The Impact of Political Change on Wholesale Manufacturing and Distribution

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

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

[00:00:36] How are you, my friend?

[00:00:38] Okay.

[00:00:39] Good.

[00:00:40] A busy week, kind of crazy week where you're at, right? Big monster fire by your house?

[00:00:45] Yep.

[00:00:45] How's that looking right now?

[00:00:47] It's much better.

[00:00:48] The mountain fire?

[00:00:48] Yeah, it's much better.

[00:00:50] Good.

[00:00:50] That was, you were pretty close to the edge of the evacuation zone, right?

[00:00:53] Pretty, about 200 yards, yeah.

[00:00:56] Yeah.

[00:00:56] Wild.

[00:00:57] Yeah.

[00:00:57] Well, we had our crazy wildland fire in, not far from my house, but not 200 yards from the evacuation, but we could see flames and stuff from our front yard looking across to it.

[00:01:09] And late September, early October, 23,000 acres nearby our house.

[00:01:15] I know that you're like 15,000, I think, right now.

[00:01:19] We're 20 now.

[00:01:20] It's like 20.

[00:01:20] Is it okay?

[00:01:21] Yeah.

[00:01:21] So that'll probably surpass because they're less than 10% contained.

[00:01:25] So, but anyways, wish the best to everybody impacted by that fire in Ventura, Camarillo, California area.

[00:01:32] Weird weather patterns out there right now.

[00:01:35] We're traveling to the southeast next, next week, and it's going to be a warmer than here.

[00:01:41] So, kind of crazy.

[00:01:45] Well, let's dive in.

[00:01:46] We'll cover some ground and we'll dive into our articles.

[00:01:48] My name is Kevin Brown.

[00:01:49] This is my business partner and lifelong friend, Tom Burton.

[00:01:52] We get together every Friday morning unless somebody's on an airplane, somebody's in the hospital, or a scheduled vacation, which doesn't happen too often, but it will impact us next month.

[00:02:04] But we get together and discuss the news of the week.

[00:02:07] We publish a newsletter every week called Around the Horn and wholesale distribution that goes out to 10,000 plus people by email.

[00:02:16] And it's also now available on LinkedIn as a newsletter.

[00:02:20] If you went to the Lead Smart Technologies LinkedIn page, you would be able to subscribe to that newsletter as well and get that coming directly to your inbox as well as available on LinkedIn.

[00:02:32] But what we do with that is we kind of gather up and curate the news of the week, whether it's about economy, supply chain, mergers and acquisitions, marketing, sales, AI, cybersecurity.

[00:02:43] We bring all those topics together plus many more.

[00:02:46] And between Tom and I and oftentimes our guests, we kind of unpack those.

[00:02:50] We use the term sometimes peel back the onion on how those topics impact wholesale distribution.

[00:02:57] So it's great that we are able to get together.

[00:03:00] We're welcoming all of you that are here today.

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[00:03:30] So we're live on LinkedIn live YouTube live and on the Lead Smart Technologies YouTube channel.

[00:03:38] Well, Tom, we're hearing a bunch of background noise.

[00:03:40] We are.

[00:03:41] Yep.

[00:03:42] I'm not hearing something.

[00:03:44] Okay.

[00:03:44] It sounded like there was something playing in the background there.

[00:03:48] But we'd love to have you join us on any of those channels.

[00:03:51] If you're listening on the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Odyssey, wherever it might be, you won't be seeing that newsletter.

[00:03:58] And that newsletter will be up on our screen as well as comments from those listening in.

[00:04:02] So we're happy to have you with us.

[00:04:04] We're going to dive right in.

[00:04:05] One last two, two last quick things.

[00:04:07] One is if you're with us live, feel free to comment.

[00:04:11] Love to hear your comments and your thoughts about the discussion today.

[00:04:15] Obviously, we're going to have a few discussions or comments today and points that we'll discuss about this week's election.

[00:04:20] We're going to try and keep things real civil, regardless of taking sides and so forth on anything, but just talk about the opportunities that are there for manufacturing and distribution.

[00:04:31] Lastly is we couldn't do this each week if we didn't have the sponsorship of the company that Tom and I work for, which is LeadSmart Technologies.

[00:04:40] And LeadSmart has developed a AI-enabled smart CRM and customer intelligence solution.

[00:04:46] That solution brings data from across your business.

[00:04:50] If you're a manufacturer or a wholesale distributor, we pull data from ERP systems, marketing automation, e-commerce systems, and other silo data that aren't talking at this stage.

[00:05:01] And we bring those together in a smart CRM platform.

[00:05:04] It works very differently than traditional CRMs where it brings that data together and we can make intelligence solutions and decisions out of that data to help drive customer growth and accelerate revenue growth within a business.

[00:05:17] So if that's something that your company is thinking about, looking to accelerate growth, looking to plug revenue holes within your business where you've got leaks, whether it's quotes, leads, whatever it might be that aren't being managed well, smart CRM is the way to go with that.

[00:05:31] We welcome the opportunity to discuss that.

[00:05:33] So enough of that.

[00:05:34] Tom, did I miss anything?

[00:05:36] No.

[00:05:36] And I would reiterate, if you're listening, would love to hear from you.

[00:05:40] Last week, the comments didn't work for whatever reason.

[00:05:42] So if you're out there, we'd love to know if the comments are working today.

[00:05:47] I know StreamYard that we've used been going through some upgrades and I'm not sure they're all that friendly as it relates to the comments.

[00:05:54] So anyway.

[00:05:55] That's good.

[00:05:56] Good, good, good, good.

[00:05:57] All right.

[00:05:57] Well, let's just dive right in.

[00:06:01] Yesterday, what happened, Tom?

[00:06:03] What happened to the Fed yesterday?

[00:06:04] You want to talk to us about that?

[00:06:06] Yeah, so they did this crazy thing of doing another quarter point interest cut, which gives us two for the year.

[00:06:16] Just mind boggling, actually, now that we think about it.

[00:06:20] Probably will be the last for the year, actually.

[00:06:22] Do you think?

[00:06:23] Yeah, I don't know.

[00:06:24] I haven't looked at the numbers or the percentages or whatever.

[00:06:28] Hey, Paul's here.

[00:06:28] Good morning.

[00:06:29] Yeah, appreciate it.

[00:06:30] Thank you, Paul.

[00:06:37] Yeah, but they did the thing yesterday.

[00:06:39] And so, Kevin, I concede that you've won your stake.

[00:06:44] But I wanted you to know I'm not a sore loser.

[00:06:48] And so I wanted to bring this up here.

[00:06:51] So here are the different choices you're going to have here.

[00:06:56] I don't know which one of those look good to you.

[00:06:59] That's awesome.

[00:07:01] You know, there's your signature stakes at Outback.

[00:07:03] That's right.

[00:07:04] But you can choose from there.

[00:07:06] Well, that's touche.

[00:07:08] Let's just start with that touche, my friend, because I've got something similar that we should discuss here.

[00:07:14] And I think our friend Paul Kennedy that just commented there, Paul and I got together for a beer early last week, I guess it is.

[00:07:21] And we were kind of discussing this.

[00:07:22] So I want you to see this, Tom.

[00:07:25] This is a prime ribeye.

[00:07:29] Okay?

[00:07:30] All right.

[00:07:31] Okay.

[00:07:32] This is a one liter bottle of 40th anniversary Caymus.

[00:07:38] So this is the starting point for the wine.

[00:07:41] You can go up from here, but this is the starting point.

[00:07:44] And they don't have prime anything at Outback.

[00:07:47] So, you know.

[00:07:50] I'm sorry to hear that.

[00:07:52] You have a prime steak there if you'd like a prime steak.

[00:07:56] I could bring my wine and my own steak to Outback.

[00:07:58] That's right.

[00:07:59] You know, Darlene and I were driving the other day and we drove by a Sizzler and it made me kind of giggle.

[00:08:05] But, you know, I think it still existed.

[00:08:08] But if that's, you're welcome to do Sizzler if you'd prefer over Outback.

[00:08:12] I'm fine with that.

[00:08:13] I have, I have, I'm going to give you an option of two different places here locally and we'll go well.

[00:08:19] But, you know, this is, this is pretty important as well.

[00:08:23] The 50th anniversary just launched to this Caymus and this will be the low end of the wine selection for the, for the evening.

[00:08:30] No matter how you slice it.

[00:08:32] So, but it's fun.

[00:08:33] This has been, you know, in all seriousness, this has been a fun, fun to discuss and go through as we, but it's also allowed us to really look closely at, you know, interest rates in the economy.

[00:08:43] It feels good to win, of course, but I'm going to, I'm certainly not going to go double or nothing, but I'm not going to be at all surprised if we see another quarter point in December and, and then nothing in January.

[00:08:59] I wouldn't, I wouldn't bat against a quarter point in December.

[00:09:03] Yeah.

[00:09:03] But, but they were saying, you know, I think that they're like, okay, maybe, you know, in so many words, maybe things are leveling out for a little while here.

[00:09:11] Let's see how things play out.

[00:09:13] And if, again, if you look at, we talked about this last week, if you look at the bond market and so forth, you're getting pretty close to things leveling out based around.

[00:09:23] So I don't know.

[00:09:24] I think, you know, we'll talk about this a little bit as we dive in more, but I think there's, it's, it's going to take quite some time before anything that a new administration is going to be able to do to really impact this.

[00:09:37] And I did think it was interesting in the announcement yesterday that I only got little pieces of it, but it sounds like Powell was pretty, pretty defensive.

[00:09:49] You know, Trump appointed him in his first, first term and hasn't said anything about firing him at this stage.

[00:09:58] In fact, I think there was a comment in one of these articles that said that he commented he's likely to keep him.

[00:10:03] Yeah.

[00:10:03] And likely to keep him.

[00:10:05] Yeah.

[00:10:05] But, but so it's interesting because there was a bunch of questions about that.

[00:10:08] And I just thought it was odd that, you know, Powell came back and said, he can't fire me.

[00:10:12] It's like, why, why push back on an issue that's not there right now?

[00:10:16] But who knows?

[00:10:18] So anyways, with this article that we are looking at here from Reuters talks about a patient approach to things.

[00:10:26] Right.

[00:10:26] So, you know, now we're at rates at 4.5 to 4.75.

[00:10:33] I think there, my guess is that, and we'll just hear more about this, right?

[00:10:39] We got another month before the next, the next and final meeting of the year.

[00:10:42] But, you know, there is some discussion that the markets might already think that they've got that next one already baked in with then big question on what happens next year.

[00:10:52] So we'll, you know, we'll see, we'll see what plays out of that.

[00:10:56] You know, they just talked about pace and destination of interest rates as they reset currently tight monetary policy to account for inflation that has slowed markedly and is nearing the central bank's 2% target.

[00:11:11] He said, but Powell said that as the proposals from the new administration take shape, he said the central bank would begin estimating the impact on its twin goals of stable inflation and maximized employment.

[00:11:24] So I think they're, they're probably going to be in the December meeting, really trying to get a look at, you know, what are the, and we're going to talk about some of the other topics that, you know, this administration has planned fairly early on.

[00:11:37] So interesting thoughts.

[00:11:38] We'd love to hear anybody else's comments on what they think is going to happen, whether then we see the next rate cut and what happens going into the new year.

[00:11:45] So any, any views on what the prognostications on, on what does the economy look like and where the interest rates settle next year?

[00:11:56] Where they settle next year?

[00:11:57] Yeah.

[00:11:58] I think we'll settle somewhere.

[00:12:01] Like I think I said before, high threes.

[00:12:04] Yep.

[00:12:06] Yep.

[00:12:07] I get it.

[00:12:07] I mean, there's, there's, there's a lot of, a lot of months in front of us over the next 20 months.

[00:12:12] If you look at what's occurred over the last 12 months, since we started this whole conversation about interest rates.

[00:12:19] It's no, exactly right.

[00:12:21] So good.

[00:12:22] I want to roll ahead to talk a little bit about the US PMI.

[00:12:27] We can kind of hit that pretty quickly, but that's, we look at each, you know, comes out.

[00:12:34] I think it's a quarterly piece.

[00:12:35] This is a big piece that the Fed looks at as well.

[00:12:38] And it increased by 1.1 to 56%.

[00:12:43] So thinking about this again, this is the purchasing managers index.

[00:12:49] It's published by the Institute for Supply Management.

[00:12:52] And economists had been thinking, as far as the poll that Reuters had done in this article, had forecasted its decline down to 53.8 and it bumped up to 56.

[00:13:06] And, you know, at 50% is a baseline says PMI reading above 50 indicates growth in the services sector.

[00:13:13] So that's what this is really looking at.

[00:13:15] So I thought that was kind of interesting that, you know, it was expected to decline and it got a little bump.

[00:13:21] So I think we're back to that.

[00:13:23] What we've been talking about for what, 18 months now is this simmering up and down.

[00:13:27] Behind the bump?

[00:13:28] No, not really.

[00:13:29] Nope.

[00:13:30] So they did.

[00:13:31] Yeah, they did talk about one of the, they said construction company used the words good and they're starting to build a backlog.

[00:13:39] They said professional scientific and technical services firm said business is in a steady state with every one holding on even keel awaiting on election results.

[00:13:49] So this was published before the election.

[00:13:51] They did mention, though, something in that about some instability in the medical equipment and medical emergency medical markets based upon some impact that the hurricanes had on some manufacturing plants.

[00:14:08] So anyways, it's good to see that, you know, that kind of bump up there.

[00:14:12] There's some good news coming out of that, which is positive.

[00:14:15] So what's next, Tom?

[00:14:18] Well, we were going to talk a little bit about Wall Street.

[00:14:21] Yep.

[00:14:22] Wall Street certainly seems to be quite happy with the election, quite happy with the rate cut, although the rate cut was kind of a blip.

[00:14:29] Well, I mean, nobody, nobody, I think that, yeah, it's, I think the CNBC thing was the most unimpressed, how did they say?

[00:14:40] The least surprising and the most unimpressive news of the week.

[00:14:43] Yeah.

[00:14:44] Even if we hadn't had the election.

[00:14:46] Because it was like, you know, for those in the know, I guess, you know, you're not included in this, of course.

[00:14:53] But for those in the know, it was baked, it was baked in and ready to go.

[00:14:57] Well, I like voting for long shots or unloading shots.

[00:15:01] You're the one that was smart enough to buy some Tesla at the beginning of the week.

[00:15:05] And I was looking at it.

[00:15:06] It was three, two weeks ago, two or three weeks when I remember when they rolled out that robo taxi and everybody dropped 10% in the day because they didn't like the robo taxi.

[00:15:17] I was like, okay, this seems like a buying opportunity.

[00:15:21] No, what can pay for your outback state?

[00:15:24] Yeah, there you go.

[00:15:25] Why wise move?

[00:15:26] I wish I would have bought some Coinbase or some, you know, some, some other crypto related pieces as well.

[00:15:33] So any thoughts out of this article about Wall Street gurning for Trump 2.0 tariffs?

[00:15:40] So I think right now, right, it's a bit of a honeymoon period.

[00:15:44] And I don't know that the run up that we've seen in the last couple of days is going to be sustainable.

[00:15:50] Because, yeah, now you're going to have to look at some of it.

[00:15:52] And this is what this article is talking about is, okay, well, what is what is really ahead over the next 12 months?

[00:15:58] Right.

[00:15:58] I do think that and we'll talk about this.

[00:16:01] I think we definitely are going to have a very business friendly environment, which I think is obviously good for Wall Street.

[00:16:08] It's good for us small business owners and manufacturers and distributors and so forth, which I think is the basis behind the run up, right?

[00:16:18] I mean, there's a lot of elements that go into the run up.

[00:16:21] Overall, they're, you know, looking at, hey, this is going to be a very business friendly environment, good for earnings, good for business growth.

[00:16:27] So, but then you start factoring in some of these other things and, you know, again, there's more analysis to be done.

[00:16:34] Yeah, I think what's interesting in this setting is, you know, look, the incoming president has been known for, you know, long before he was ever in politics for being vocal and boisterous and flamboyant and all of those things, right?

[00:16:53] I do think it'll be interesting to see, you know, if he has mellowed a little bit through all of this.

[00:16:59] I think it would be beneficial if that were the case, obviously.

[00:17:03] But I don't think we're going to see the level of tariffs.

[00:17:07] I don't think we're going to see the level of tax cuts that have been promised.

[00:17:11] I think that we're going to see some good stuff there.

[00:17:14] And I mean, there's some points in this article and others that talk about, you know, what could happen to the economy with corporate tax rates, you know, dropping significantly.

[00:17:25] You know, the promise was getting those down to 15 percent, whether, you know, that's the case or not.

[00:17:30] It was major economic impact for earnings and so forth that was going to come out of that as well.

[00:17:36] So, you know, regardless of what comes out of this, I think it's going to be very much pro-growth.

[00:17:43] Just a quote from this article, it says, while political developments can move markets, investors say they typically tend to take backseat to macroeconomic forces and the health of corporate profits as well as global events.

[00:17:55] So they describe this as an example.

[00:17:58] The S&P 500 rose 70 percent during Trump's first term as technology shared sword, even as tariff policies sparked bouts of volatility.

[00:18:10] So I think we're going to see some some bump ups and quite a few things, maybe a little flattening out.

[00:18:15] And then as things settle in next year, we'll probably get much more.

[00:18:22] See a much more solid base of what's going to come out of this by middle to latter part of next year.

[00:18:27] Yeah. And to the point on tariffs, right.

[00:18:30] Trump is a negotiator.

[00:18:31] Absolutely.

[00:18:32] Negotiator.

[00:18:33] So, you know, he's throwing out some tariff rates and so forth.

[00:18:37] To me, that's like, hey, let's throw the first thing out of the table.

[00:18:40] There'll be a lot of negotiation, a lot of thing.

[00:18:42] He's surrounding himself with other business people.

[00:18:45] You know, as I was saying earlier, right.

[00:18:48] The vice president Vance, he's a business person.

[00:18:50] He was a venture capitalist.

[00:18:51] He grew a company.

[00:18:53] He didn't start in politics.

[00:18:54] Right.

[00:18:54] So he's surrounding himself with business people that I'm hoping, you know, together are going to hopefully come up with something that actually makes sense all the way around.

[00:19:05] Of course, not everybody will be happy about everything.

[00:19:08] But no, of course not.

[00:19:09] No, I think that's a good point.

[00:19:12] I think at the end of the day, you know, no matter what you're doing in life, if it's related to business, why not, you know, find people that have been successful at it?

[00:19:22] And whether you agree with, you know, Trump's business practices or you don't, that's okay.

[00:19:29] But you got to look at the people he's surrounding himself with and, you know, I see that the numbers of, you know, that Elon Musk is where they call it Department of Government Efficiency is what, you know, they're talking about.

[00:19:45] And the trillions of dollars that Musk is saying that, you know, he thinks he can find a cut, even if it's billions of dollars of efficiencies.

[00:19:54] That's wonderful.

[00:19:55] Right.

[00:19:56] It serves everybody's interest.

[00:19:58] And I think that's where you'll find the pushback, right?

[00:20:02] Because whether you call it a deep state or career politicians, there are people and political appointees, there are people out there that their lifeblood is making sure that they're still employed by the government.

[00:20:15] In fact, Tom, do you remember this?

[00:20:18] I hate to put you on the spot because it's not fair, but do you remember the number of the...

[00:20:27] It was billions of dollars and a large percentage of the economy or a surprising percentage of the economy were tied up in people that were funded.

[00:20:40] Their work was funded by the government, whether it's government employees or contractors.

[00:20:44] Over a third of the GDP is supported by government spending.

[00:20:50] So, and a lot of the GDP growth is based around the growth of government spending.

[00:20:55] Right.

[00:20:56] Which is very...

[00:20:57] So, let's say that there is a substantial cut, right?

[00:21:01] Let's say Musk goes in there and, you know, does what he did at Twitter, right, as an example, right?

[00:21:06] And starts cutting a lot of the excess government spending.

[00:21:09] Now, by the way, that GDP number is not just federal government.

[00:21:13] That's federal government.

[00:21:14] State and local as well.

[00:21:15] State and local as well.

[00:21:16] Yeah, but the payrolls that go with that were astounding.

[00:21:19] Right.

[00:21:19] But if he goes in at the federal level and really makes...

[00:21:23] And if this really happens, right?

[00:21:25] Yep.

[00:21:26] Really meaningful cuts, that's actually going to have an impact on the GDP, which is the measure of economic growth.

[00:21:35] And what does that do to the economy, right?

[00:21:38] Does that spook the stock market?

[00:21:41] What does that do when a lot of the things that we measure related to economic growth is around the GDP?

[00:21:47] Mm-hmm.

[00:21:47] So, it's...

[00:21:51] There's a lot of nuance, I guess, in all of this.

[00:21:53] There is.

[00:21:54] But I think the other side of that is if we can use those dollars to impact the debt, federal debt, right?

[00:22:01] Then we've got a whole new story to talk about.

[00:22:05] And there's...

[00:22:05] And I think your comment is well said.

[00:22:07] They're nuanced, right?

[00:22:09] Because there's a balancing act with that.

[00:22:11] If we can...

[00:22:13] The...

[00:22:13] Yes, Brandon's saying that there is a corollary there between Department of Government, governmental efficiency, and Doge.

[00:22:23] Do you want to...

[00:22:23] Do you want to...

[00:22:24] You know more about Dogecoin and all of that than I do, right?

[00:22:27] So, do you want to address that real quick?

[00:22:30] I don't know enough to be...

[00:22:32] That was just...

[00:22:33] That was the...

[00:22:34] There's a...

[00:22:35] Yeah.

[00:22:36] Cryptocurrency called Doge that Musk was behind, right?

[00:22:39] Yeah.

[00:22:39] Well, he wants to make it part of Twitter and incorporate it into Twitter, so...

[00:22:42] Yeah.

[00:22:43] So, good.

[00:22:43] Well, let's just see, right?

[00:22:45] There's some interesting things that are going to be happening.

[00:22:47] It's time to watch.

[00:22:48] We have that other article, though, before we jump, about Chinese logistics operators are getting into U.S. warehousing.

[00:22:55] I would assume right now, with just the fact of the tariff threats that are going on, is that there are...

[00:23:05] Between Shanghai, Shenzhen, and all of the other key ports in China, that there is every container ship that could be found is being brought in there right now to...

[00:23:16] Between now and the end of January to get as much as they can into this country.

[00:23:22] So, this talks...

[00:23:23] This article talks about all the warehouses that are being rented near ports.

[00:23:28] And, you know, it's interesting.

[00:23:29] We're both at...

[00:23:30] Here in California and closer to where I'm at, you know, there's a whole area...

[00:23:35] You know, historically, we saw all these big warehousing areas right around the port of L.A. and Long Beach.

[00:23:40] And now all of that's moved...

[00:23:42] Not all of it, but it's grown so much it's moved inland out into what we call the Inland Empire here, which is kind of moving either out on the way to Las Vegas or out off on the way to Palm Springs in that area, which is Highway 10 or Highway 15.

[00:23:59] It's just, you know, wasteland is now monster warehouses.

[00:24:03] And this reference is a handful of these that are now being leased by Chinese-owned companies.

[00:24:09] And you got to peel that onion a little bit to find out who really the owner is.

[00:24:13] But they're trying to get that foothold.

[00:24:15] And, you know, I've been saying this, Tom, for, I don't know, months and months, I think now, with all of this is...

[00:24:24] We got floods of goods, I'm sure, coming in right now with a tariff risk.

[00:24:28] But I've been saying forever, not forever, but I'm just going to say six months now, let's watch Mexico, right?

[00:24:35] Because this is even more important, I think, right now, because if the new administration, one has, you know, the potential big conflict of both deportation, right?

[00:24:48] Can't imagine they could ever deport as many people as they're talking about.

[00:24:51] But if we're deporting so many people, and there's a conflict that starts brewing with Mexico, right?

[00:24:57] And then we're adding tariffs to Mexico.

[00:25:00] China's already trying to get, you know, electric vehicles and all of those things into Mexico.

[00:25:05] And I think we've got to watch that there's not too much of some sweet deals happening there that could not just impact NAFTA, but just impact us in general in this country.

[00:25:17] So I'm going to continue to say, watch Mexico, watch Mexico, watch Mexico.

[00:25:21] I don't disagree.

[00:25:21] I think you've got to keep an eye on Mexico as kind of the wild card in all of this.

[00:25:26] Yeah.

[00:25:27] Good.

[00:25:28] All right, let's jump into our manufacturing and distribution segment, huh?

[00:25:32] This is an article from Industry Today, and I think we'll be in a moment getting off of the, maybe a little bit of the economy and the election stuff.

[00:25:42] So we'll bump through this one, but I thought this article was really good just because it was, and again, this is from industrytoday.com, and it's just the title is,

[00:25:52] How Donald Trump's presidency May Impact the M&D Industry or Manufacturing Distribution.

[00:25:56] So what I liked about this is it just went through corporate tax rates, labor rights and worker protection, climate change and environmental regulations, trade and trade policies.

[00:26:08] And it just took what the Democratic side and the Republican proposals had been through this.

[00:26:14] So, you know, I talked about labor rights and we'll start for the first part of it.

[00:26:18] Corporate tax rates, you know, the Democratic view of this was looked at raising corporate tax and reducing after-tax profits.

[00:26:27] It says unlimiting funds available for reinvestment.

[00:26:30] You know, the idea here was, you know, tax the rich and make the, this was a Robin Hood moment already.

[00:26:39] And there was a discussion of letting most of the tax cuts and the Jobs Act expire in 2025.

[00:26:46] The reverse was, this is what talks about what to expect from the incoming administration was, it talks about during a second term, manufacturers will likely experience higher after-tax profits,

[00:26:58] giving businesses more flexibility to invest in new technologies, expand production capacity, etc.

[00:27:03] A distribution companies will benefit from lower tax burdens, providing greater capacity for expansion and infrastructure improvements.

[00:27:12] New president is expected to continue pushing for lower corporate taxes and other pro-business tax reforms,

[00:27:19] including making tax reforms enacted, provisions enacted in the TCGA permanent versus expiring.

[00:27:28] That was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

[00:27:29] So that was kind of interesting.

[00:27:32] Yeah, I thought it was a very good summary, as you said, of all the different sort of key things.

[00:27:36] Yeah.

[00:27:37] So if you get it, go ahead, I'm sorry, Tom.

[00:27:39] I was going to say, definitely we're taking a look at it.

[00:27:41] It'll be interesting to see if we look at those in a year from now, how many of those actually come to fruition.

[00:27:47] But we should tag that article and look at it again in a year.

[00:27:51] Well, I think what we'll do, we're going to, so I think that's a great idea.

[00:27:55] Working on getting our panel back together that we had last year with maybe an addition or two.

[00:28:02] When we looked at last in January, we had the illustrious Dirk Beveridge, Mike Marks and Ian Heller joined us to talk about the previous year and looking forward.

[00:28:14] We, I think we'll look to get that group together and maybe an addition with that or two for the discussion again in January.

[00:28:22] We kind of look at what did we say last year?

[00:28:26] And in fact, we'll probably need to just reshare that episode for anybody that wants to watch that in advance, see how we look to things.

[00:28:35] And not that we want to focus on, you know, the fact that we ended up with two rate cuts, maybe three, but we'll kind of move through that pretty quickly.

[00:28:45] But that'll be a good discussion.

[00:28:46] But what we have next week, I want to actually look at this article again next week, because next week we have Alex Chisofsky joining us as our guest next week.

[00:28:58] And Alex is a well-known, he's an advisor to private equity groups and an advisor to M&A firms and an advisor to investment banking firms as well.

[00:29:09] You have his profile up.

[00:29:10] He's with the Bundy Group.

[00:29:11] He's done a lot of work in research with the folks at Modern Distribution Management and a lot with the distributions.

[00:29:19] You know, this DSG thing with Paul commented earlier, I get wrapped up between which one leaves my mouth.

[00:29:25] We've got Distribution Strategy Group and Dakota Supply Group here as well.

[00:29:31] So there was my little faux pas for the day.

[00:29:34] Hope it's my only one.

[00:29:35] But Distribution Strategy Group has done a lot of work with Alex.

[00:29:38] And we're really excited to have Alex because he really dives into the economics of things.

[00:29:44] So we'll kind of look at this article again with having Alex with us next week.

[00:29:47] So he's confirmed as next week's guest.

[00:29:50] And we may have even some folks coming down the road from NAW to talk a little bit about what we can expect as well.

[00:29:59] So good time with that.

[00:30:01] So let's kind of jump through into our e-commerce and marketing segment.

[00:30:04] Four tips for B2B marketers to optimize 2025 strategy and planning.

[00:30:10] This was from demandgenreport.com.

[00:30:12] Any thoughts on that, Tom, on your end?

[00:30:15] Do you have the four tips handy on the list there?

[00:30:18] The first one is adapting go-to-market motions to account for expanding buying groups.

[00:30:24] Yeah.

[00:30:25] Which meaning there's a lot more people involved in making decisions.

[00:30:28] We've talked a lot about that.

[00:30:30] Yep.

[00:30:31] Yep.

[00:30:31] It talks about traditional lead scoring only looks at first-party engagement.

[00:30:35] There's a whole world out there that isn't being accounted for typically.

[00:30:40] We talk about account-based perspectives versus just having a lead.

[00:30:44] Before you jump past that one, just to clarify for people what that means, right?

[00:30:49] Most of the time in marketing with lead scoring, we score it based on what they do with our staff.

[00:30:57] We've talked about the fact that email opens and clicks are not really very good metrics anymore.

[00:31:03] Sure.

[00:31:03] They come to our website.

[00:31:04] They visit our price pages or products or whatever.

[00:31:09] Those are all our first-party data that we tend to have information around.

[00:31:14] But meanwhile, prospects are all over the web, right?

[00:31:18] They're going to Google.

[00:31:19] They're going to chat GPT.

[00:31:20] They're going all over the place doing all kinds of things that have nothing to do with our staff.

[00:31:26] So what they're talking about there is using that data, party data, to help influence what are the things that are.

[00:31:35] Well, I think this goes back to what we talk about a lot of times, right, is being able to identify signals versus noise, right, in coming into that setting in those pieces.

[00:31:47] So second one was identifying target accounts based on intent data.

[00:31:53] So very much related to that, right?

[00:31:56] We're looking at what's meaningful engagement versus just somebody opened an email, right?

[00:32:02] Those are, you know, the metrics are changing all the time in these things and staying on top of those metrics.

[00:32:08] And what is relevant and what is not relevant is important.

[00:32:12] Talked about conducting content audits to determine relevant assets.

[00:32:16] And it's kind of funny.

[00:32:17] We've been working on that at LeadSmart with our marketing, internal marketing folks and agencies that we work with.

[00:32:25] We've been talking about that quite a bit this week, right?

[00:32:27] What is our content?

[00:32:28] What's the content strategy?

[00:32:30] What are the right assets?

[00:32:31] And most importantly, right, is, and this hits some points that I'll cover first here, is determining if asset titles are outdated.

[00:32:39] Looking at closely at when the content was created.

[00:32:41] Is it stale?

[00:32:42] Is it fresh?

[00:32:43] Does it have, they talk about evergreen scoring.

[00:32:46] Does it last forever and we use this or is it recyclable?

[00:32:52] Where is it most utilized on a buyer journey?

[00:32:55] And then what personas are most likely to engage with certain assets?

[00:32:59] So these are things that I don't want to say, maybe I will.

[00:33:04] Maybe I'll say this is more sophisticated marketing than ideas than just having somebody that gets some newsletters out and hosts a barbecue and gets the invites out.

[00:33:17] This is when we really want to start digging into things and truly understanding what is our buyer doing?

[00:33:24] What is their behavior?

[00:33:25] What is their journey?

[00:33:27] Expanding, you know, I use this example all the time about, you know, touring some automotive plants earlier in my career where, you know, we, and people talk about this.

[00:33:36] We talk about this with lead smart customers all the time.

[00:33:38] You know, a lot of times salespeople walk by more business than they have because they don't realize that there's multiple buyers in a facility.

[00:33:46] They don't realize what the buyer behaviors are.

[00:33:49] They don't, you know, look at any of those things.

[00:33:51] So good opportunity here to, to kind of grow.

[00:33:56] So anyways, these are just to, I'll touch on what you're saying.

[00:34:01] And also what Jan was saying here, right?

[00:34:03] Saying about different matrices and stage of nurturing will help to determine and nurture.

[00:34:08] Yeah, good.

[00:34:09] What you're, without going too far into this, but this is an area I have a little bit of passion about, is marketing in the past has been traditionally direct.

[00:34:21] And I think, and I see this a lot in our industry, right?

[00:34:24] I call direct response, direct response.

[00:34:27] I send an email about a special or a product or whatever, and we're expecting a direct response, right?

[00:34:34] Or we do a communication or a marketing campaign out, we're looking to get a direct response back on that.

[00:34:40] What companies are starting to realize now is that direct response, while it's fine if you want to include it in your marketing strategy, is not the, is not the, are you onto something else?

[00:34:53] Are you watching TV?

[00:34:54] No.

[00:34:54] Yeah.

[00:34:55] No, I'm with you.

[00:34:56] I'm trying to look at my notes for the article, Tom.

[00:34:58] Okay.

[00:34:58] I have three screens with articles up.

[00:35:01] Okay.

[00:35:01] So remember when you're able to come to me and ask me.

[00:35:04] I saw CNBC after I was.

[00:35:06] No, no, no, not, not me.

[00:35:08] You remember when you come to me for things like, what are those four tips?

[00:35:11] Yeah.

[00:35:12] Because I have the articles up.

[00:35:13] Good, good.

[00:35:15] Anyway, so what I was saying is, is that, you know, doing things like the nurturing that you're talking about there in the content and all of those are not direct response actions.

[00:35:24] Those are things that you're trying to do to build relationship, build influence, but you're not necessarily going to get a direct return out of this.

[00:35:31] It's something that builds up over time.

[00:35:33] Yep.

[00:35:34] Very good.

[00:35:35] So good tips in this one.

[00:35:37] I like that article.

[00:35:39] Again, this one was from, if you're marketers out there and wanting to enhance this.

[00:35:44] In fact, the final, the final part was embracing the stickiness, the fully engaging buyers with this.

[00:35:51] So I thought that was pretty positive as well, right?

[00:35:55] It's like, how do we capture this and how do we keep the attention and how do we get across all facets and then continue to watch that buyer journey?

[00:36:04] This was demandgenreport.com.

[00:36:07] So a good article with that as well.

[00:36:09] So kind of want to jump ahead.

[00:36:11] Let's jump to, we had an article, Amazon Business still dominates the B2B marketplace and industry.

[00:36:18] I don't think that's surprising to anyone, but it is something to be paying close attention to.

[00:36:25] You know, I think the challenge that we have right now, we've talked about this a lot over the years of our show here, is that, you know, the line is blurry, not just gray, but blurry, between a B2B experience and a B2C experience.

[00:36:41] And every day, right, we see that B2B, where are we at right now?

[00:36:47] I think it's, I'm expecting soon, we'll see updates to these numbers, but we already know that 60 plus percent of B2B buyers are millennials.

[00:36:56] And you may not feel that in your market today, but you will very soon and you're already seeing that trend.

[00:37:03] And conversely, we talk to customers about this all the time, the people that are applying for jobs are younger and younger.

[00:37:09] They're millennials and Gen Zs.

[00:37:11] We'll talk a little bit more about Gen Zs later in the show today.

[00:37:14] So I think from that standpoint, we're really in this place where we have to be evaluating.

[00:37:20] And obviously, you know, if I'm a wholesale distributor in middle America, that's, you know, 15 locations or 20 locations and, you know, a couple hundred million in sales, whatever it is, right?

[00:37:32] I'm never going to outspend Amazon, but I can provide an experience of working with my company that is a, it doesn't have to be the same experience, but has, could be equally as valuable.

[00:37:46] Right?

[00:37:47] So I'm never going to have the same.

[00:37:50] It should be more.

[00:37:51] Yeah, it should be more valuable.

[00:37:52] Right.

[00:37:53] Amazon is everything to everybody.

[00:37:55] Right.

[00:37:56] That's, that's fine.

[00:37:57] But as a distributor, the whole, I mean, especially if you're local or specialized or whatever, you're not everything to everybody.

[00:38:04] Yep.

[00:38:04] So play to the strength.

[00:38:06] Yep.

[00:38:07] Exactly right.

[00:38:07] So this, this was a solid article, had some good, good points in there.

[00:38:12] Six million customers in Amazon business, but they're really looking to beef that up.

[00:38:17] This was a, this was a great article.

[00:38:18] This was written by Mark Brohan with Digital Commerce 360.

[00:38:22] Mark's going to join us as a guest soon.

[00:38:24] I think he might even be with us this morning, but I had lunch.

[00:38:27] With Mark in Chicago early, so early last week, I guess it was.

[00:38:32] Weeks are all running together.

[00:38:34] But this came from some recently published data, B2B Marketplace 750 research support, research report, excuse me, from Digital Commerce 360.

[00:38:44] But, you know, let's, Tom, can you bring up those two charts for us to take a quick look at?

[00:38:48] Let's look at the dollar one first.

[00:38:51] You want me to look at this chart?

[00:38:54] No, no, this one.

[00:38:57] This was Gen Z.

[00:38:59] Let's see.

[00:38:59] How about?

[00:39:03] Nope.

[00:39:03] That's, well, yeah.

[00:39:05] So I was going to look at the dollars first that went with it, but there we go.

[00:39:09] So this is, this is the, the growth percentage and the revenue growth.

[00:39:13] Those are pretty attractive, attractive numbers.

[00:39:15] So $67 billion.

[00:39:20] It's crazy, right?

[00:39:22] With that is, and growing and growing and growing.

[00:39:25] So we're, it's pretty astounding where this is headed.

[00:39:29] And if we want to, if we want to flip flop that slide that you had previously now is the, this was the one that was talking about.

[00:39:37] But I think that's going to be the right one.

[00:39:39] Yep.

[00:39:40] So these are, the idea is now we're migrating over at Amazon.

[00:39:43] What they're looking at doing is bringing that experience over to the B2B side from the B2C side.

[00:39:51] So, you know, we look at, basically you've got to have a tax ID, right?

[00:39:56] To be involved there.

[00:39:59] But you can have multiple users using your account versus single users, business pricing, negotiated pricing.

[00:40:07] You know, I don't know if they're doing this now, but I'm sure it's not too far away where they'll have some AI tools that can respond to RFPs easily enough.

[00:40:16] And getting, we get requests for proposals or requests for quotes, payment issues, right?

[00:40:22] All pretty much the same.

[00:40:24] There are business only products and their tiered quantity discount program.

[00:40:30] I think the issue here is, you know, it probably won't come up that often just because of the way that Amazon drives pricing down to start with.

[00:40:42] But they'll probably be a place where, you know, they'll find some AI tools where they're going to want to get last look on with some people on some pricing as well.

[00:40:50] So it's kind of an interesting view.

[00:40:52] But, you know, Tom, I take this back to the, an example I think I've shared with you.

[00:40:59] I don't know if I've shared it on the, on the, on the show before, but I remember meeting with a manufacturer's rep years ago.

[00:41:10] I was doing some interim executive work for a manufacturing company.

[00:41:13] They had a rep in the Pacific Northwest and that rep worked very closely with a lot of the Amazon buyers.

[00:41:21] And we were getting ready to go to a meeting there and, and to get this organization, this manufacturing company, get their, their products on the Amazon business.

[00:41:31] And we were chatting in the car about this.

[00:41:33] And I asked him what he feels like as a manufacturer's rep.

[00:41:36] And he was in the safety and industrial equipment world.

[00:41:39] This rep was.

[00:41:40] And I remember talking to him and asking him what his experience was.

[00:41:44] Now this would go back to probably 2013, roughly 2014.

[00:41:50] And what his experience was in this based upon things in the field and then working with distribution in general.

[00:41:58] And he was a veteran manufacturer's rep.

[00:42:00] You know, and he said, look, he said, I can just give you this example.

[00:42:04] He said he had been driving from Eastern Washington to Western Washington where his offices were.

[00:42:12] And going through some of the mountain areas where they have a lot of wind farms.

[00:42:15] And he said, and he was training a new sales guy.

[00:42:17] And he said, they pulled off the side of the road because there was a whole new construction set of construction trailers going where they were going to extend this wind farm.

[00:42:26] He said, let's go in and talk to this, see if we can find a buyer that's on this site.

[00:42:30] And he said, they met with one of the guys running the project and one of the buyers that was in one of the trailers.

[00:42:36] And they asked them kind of about where do they buy their safety and industrial equipment from.

[00:42:41] And they rattled off the usual players in the Pacific Northwest that you would hear from.

[00:42:47] And I'm not going to say any of those names because some of those people are regular listeners here.

[00:42:51] But it was an interesting thing, right?

[00:42:53] Because as a regional player, you're not going to be able to be all things to all people as a distributor, right?

[00:43:00] You just can't be.

[00:43:01] And you can't have everything in stock all the time.

[00:43:04] And the people's comment at that stop that they made was that, look, they said, you know, we buy from and they rattled off all the usual players that you would expect.

[00:43:13] And they said, but we're buying more and more every month from Amazon.

[00:43:16] At the time, it was Amazon supply, not Amazon business.

[00:43:19] So we're buying more and more from them all the time.

[00:43:22] And because when I have a big order and a big need, he said, I can call this guy and he has 40% of what I need.

[00:43:29] I can call this guy and he has 60%.

[00:43:32] But the 40 that he's missing is really important.

[00:43:34] And he said, I might have a week to get everything from these key local players.

[00:43:40] And he said, for the vast majority of the brands that we use and need here, he was like, and at the time he said, he just went and used his own personal Amazon Prime account, but got the business pricing at the time.

[00:43:52] And he said, it's all here the next day or two days later.

[00:43:54] We don't think twice about, do we have to check on things?

[00:43:57] So, you know, again, nobody can be all things to all people.

[00:44:00] But that was an interesting example of how these things have kind of evolved and some of the thinking out there.

[00:44:05] Sure.

[00:44:06] You know, so anyways, it's going to continue with this.

[00:44:09] We can see that that's going to, this continued to growth.

[00:44:13] But I'm looking at all of this and saying, you know, we'll talk about this a little bit further when we have Mark on the show with us soon is we'll talk about this a little bit further from this research.

[00:44:28] But kind of in closing, it says 60% of buyers do more than a quarter of their purchases on Amazon business.

[00:44:33] A digital B2B buyer survey found said 28% say they do more than half, but another 12% said they don't buy anything.

[00:44:42] So there's just a shift here.

[00:44:43] And I think the better way to look at this is less about Amazon and more about what can I do better to understand my customer better?

[00:44:50] My customer is buying journey better.

[00:44:52] And what do they really need?

[00:44:54] And then how do I position myself, whether it's online or it's, you know, multifaceted or omnichannel buying?

[00:45:02] How do I position myself best by understanding what's going on in the market?

[00:45:06] Yeah.

[00:45:06] I mean, to your story there, I don't know that this is a brand loyalty issue, right?

[00:45:11] That people are looking at, hey, what I need, I need what I need, and I need it when I need it, right?

[00:45:17] And what's the best way to get that?

[00:45:19] But also, if, you know, depending upon what you're buying, do you need other value-added support services, all of those types of things, right?

[00:45:28] That also has to be factored into the equation.

[00:45:31] Right.

[00:45:31] Yeah.

[00:45:31] No, I would agree.

[00:45:32] I would agree with that.

[00:45:33] You know, I think in this setting, though, what's interesting is, you know, at least, you know, my background is mostly safety and industrial.

[00:45:40] But, you know, it's hard.

[00:45:41] It's harder to put a water heater, you know, to deal with that online than it is with buying your favorite flashlight or your favorite PPE, right?

[00:45:50] But all the major brands are there.

[00:45:51] And they're there with their own marketplaces.

[00:45:53] And they're there, you know, the smart brands, what they've done is they've gone out and partnered with key distributors to let the key distributors post and then play off the store that the manufacturers put there as well.

[00:46:05] So it's a good partnership idea there.

[00:46:07] The point of the discussion is today, right, this could be very contentious with some people.

[00:46:11] I can almost guarantee you there's people that have some comments right now that they would like to blast this whole idea, but they're not willing to do it publicly here.

[00:46:21] And that's okay, right?

[00:46:22] The idea and our goal of this is to bring the awareness to what's going on out there to encourage people to have a plan.

[00:46:29] And that ties into the world that you and I work in, right?

[00:46:33] If we have a, you know, your team has done a great job of we have an e-commerce app built into Lead Smart Channel Cloud, our smart CRM solution,

[00:46:42] where we can bring that e-commerce data in and evaluate that and see the customer journey across, you know, branch activity, online activity,

[00:46:52] in-person visits, all of those features, including e-commerce and see that customer journey,

[00:46:58] not as a siloed piece of data in all these different solutions, but in one central location within a smart CRM.

[00:47:04] So it's my quick plug for us for the day.

[00:47:07] All right.

[00:47:08] All right.

[00:47:09] Technology, cybersecurity and AI.

[00:47:11] Cybersecurity Dive Magazine.

[00:47:13] Cyber Task Force has a long to-do list for the next president.

[00:47:17] Why don't you take us away on that one?

[00:47:22] Well, and I think that he's, I think it's also covered in the other article about the tech issues on the one there.

[00:47:28] Right.

[00:47:28] Cyber security and is going to be even maybe more emphasized than it has been under the new administration.

[00:47:38] I think if you own a cybersecurity company, you're probably pretty happy because I think there's going to be a lot more push.

[00:47:45] I know some people that are working actually on some government projects and some things like that with incorporating cybersecurity into some of the government things.

[00:47:55] There has been traditionally in the government a lot of red tape.

[00:48:00] Let's just put it that way to get things through the system.

[00:48:02] So, you know, hopefully some of that red tape will go away.

[00:48:07] But certainly it was one of the top issues that I think are going to be dealt with, which is obviously important.

[00:48:13] Well, it's pretty critical, right, to the business in general.

[00:48:17] We're seeing more and more each week of companies that are acknowledging that they've had breaches.

[00:48:21] Sure.

[00:48:22] Right.

[00:48:22] So pretty dramatic.

[00:48:25] So this talks about this being a time to reassess and adjust priorities.

[00:48:30] You know, this kind of ties into, you know, what we are thinking about from another article we have.

[00:48:38] We can just kind of dive ahead.

[00:48:39] It says for tech issues to watch in Trump's second term.

[00:48:43] And again, this one is this article is from cybersecuritydive.com.

[00:48:47] This is a pretty good group.

[00:48:50] We get a lot of news from this.

[00:48:52] They have cybersecurity dive, HR dive, a few others that they publish some pretty darn good stuff.

[00:48:58] So we use their data most weeks.

[00:49:03] And but this talks about this particular article for tech issues to watch in Trump's second term.

[00:49:10] And it talks about the cloud market oversight.

[00:49:13] And this is an interesting piece here, right?

[00:49:15] We haven't addressed this yet today, but we've talked about this gal a lot.

[00:49:19] That's at the FTC Lina Khan, you know, and talking about, you know, the I want to call them a tax.

[00:49:27] But if you were to go back right now and look at some of the things that the previous or the current administration, I'll say, and FTC has done to all of the things that Elon Musk is working on.

[00:49:39] Right. I mean, just from.

[00:49:43] Anyway, so if you I don't want to get what's the term?

[00:49:48] Conspiracy theory.

[00:49:49] But if you would look at some of the challenges that the businesses that Elon Musk is involved is, I mean, the simplest example, right, is that the current administration had a summit on EVs and they didn't invite anybody from Tesla.

[00:50:03] How do you do that?

[00:50:04] Right.

[00:50:05] But but the current FTC has been really in a position of, you know, lawsuit heavy.

[00:50:12] And I'm not suggesting that there's not some value in taking a close look at, you know, the impact that Amazon has on the market and, you know, but looking at trying to break up Google and so forth into different companies.

[00:50:25] But bigger is that the pressure that's been on M&A that's gone with it.

[00:50:30] I mean, look, she's going to be fired probably shortly after.

[00:50:34] Yeah.

[00:50:34] Inauguration.

[00:50:35] I think probably packing boxes now.

[00:50:37] I think that was even stated yesterday.

[00:50:40] I think.

[00:50:40] Was it?

[00:50:41] Yeah.

[00:50:41] Yeah.

[00:50:42] I don't know if it was Trump or Elon Musk or somebody came out and said that she will be fired shortly after the thing.

[00:50:49] That's that Department of Governmental Efficiency taking place already, right?

[00:50:54] Right.

[00:50:55] We're already making cuts.

[00:50:57] And so, I mean, again, this goes back to what I was saying earlier about being business friendly.

[00:51:02] Yeah.

[00:51:03] The M&A market, the large M&A market has been stymied because companies have been afraid to do deals because they just know they're going to run into.

[00:51:12] And think about this, right?

[00:51:14] On both sides, the company, the acquirer and the acquiree, having something that you think is have a chance of going through and then it takes months or years and then gets stopped.

[00:51:24] Right.

[00:51:24] That's that's not good for either company.

[00:51:26] No.

[00:51:27] So, you know, the M&A opportunity will, I think, the way that however they structure this will be to help to really open the door to the M&A world and not have people in fear of M&A.

[00:51:39] A lot of the M&A problem has been the fear of the M&A transaction that's there.

[00:51:44] Yeah.

[00:51:45] I think that might also open the door to more public, more companies going public.

[00:51:50] But we'll see opening up the public market.

[00:51:53] No, I think IPO floodgates are going to open fast.

[00:51:56] Right.

[00:51:56] In all honesty.

[00:51:57] Yeah.

[00:51:58] The he said very clearly that the executive order related to AI regulation is going to be repealed.

[00:52:07] Not that that order really had much bearing on anything anyway, but I think it shows the mindset.

[00:52:13] Right.

[00:52:14] And I think, again, the whole idea is let's let the market work out some of these things as it relates to those tech issues that are there.

[00:52:23] So this is how strong.

[00:52:25] So let's just before we jump ahead, we'll hit all of these key points briefly.

[00:52:29] But the first one was a cloud market oversight.

[00:52:31] Right.

[00:52:32] So there's FTC launched an inquiry in March of 2023 about anti-competitive practices and security gaps in the cloud provider marketplace.

[00:52:44] And this is where I kind of struggle with some of these things.

[00:52:46] Right.

[00:52:47] That market has already filtered itself out.

[00:52:50] Right.

[00:52:50] The players that are there, there's obviously the cloud space.

[00:52:55] There's, you know, two main leaders, right, in Microsoft and in Amazon's AWS.

[00:53:01] Right.

[00:53:02] Google.

[00:53:03] Google.

[00:53:03] Google.

[00:53:03] Right.

[00:53:04] And yeah.

[00:53:04] So good point.

[00:53:05] But then you've got what Oracle is doing, what IBM is doing in some other clouds.

[00:53:09] You have a tiered structure with that already.

[00:53:11] And to think that we need the FTC to look closely at that and then even look at, you know, the security components of it.

[00:53:21] How's the FTC qualified to talk about the security portions of that to start with?

[00:53:27] Um, so I just think this is some of these things that we, we need less big brother and less hammer on.

[00:53:33] And again, and I'm not trying to suggest that we don't need oversight on, on things, but I think sometimes what they're trying to get their hands on with the current FTC is an example is a little unreasonable, uh, in some of these issues.

[00:53:48] So, um, so yeah, the article to your point, Tom, the article actually says, uh, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, a vocal supporter and major donor of Trump's campaign efforts said last week that Khan would be fired soon.

[00:54:02] And, um, so anyways, and that, you know, obviously we're hearing about this with Musk having an official role.

[00:54:08] So the second one was what you already referenced briefly was AI oversight.

[00:54:11] And, you know, I, I'm just, I want to be cautious because my intention is not to, uh, you know, throw rocks at anybody in particular, but, you know, I, I felt like the, this current administration's response to AI oversight with the executive order was like a flailing attempt to do something related to what was already going on with the EU.

[00:54:37] Right. And the EU was coming out with, you know, stuff with real teeth in it.

[00:54:42] I'm not, and we've both talked about this in an agreement that it's way too early to try and figure that stuff out.

[00:54:48] And all you're going to try and do is hamper, hamper innovation at that point in time.

[00:54:53] Um, but I think the first effort of this AI oversight here in the U S was just the fact that it was a, you know, a presidential order, as opposed to, we really push something through Congress and the Senate.

[00:55:05] So, um, anyways, they, it's your, your comment.

[00:55:11] They said, uh, we will repeal Biden's a dangerous executive order that hinders AI innovation, right.

[00:55:16] Uh, imposes radical left-wing ideas on the development of this technology.

[00:55:20] I think that's silly rhetoric to say something that, that, that I agree.

[00:55:25] I mean, that's just, when you call that, that's a inflammatory, that's unnecessary.

[00:55:29] Necessary.

[00:55:30] I'm sorry.

[00:55:31] Yeah.

[00:55:31] Let's just go put some, let's go put some good stuff in place.

[00:55:35] That's actually going to be beneficial and support innovation.

[00:55:37] I think that'll be great to see.

[00:55:39] I'm looking forward to see what that is.

[00:55:41] I do think we will need some guardrails, uh, in this.

[00:55:45] I know we haven't thought exactly on the same track on this, but I do believe there's some guardrails needed on these things, but it doesn't need to be what the EU is doing.

[00:55:54] So, uh, third one is cybersecurity policies.

[00:55:57] Um, and so it says executives are looking for signs of Trump's priorities around cybersecurity.

[00:56:04] And they say they can look to his previous term in office in 2017, Trump administration act, uh, enact an executive order calling for broad modernization across government IT flagging ongoing cybersecurity concerns.

[00:56:16] Tom, I probably shouldn't bring this up because I don't have anything in particular to quote on this or statistics, but you may remember, I think we might've even talked about it, but I remember reading a while back about how antiquated most government systems are.

[00:56:35] Whether it's just the computers on people's desktops, you know, it's like, you know, DOS based computers still floating around, not that bad, but you know, earlier versions of windows and, and servers that are, you know, five, 10 generations old.

[00:56:51] Do you remember anything?

[00:56:52] And you've, have you heard or read much about that?

[00:56:56] Well, it's just what it is, right?

[00:56:57] I mean, I've done a lot of work in government organizations over my career.

[00:57:01] It's slow change, right?

[00:57:02] The speed of change is very, very slow.

[00:57:06] It's a lot of, been generally full of red tape and bureaucracy and all of that stuff.

[00:57:10] So it just happens slow.

[00:57:12] Even if they buy stuff, a lot of times they don't get implemented.

[00:57:16] Yeah.

[00:57:16] So it's not just the speed of purchases, the speed of implementation as well on the other side.

[00:57:21] Again, I think all of this, they're going to try and look at and try and streamline how fast that happens is a different story.

[00:57:28] And whether it's practical, I don't know if that's either, if it's a practical either, but that's the intention.

[00:57:34] Good.

[00:57:34] All right.

[00:57:35] So the, the, the focus was here and the quote was, this will be a national priority and will both raise the security standards for critical systems and networks and defend them against bad actors.

[00:57:45] I think that's an easy statement.

[00:57:47] There's a lot of work to be done to do that, but just the fact that that is reprioritized, I'm not suggesting that it wasn't a priority, priority to current administration, but this seems like a big focus.

[00:57:58] And then the chips and science act signed into law in August of 2022 had poured more than 33 billion in semiconductor manufacturing in the U S it said, a pre prior to election.

[00:58:12] Trump had criticized the initiative, suggesting that his administration would rely on tariffs against foreign companies to spur domestic manufacturing.

[00:58:20] We're going to see, right.

[00:58:22] That's going to play out how it's going to play out.

[00:58:25] I don't know.

[00:58:26] Any thoughts on that on your end?

[00:58:27] I don't have any opinion on that at this point.

[00:58:30] All right.

[00:58:31] Let's let's jump ahead to our next segment here.

[00:58:35] Sales and MNA.

[00:58:38] We again publish our newsletter every week and a newsletter goes out to about 10,000 plus people.

[00:58:45] And we're reviewing that now on the show.

[00:58:47] I should have said this about 20 minutes ago, but if you don't get that newsletter and you would like to three different ways to do it, you could go to the lead smart technologies, LinkedIn page, hit the,

[00:58:57] the follow button there and you'll get the alerts.

[00:58:59] And you can subscribe to the newsletter there.

[00:59:01] You'll get it by email as well as it'll come to your LinkedIn profile or feed.

[00:59:07] You can email us at hello at leadsmarttech.com or you can go to www.aroundthehornpod.com and sign up for it there.

[00:59:19] So we have all of the different sections that we've talked about today.

[00:59:23] Now we're dropping into our MNA and sales section.

[00:59:26] October MNA recap, another solid month of activity.

[00:59:29] And this comes from Modern Distribution Management Magazine.

[00:59:33] October saw 24 transactions.

[00:59:37] Or September did, I'm sorry.

[00:59:39] And then in October, 30 transactions were discussed.

[00:59:42] So we'll see how that bumps up as we go into getting, I think, two things related to what's going on on the political front and the economy.

[00:59:53] We're seeing some stabilization with the economy.

[00:59:56] And then the question about the election is now behind us.

[00:59:59] So hopefully we see even a boost in MNA activity.

[01:00:04] Yeah, I think we will.

[01:00:05] I think there's no doubt.

[01:00:07] No, it should.

[01:00:07] So moving kind of ahead.

[01:00:09] Again, that's from Modern Distribution Magazine.

[01:00:11] We want to talk about our good friends at DSG.

[01:00:16] They just acquired Peoria Pump.

[01:00:18] One of our first comments today was from their president and CEO, Paul Kennedy.

[01:00:22] So, Paul, and your executive team that put this deal together, plus all of your employee owners at formerly Dakota Supply Group, now DSG,

[01:00:33] the acquisition of Peoria Pump.

[01:00:36] Great acquisition.

[01:00:38] It's a company founded in 1947.

[01:00:41] It adds quite a bit of scope and breadth, not only to product categories, but to geography for DSG.

[01:00:47] So this was, you can kind of read this in a lot of different places.

[01:00:51] This is from the electrical distributor or tedmag.com, which is the publication of the National Association of Electrical Distributors.

[01:01:00] So, anyways, congrats to our friends at DSG.

[01:01:03] So, Tom, let's jump to our people and leadership segment.

[01:01:08] Interesting article there about average salary increases are sloping downward, the survey says.

[01:01:15] Any quick thoughts on that?

[01:01:18] You know, I don't know exactly why or anything like that.

[01:01:23] I think it's, I don't know.

[01:01:29] I think there's more research to be done on that.

[01:01:31] Well, this was just kind of give us a set.

[01:01:36] It doesn't say particularly why in the article, but it talked about a broad shift and part of that coming out of the pandemic.

[01:01:44] And those increases and now those are flattening out and dropping off.

[01:01:49] So, that does not mean that you can cut my salary, by the way.

[01:01:54] So, just FYI.

[01:01:57] Again, I didn't, you know, I didn't dig in, you know, kind of look at the story behind the story on this one.

[01:02:02] But I don't know if that is a symptom or, you know, the canary in the coal mine related to job or job growth or anything like that.

[01:02:12] But it's, yeah, it just kind of triggered for me.

[01:02:16] I didn't say it in the article.

[01:02:17] It just triggered what, for me, the only thing I can think of that must be behind this is, you know, as the labor market is balancing out a little bit better.

[01:02:24] And most people I talk to are finding it much, I don't want to say easy, but they're finding talent better than they were able to just as we came out of the pandemic, right?

[01:02:34] Because people aren't living off pandemic funds anymore and things like that.

[01:02:38] I think people were paying quite a bit more and willing to do whatever it took to get new people coming in.

[01:02:44] So, I think that's probably what we would find is behind this.

[01:02:49] And now there's just a leveling out of that a little bit as everything else is leveling out.

[01:02:53] Yep.

[01:02:53] Good.

[01:02:54] All right.

[01:02:54] What's the next one we're going to talk about?

[01:02:56] Well, I think we have two.

[01:02:57] I think they're interrelated here.

[01:02:58] Yes, they are.

[01:02:59] Gen Z.

[01:03:01] Gen Z.

[01:03:02] So, what's that?

[01:03:03] This is the other diagram you had, right?

[01:03:07] Yeah.

[01:03:08] Trying to give you the charts for us to use each week.

[01:03:11] Just so we can orient ourselves.

[01:03:13] So, Gen Z.

[01:03:14] Because I struggle with these, so I looked this up and said, let's keep this handy.

[01:03:17] Right.

[01:03:17] So, Gen Z are people that were born between 1997 and 2012.

[01:03:22] Yep.

[01:03:22] Which means they are between 12 and 27 years of age compared to millennials that were born between 1981 and 1986.

[01:03:32] Yep.

[01:03:33] So, sometimes I think people use those terms interchangeably, but they're two different generations.

[01:03:39] No, and I think there is a lot of crossover.

[01:03:43] I'll use the word behavior for lack of a better, or styles maybe, between the two.

[01:03:50] But there are some unique pieces that come to that.

[01:03:52] So, the first article is Gen Z is stressing managers out, a survey found.

[01:03:58] And it says they've had to alter management style to accommodate younger workers, saying they require more time and more resources to deal with them.

[01:04:07] I thought that was interesting.

[01:04:10] Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I've had my concerns and issues with some of the Gen Z people that I've been around.

[01:04:18] That what I have seen, and again, I'm a very, very small sample size, and it was just interesting reading this article is, and again, I don't want to generalize because it's not everybody.

[01:04:28] But a trend that I saw was just sense of urgency, right?

[01:04:33] I think that, you know, in business, a lot of times we have a sense of urgency and, you know, deadlines and goals and things like that that just didn't seem to exist.

[01:04:46] And maybe that is similar to what we're seeing with the second article there, right?

[01:04:52] About, well, you know, and work-life balance is a very big term.

[01:04:57] It can mean a lot to a lot of different people.

[01:04:59] But does work-life balance mean, well, you know, I don't have that urgency quite the same in my work life because I'm trying to balance that with urgencies in my personal life and things along those lines.

[01:05:12] I also think just the technology distractions, all of those types of things.

[01:05:17] There's a lot of ingredients into it, but there was a second quote in there.

[01:05:21] Then they said that 40% of managers said they had fired a Gen Z person that they had hired.

[01:05:27] Oh, I mean, this article, both articles were astounding to me in how bold they were in people coming out.

[01:05:37] I mean, let's just, this was 1,000 U.S. managers who oversee Gen Z employees.

[01:05:41] It said 51% said they've experienced frustration.

[01:05:45] 44% said they've experienced stress due to managing this age group.

[01:05:50] Managers also said they've experienced disappointment, 31%.

[01:05:55] Increased workload on the manager, 27%.

[01:05:59] A need for additional resources having to be brought in, 26%.

[01:06:04] Reduced productivity, 21%, and so forth.

[01:06:08] So, and this is all from managing Gen Z employees.

[01:06:11] So, it's interesting.

[01:06:12] It said half of managers said their younger workers caused tension among other generations in the workplace.

[01:06:21] This was kind of brutal, right?

[01:06:23] Yeah.

[01:06:25] I mean, to me, it comes back to the company, right?

[01:06:28] As the company, we have a responsibility to really, first of all, understand what's important to us, our core values.

[01:06:34] And what's important to us and make sure that as the recruiting, right?

[01:06:38] Because certainly not every Gen Z person.

[01:06:41] Absolutely not.

[01:06:42] Right.

[01:06:42] But what this is showing is, is that maybe there's a bit more due diligence that it's important to do as you're hiring and bringing on people.

[01:06:50] And I think this will be especially true as we move more into this AI world about the type of people that we're bringing on.

[01:06:57] Yeah.

[01:06:58] And I think the...

[01:07:00] Thank you, Jan.

[01:07:03] I preach the struggle is real.

[01:07:05] Yes.

[01:07:06] I feel you.

[01:07:07] That's great.

[01:07:07] Thanks, Jan.

[01:07:08] That's good.

[01:07:10] I like that.

[01:07:11] So, those of you that are listening to the recorded podcast later, Jan Berry just shared with us that she said, preach, the struggle is real.

[01:07:19] And I think this is interesting.

[01:07:21] And I'm going to, you know, Jan, if you have any thoughts on this or others that might...

[01:07:27] You know, we use it at Lead Smart, our company, we use the Entrepreneurial Operating System or EOS.

[01:07:33] And EOS has a system in there where it's called a people analyzer tool, right?

[01:07:39] And the whole idea is hiring people that align with your core values of your company.

[01:07:45] And I'd like to, you know, I'm going to defend because I have a Gen Z son and two millennial sons.

[01:07:55] And not that they're perfect either.

[01:07:57] But when I look at this, my millennial son is killing it right now in business.

[01:08:04] He started a company.

[01:08:05] It's thriving.

[01:08:05] He's got a global clothing company now.

[01:08:08] But...

[01:08:08] And it came from really, really hard work.

[01:08:11] But I question a little bit about this.

[01:08:13] And I'll just throw this into the mix for discussion.

[01:08:16] Is the idea of how well did the hiring go with this, right?

[01:08:20] Are you hiring tied to your core values of your company?

[01:08:25] Are your core values aligned with what you're expecting from people?

[01:08:29] So I think there's a little bit of a double-sided thought that goes with this as well.

[01:08:35] So...

[01:08:35] I think that we, as an employer, right, have more responsibility.

[01:08:42] Yeah.

[01:08:43] And that we have to be aware that we're...

[01:08:46] Not just the skills, right?

[01:08:48] You tend to look at a resume and what is your skills or experience or whatever.

[01:08:52] Yeah.

[01:08:53] But it's not...

[01:08:56] There's more to it than that, right?

[01:08:57] There is a mindset.

[01:08:59] There is, you know, basically the philosophical approach to the work that we have to also do

[01:09:07] our due diligence on as well.

[01:09:08] So...

[01:09:08] Yeah.

[01:09:09] Well, it's nice to see Jan just commented about using People Analyzer as well and having

[01:09:14] successful millennial kids.

[01:09:15] I think, you know, the viewpoint of this and it's literally, I think, and it's our role

[01:09:21] and I'm sure you can...

[01:09:23] People can read between the lines.

[01:09:24] We're, you know, two plus years into our podcast here and our live stream.

[01:09:30] Obviously, we have opinions.

[01:09:32] We get to share our opinions.

[01:09:34] But I really always want to try and continue to show both sides of things.

[01:09:38] And it's impossible to be unbiased, you know.

[01:09:42] Just turn the news on if you think that you can see unbiased.

[01:09:46] But I think it's good to kind of share both sides of that.

[01:09:51] Yep.

[01:09:51] So let's kind of jump ahead.

[01:09:54] We move into our industry scuttlebutt section.

[01:09:55] Just some good news at Fastenal Sales.

[01:09:59] The industrial and vending company, industrial supply and fastener supply company.

[01:10:07] Good results in October.

[01:10:09] They're publicly traded.

[01:10:11] Schneider Electric.

[01:10:12] We were talking earlier about cybersecurity.

[01:10:16] Schneider Electric probes a cybersecurity intrusion on their overall platform.

[01:10:21] So kind of a concern there because we have probably a lot of their customers are connected into their systems as well.

[01:10:27] And then the affiliated distributors.

[01:10:31] We just got back last week after three straight weeks with affiliated distributors events.

[01:10:36] They reported record sales through the first nine months of 2024.

[01:10:40] They've got a merger with their iMark electrical side of iMark's business is coming over to AD.

[01:10:50] So watch those numbers soar next year when they're bringing in 400 plus new members into affiliated distributors.

[01:10:57] So good discussion there.

[01:10:58] Anyways, there's another read in there.

[01:11:00] This is more of a personal introspective.

[01:11:03] I think there's an article from Inc.

[01:11:05] Magazine about AI chaos or innovation coming from Trump's second term.

[01:11:10] I thought that was kind of interesting.

[01:11:12] And Tom, do you have any thoughts on that one before we kind of wind down?

[01:11:16] It ties into what we were talking about before.

[01:11:17] It talks about repealing the executive order.

[01:11:21] I'll give you my opinion, right?

[01:11:22] Sure.

[01:11:23] Since we're asking for opinions.

[01:11:25] As I've said before, we're way early in the AI journey to even understand how to regulate.

[01:11:31] So I think that if we can really open up the door to innovation, especially over the next year or two, and then start to really understand what would be the right guardrails to the point you were bringing up earlier.

[01:11:44] Yeah.

[01:11:44] But let's not do anything to get in the way of innovation.

[01:11:47] Let's not do anything to drive people into other countries or other areas because there's less headwinds on these things.

[01:11:55] Right.

[01:11:56] I think, but I'm very bullish and excited, actually, that there's going to be a lot of opportunity for innovation.

[01:12:03] That's great.

[01:12:04] Good.

[01:12:05] All right.

[01:12:05] So we close out each week with that Goodread.

[01:12:08] Sometimes it's a podcast, so we call it Goodreads and Listens.

[01:12:11] And then we also have our second look feature that we have, and that's just we talked about for a number of weeks.

[01:12:18] We talked about the Boeing machinist strikes.

[01:12:20] We probably should have talked about that in our economy and supply chain section, but machinists are on their way back to work.

[01:12:26] It's going to take a while for things to catch up.

[01:12:29] But the trickle-down effect through both distribution and then back to manufacturers that are sending parts in for planes and so forth, take them a bit to get back up and running.

[01:12:38] And then the one thing that we didn't talk about today that we should have as well, but we had so much to cover, is another port strike.

[01:12:45] And we'll probably be talking about that next week that's in British Columbia.

[01:12:48] So watch for the numbers of items that are coming from British Columbia from those ports back into the U.S. is astounding.

[01:12:58] I can't remember the number off the top of my head, but I'm sure we'll be talking about that next week if that is still going on.

[01:13:04] The Canadian government seems to jump in on strikes much quicker than our government does, but we'll see what plays out with that.

[01:13:11] So very good.

[01:13:13] All right, let's wrap.

[01:13:14] I think everybody's back to work.

[01:13:16] Yeah, anything exciting for you for the weekend?

[01:13:19] No, got him getting ready for the trip on Monday.

[01:13:22] Yeah, I guess I'll see you in Mississippi Monday.

[01:13:25] Yeah, looking forward to visiting with a large wholesale distributor there and working with them on their technology and digital journey.

[01:13:37] So it's going to be an exciting visit.

[01:13:39] So anyways, we'll thank everybody for coming with us today again.

[01:13:43] My name is Kevin Brown.

[01:13:44] This is Tom Burton.

[01:13:45] We certainly appreciate all of you that join us live on this live stream on LinkedIn Live, YouTube Live, and Facebook Live.

[01:13:54] If you're again listening on the podcast, we reviewed today a newsletter that we publish every week.

[01:13:59] It's called Around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution, and that covers manufacturing and wholesale distribution.

[01:14:04] We look at the economy, M&A, all types of different things going on around the world,

[01:14:09] and we try and unpack that here with our guests as well as those of you who bring us comments and your thoughts.

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[01:14:57] So that's about it.

[01:14:57] We have quite a few guests starting to line up, so you're not going to have to just listen to it.

[01:15:01] Yeah, that's right.

[01:15:02] Yeah.

[01:15:03] So we've got a great, great lineup of guests coming.

[01:15:05] Those will solidify.

[01:15:06] And we're going to go into the new year with a handful of panels as well.

[01:15:12] So and then we're working on two.

[01:15:15] I'm just going to let the cat out of the bag.

[01:15:16] We're working on, I don't know what it's going to be titled yet, but it's kind of Around the Horn 2.0 that we'll not do every week next year,

[01:15:23] but it's going to take on a little different format and bring some pretty cool stuff together that we're working on.

[01:15:28] So we're going to keep expanding.

[01:15:30] Again, if you like what you're hearing and experiencing, share it with your friends.

[01:15:33] So, Tom, that's it.

[01:15:34] Have a great weekend.

[01:15:35] I'll see you Monday.

[01:15:36] And we wish everybody a fantastic weekend.

[01:15:39] Be kind, be safe, and do good things.

[01:15:42] Thanks, everyone.

[01:15:48] We hope you enjoyed today's episode and our guests.

[01:15:51] Each week, we try our best to dig into the topics that are impacting your business.

[01:15:55] So please reach out to us and let us know how you think we can make the show better,

[01:16:00] or topics you'd like for us to tackle or talk about more often,

[01:16:03] and even guests you'd like to see join us.

[01:16:05] We're looking forward to bringing you next week's session and hope that until then,

[01:16:10] you stay safe, stay focused, and do great things.

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