The AI-Native Distributor: Agentic Buying, Smart CRM and the Future of Growth

[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. Whether it's M&A, SaaS and cloud computing, B2B e-commerce or supply chain, we're going to be able to get a little bit more.

[00:00:30] With the high chain issues, we peel back the onion with our guests into the topics that impact your business the most. So it's pretty funny. Timing is everything. You know, we use StreamYard, right, to do this with. When I connected to start, I got all these errors. This is not connecting. You have an error. You're recording too much. I mean, like getting all these errors when we first came on.

[00:00:57] Then, like two seconds later, a little thing popped up in the bottom, like a survey. How are you liking StreamYard? Right now, I'm not liking it very much. It's like, that was not the right time to ask me that question. Anyway, hopefully we're connected and we're working. What a great start to a show. Yeah.

[00:01:19] You know, it's funny you say that because I've been having some struggles with the manufacturer of the new car I bought last month. And I was at my wits end messaging with somebody three or four days ago and literally within like 10 or 15 minutes, I got a received an email from the location.

[00:01:43] It's a direct to consumer purchase, not a dealership purchase. And I got a note. How likely are you to recommend this particular location for your friends and family? Use this code and like, I'm not doing anything for you guys, right? Yeah. I'm ready to clobber you guys. So it's kind of funny.

[00:02:06] I mean, timing is everything when it comes for asking for referrals and so forth, right? It's like a distributor asking their customer for a referral when they're in their pallet of water heaters was damaged or something along the way, right? So same day is a difficult thing. Anyways, how you doing? Well, did you realize it was our 200th episode? We're getting some congratulations and things in the comments here. 200. 200. Wow.

[00:02:36] I thought we were having a big celebration for our 200th. I think we should talk about that. You know, you want to do that? Should we do something like that? Yeah, I think we are going to do something like that. So, okay. When's it happening? I think August 21st would be a good day. Three weeks from today. Let's look into that. Let's look into that. What do you think? Yep. The, it's nice, Andy and Bob and a few others to chime in here and say that, you know, it's kind of funny as we talk about this.

[00:03:06] It's things to, if it's so taking a step back, right? Yes. August 21st. We've got people from all over the country joining us. We've got a live moderator with us that will keep us in line. We might even like stay on track and start and end on time and not brand. Yeah. Let's stop discussing random stupid stuff. And there will be adult supervision. And we're going to be in the same place for the first time ever, uh, for the show. We're going to have adult supervision.

[00:03:37] Uh, Dana, our new marketing director is going to be there. My wife's going to be there. A couple of people on our team are going to be there. So we'll have supervision for us and then a moderator, but a great group of people coming. We've got Mike Marks from Indian river consulting. We've got Dan Schubert, uh, chief revenue officer of the National Association of Wholesalers and Distributors. We've got, uh, Steve Levy and senior vice president and in for, um, who am I missing there? We've got a Dirk beverage, our good friend.

[00:04:06] Dirk is joining us and, and Alex Shosofsky, which has been one of our highest rated guests in the past. And we love having Alex with us. So we're going to, the beauty of this is we cover so much ground, right? We've got Steve's technology background. We've got, um, uh, I will let my wife know that Bob. Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah.

[00:04:35] If you go ahead, he says random stupidity is part of your charm. So. Yeah. I think he missed one word and one, uh, comma. It should have said Tom comma. Huh? Random stupidity is part of your charm. Uh, how's that? No, it's funny. The, I like that. Um, where was I at with, with, uh, show coming up?

[00:05:04] It, you know, it's the, the great part of this, right. Is we, we had a little pre-show call with, uh, John, who's our editor and producer of the show. John's going to be with us and moderate the show for us. Um, you and I are going to be live at an exciting location. All that plays out correctly. Uh, shirts, everybody gets shirts again, this go around. It's going to be kind of fun. And then, um, a little commemorative swag for that, which will be great.

[00:05:30] But I think that the group that we've brought is what's important, right? You got Mike Marks, who's, you know, kind of grandfather of, uh, wholesale distribution and working and spending the electrical side, the electronic side, the, um, plumbing HVC industrial. He's done just so much work. He teaches at universities and mentor is on the board of many companies. Mike's just always phenomenal. And you just don't know what you're going to get from Mike.

[00:05:57] Uh, I think it was the hundredth episode where Mike, he didn't tell us Mike came with his arm in a sling. He had shoulder surgery and all he could talk about was all the meds he had been taking. So, but here we've got Mike and Mike's background. We've got Alex who's, you know, he's not an economist by training per se, but he's, I call him kind of a globalist.

[00:06:17] And, uh, if you want to meet somebody that can say what's really going on in the, the war in, in the Ukraine and the Houthi rebels and the impact on gas prices and those types of things, I just call him kind of a global strategist. He's just always got so much insight. You got Steve. That's a technology guy that's coming with us is going to be with us as well.

[00:06:39] And we've got this nice rounded group, but then we bring Dirk in and Dirk has his entire career in wholesale distribution and mostly distribution. It's a manufacturing, but Dirk is completely focused now on human development and making the best of our people. Just finishing up writing a book. I'll be with Dirk in Puerto Rico at an event next week. We're speaking together and, uh, it's just such a nice, nice group with a broad, diverse experience and background. I think it's going to be, it's going to be a lot of fun.

[00:07:06] So if you, um, if you're newer to our show, we'll tell you the fast story here. Tom and I got together. What would that be Tom? Four years ago, I guess. Um, yeah. And I went to Tom and said, you know, we, we work with all these trade groups and buying groups and our marketing team has got all these lists together. And most people in the technology business, like we are, uh, get out and, you know, send emails out about, Hey, you know, do you want to buy our software?

[00:07:32] And it was like, how can we stare, stay in front of our potential customers and our customers for our business? But how can we support the industry at the same time and do something unique and different? So there's plenty of media companies out there, but we decided as a technology company to, uh, give it a whirl. I said, uh, one day I brought the idea to you. I said, I get all these newsletters and I read the updates every day on what's happening in distribution and manufacturing. Maybe we should publish a newsletter.

[00:07:59] You were smart enough to say, um, um, see, Bob says you're stupid. And I say, Jay just said, you're smart. Just to be just balancing out, just balancing things out. You're kind of me. Yes. Yes. See it's in, and that's probably the third compliment of the month on the final day of the month. So, and you're only allowed one, but, uh, you, you were smart enough to come back and say, Hey, you know what? LinkedIn has this new thing called LinkedIn live. Let's give it a shot.

[00:08:28] Next thing we knew we were babbling through a newsletter and people started showing up. And so we, it was funny in the call we were on yesterday, we were talking about, uh, trying to find some snips from that original episode. So here we are 200 of them today. We're going to do the big celebration later in the month and, uh, we're going to bring in great group of people together and have some fun. So it's going to be a good time. So we're appreciative of those of you that have joined us.

[00:08:51] Um, you know, the majority of the audience now is certainly on, on the, uh, recorded podcast, uh, sessions and, and more and more growing on YouTube as well. But, uh, we're thankful for that. So I'll just kind of kick off our show. Like we always do. I'm Kevin Brown. Hey, before you do that, you know, I was thinking, I bet you Andy, Andy, Andy Mitchell was on the original show. I don't know about Bob, Bob. I don't think you were there in the beginning, but I think Andy might've been one of the, He might've been around for that. Yeah.

[00:09:19] Andy is a great personal friend as well as a, uh, uh, I'd say he's almost approaching industry icon status. Um, just depends on if you're one of his vendors, right? He can be tough on those guys, but Andy's a great guy. Great friend. Yeah. Helps, uh, Tim Loy at, uh, Mallory, uh, safety and industrial supply run the show there and great affiliated distributor member and good friend as well. So good group. Uh, we're appreciative of that. So anyways, we do this every week.

[00:09:48] If you're joining us today for the first time, which happens every week, there's new people. Uh, we're here on episode 200. We say that we do this every week, whether unless someone's in the hospital, uh, on an airplane or on a, uh, planned vacation. I am actually taking a vacation day, uh, next Friday. And we'll be with my wife in the Caribbean after working in Puerto Rico for a few days. We're going to take a couple of days in the Dominican Republic.

[00:10:15] And so, uh, looking forward to that, but, uh, so we will miss a day, but, um, we've been doing this for a bit now and we get together and we talk about the news of the week and how it impacts wholesale distributors and manufacturers. We talk about the economy and supply chain and AI and mergers and acquisitions and sales and marketing and robotics and MNA activity and so forth.

[00:10:35] And we try and unpack that and reference how that would, uh, support the customers that we have at lead smart that we're company Tom and I work for and entire world of wholesale distribution and manufacturing because a lot of people don't realize that wholesale distribution represents one third of the U S GDP.

[00:10:54] And when you start thinking about that, no matter where you look, whether it's something on your desk or the glass or the fork in front of you at your restaurant that you're sitting at all that went through distribution. So it's an important, uh, component of the world economy as well as the U S GDP. So it's important to look at what those factors are that are happening, but we do that through the means of our newsletter that we publish every week as well as called around the horn and wholesale distribution.

[00:11:19] Manufacturing goes out to 11, 12, 13,000 people. I haven't looked recently had more requests this morning come in, uh, for it. And, uh, that newsletter again, goes out to many different people goes out to Dean and I were looking the other day. It's about, uh, I think last week it was eight different countries, uh, that it went to. And so if you'd like to get that newsletter and you don't currently get it simple way to do that is just pop us a note at hello at lead smart tech.com.

[00:11:49] And we'll get that out to you. Or, uh, if you're on LinkedIn, you can just go to the lead smart page or search the show around the horn and wholesale distribution. And, uh, you'll be able to sign up to get it through LinkedIn, or we have a website for the podcast, www.aroundthehornpod.com. And all of our past episodes are there and you can, uh, register to get the newsletter there as well. You can also subscribe to Amazon, uh, Spotify and Apple and so forth.

[00:12:15] But if you're, again, if you're listening in the recorded podcast and not with us live, you won't be seeing that newsletter. But if you'd like it, we'd love to get that out to you. So, um, finally, we couldn't do that if it wasn't, uh, what we do each week. It wasn't for the sponsorship of, uh, the company that Tom and I work for lead smart technologies. And, uh, we have a front end person working on the show, getting everything ready for us. And a whole company behind us on the back end, John Taylor and his team that produce and edit and publish everything for us. So those things cost money.

[00:12:44] So lead smart foots the bill for that, for Tom and I to be able to do that. And at lead smart, uh, we were for many, many years known as a, uh, I'd say one of the leading, uh, what we called, uh, AI enabled smart CRM solutions in wholesale distribution and manufacturing. But we've recently launched all kinds of new solutions to go with that. And we now refer to what we do as an enterprise growth platform.

[00:13:06] And what an enterprise growth platform is a, is a platform, not a software product, but a platform that brings data and information from across your organization, from your ERP or marketing automation, your e-commerce systems, your data lakes, other places where you're storing data. We bring that into that platform and we look at that holistically to understand what's going on with your customers, your teams, and your overall business. So historically people think CRM that's for my salespeople.

[00:13:34] But when you have an enterprise growth platform, everybody in your company can make great use of the insights that we get of what's happening. Customers have many different journeys. They don't just have a transactional journey that's in an ERP. If you're only looking at ERP data, you are missing what's going on fully at your customer. But when you combine all of those other components of what's in the CRM, what's in the marketing automation, what's in your e-commerce solution, and bring that together in one AI-driven solution, that's when we really understand things. So that's what we do at LeadSmart Technologies.

[00:14:04] We have our new platform that's launching shortly called the Meridian 360 system. So watch out for that online. You'll see more about that shortly. So, Tom, you want to take it away and get us started on the news? Probably should. Officially kicking off number 200. Enough random stupidity and get on with things.

[00:14:26] So, speaking of random stupidity, we'll start off with the government and the Fed. So, Fed left rates on hold, as we know. There was a 9-3 vote with the committee to leave the rates on hold.

[00:14:50] I didn't see any of the, you know, press briefing or anything. Wafford sounds like a lot of kind of vagueness. Like, I think Warsh is not really providing a lot of future direction. But, you know, hammering home the importance of the 2%. Basically said that they had a good family fight, I think was his quote that he used. He used that quite a bit, yeah.

[00:15:19] And we can talk about this, but I, you know, I've talked about this. Like, I don't understand why you would raise rates, right? And three people, clearly, at least three people in the committee, and I have to assume they're not dumb people, have voted to raise rates. And so, I did some homework on why they would even think about that, which we can talk about.

[00:15:45] But before we do, I don't know if there's anything you want to add or touch on other than the fact that it was held steady. Well, I mean, I think what's already, there's already a concern that the shine might be off the apple, so to speak, with this, you know, new Fed chair. He's saying the right stuff for some people, but now we've got this, it's just, it's almost like more of the same within the economy, right?

[00:16:13] We're just, there's a vacillating, simmering thing with no significant ups or downs. It's, it just feels so much, and we can go into the depth of this, of course, but it just feels so much with the Fed right now. It's, I almost feel like this group is, just to take away, you know, these, most of these governors were there prior under Powell, right? And, and so it sounds like maybe they were towing the line a little bit for a while, because it was just, I think, his last two meetings.

[00:16:43] That there was some dissent there. Now you've got people speaking their mind a little bit more, but it just, it just seems like it's a little bit of a game right now. But I know you've got some things to say, you know, one of the things on my mind related to this is that, and I don't want to harp on what I always talk about, about maybe we should be looking at adjusting the, the reference points and what the levers are and what are our data points.

[00:17:09] And so I'm happy with, with Warsh saying he wants to get rid of the dot plot, some of those things and try to do less, you know, less forward looking. But I think the, I think the things that we're looking at right now, or it's a struggle, Tom, because we're looking at all of these historic factors. We're looking at trying to get to a random number. And you know what?

[00:17:32] I guarantee you that every one of these Fed governors could run circles around anybody that's ever listened to this show about the economic factors and why they do what they do. But that's just defending, like saying, I don't want to buy a new car because my Oldsmobile still starts. Right. Right. As opposed to what is optimal and what is better. And interesting.

[00:17:56] We just had a comment there from a LinkedIn user says government is rage baiting us at this point because there's, there's frustration out there. But I think we're, we're in this place where he's worse is trying to maybe say how he wants to go about things. But I think the challenge right now is, and we talked about this before we went live today, is that I don't think perfect storm is the right answer.

[00:18:22] But, you know, I heard something on the news yesterday that the world has never had since World War II, the conflict of World War II ended. There's more conflicts going on, not just wars, but wars and conflicts since World War II. And World War II ended in, what was it, 1943, I think? War, four, yeah. Before 1944? War, yeah. Right.

[00:18:47] So, I mean, think about that 80 whatever years that we've not had the conflicts going on. So you've got the pressure that we talk about consistently on the show here. We're going to talk about a little bit more later in our supply chain section. You got the straight-of-horse issues, right? Pushing oil prices up and the other commodities that are tied to it. You've got these things going on with the Houthi rebels, right? And their pressure that's there. You've got issues in the Panama Canal going on.

[00:19:15] You've got multiple major wars going on. And then other conflicts happening. And you've got this Fed Reserve that's trying to say, you know, well, the dot plot or, you know, this factor. And trying to say where they want to get a number to that was back to 2% that he wants to continue to push to. It's like, how could you really do that?

[00:19:37] Do you have the switches and levers enough to push and pull to get to that number with all these other major factors going on that normally would not be the case? Well, they don't. So, that's kind of the point, right? So, if three people voted to raise rates, okay? So, again, the question would be, why would you want to raise rates?

[00:20:01] So, clearly, in the homework I did, clearly, even the Fed agrees that the most recent inflationary data is coming from what they call price shock from the things you just outlined, right? Price of fuel from the geopolitical things and all that kind of stuff. So, it's not from more money in the system or whatever. It's a price shock.

[00:20:24] However, the economic logic is of the three people that are wanting to raise rates is, well, we need to make sure that this doesn't become permanent price shock. In other words, right, let's say an airline raises their price right now because fuel is higher, right? They want to make sure that that price doesn't stay high forever, even as fuel prices come down.

[00:20:49] And so, the logic is if we raise rates now, we will cut demand, predominantly consumer demand, but business demand as well, and basically create a recession. And that is what they are actually want or able to, they believe they can do is actually reduce spending, reduce things, and then, obviously, the supply and demand. So, price comes down from that reduction in demand that's there.

[00:21:19] Now, we've seen that before that really hasn't worked, right? But as I said to you earlier, it's like, to me, that's like saying, well, I have a headache. Okay, so the way I'm going to cure my headache is hit myself over the top of the head with a sledgehammer, right? And even, you know, in the homework I did, it was clear, like, that is a brute force way of trying to handle a situation to reduce the inflationary costs.

[00:21:44] It's like, that's just, but, to your point, that's about the only tool they have, right? Yes. They only have two tools. They can raise or increase interest rates, or they can increase the money flow through quantitative easing. That is all they have in their toolkit to do this. So, the logic appears to be that the three people that have voted to raise rates is basically, well, we got to do something.

[00:22:14] We got to do something. And what if this goes on permanently and price shock becomes permanent? You know, everyone's going to look at us and go, what did you do about that? Right. So, then they, okay, let's go, let's hit myself over the head with a sledgehammer and see if that cures my headache. So, I don't think it's entirely stupidity. It's just they're so limited on the tools that they have to deal with all of these different complexity, complex situations. That's, I think, a lot of what we're dealing with here.

[00:22:43] And I don't, obviously, I don't see anything changing this as we move forward with the Fed Reserve. So, that just, you know, the audience that we talk to, right, manufacturers and distributors in this setting are thinking about, okay, well, if there's pressure on rates going up, right? Fond markets kind of doing this up and down thing. Rates potentially go up, and you've got, obviously, this group doing it.

[00:23:12] And this is one of the challenges, right, with Warsh, I think, is he's talking about really wanting to not project what they might be doing and keeping things close to their vest. And, you know, you might understand this better than I do. I just, we pretend to know things about the economy and when we sit down for an hour and a half on Fridays.

[00:23:33] But, you know, I look at this from this standpoint of them trying not to project on this. And it's, it's like, what's really your role, right, at this point in time? Is because the markets, the markets don't seem to care. Let me rephrase that.

[00:24:00] When we went through the increases, right, it was supposed to cool the economy. And the market was just racing, racing higher and higher, right? When we did that last year and middle and latter part of the prior year. And so it just kind of goes back to this is like, I don't want to say the market doesn't fully care. That's not fair. But they have a good enough idea of what's going to happen.

[00:24:24] And is that what Warsh is trying to do in this setting is say, I don't want the capital markets to try and have this figured out before we make an announcement. I want the adjustments to happen with the economy based upon what we say is going to happen. I'm not sure on that. Do you have any thoughts? I don't know. But I don't, I think in this day and age with all the quote unquote ways of covering something, creating a vacuum is not a smart idea, right?

[00:24:48] But if you create a vacuum of data, somebody is going to come in and fill in that vacuum or try and fill in that vacuum. I think that they would be better served to be way more transparent and more. But that's not his plan. I understand. I understand. That's the opposite of his plan, right? His plan is to be not as transparent, nowhere near as transparent, right? I just don't know what benefit that he thinks that's going to provide. So we just had a comment pop up here.

[00:25:18] It said, of course, there's zero possibility of politics coming to play, you know, in this as far as rates are concerned. But the other, I don't disagree with that comment. However, this is supposed to be Trump's guy, right? Right. So what we should be seeing is some pressure to bring rates down because that's what this administration is looking to happen. Right. But back, Tom. That's almost, look, that's almost impossible to do right now during this price shock. Right. Yeah.

[00:25:47] If the price shock starts to come down, which we saw, what, briefly for like a day and a half. Well, we need oil to state, we need probably the single most important thing is for oil to come down on a consistent basis, not up and down. Right. And we have the roller coaster where oil came down for what, a day or two? Mm-hmm. And then, you know, we had a quote unquote ceasefire and the next thing we didn't and then I went back up. And now it's like, well, we're having a conversation.

[00:26:15] So, right, it's all this roller coaster and stuff that is there. But you can't cut rates, I don't believe, until there's some level of stability there. Right. Yeah. Raising rates, again, for all the reasons we just discussed, doesn't help either. So they're kind of sitting there in the middle with nothing that they can really do. Yeah. And they have to make sure that they appear to be doing something productive and helping the situation.

[00:26:40] So takeaway is hitting yourself in the head with a hammer when you have a headache already? Is that your takeaway? Well, that was my point of raising rates, right? I have a headache, so why don't I just knock myself unconscious? I don't have a headache anymore. Yeah. That's kind of a brute force way to handle the headache, you know? So, you know, kind of moving into some other areas of discussion here, right? We have an article here from Reuters about U.S. consumer confidence eases in July.

[00:27:08] So, you know, you've got Fed doing their thing, right? And it's really a mixed message. You know, it's only a third of the or a quarter of the Fed board members that we're talking about, and it rate increased. But now you've got this look of the consumer confidence continuing to ease. Those numbers were adjusted. You know, and it's interesting, as I was reading this article and kind of prepping for our show a little bit,

[00:27:34] it said, you know, this is really interesting because the way that they do these consumer confidence surveys, it's literally sending it out, survey out to people, individuals to take it. And it says, you know, the qualitative write-in data cited by the conference board is the most absolute revealing metric here. It says when households take the time to write negative comments about the economy on a structured survey,

[00:27:59] it signals visceral top-of-mind stress, specifically tied to the labor market stability and employment security. The traditional quantitative metrics often that get captured too late. So the job numbers coming later and a little less important. But I think the point is, right, how many of us like to take surveys? And so that, I hadn't looked at it from that standpoint before, but when I dug into that article a little bit more,

[00:28:27] what I was really saying is the value of that particular survey is that people don't want to take surveys. And if they're willing to take a survey and then the sentiment is negative, right, from that standpoint, you really do get a feel of what's going on out there. And so I don't know how raising rates, right? And if you think about the rate raising, if you just look at, you know, John Q Public in that setting, right,

[00:28:55] most people have very high credit card interest rates. And right now people have some very high balances out there and so forth. What are you doing to that person if you raise rates? People have shown they're not going to stop spending. And this just kind of goes back to what, you know, we talk about this in our business all the time, right, with our customers is, you know, if you're a wholesale distributor and you're looking to grow and grow and grow and grow,

[00:29:20] what got you from zero to 20 million or zero to 200 million is not going to get you from 200 to 400 million, right? You need to go do different things. And so we're looking at these same data and statistics of our economic outlook within the country that we were looking at 30, 40 years ago. But the world is a completely different world in this setting. And what we've seen with whatever generation it is,

[00:29:46] outside of probably our generation, right, people in their 50s and 60s, there are not really that many savers in this country anymore. Right? People are spending this. Comparatively, yeah. But where all of the data that we look to and all of these reference points that we look to, they're looking at a different mindset and a different socioeconomic experience that people are having versus really what we're dealing with right now. And so you've got these people that says,

[00:30:13] I don't care if my credit card interest rates are 50%. I'm going to target. Yeah, because they still have a monthly payment regardless, right? Or I have room on the card, hence I want to go get something. Right. Right. But yet we're using the dynamics of consumer confidence and the Fed and all of these things to manage all of that. So it's an interesting piece. Let's move ahead just because of time-wise.

[00:30:40] Let's just talk briefly, you know, these 301 tariffs that went in last Friday. We talked quite a bit about them. A couple of good articles. There's a really interesting article that we have here from Air Cargo Week. I've been finding some great new sources, Tom. But this is a really good article that talks about, again, it's aircargoweek.com.

[00:31:04] It's articles titled Tariff Transition Test Supply Chain Visibility as the Section 301 Tariffs Take Effect. And so we had that IEPA tariffs, right, the Emergency Powers Act, and with Section 122, those expired. And now we're in these Force 301 Section tariffs. These likely are going to last. And, you know, as we've talked about a number of times, most countries are willing to now pay these.

[00:31:32] The EU last week said just keep those numbers, basically, in what we've already been talking about. And we're comfortable with that. And we can call it a trade agreement versus a tariff, basically, is what it's coming down to now. But this really talks about some of the challenges in this article that wholesale distribution is going to face because of inventory valuations and so forth.

[00:31:58] So it just talks about, you know, the days of having plenty of safety stock and so forth. We're moving just in time isn't the right solution anymore. But big safety stocks is going to be harder and harder. So understanding the business is going to be so much more important. And understanding, and I think not just understanding that there's tariffs, but understanding what do these tariffs mean? Because these could be sticking a whole lot longer now.

[00:32:23] So the reason to not do just in time is because of the supply chain challenges and things. So you want to... If shipping lanes are closed, it gets a little harder, right? Right. So the just in time becomes not practical for all the disruption, right? Having too much inventory is going to add excess cost to your potential tariffs and so forth.

[00:32:51] So that, you know, not too hot, not too cold, just right. Somewhere in the middle is the right answer, so to speak. Not that that's easy. I'm not suggesting that's easy. But that's what I'm hearing you say is kind of the punchline of the article. Well, I think there's that. I think the upside of this would be, you know, maybe, right? Because there's... And this is probably a very, very good thing.

[00:33:18] And I think what we might be looking at, we've been talking about this for, I guess, probably a year now, right? Well, over a year because it was beginning of April that the IEPA tariffs came in last year. And we've cycled through this. It was, what was it, February that Supreme Court finally ruled on that being invalid, right? Then we got the 122 tariffs that came through. Those had a time limit to them. That is, clock is now expired. But now what is being used as tariffs, and I'm not opposed to tariffs at all.

[00:33:47] It's just, I think the struggle is, and we've got people listening into the show today that we can see, that are trying to run distribution businesses. They've, you know, I've just, you mentioned our friend Andy earlier today. They've got, I don't know where they're at now, probably close to 30 locations across the country. You know, you've got people that are trying to manage inventory levels for all of those things. And you've got people that are wondering about their supply chain and so forth that goes through this. So I think we are, and maybe this whole process has played out well and is working well,

[00:34:17] as it says, well, these 301 tariffs is, you have to have gone through an analysis and been able to prove, back up, and support the fact that these countries are doing these negative things, whether it's price fixing or dumping or forced labor or whatever they are. Right? We've gone through this U.S. trade group. It was the U.S. trade representative office. They've now come up. Here's our study. Here's the documentation.

[00:34:46] Here's the tariff. Now, what I think we're seeing here is, and this was, this actually, we did talk about this last week, but this kind of surprised me a little bit, is the EU is not saying, there's not countries in the EU that don't have forced labor in these things. They weren't fighting that the tariff was incorrect under this section 301. They're saying just help us with what the number is. Right? So it's almost acknowledging the violation. But they already have the agreement.

[00:35:16] So they already have an agreement. Well, the point was, they didn't bother to argue it. Right? They weren't looking to argue that piece is what came out of it. So anyways, I think maybe what could come out of the 301 tariffs is, I would never want to use the word certainty or stability, but maybe there's an understanding that within this, it's harder for the administration to just wake up on the wrong side of the bed

[00:35:43] or run out of Diet Coke or something and, and, uh, you know, McDonald's order is delayed and come up with some random new thing because he's upset with somebody for the day. Right? A little different when you start talking Mexico and Canada, I think, because of the magnitude of what's being traded there. But I think in general, with some of these other countries, we might see some balancing. What we've not heard anything about, Tom, is China. It's been months. Yeah. Right. Well, there's a big meeting in September with China, supposedly.

[00:36:12] So that's probably what's on hold there. Let's dive into our, uh, supply chain, uh, news and views. And so there's a good article there about oil inventories, not a good article. It's a, it's a well-written article from the financial times about oil inventories are precariously low. You know, we, we talked about this a number of times, um, over the months. In fact, something I should probably look into and get a feel for where we're at with it right

[00:36:37] now is that, um, you know, obviously they've been getting fuel there, but a month and a half ago, uh, most of Europe had like three weeks worth of jet fuel yet. And there were airlines, like some of the budget airlines were cutting some flights back. Um, so now we're in this country, right? Dangerously lower. It's a use of the term precariously low level of the U S oil inventories and the strategic stockpile is quite low.

[00:37:04] So probably the biggest factor of what's going on right now is the straighter Hormuz, you know, not going to ask you to show your map today. No, same old story, right? Same story, different day. Um, so, but we've got, again, another article later on from G captain here. I want to get to this, um, the electrical distributor magazine article about the survey that they did, cause there's some really good data. And I'd like to show some of those charts, but you know, now we've got just this again,

[00:37:32] and we, we talked about this in the last few weeks. If you think about it, what was, we had an article, I think there was seven major choke points around the world for shipping. Yeah. And, uh, we've got three of the biggest ones that are having some major issues, right? With, we've got the red sea blockade and red sea leads to the Suez canal. And, um, now the Houthis are going after something very specific. They get Saudi link tankers as well as Israeli link tankers as well.

[00:38:01] So there's a little bit of that, but those who are the rebels that are doing that they're following the straight or Hormuz playbook from the people that are financially backing them, which is the Iranian guard. Right. And so pretty crazy scenario there. And then as we talked about, we've got other issues with, uh, getting ships through the Panama canal. So pretty big issue. So why don't we kind of springboard from that to this article from the electoral distributor Ted magazine? Uh, they did a survey.

[00:38:30] It's an interesting thing though. I just kind of make a comment. If you look at historical, right? Military advantage, it's usually based on your military size, your presence and so forth. How big you are, how much ammunition you have. But what we're seeing now, right? Is leverage rebels with drones. Well, but with leverage, right?

[00:38:53] So if I can figure out how to leverage like the Suez canal or the straight or moves or whatever, right, it gives me undo military or out of whack military advantage based on my size because I'm leveraging those things. And I think that's what Iran is doing is they're trying to figure out or finance everything that they can that to leverage every different angle that they can.

[00:39:21] And we're finding it obviously harder and harder and harder to address. You can't, you can't bomb your way out of the leverage situation, right? That's there. Or you can't militarily attack your way out of some of these leverage points that continue to be the problem. And I'm, I don't see anything imminent that says that any of these leverage points are going to be relieved anytime, anytime soon. No. And you've got.

[00:39:53] I would describe this best. You've got, you can be a smaller group with much less influence historically. Exactly. But when you look at the use of, and you've got a, you're a religious zealot or you've got a cause that you're behind, it's much greater than, you know, typical. Um, and then you've got financial backing from another, an organization that the world doesn't

[00:40:23] like. And then you look at how easy it is. You know, I don't remember the exact numbers, but something like, you know, when they've looked at, uh, dealing with the same Pucci rebels and, and, um, and they're throwing up what, you know, 1200, $2,000 drones with projectiles on them and bombs and stuff on them. And, and, and the rest of the world, most specifically the U S is shooting up 2000 or $2 million Tomahawk

[00:40:52] missiles or whatever to take them out. Right. Talk about leverage. Yeah. And, and then the U S I just heard the other day, there's, you know, there's an issue with how many, how many bombs can be made and how many do we really have that being, being in multiple conflicts and so forth at the same time. So it is interesting. I think your point about leverage is great. Uh, but we are, we are living in an age no different than what a small startup can do to, you know, have leverage against big, big, large companies, right?

[00:41:21] There's, there's technology there and there's tools there that, uh, if you're the old behemoth, right. With the, with, if all your battles are fought with battleships and somebody else has speed boats and drones, there's some issues. So Tom, let's, let's go look at this survey that, uh, that Ted magazine did about, uh, uh, looking at risks and opportunities in the marketplace right now. So Scott Costa and his team, Scott's been a guest with us many times before we need to get him on the show again soon.

[00:41:48] And Scott listens in regularly, but his team put together some pretty cool stuff here and just a series of questions that they asked. But do you have some of those, any of those charts handy? It's not always. Yeah, there you go. I know it's not always easy to multitask. I appreciate you, you doing that. So they just asked in this, uh, they did a survey with Baird, um, research and it talked about compared to one year ago, how would you assess current supply chain delivery conditions? 9% said they were much improved.

[00:42:17] 35% said they're improved. 39, no change. And then 17 said slightly worse. So I mean, that's a large, large number that says improved. Why do you think that's the case? Well, I think, you know, I, what I wish I would have gone and looked is exactly what, and maybe I can see this year in the article, uh, end of the second quarter.

[00:42:38] I think what we, my, my assumption is part of that was tied to the, um, um, the IEPA tariffs and finding some balancing with that. My suggestion though, is that it's not necessarily, it could be that it's not necessarily truly improved. They figured out how to manage it better. Okay. So that'd be a great question for Scott. Let's look at the next one.

[00:43:03] Um, how to expect supply chain conditions to trend over the remainder of 2026 and resoundingly 61% no change. This is where I thought there might've been something now. I bet if we did this, um, if they took this survey again, I think that that might be that you might see improving might increase a little bit because of the 301 tariffs and there being

[00:43:33] some control systems around those tariffs. I think that would be an interesting conversation. I might reach out to Scott and whose team did this. Only 17% said worsening. So what that tells me is that most people feel like I've dealt with the worst of it. And I, it's not that things are perfect by any means or not disruptive even, but at least I know how I'm handling them. Um, and look, things are only going to get better, right?

[00:44:03] So what we're seeing here is that 83% of the people are saying, Hey, at least we're going to be status quo or it's going to get better. Yep. So that's an interesting thing. Yep. So the next one is any, they talked about excitements and concerns. Um, so this group of distributors referenced that, uh, they are most excited about demand, recovery and growth. Okay. Uh, I would have, I would have thought number one and number two might've been flip flop.

[00:44:32] Now, remember this is from Ted magazine, which is the electrical distributor, because the second number, which was 23% was most excited about AI and data centers because AI and data centers is what's going to drive the recovery and growth that they talk about the 39% first number. Right. I mean, everything we're reading right now about, um, Excel and, and, uh, Schneider and

[00:45:00] other large organizations in electrical business and looking at their growth, all of that growth is really truly written right now. The majority of it, I should say is tied to the data center. Right. And you know, so 8% about, uh, reshoring and infrastructure. Um, I thought this was interesting. I don't know what your thoughts are and then we'll look at the, what they're concerned about in a moment, but the, um, there was only 7% that had, were excited about, um, tariffs relief.

[00:45:29] Who would have thought that would have been a little bit more so, um, and then people don't believe there's going to be a lot of tariff relief, so there's nothing to be excited about. Okay. Very good. All right. Um, and certainly as you get down in the lower single digits, this is odd that there's only 6% of respondents had any excitement about innovation and technology and new products coming into the market, which that should be. That should be number one.

[00:45:58] Well, it should, it should trigger things for two, two different groups of people that this addresses. Again, this is innovation, new products and technology. 6% were excited. Companies like ours, right? We are, we not helping people understand well enough what they can do with technology to accelerate the growth in their business and reduce risks in their business. But number, probably even more important than that is if I'm a manufacturer selling to electrical

[00:46:26] distributors that took this survey, only 6% of people think I'm doing anything innovative. Yep. Yep. Right. So why don't we talk about the concerns? Do you want to, you want to hit those? Sure. Um, so this is kind of the other right side of the graph here. 28% most concerned about tariff policies and geopolitics. Not surprising. 22% cost inflation or margin. 20% slowing demand. So that's, you know, what?

[00:46:54] Almost 80, 60, some 70%, I guess. They're related to margins, geopolitics and slowing demand. 10% supply chain. That's lower than I would have thought. But again, maybe people have got this already somewhat under control. Competition, consolidation, private equity. 8%. Data center dependent, 8%. Labor and talent, 7%. And only 6% are concerned about interest rates or financing. It's interesting, huh? Yeah.

[00:47:23] That one surprised me quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. They've got their capital figured out. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. These are good charts. These are, I don't know how many people they interviewed or whatever, but I'm sure there's more details in the article, but. Yeah. Well, thank you, Lily. She did, Lily does all her front end work and getting the article and the newsletter and all of those things ready.

[00:47:48] You wanted to, let's hit the newsletter, but then we'll get that next one. Let's go through our manufacturing distribution M&A section. There's a good article there about AI driving change in the supply chain and skills and talent. That's from supplychain.com. It's actually SEMR.com. And a pretty good article there as well. And then we've just got a handful of other kind of news items there. One about Border State being a top private company and Stanley Black and Decker's earnings.

[00:48:17] And then our good friends, Jennifer Murphy and Dan Judge and Zach and the team over at Net Plus Alliance published some information. This one, you just used what came from it from industrial supply trends about their Net Plus Alliance members seeing a positive second half. So that's good to see as well. But Tom, why don't we dive into our favorites? I want to hit one thing on the Net Plus. Yeah.

[00:48:42] So the average growth, right, from this year, I don't have to go look at the numbers, but a large percentage of the company said they were going to grow over the next year. But the average growth rate is 3% to 7%. Okay. And how many people we talk to, and maybe we're talking to a smaller subset of people, but

[00:49:06] I would say the majority of the people we talk to have really strong aspirations of 15% or more growth per year, which is double what the average person is doing. Yeah. I think what you're describing there is a, so I don't want to compare this with a Net Plus member versus a different type of distribution. Right.

[00:49:32] But there are different people that view, the people that you're describing are extremely forward thinking. They're larger, they're reasonably large size and very well capitalized organizations that are, have everything that they need to accelerate the growth in their business. Net Plus has some very, very large distributors that are in that same boat. They have some smaller distributors as well going with that.

[00:49:59] So I think there's, that's probably a thousand plus distributors and we've got a smaller reference point. I do think so, right? The people that are out there saying, I am going to leverage everything possible between human talent, my balance sheet, my reputation in the market, and I'm going to pull all of these things together are those people that are saying, I'm going to go. Continually find ongoing, ongoing growth. And we have a number of customers in our business and we talk to people regularly who are saying

[00:50:29] there has a mindset of I'm going to double every five years. Now doubling every five years says you have an amazing balance sheet. Well, maybe I don't, I don't know that that's you. You do, you, you have to be able to leverage your suppliers and your inventories and, you know, greenfield opportunities for new facilities and all of the things that go with that. And you've got to be able to leverage. Now your argument would be in it, which I love, and I couldn't agree with more is it's

[00:50:58] a, well, if you use technology correctly, you could do that without needing to have an amazing balance sheet. But the way the majority of them are going about it today or historically has been balance sheet. I agree historically. Yes. But I do believe that you not only believe I can prove that with, you don't have to have a amazing balance sheet in today's day and age with the proper use of technology. Agree.

[00:51:24] To move significantly in that direction. And not everybody has a big, solid, super strong balance sheet, right? Yep. So anyway, if you have a strong balance sheet, that's great, but you don't have to. Yep. Anyway. No, there's, there's, you know, there are lots of tools and levers now that you can use to grow in your organization and technology, like the technology that we have, right?

[00:51:51] Using tools that your team has built, like a revenue expander tool that can go uncover hidden opportunities. And as we have our good friend, Steve Crocker says that EB Horseman in electrical distributor in Western Canada uses the term trapped potential, right? People that have no idea typically what the trapped potential within their businesses. I always say that, you know, when I was my earlier in my career and I was a manufacturer's rep and would tour most facilities with a distributor sales.

[00:52:21] Even some of my own guys that worked for us is, you know, most often people are walking by more business than they have just because they're busy managing the business that they have. So, but Tom, there is a article that we have in our AI segment here that is from Gartner. It's published through LinkedIn, but it talks about building the AI driven enterprise from strategy and trust to scalable growth. And there's some really good data in there about what does it mean to be AI native?

[00:52:51] So that kind of, I'm going to segue off our topic of, you know, discussing how you can use technology to really help grow an organization to what does that really mean to drive in this and they're saying an AI driven organization, but just even a technologically advanced organization, you know, AI is a component of that. But, you know, it's kind of funny. We look so often right now is, you know, everybody wants to talk about AI, AI, AI.

[00:53:18] So I'd say it's an old, old children's song, AI, AIO. So, but people were missing the boat when you, with so much of what you could do with just really good workflows built into your technology and so forth. Right? So I look at things sometimes as, and your team has done a phenomenal job of the AI tools we have built into our Meridian 360 platform and our channel cloud CRM system and sales compass, sales enablement tools and so forth.

[00:53:46] But when you're harnessing technology correctly, it's where you really can go. But within this article, there's a great Snapchat because now we're starting to hear this term more and more. You've used it, conversations about the company that you and I run about being AI native. Why don't we use that chart and chat about that for a couple of minutes? I think this would help people. And before we get into there, I actually want to do a shout out to Bob, Bob Britton.

[00:54:13] He wrote a really good LinkedIn article today called the AI cliff dive. Yes. Let's make sure we publish that next week. Yeah. Well, we're not going to do one next week. We're not going to do a show, but we can do the newsletter next week. We'll do a newsletter. But it fits this article. I thought I was reading this and I was reading, I was reading Bob's article and I was reading the Skartner article kind of the same time and looking at them together.

[00:54:38] And there's a lot of these between the two viewpoints that are there. Because Bob's point in the article is, you know, hey, it's dangerous to just dive off a cliff right into the water, not knowing necessarily what you're going to run into. And AI can be very similar. But I think as we get and we can talk about some of these graphs that are here, but it's like anything else, right?

[00:55:08] If you prepare a little bit and you have some strategy and you know what you're doing, right? Then you can dive off the cliff with confidence that you're going to have a successful, successful landing. And that's a lot of what I think this Gartner article is. And it's very, it's quite, it's quite comprehensive. But, you know, Gartner is usually quite comprehensive on some of the things here. But your question about what is AI native?

[00:55:37] So they have on this chart here that we have on our screen, right? They have these different stages. So they have stage zero, not AI enabled, stage one, AI assisted, stage two, AI augmented, stage three, AI integrated, stage four, AI centric. Honestly, don't fully know if I understand all of their, their different. But then they have, it's just Gartner. Right. It's just Gartner. Right. But then they have stage five, which is AI native.

[00:56:07] What AI native is, is if you look at how you run your business, whatever that may be, or parts of your business, right? You can look at how you would leverage AI as a tool. So you could say, okay, let's say I'm just just take legal as an example. It's a simple thing, right? Let's say you have a legal department in your business.

[00:56:33] Maybe you have a lawyer or somebody on staff, or you have a, or somebody who has a legal background and a contract comes in and then they say, oh, I'm going to take that contract and I'll run it through chat GPT and have them give me some feedback. Right. Well, that would be kind of AI assisted or, or whatever it'd be early stage there on what it is. But what if you decided that you were going to, rather than having a lawyer there, you have

[00:57:02] an AI agent, the contract comes in and automatically feeds into the AI agent. The AI may ask for some clarifying results on it, goes through, reviews the contract, redlines it, compares it to other contracts that you've had that are similar and how you handled the red lines with the other things, right? Because think about contracts. A lot of times we, we replicate a lot of the same changes or requests or whatever from

[00:57:31] one contract to another, or we make one in contract day and we forget to do it in contract B, whatever. Right. And so looks at all of the things that you've done, other red lines you've done with similar contracts. What are some best practice strategies? What are the legal, you know, geographical domains? So if this is in a certain state, should it be handled in a certain way? And the agent pretty much handles all of that before it even gets to a human, right?

[00:57:58] That's more AI native where you're using AI as the center of what you're doing versus assisting what it is that you're doing on the other side. So what this article is talking about is how organizations can think about transitioning of using AI, well, not at all, maybe, or AI as a tool, or how do I think about using AI,

[00:58:24] even if I can't do it right this second, or I don't have the technical capabilities, at least thinking through how it could be done. Because even if it couldn't be done or it's hard to do technologically right now, it won't be in three months, six months, or whatever down the road. So that's the big difference between these things and how you're looking at it. Right. And where you're using it and to what means, right? And what is, right? To what?

[00:58:52] Well, it talks about, right, what areas that they're using it in their company. They talked about in this chart, right? Where are you waiting and what are you doing? Is it in your supply chain? Is it in processes and automation? Is it in your revenue models and so forth? And I think that ties into that whole picture that you're describing quite well. Yep. Yep. It's good. So, go ahead. Well, there's some other charts here. We won't spend a bunch of time on all of these, but, you know, definitely a lot of good

[00:59:22] conversation even about how you manage change, change management within the organization, all of that. You know, kind of how you start to use this to kind of create a flywheel, the importance of your data in here and your proprietary data. We've been harping about data for 400 or 200 episodes now. Really? We should, I was thinking we should start talking about that more. No, I mean, I think if you go back to 200 to our early episodes. I agree. One of the early things we've talked about is data, right?

[00:59:53] And now data is becoming more and more of a hot topic in organization. And what does it really mean to have proprietary data and all those types of things? Yep. So, anyway, just talks about cost. Like I said, I don't want to spend, we could spend an hour going. No, no. We've got a few other things to jump to. But I think since we're in this AI topic, let's kind of jump ahead there to our friend

[01:00:19] David Gordon published a good article in his electricaltrends.com newsletter that he published about how agendic AI could change how contractors buy electrical products. And I think there's another chart that goes with it. He did quite a nice job. I think it looks like it might be even an AI developed chart, but he really looks to kind of talk about this. And I think it's unique right now where we sit with this is that, you know, we all think

[01:00:48] about, I guess the first thing we might think about is how we're going to use AI in our business. What we should be thinking about is how are we going to, how is our customer going to be using AI in their business in relationship to us? Can you throw that chart up there? I think it's the next one. It was on your screen. It's coming up. There you go. He just talks about the changing buying process here.

[01:01:16] So again, you know, for those of you that are listening on the recorded podcast, if you want to look at any of these charts that we've gone through, you can catch all of our episodes on both YouTube and just search for Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution and or on the Lead Smart Technologies page on LinkedIn as well. But they talk about how Agentec, or David just talks about, in fact, David's going to be on the show with us soon. I was messaging with him this week and we're going to collaborate on a few things going forward for the rest of the year as well.

[01:01:45] But he talks about how Agentec AI changes the buying process. And he talks about today, traditional ordering process, right? You know, contractor calls, sales rep or inside salesperson picks up the phone, branch order processes something, you know, order gets shipped, blah, blah, blah, right? But now they're talking about, you know, agents being involved in all of this and the value that an agent can bring to this. And it makes me think, Tom, and instead...

[01:02:14] From the customer, from the initial... Correct. The electrical contractor has an agent. Correct. So think about... So the buyer is using an agent, right? Exactly right. So, and you mentioned here, right, Tamara, the Agentec AI ordering process from the buyer side as well. And the reason that I wanted to spend a moment talking about this today is, you know, something that I've thought about forever. And literally, long before we were looking at agentic AI and so forth, and this would have

[01:02:42] been back 2018, 2019, when we were first building our technology for our company, was this world would be coming. And I think we are... We're there. It's just the adoption of it is what's really coming. Just think about it from a standpoint of service titan. Just as a simple example, there's Service Window, lots of other, you know, technology companies that are serving that contractor, whether he's, you know, building your porch and your

[01:03:11] back porch at home, your home, or he's rewiring a data center, right? They now are running... More and more of them are running... I mean, service type went public last year. And so they are running these tight ships of technology that is saying, I go to a job site, I take pictures of it, you know, I put some notes in, I've got my CRM built into that, I can do my order or my bids out of it, I can show the bids that I won. They've got all these wonderful tools.

[01:03:39] The idea of now pushing what my needs are for that job, think about, you know, you did some really cool stuff late last year of being able to take a picture of a ditch with some some PVC pipe in it and getting an order of what's needed out of that, right? So now think about that contractor is moving down that path that he's saying, I just want to go take a picture of a yard, right? Plug a few things into my CAD, kicks out the bill of materials.

[01:04:07] I push the bill of materials by AI to my three or four top customers. Now who's his three or four top customers? Because... Or vendors, I should say, not customers, three or four top vendors. That he buys from. Let's just say he's, you know, he's a, he's a, needs building materials. And in that setting, he's going to go to his lumber supplier and his different suppliers there and their ability to capture that data and get him a timely response is what David's talking about here.

[01:04:36] And this concept, you know, wholesale distributors are going to have to meet to, you know, quote our good friend Ian Heller said on this show a while back, was it, he said on our 100th episode show was you have to meet the buyer where they're at. And these buyers habits are changing very, very quickly and are going to be establishing more tools. And there's the threat that we talked about last week in general of now hitting 60 billion in sales was it was Amazon.

[01:05:04] And Amazon knows exactly how to meet that buyer where they are in that set. Yeah, I think it's a, it's a real challenge. It'll be interesting to see. Look, I don't know how fast the electrical contractors of the world are adopting, you know, buying agents yet. Right. That's a, that's a pretty. It's a, it's a pretty. Can I interrupt you? Can I interrupt you with that thought? I want to add to what you're saying because you're right.

[01:05:34] How fast are they adding? But what they are doing, Tom, is they are buying these technologies. I'll just use service type. No, no, I get you. Right. I agree. They are all going there and service type is who is going to bring them down that path. Right. So the threat is the threat is where is service Titan going to bring your customer? Not where is your customer going to go on their own? Right. No, I agree. They're not going to go build the agent on their own, but someone's going to have to go in and implement it and set it up where they're using service Titan.

[01:06:03] You're going to have to verify it. You're going to have to, you know, there's, there's, there's care and feeding involved in that agent regardless. Of course. Of course. Or agents, plural. Right. It's, you know, Bob's saying here, is there things that are going to be going to be missed along the way through all of that? And probably, probably along the way. But look, I don't disagree that this is the future. Right. The question is the timing of the future. That could be debatable.

[01:06:34] So the distributor, what you have to then be able to do is have an agentic friendly website and buying capabilities along the way. And I think there's a real opportunity for a distributor. You mentioned our revenue expander, right? Our revenue expander, all it, all it's doing quote unquote is. Don't sell yourself short. Yeah, I shouldn't.

[01:07:00] Uncovering opportunities, basically where somebody is buying A and there should be an opportunity for them to buy B and they may or may not. C, D, E, and F. Right, exactly. But if I'm, and we're using this currently with a traditional sales process, like we have on the left-hand side of this graph. But that same process could be incorporated into the agentic process as well so that there

[01:07:27] are, it could even more intelligently start to help the distributor even get more wallet share and more capture more white space through how they're actually interacting with those contractors going forward. Because this is just a channel, right? The agent is just a channel. It's just something else that is buying other than an individual. And this is going through a different channel, but all the same tactics and strategies and

[01:07:57] so forth could apply in this situation as well. Yep. Good. Let's, let's just hit a couple more of the different topics and segments that we have today with the time that we have left. What, what appeals to you of what's left today, Tom? I didn't know I'd throw that in your lap. No. Is there anything that appeals to you that? Nope.

[01:08:25] Looks like we, um, you know, two pictures of the same, but different articles there. Uh, scrolling through. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that funny? Uh, that's all right. People make mistakes. Um, there's an article there about BYD, which is a big Chinese, um, autonomous car manager, electric vehicle manufacturer that's doing autonomous cars. And they're revealing some new things with, uh, humanoid robots. There's a, um, um, if you're following humanoid robots at all, there's an episode that just

[01:08:54] launched, I think it was Wednesday on the all in podcast where one of the, uh, the four co-hosts of the all in podcast was at a big robotics conference in, uh, Paris talking with some of the, uh, the, uh, I don't know if you've listened to any of that, Tom. I listened to a little bit of it last night while I was driving, but some good stuff there as well, uh, about what's coming with autonomous, uh, humanoid robots and the different things that can be done in that setting. Some really unique discussion about where those could be used.

[01:09:22] And there's basically an interesting enough, a kind of a coalition of the top humanoid robot companies that are saying not for war, not for destruction of anything, you know, no, no damage should come from these. Do you want to use them in the department of defense to go defuse bombs? Absolutely. But don't put, don't put a missile on their, on their shoulder. So it's kind of interesting, but robotics is something that is just, you know, I got, um, Oh, I think it was last week.

[01:09:49] I was messaging with, uh, Max Meister from Ludwig Meister, the biggest, uh, um, uh, distributor in, uh, in Bavaria in Southern Germany. And, uh, he was asking me to have my humanoid robot yet. And I saw another humanoid robot, uh, article on LinkedIn and I reshared it. And reposted it and copied our friend, uh, Pierre from, um, Moblico, who is planning to buy multiple humanoid robots for his home.

[01:10:17] So we're going to continue to pop up and show more, more humanoid robot in instances and what they're going to be able to do and so forth because of the value that they're going to bring into distribution. Right. If you can use, if you can use AI tied into a humanoid robot, the value that we can bring to human beings to have fewer back injuries and different things like that and use their

[01:10:43] minds and their bodies and just their bodies and make better people, uh, and have a better life experience. I think it's where we want to be in life. So, um, you know, the, the, uh, previous founder of Uber, uh, Travis, Travis Talmud. Yeah. He just raised, I want to say a hundred and 300 million for his company and his company is

[01:11:07] building not humanoid robots, but purpose built robots for very specific applications. So for example, food, food service or cooking or whatever. And what is interesting is, and, you know, kind of look, understanding a little bit about what he's doing and what others are doing is the humanoid robot. While it has its place is very relatively small, right?

[01:11:36] Humanoid robots are not the best fit for all the things that robots could do things for. Don't tell, don't tell Elon Musk that. Yeah. Well, but, but there's not that there's a, there's not that there's a, a place for the humanoid robot, but there's a lot of specialty situations. And that's what Travis's new company or a relatively new company is doing is building robots that are not necessarily humanoid, but purpose built for the situation of which they're, how they're being utilized. Right.

[01:12:05] So I'm going to push, push back, not on you, but on him on that. Right. What, what he's building is robotic kitchens to build food, to, to make food and cook food through, through robots. That was just one vertical. He's going into other verticals. He's going into other verticals. But, but let's make a comparison with that. And this is where my pushback is. So, and to your point, right?

[01:12:33] You've got robotics and you've got humanoid robotics. The last five, I don't want to say five, the last three cars that you've bought and you keep cars a long time have all been welded by robots. Same type of purpose built. I do, I have an arm and it does this movement. It goes, and then moves and does, right? That's, that's nothing new. Now, building AI into that is, is kind of unique.

[01:13:03] There is a, and I think if you, if you really start diving into where robotics are going to be, is there will be purpose built robotics, right? For the factory line, for building, for doing those things that will start applying more AI and that will get better and better and better. Where you think about, and let's, let's use, I'm going to use a different word. I'm going to say more lifelike robotics versus humanoid robotics.

[01:13:32] Think about the ones that run on four legs, like a dog, right? Right. That are out monitoring pipelines where there could be dangerous gases or explosive gases could be there where you would never want to send a person. You can't send. And that's where I push back on what Travis Kalnick is. If you know, if I understood you correctly, he's saying much bigger use case over there.

[01:13:58] I think if you look at it now, maybe the, maybe the contribution to the economy from a dollar standpoint is similar because those bigger machineries that are perfect pieces of machinery that are built to do something related to food service or whatever it might be. Maybe those are far more expensive, but that 75,000 or $50,000 humanoid or four-legged robot

[01:14:22] that can work 20 hours a day, change its own batteries and be far outpacing a human in a dangerous job are going to drive amazing things in the economy. Now, Elon Musk, and I just, whether you, I don't care if you like Elon Musk or not, betting against Elon Musk, I think would be a mistake. I think his belief is that we will all have multiple humanoid robots within our homes and our workplaces. All of this could be true. I don't think this is an either or.

[01:14:52] It's not an either or. That's exactly right. Could not agree more. And Travis's position, which he just raised $300 million or more on, is that the humanoid robot market will be huge, but will only represent three to 5% of the overall robot market. I would absolutely call that ludicrous. I don't know. I'm not saying I'm agreeing. I haven't done enough homework. Yeah.

[01:15:20] But it's a very different, look, there's, I agree that there'll be no shortage of humanoid robots and all the things you said would be true. But I just think we, if you really look at all of the different possible use cases and different scenarios, situations, whatever, right? There may be different robots that are, you know, maybe sort of humanoid or kind of not, or they don't look like anything we've experienced, or they look like a barrel or I don't know. Right.

[01:15:48] But they're still accomplishing a lot of the same things. Yes. No, I, to your point is that is not a mutually exclusive discussion, right? It is a broad, broad point. Tom Harvick, my old friend, going to have lunch with Tom again. We had lunch about six months ago. He comments that's, I think he's referring to Metropolitan Water District in LA. Tom's a Southern California guy like we are. He's talking about using robotic dogs or robot dogs for security at their facilities.

[01:16:16] But start really thinking about that standpoint of where, where are there jobs and roles that are unsafe for humans, right? Right. And think about that from Tom works in the, the safety equipment world and personal protective equipment. Think about that. You know, if I'm, if I'm a PPE manufacturer, I'm starting to think about what type of PPE should I be making for protecting the electronics on a, on a robot? Because there will be fewer people.

[01:16:46] Do they need to wear the orange vest or the, or the lime colored vest and the. That's a good point though. Think about that because that just think about a traffic vest. The traffic vest is for the safety of the individual. Sure. The other side of it is guess what? If you hit a person, let alone a robot that's, you know, heavier and steel components, you're going to damage your equipment, right? So you still are going to want that PPE component. This is a great conversation.

[01:17:15] I think maybe I'll go to the national safety Congress and this fall and wander around and ask people in the manufacturing side, are they contemplating a PPE for robotics? Because you've got that component. But if you think about that entire market, which is a huge market, right? Is if we're putting less human beings into dangerous situations, what happens to that market?

[01:17:39] Unless we're now doing PPE, which probably looks very different than the PPE of today for. But wouldn't, wouldn't this infect Andy and his company? Of course. And all that stuff. Yeah. So. I mean, I don't know that it will, but what I'm saying is that is a point of discussion. I agree with you. I think it's an interesting point of discussion because. Yeah. Yes. A lot of things where we're trying to protect humans. Yeah. We won't be protecting humans anymore because they're not going to be doing the job.

[01:18:08] So if I'm, if I'm a, if I'm a manufacturer of flame and fire resistant and Tom just put a link in one of the companies he works with that does PPE for pets, evidently. So, but if you think about that, right. I mean, people, people have been putting. Chains around their dog's neck with studs on them. Right.

[01:18:34] We think it's a punk rocker thing, but really what that came from is protecting their dogs from other dogs, biting them in the neck. Right. So we've been protecting animals with different types of protection, just like we've been protecting people. But if you're now going to put a humanoid robot into, or any type of robot into, you know, an oil field scenario where there could be, you know, dangerous gases that you can't breathe. That, you know, that's no problem. You protect the robot from that.

[01:19:02] It's not the same issues that a human has, but maybe, you know, think about a protective clothing company, right? Maybe there is a protective, you know, Nomex shield that or sheet that goes over that robot, but, but we're not protecting as many people because the robot can one outperform all the people because they're working 20 hours a day. And they need one set of something that maybe looks a little bit different. Sure. Or even harnesses or anything like that.

[01:19:28] Cause you don't want the robot falling from 25 feet and falling on somebody or breaking or, so yeah, I can see it. I think it's a good point. Changing market and new market. You heard it here first. Sounds like we need, that sounds like some company we should create. That's what we need is one more company. It sounds like you want to start making robots and make salads. Yeah. There we go. Good. Hey, I've had enough. I got a lot of work to do. Yeah. All right. So good. Yeah.

[01:19:59] Appreciate everybody's comments. People being with us. Forward to the celebration on the, on the 21st. The, uh, the swag arrives today. Okay. So all, all set to go. I will miss everyone next week. Um, and, uh, it's been great having you in the office this week. And so you're back up at your home office, but it was good having you. All right, Bob, if you're still on, drop the link to your article in the chat here. Yeah.

[01:20:27] We can't do it, but if you can put it in there, because I think it was a really good article to. That would be great. Comparing. Great idea. Yeah. That'll get that out to the audience here. We'll use that article next week. Um, but anyways, we appreciate everybody coming with us again. I'm Kevin Brown. This is Tom Burton. We do this every week. We're grateful. Uh, I'm just still astounded. And I guess humbled might be a word to think that 200 times people have shown up and listened

[01:20:55] to what we have to say and continue to come back. We don't know if anybody's showing up and listened to what we had to say. We've just done this 200 times. Well, the statistics that our marketing people have and our producer and editor have would suggest that people actually like what we're doing. Probably robots. Probably agents that are listening. That's right. Agents that are coming in and listening. The, um, the numbers are going up and the numbers are going up significantly, uh, every week

[01:21:21] on the, um, on the recorded podcast, which is a bigger audience there, but, uh, we're grateful. Appreciative. We'll see everybody, uh, on the, when are we back on the 14th? Is that right? I think it is. We'll be back. Yep. Good. Bob, Bob posted his article there. Appreciate that. I'll get a closer look at it. I didn't read it all, but we're appreciative of everybody being with us. We're appreciative of the company that Tom and I work for that sponsors our show, the guests that we have, the comments that everybody makes.

[01:21:48] So we'll, uh, we'll get excited for, I don't want to get excited for the next 200 episodes, but as I said, in our team call yesterday about this, there's four or five of us on the call. And I said, I'll get it. Somebody said something about when we get to 400 and I said, let me, let's work on three. Let's work on three. Make sure I'm still alive for 300. So anyways, thanks everybody for being with us. I'm Kevin Brown, Tom Burton. We do this every week. We thankful for you being with us. Thankful for the sponsorship of our company at lead smart.

[01:22:16] If your company is looking to digitally transform, understand all the data that you have in your business, understand what your customers are really doing in your business, uh, with all the different journeys that they take with your organization and you're looking to accelerate growth and understanding within your business. We'd love to talk to you and share with you what we do at lead smart through our enterprise growth platform called Meridian 360 that is fully launching later in August. So thanks again, Tom. I wish you a great weekend. I'm sure I'll talk to you more later today.

[01:22:46] We'll wish everybody a wonderful time for the weekend ahead and please be safe, be kind and do good things. We hope you enjoyed today's episode and our guests each week. We try our best to dig into the topics that are impacting your business. So please reach out to us and let us know how you think we can make the show better or topics you'd like for us to tackle or talk about more often and even guests you'd like to see join us.

[01:23:15] 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 finally, please check out our sponsor Lead Smart Technologies and their manufacturing and wholesale distribution industry CRM customer intelligence and channel collaboration platform.

[01:23:44] That's Lead Smart Technologies at leadsmarttech.com.