going to want to open factories here,

[00:45:43] and we'll provide the incentives to do that, and the interest rates are lower, they're not going to go back to, you know, you're not going to probably find a 2% mortgage again, but if we get down in the low, in the 4s again, oh, it also reduces the cost of our debt, right, that's the biggest thing. Well, that's a great point as well. Right, that's why we need the bond market to drop, which is why, again, part of the squeeze that was happening earlier, right, that can save a lot, a lot of dollars

[00:46:13] on our, and I think we have a big refinance on the debt coming up here. It is, within the next six months. Yeah, within the next six months, yes. So, that makes a gigantic difference. Sorry, I'm alive. All right. This cough is brutal. But, I mean, the, I guess, so, I'm going to throw some stones at the statement if you disagree with this.

[00:46:44] I go back to the folks that are, how do I put this best? I'm thinking about, right, some of the business people and major hedge fund managers and stuff like that that were supportive of everything going on until all of a sudden now they've watched what's happened in the stock market this week and are kind of turning their back on the administration. Then I think about my comment earlier today about smart people out there that, you know,

[00:47:14] I'm watching that are just gobbling up headlines and clickbait without looking at big picture with all of this. And I'm kind of looking at both of those, but I'm really thinking is like just imagine the potential of that state where all of these things fall in the line and what really global economy will look like not just U.S. economy because, you know, a Swedish company opening up a factory in the U.S.

[00:47:44] is wonderful for them as well. They'll continue to do their manufacturing in Sweden and they'll do more manufacturing and more business here. And it's just this balancing act that could be there. But I just think you've got to look at the big picture and then decide where you're going to cast your bet. And I think if you were to look ahead realistically, where could we realistically be at the end of the year? Between now and the end of the year? Ideally,

[00:48:14] we have rates down. Ideally, we do have some deregulation, some tax cuts, and maybe those are being offset by tariffs. We have maybe a more, as I said earlier, strategic competitive relationship with China versus the current environment that has existed for many years and they're respecting, at least improving the respect of how they treat our IP and the trade deficit between them. It's

[00:48:43] possible to have a lot of these things, which is essentially what was voted for. Right. What people didn't know exactly what was voted for, right? What people and myself included, I was talking to my wife about this, it's like, why didn't I see this coming? To change something is disruptive. It's going to create disruption and it wasn't just going to be a wave of a wand and everything is going to go back to the other thing. But anyway, I think there's a chance, there's also a chance that the

[00:49:13] whole thing could go to hell. This is hero or zero moment, right? Right. It's hero or zero. But you know what's funny? I'm going to take a personal view of this or maybe a self-serving thought of this. We were messaging this morning about our business. We're the two co-founders of the company that sponsors our show. And we've hit some milestones in our company in the last few months,

[00:49:44] Q4 of last year and a handful of things just recently. And there were some tough times along the way, right? We went without for a while. We wrote some checks we weren't expecting to have to write to get to the place that we're at and the growth that we're experiencing within our business. This country and many other countries are full of entrepreneurs

[00:50:13] that have taken risks, made sacrifices in the short term to get long-term benefits. And I think what happens is when you have a business person that was elected in a landslide election, I mean, I'm still astounded how broad sweeping the election was. This is what the country has said, we want a businessman versus a politician. And businessmen go in and say, it might be painful to get to where we want to get to, so buckle

[00:50:43] up and come along with me. Yeah. Yes. I mean, and I think sort of the complaint, obviously, on the other side of that is maybe the lack of clarity, the lack of communication, a lot of how things are being handled, all those things. But again, I want to scrutinize the strategy, but we're going off base, so let's go back to... No, but you know what? So I think let's just call a spade a spade, right? There is the potential

[00:51:12] for great things to come. There is also risk with that. The struggle with what's going on and how it's being done is the messaging. We're doing a big pivot, right? From a startup perspective. Yes. When you pivot... The messaging has been poor. Yes. Right? The messaging is poor. I mean, no matter how you slice it. And good lesson for all of us in our businesses, right? If we're going to pivot and make adjustments, then we need to go ahead and make sure we understand what our message looks like and we don't have some talking heads

[00:51:42] that say whatever it takes each day. Good. All right. You want to roll ahead? I think we need to move into some other part. Let's talk about something else. Yeah. Like what kind of wine we're going to drink this weekend? We'll talk about that. It doesn't sound like you're going to be drinking any wine this weekend. No, I'm going to be no, probably not. It's going to be some sort

[00:52:22] There's article here. It's actually from Walmart. Again, if you don't get our newsletter each week, we publish this. It's called Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution. You can just reach out to us directly at hello at leadsmart tech dot com or if you are active on LinkedIn, simply go to around the horn in wholesale distribution newsletter. Pop up, you can subscribe there. It'll come to your email and to your LinkedIn feed or Walmart

[00:52:52] has been working on this. They talk about a $350 billion investment in products made, grown, or assembled in the U.S. They've had this in place already, which is positioning them really, really well for what's going on with the tariff increases. They say Walmart is helping over $750,000 American jobs and driving long-term economic growth. It's interesting. They were already positioning and I'm trying to remember who I was talking with a couple of

[00:53:22] weeks ago and we've talked about this on the show before is that there is no one better positioned out there than Walmart to take a run at Amazon and Walmart is doing more and more in the B2B space nothing like Amazon distribution in fact next week's show we're going to talk about it came out too late yesterday but Amazon put out their shareholder letter yesterday and there's all kinds of hints in

[00:53:52] that of huge growth in the B2B space and I think we're going to see Walmart right behind that and I was laughing about this I'm trying to remember what I was talking was it at ISA last week I was talking about this and you know where we live in Southern California I mean I have three Costco's closer to me than one Walmart just where I happen to live so we don't see Walmart the way we see it in other parts of the country but

[00:54:32] presence to start doing more and more so it's interesting I thought this article was interesting about how they're already behind ahead of the curve on this it's interesting this is something I'd like to maybe we talk about it another time if you start to see more manufacturing occurring either onshore or closer to home does that actually open up the opportunity for more distribution is there greater opportunity for the wholesale distribution world whether they're the big

[00:55:01] behemoths the B2B distribution versus the it's interesting is there what would be or could there be a cause and effect between those two tell me the first part of the question again I'm sorry if we have more manufacturing occurring onshore does it actually increase the opportunity for the distribution side of the equation right so we have the manufacturing side is it open up the door for even greater and I think and I think about

[00:55:31] some of our customers I think the answer is yes I think it gives you greater flexibility on pricing I the point of this article and your

[00:56:01] point of what we want to talk about next week the big guys are getting more into B2B I don't think that means the death of the regional distributor or the whatever I think there's a rising tide may raise all boats spot on Walmart sees that right and is out from a pricing standpoint right

[00:56:32] the big winner when we think about you know our audience here is manufacturers and distributors but the and wholesale distributors the big winner is access to goods is more readily available than historically

[00:57:02] right and so we put ourselves in a very great spot specifically in this country and I think the winner on that and we talk about it as a component of our product channel cloud right about customer intelligence is customer wins right because distributor can get them the things they want quicker the distributor can work closer with the manufacturer and we're at a time and place with the tools and the technology that are available and this is a little bit off topic here but reality is we are not

[00:57:31] too far away from where whether it's a platform like ours or others where manufacturers distributors and even end users can be communicating about their needs so I think it's like I said we're either going to be in a real pickle later this year or we're going to be moving towards a really good spot in this country and I

[00:58:17] intermediation but that's interesting I agree with them Will can comment again since he's here with us but I think the disintermediation component of that is there is a bigger opportunity for manufacturers to go direct in that setting and so if you were a wholesale distributor that's the

[00:58:50] relationship with it and collaborate more with the distribution side it's not to move away from it I I've been in the world of manufacturing and distribution for 35 years I guess now I feel like for 35 years yeah but you're 10 10 coming up on 10 years

[00:59:20] you know 8 years whatever it is 2017 2017 it's the first time was when we did the clean space project yeah but you you were tap dancing around co-ops and doing that was software but you're selling to distributors at the end of the day they just sold retail and wholesale so I'm trying to give you credit here my friend yeah it's been years years

[00:59:49] it's been years trying to trying to build you see and to to more and more and say hey yeah

[01:00:19] I'm going to have a presence on Amazon at a very high price and all of my distributors should have an online presence at a lower price

[01:00:57] and

[01:01:29] I want to hit a couple more here and then we yeah that's great let's jump ahead after that you agree with Bob is saying is you have to look at the core comp see Walmart of cross docking if they can manage a supply chain imagine what they could do with an onshore supply right point yeah exactly what I think they're looking for yeah and yeah you know allow and again Stephen's point allow for the wholesale distribution is to look at different ways to delight the customer profitably right right and I think that profitably right which

[01:01:59] how do I say this what I'm seeing in the conversations I'm having with our customers is more control over profitability going forward than they have in the past and I'm not sure exactly where that a little more what's a sentiment right it's almost a sentiment it's not a specific

[01:02:28] there's a sentiment that exists that hey I think we're going to be able to control better again maybe using technology and some of the things that we do our profitability our gross margins right things if they're selling maybe through a buying group the rebates and the other things that they achieve through that they have better there's a sentiment that hey as we move forward we're going to have the opportunity to have better control over some of profit profit profit numbers and profit margins and so

[01:02:58] forth so gotcha anyway yeah it's good so one little hint before where there's a great article about organic growth that I wanted to talk about that's the best article you've ever had in the newsletter ever of all time well now you just am I going to make you cough and be sicker yeah or barf the just turn off your camera right what's that turn off your camera

[01:03:28] yeah okay here we go all right I'm back now the there is a component right and we have a couple articles here is there's an article from industry today about navigating the tariff landscape with lessons from COVID and then we have another article later in the newsletter about port issues right and the one thing that we've not talked about today and I'm just going to throw it out there and we'll maybe revisit it next week because I'm sure

[01:03:58] there'll be more articles that go with that by the way I

[01:05:22] behind that well it came from the fact that you know i'm not going to say all of our customers but i would say i don't know what you think 70 of them 60 to 70 of them have all told us that hey they have goals of doubling their business in the next five between now and 2030 right that's been an objective coming into the year is to literally which is a 15 annual compounded growth

[01:05:48] rate over five years right that's not trivial to accomplish no but there's also been in the last again going back i guess the negative of some of this disruption and uncertainty there's been talk that i've heard in talking with our customers like well maybe some of the m&a plans that we have are going to have to go on hold or maybe we won't open that new branch right away or whatever which are all forms of inorganic growth if you will it's not growing from what you already have within the

[01:06:16] company so that was kind of my motivation and emphasis for writing this article which is hey how can you achieve this still by just being you know growing and working with what you have already in the business and that's a lot of what we do right we help them take what they have and sure and get more out of it so um anyway that was the the motivation behind the article really get people i think thinking more about and we are seeing this i'm not suggesting that this isn't happening

[01:06:44] i think this is a lot of what we're seeing but really put yeah maybe it's not the best time to open a new branch or maybe it's not the best time to do an acquisition maybe you do need to kind of think that through a little bit more but put the pedal to the metal on the organic growth capabilities and you still have a very good chance of achieving some of these you know longer term goals over the next five years well i'm gonna add a little bit to that i think in is something we talk about a lot

[01:07:14] i'm glad you wrote the article and um again if you don't get the newsletter let us know please and we'll get that out to you we had a handful of requests coming this morning interestingly as well um we've got all the things we've been talking about today going on right so if i'm a office products distributor and hvac distributor electrical distributor doesn't matter what it

[01:07:38] is right and i'm thinking about my traditional ways of growing uh which is you know unfortunately still in this day and age a lot of it is my sales leaders get together with the sales guys and they take a spreadsheet of all of their customers and what they bought last year in total dollars and they

[01:07:58] put a number to it excuse me sorry um i'll survive i promise um can you have darlene bring you a shot of schnapps or something or 151 or something along the way yeah i'm gonna that that's not that it's not impossible later in the day i'm gonna go uh to the acupuncturist that typically helps me clear things up when i feel like this and i'm on antibiotics and stuff as well but it's not impossible that there

[01:08:28] might be a a tonic of some sort this uh uh this later in the day or this evening for me but uh my point being is that you know we have this historic growth that says hey let's go look at all of our customers and how much can we maybe grow and uh um we'll put all those numbers together and my eastern regional manager my western territory regional manager will aggregate those numbers they'll come together to

[01:08:55] the sales manager and the sales manager says all right i'm cutting that number in half and and then i hate to say it but i talk to companies every day that are still doing this right versus using some technology that can go uncover right uh where are where am i weak what categories am i not selling over here and what category should i be selling and where is there opportunity that that you know technology like we make on all frankness that uncovers those white space or we have a customer that

[01:09:25] was just they call it trapped potential um and right now to your point in this article right about organic growth is if i can figure a way out how to grow by let's just say you know we've got another customer right now that's saying you know hey if we could close five percent more quotes this year it was worth three and a half million dollars off of a sixty thousand dollar technology investment that's

[01:09:50] helping in the track and manage their quotes right if i can grow my business that way versus the risky market right now of saying i want to go build another facility two states away with interest rates high um labor market has its ups and downs and the tariff issues and stuff going on right now why not you know i'm not saying hit the pause on growth and that's what you're saying with this article

[01:10:18] but there's so much untapped potential for double down right double down on the organic side that's the whole purpose of that and you know what's i don't know what the what the statistics are somebody might be with us on the show that knows but something like it's it's exponentially easier to grow with an existing customer than finding a new customer right okay yeah let's let's do that i listed out in there like eight or ten things that you can do retention being one of them right with the existing

[01:10:46] customers that are there but again it's a mindset thing to be thinking with like hey how do i look at my growth strategy how do i put organic first it's not that inorganic is horrible but i agree with what we just said is like it's it's it's a challenging environment to make those sort of risky decisions and these are all in talk about gross profit right these are all things that generally lead to increased profit or increased profitability on what you're doing at the same time without the risk that

[01:11:16] comes with capital expenses and facilities and all that and if you're good at what you do right then you've already bob coming to hear about differentiating right if you've already differentiated yourself and you're good at what you do why not leverage everything you can out of every customer and so few people i i've said this forever right and i started my career working for a

[01:11:40] national host a national distributor um in 1989 and in 1993 started a manufacturer's rep agency worked with distributors all over i've now in consulting roles and other interim executive roles worked with global companies as well and at the end of the day people walk by far more business than they have far more business than they have so anyways that's my thoughts on a great article tom

[01:12:10] glad you wrote that let's jump ahead uh into our e-commerce and marketing segment you know chinese sellers on amazon to hike prices or exit u.s um good article in there from reuters um this is an interesting thing though the follow-up article to that was uh from cnbc that 70 percent of goods from on amazon are from china what does that mean for sellers i'm not a shock not a shock no i mean i i heard a

[01:12:35] 50 percent number earlier in the week and that surprised me yeah um so but it's interesting is that reuters article talks about hike prices or exit u.s i mean how do you exit i mean the largest global economy in the world do you i mean what are you going to go do it's you know you got to hike prices and stay here and hope for the best and figure out some way to differentiate or do something in your

[01:13:03] business but the idea of saying x you know hiking prices or exit the u.s it's just to me that just doesn't even sound like an option are they saying like take your business out of the u.s well that's that's the title of this article right or you know hike prices that's what they're you're covering part of that in your part of the title there and you're how you're scrolling there right but um but that was the title of the article i see um did you miss that one in your preparation i did i looked at it a

[01:13:32] little bit differently i was looking at this is whether or not the if they were going to continue to purchase you know for the higher prices there but i didn't i didn't think i didn't see it the other way around where it was moving the business out of the u.s yeah if it's an online that's interesting i hadn't really thought about it i have to read the article more carefully um is uh

[01:13:57] i mean moving an online business is possible so it's an interesting i have a couple of friends that have online businesses that are on that they sell on amazon and plus their own shopify site and every all their products come from amazon are from china right so i i will i will i will do some homework on that yeah so anyways it's uh you know comment was made here about what does that mean for amazon i mean

[01:14:23] i i haven't looked closely yet about the um amazon's um shareholder newsletter that or shareholder letter that went out yesterday we'll analyze it pretty closely i have an agent ai agent built that i will run it through that will help me with that as well um i was reading it and we'll talk about that more next week but how do you not anticipate that amazon's going to have some implications of their stock

[01:14:49] prices to this yeah right let's uh let's roll ahead um to our technology and cyber security world uh that we talk about each week anything there catch your eye particularly i mean these are both really good i don't maybe we talk about these more next week and we have more time do you want to hold on to those for next week sorry do you should we post those again next week i think we should i mean the first article article here is from mckenzie u.s utilities struggle to meet uh big tax data center

[01:15:17] demands we've been talking about that a lot about the the the there's a lot of matter oh we don't need all the electricity anymore and all these big data centers and all that kind of stuff and that's just we need we need fusion it's what we need to power these things right but um the demand for electricity and utility and resources ai use just keeps going up right as the cost of ai use comes down the use goes up right and so anyway we could talk a lot about and then the next one here

[01:15:46] from cfo dive ai agents emerge as ai agents emerge as potential targets for cyber attackers um some good insights in there yeah why don't we hit these on another another week or or whatever because yeah so we we we talk a lot about you know ai and then now the what the focus is about let's just hit that one briefly right um now our big focus is agentic ai right so agents that

[01:16:16] agents and digital twins agents that can do the mundane parts of our jobs uh or help us do our job faster and and maybe even better and so there's a risk there with some of these that depending on how you are managing these and so forth uh for some cyber issues that go with that so yeah like you said tom we'll hold those for next week as well yeah good yep all right what's what's next on

[01:16:42] our agenda here my friend i think we'll just kind of kind of quickly go through some of the last few just to let everybody know what's here and then we can uh yeah so there's good articles your shot at shops good article for sales onboarding uh overlooks the buy side from sales and marketing management and really this is a good article about uh um and again this uh all of these links are in the newsletter so let us know if you don't get the newsletter this is a good one it talks about really

[01:17:11] kind of helping a salesperson when they're doing onboarding and training within your organization to you know put the the shoes on of the customer right what's going on on the buy side and it sounds pretty rudimentary but it's so and it's a it's it's not a deep deep article but it's uh it's good thoughts you know and sometimes it's sometimes the most important things that we can do really bring into our lives are the things that seem simplistic but where they seem simplistic but we're really not

[01:17:37] even doing them so i think that's good um another though this article from ink right uh ink magazine talking about is mna flow at risk of becoming like molasses right so we're just talking about yep exactly right the the mergers and acquisitions world was looking really really strong um the um with it what the thinking at least was with this administration and

[01:18:05] you know getting right at rid of the ftc commissioner that was there lena khan and uh the wrath of khan so to speak and her tightening the reins on mna activity in the big big level right but even on the short-term level it's with the uncertainties out there does put some risk right now on slowing down mna so why don't you pick a one or two out of our people in leadership and uh we can hit those real quick to describe those tom let's start to wind down for today

[01:18:33] um well i found the second one well the first there's three articles one talks about ai and hiring and um basically this is the shopify ceo talking about hey before you have to if you're going to hire somebody or you're going to put in a rack to hire somebody you have to prove that you cannot get what that person would do done with ai so you have to prove and and justify that you're going to uh

[01:19:00] you really need that person um related versus you know you doing it or replacing it or augmenting it with ai prove to me we couldn't do this with ai right right right if you want to hire somebody prove to me that ai couldn't do the job right i think there's going to be more of that absolutely i think there's a lot of kind of like all of these things we could end up with a whole hour discussion on on these things that are here i think there's a lot of

[01:19:29] short-sightedness that probably is taking place related to that as well but um but i do believe there will be more and more of that right it's not just going to be justify the position right but justify okay maybe you need the help but justify how you get the help and is it an agent or an ai facility versus a human resource i think you know as we wrap wind down kind of today i think this

[01:19:55] goes back to our broader discussions about ai in general with these things from a standpoint that um sounds like cooper thinks highly of this uh topic as well he was just letting me know down the hall there my uh he can't be replaced with ai he won't be replaced with ai he's good yeah i'll tell him i robot dog or whatever i will we absolutely what was the jetson's dog name um i wasn't i wasn't around

[01:20:21] for the astro astro was what it was uh no he will not be replaced with astro but uh but the the gardener might be uh the gardener might be yeah the gardener might be and it's looking closer and closer all the time with that but you know i think what what really comes of this is that there's organizations right now including ours who is looking looking at every activity within the organization

[01:20:44] that says how can we use ai to augment right and really even getting ourselves in a place where and i i'm not you know i'm not in an idea or in a place that says hey we shouldn't be hiring people but it's who do we hire and how can we use ai to assist that and can we really get ourselves in a place where and i use our company as just a great example in fact i was chatting with somebody this

[01:21:12] morning about this is that you know we have a fraction of the employees that most technology companies would have based upon the revenues and number of customers that we have because we use we're highly efficient and we use technology our own technology to organize and run our business so it's really really helpful from that standpoint so yep all right um anything here on the chat

[01:21:38] yeah you know some good good news that um on our channel movers and shakers uh just quickly steve uh goodry from uh goodry from a affiliated distributors uh running the electrical division there is moving over to mcnaughton mckay rsu is the big uh industrial distributors uh ceo is retiring they've got to move there so some good movement there handful of things in our industry scuttlebutt section

[01:22:02] uh there you guys can can hit that in your as you um uh peruse the newsletter so i think that covers us for the day we have our second look and our good reads the good read section i think is interesting is uh what roman entrepreneurs can bring to today about how that they uh business was done in the roman empire so i thought that was kind of cool so always love putting in something unique and different there well some good discussion for such a dull news week i think yeah sorry about

[01:22:32] the sniffs and the coughs and the things that go with that next week no planes no sickness just back back to regular yeah yeah well good we have some guests possibly coming on right that are some well yeah i was not going to mention it but i will uh i don't know for sure it might even be just a recording that we do during the week but um brian wild with uh uh leads the legislative group with the

[01:22:59] national association of wholesalers we've been messaging all week obviously he's back and forth between capitol hill and their offices every day um naw had a board meeting this week it's no it's not unreasonable for me to say because lots of people were commenting about it on linkedin so we weren't able to get him today but um uh we looks like we might have him either as a guest next week or we'll record something with brian and he'll give us a little inside take on tariffs and other things happening

[01:23:27] i'm very interested to hear the naw and he's a brian is a no nonsense guy he's just you know uh easy to listen to and and just a straightforward guy so that will be good we've got a ton of other great guests coming up over the the rest of the year they're lining up uh nicely so um we'll go from there so all right like in closing i like bob's comments schnapps yeah so that sounds good to me that's the way yeah so anyways thanks again everybody for being with us kevin brown and tom burton we appreciate

[01:23:57] our sponsorship from the company that we both work for lead smart technologies if you or your company are contemplating expanding your digital transformation and really understanding your customers better your team better and trying to accelerate growth but we would love to get organic growth don't forget organic growth nor anything that tom writes that's right we always want to make sure we read so uh but we would love to talk with you and share with you how other wholesale distributors

[01:24:24] and manufacturers are understanding their customers better um and really getting insights into their business that they've never seen before we'd love to share that with you so tom my friend appreciate you we'll talk more later in the day everybody have a great weekend be kind be safe and do good things yep thanks everybody we hope you enjoyed today's episode and our guests each week we try our best to dig into the topics that

[01:24:52] are impacting your business so please reach out to us and let us know how you think we can make the show better or topics you'd like for us to tackle or talk about more often and even guests you'd like to see join us we're looking forward to bringing you next week's session and hope that until then you stay safe stay focused and do great things if you haven't already please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review to help others in wholesale distribution get access to the conversation and

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