From Blueberries to Billion-Dollar Supply Chains with Kerim Kfuri

You have to have in entrepreneurship a bit of a limitless mindset. You have to have a limitless mindset because it's when you see the restrictions or you see too many boundaries that you're not able to really innovate and create and believe that there's a different way. Back to that idea of trying to create solutions around problems that are being presented. Well, How can you come up with creative solutions if you see limitations? You can't.

Karim, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. I'm excited to chat with you about your book, Supply Chain Ups and Downs. I want to kick off with your background. Your book starts with a rich account of your upbringing and how your cultural heritage influenced your career. So tell Tell us, how did you get into the supply chain industry and how does your background relate to that?

Yeah, I know. I think first of all, thank you so much for having me on the show. Really appreciate it. And for all the work that you and Book Thinkers do, I really do appreciate us always talking and working together. You know, my background is like many entrepreneurs' backgrounds. It's not a straight path. I really just had elements of what led to my final path being in the realm of the supply chain industry and what are some of those elements. You know, at a very young age, I was entrepreneurial. Anything I could sort of be able to do to be able to create commerce or interest in a product or a service that I was trying to put together, you know, I was interested in those things at a very young age. So, you know, selling blueberries in my neighborhood or, you You know, or t-shirts in the mall, or those things that you do as a young kid and a teenager were sort of the beginnings of this. I then, you know, was pretty well traveled. My family came from Lebanon, and, you know, that meant that in the house I was speaking 3 languages. I was speaking Arabic, French, and English from a very young age, and family was sort of spread out throughout the world. So we would take trips to different parts of the world. to visit family. And this idea really spurred that, that concept of kind of global citizenship and that it's a big planet. And I wasn't— I was not, you know, someone who never left my hometown or never left my state. I really was getting on airplanes from probably before 1 year old. So these things all played into sort of my global mindset and those concepts, and then a mixture of different business experiences really that came together to allow me to just to understand customer needs and business needs and manufacturing needs. You know, I worked in the realm of consulting for a little bit. I worked in the regulatory space and the financial space for a while, and that provided some of the backbone of some of the risk mitigation type of ideas and mentalities that I talk about and that I write about. And I worked within, you know, just different industries really. I worked in the tech space for a little bit as well. And so, you know, somewhere about 20 years ago through all these different corporate and life experiences and background and fundamentals, I had taken a trip to Asia and I really just appreciated what I saw there, which was that all ideas can become reality. Manufacturing capabilities and prowess, which was unbelievable and unrivaled anywhere that I'd ever seen. And I said, but there's a lot of fraud here, potential fraud here. There's a lot of lack of transparency and visibility, these very key and important things that matter to the supply chain industry specifically. And could I create a business or a service as I had done even at a young age that looked to tackle those problems because that's what entrepreneurs do. We look to find those issues and problems and then find creative ways to resolve that. And that was the creation of the Atlas Network, which is a company, a global supply chain solutions company that we've been running for more than 20 years with almost 2,000 suppliers, offices in the United States and in Asia, and really with a very kind of strong focus on Visibility, transparency, high-quality outcomes, efficiency, improved quality. These are the kind of the backbones of which and how the Atlas Network has worked and survived. So that's kind of a quick trajectory from young age to just overall background and then feeding into, you know, how I sort of came to what I do.

Yeah, I love that explanation. You're incredibly articulate. And one of my favorite things that you just talked about the global citizenship piece of things, because I have a couple of friends that, like you, grew up speaking multiple languages, visiting their families back either in a home country or if their family spreads out a little bit. And I think there are a ton of advantages to that. And as you know, I grew up working in the supply chain space as well. I worked for a transportation management software company. We sold to intermodal trucking companies. And I would sit down with these business owners and they were almost all originally from another country. And then they started an import-export relationship with people back home. And so I think that, that, that global identity that people grow up with like you did is such a cool advantage because I'll admit that I grew up in a family and although I had, you know, I'm kind of a mutt, as you'd say, I have ethnicities from 10 or 12 different European countries. I didn't grow up traveling or speaking other languages. So it's a really cool advantage that you had.

Yeah, you know, I think the wonderful advantage today though is through technology, the world has never been smaller. So, you know, although then it may have been more complicated to see those parts of the world and get on an airplane to go see this or that or be exposed, now all you have to do is push a button. And it's really just a matter more of interest, I think, and that interest comes from our education. It comes from our parents. It comes through, again, technology making the world smaller that you can in 5 seconds look on your phone and either video chat with somebody on the other side of the planet, or you could, you know, learn about things that are happening in different far reaches of the globe and see how those things either have interest for you or, you know, make your life more fulfilled. It's just about having the interest. And this is where I think we need to consider this concept of, let's say, Make America Great, which President-elect Trump is talking about, is really, if you think about it, is not about an insular view, a view just of, let's say, the United States or America. Mm-hmm. But more so, it should be a global view. And that's how we continue to make this nation and other nations better and stronger by having a global view, because we're in a global economy and we're in a global technological revolution in our evolution as people. And so, you know, I just, I believe that that's really what's going to lead to our, uh, you know, our, our continued advancement as people and in the realm of business and in the realm of just general, uh, philosophy and, and thought process.

Yeah, I mean, you bring, you bring up the word interest, which is interesting. Interesting. I think that there are a lot of people that listen to this show that are small business owners or thinking about starting a side hustle. Maybe they're a successful business owner, and so they're always interested in subjects like this, but it doesn't feel like the average person is. So you mentioned selling blueberries and t-shirts. I mean, for me, I would draw pictures and try to sell them to my neighbors, earn a few quarters so I could go to the local arcade. But do you think entrepreneurship is sort of baked into us? Like, do you think you were always going to be an entrepreneur interested in commerce, or was that developed through some type of other influence?

I think we all have some of that within us. Now, whether you choose to then make it a deeper passion and then expand upon that deeper passion, that really, I think, is a matter of personal— who you are as a personality, and also some additional influences. I think that if you have, uh, mentors or people that are in your environment or in your, in your world that are entrepreneurs or business people, let's say, that you look up to, then that's going to rub off. You know, I had, I had an uncle of mine who was an eternal entrepreneur, even to now, you know, big entrepreneur. And at a very young age, you know, he was talking about things that were different than what other people were talking about. You know, hey, you know, if there's a mountain, you know, you got to climb it. When you climb it, you get to the top of there, you're going to see other mountains. And you gotta then wanna go for those other mountains too. I mean, you have to have in entrepreneurship a bit of a limitless mindset. You have to have a limitless mindset because it's when you see the restrictions or you see too many boundaries that you're not able to really innovate and create and believe that there's a different way. Back to that idea of trying to create solutions around problems that are being presented. Well, how can you come up with creative solutions if you see limitations? You can't. So I think it's a mixture of personality and our, our background and environment, and then even some external influences like some mentors now and again, or, or people in your life that you either see or know, uh, through family or through business associations or on television or whoever it is that you end up sort of looking up to that could also be a part of this.

Yeah, I love hearing stories like that. You have an uncle who's just an entrepreneur. It's just who he is. And he's always talking through this lens of entrepreneurship and overcoming obstacles and those little things. They have a big impact on people, which I think is a lot of fun. And, and so do books, right? So you've decided to write this book that teaches people the basics of the supply chain industry. Can you talk a little bit about Why you decided to write it and maybe what some of the core lessons are in there?

Supply chain ups and downs. It's all about this book. I mean, the really the concept here is, is that it's a difficult, confusing space because of the fact that there are so many moving parts. When we talk about supply chain, we're talking about these, these links in the chain. And who are these links? Well, there are customers and there are suppliers and there are transportation folks and there's duties and customs and there's trucking and there's fulfillment and warehousing and procurement and the whole kind of lifecycle that continues through. And it's global, right? And anything and everything can and does go wrong. And so it's confusing and it's complicated and it touches all of our lives in so many ways. And I always kind of will come back to the pandemic as a perfect example. And that really, I think, lit a spark and became, you know, made supply chain more common words in our vernacular for sure, because people were not getting what they wanted or what they needed when they needed it most. And that was globally. And everybody didn't understand the reasons as to why that was. In some cases, it was manufacturing issues. In other cases, it was a labor issue. In other cases, it was transportation-related issues. But it didn't matter what it was that was happening within that industry. In general, it came down to people not getting what it is that they needed when they needed it most. And that was either particular products or services or aid or support or whatever it may be, medicines. And it's the business of supply chain. And so when that happens globally, everybody starts to really pay attention because they— it impacts their daily life, it impacts their comfort. It's not a concept anymore or some theoretical idea that's out there in the ether that nobody can kind of touch or understand. And the issue with the supply chain space and the reason why I wrote the book Ups and Downs is that the industry itself is too siloed. So many players within the industry just play or look at their role within it, whether they're in the technology side or the transportation side or the manufacturing side or the delivery side or whatever component of the whole lifecycle they play in. They tend to just see their part with some level of blinders. Well, My company, the Atlas Network, was created 20 years ago to help small to mid-sized businesses who didn't have resources, who didn't have the capabilities, who didn't have the visibility or the transparency into the space to get that through third-party services. And in doing so, we had to be the group that would build their supply chain, manage their supply chain, make sure that products were being delivered, that they were in accordance with what the clients wanted, And then back on through for reordering and delivery process all over again. So in doing that for more than 2 decades, you, we got a very holistic view of the supply chain. And I thought the best thing would be with that level of experience and those experiences that we've had with customers and suppliers and transportation and all the different touchpoints I just mentioned within the industry to sort of bring it home in a holistic book, easy read, 150 pages that people could relate to, to pick it up, whether you're a student or entrepreneur or different business person of different capacity and really get a sense of the entire supply chain industry in a very short read. So that was the impetus behind this because there is no cohesive voice in this space. There is not just a very clear-cut overarching view of this entire industry. And that was the goal of this, of this book, to really be able to take that type of an approach, easy to read and really relatable approach to the supply chain.

Yeah, and I think you did a great job doing that with the book. And you have a few different target customer profiles. So we'll talk through the lens of a few different ones real quick. Why should a young kid, high school age, maybe heading into college, interested in business, why should that person read the book?

Well, really because this is an exploding field. This is an industry that is growing by leaps and bounds and needs really smart people to basically take it to the next level of heights. And what do I mean by that? So some of the biggest advancements that are happening in the realm of AI, in the realm of sustainability. These are all key important topics in the business world today are happening in supply chain. There are major impacts that are happening in this space. Also, you know, it's a dynamic field because, as I mentioned before, you could sort of play a role within various aspects of the supply chain, whether it's technology or manufacturing or engineering or design. Or procurement or warehousing or fulfillment or sales or e-commerce. I mean, there's so many places that the supply chain touches that to be aware of this industry and to know how you can connect into it with almost any kind of business experience. I mean, you could be a finance person working in the realm of supply chain. You could be in accounting. You could be a marketing person. Really any field of business can be involved or touching this space. So that's why it's exciting. That's why it's wide-reaching. And as I mentioned before, and we keep talking about, is it's global as well. So you could travel to corners of the Earth. You could be working with counterparts in different parts of the world virtually, be learning about cultures and differences. And, and in that way, I believe it's a very rich experience for students that are looking to figure out their next levels or career path?

Yeah, as you answer that question through the young— through the lens of a young professional, I was thinking back to— I was about 21, I think. I just graduated college. I was working for this software company, and I got an inbound sales call. I was, I was a sales guy, and it was this, uh, trucking company owner down in Panama, the country of Panama. And he had this transcontinental company that would take containers off of one side of the canal, truck them over to the other, and load them back on container ships because the tariffs to go through the canal are so expensive.

Yeah.

It was actually less expensive to take like thousands of containers off of a ship and then drive them to the other side and put them back on another. And flying into Panama, you see 50, 60 ships just hanging out on one side of the canal waiting for their turn to go through. And it was just so much larger than life. I mean, for me at the time as a young person, it was so exciting to see all of this happening. And I think that if anybody listening to this or watching this just pauses for a second and looks around, whether you're in the car or at your home office, virtually everything around you was manufactured somewhere else on this planet and then transported to you. And you're talking about dozens of different industries, you know, people that had their hand in moving that item or whatever it was, maybe even the car you're driving.

Yeah.

to the location that you purchased it. And that's just— I don't know. Yeah, if you're a curious person, it's just fascinating.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think that's, that's the sense of wonder that you have to have that then creates the interest to know more. And that comes through either seeking out a book like the book I wrote, or knowledge in the industry, whether you're studying that now. Again, many universities are really offering great supply chain management majors and degrees in this. So, you know, it's, it's something that is touching every single part of our lives. And as you said, all you have to do is just look around and it doesn't even have to be a cross-border thing. There's supply. It could be domestic supply chain. You could, you could literally be buying something or picking something up that's made down the street at a place that's maybe not even a large factory. And there's still some aspects of a supply chain. There were materials that had to then get to that place, that then had to be manufactured into something, and then distributed out and sold and warehoused and pushed through to even the local market. So supply chain is, is not even just a global idea. It's really just an entire sort of industry-relatable idea.

Yeah, most people, most readers of books like yours don't realize that there are print-on-demand services like the one that Amazon offers. So when they buy their book and that transaction goes through, there's a printing press at their local Amazon warehouse that's actually building that book from scratch and then shipping it right to their door so that they can get it the next day. I mean, that book didn't exist until they decided to purchase it.

Exactly. And that, that's where it really gets really very interesting where it's not even mass production anymore. It's mass customization is really what we're talking about. And at the push of a button. So again, that printing press had to get to that place and those inks had to get to that place and that paper and cardstock had to get to that place. And then it had to then be put together in this beautiful symphony of technology and innovation and manufacturing. And then probably boxed via AI or robotics and then shipped and labeled and then sent out and then, you know, consumed. And so, you know, it's a great example and it is a perfect example of even just, you know, supply chain of kind of book and printing industry. So yeah.

I said we would tackle multiple target customer profiles for your book. So we'll do one more.

Sure.

Somebody like me, I'm 30 years old. I'm a small business owner. I've got a, you know, 10 people on the team. I work mostly virtually helping authors promote and market their books. There are a lot of people in our audience that are small business owners that might be having a hard time drawing a connection between reading a book about supply chain and their individual business. So help bridge that gap for us. Why should somebody like me read the book?

Well, I think that it's just such an important part of everything that we do within the realm of business that to not have a backbone or some level of an understanding is, is sort of putting some blinders on. Whether it directly impacts your industry or your business, I think is a secondary concern.

Hmm.

I think that it's just first and foremost, have knowledge because knowledge is power. That's that. Second of all, that through that knowledge, maybe it sparks some kind of either an idea or a thought that could either be a new segment to your business or something that you may have been facing that's been a challenge in the past that you then can look at and say, oh, well, maybe I could resolve this with this kind of solution set or this kind of mentality, or I didn't even know that those opportunities existed. So it, it may not even be you pick up the book to try to solve things that are happening in your business today. You may pick up a book like this, look at it, and then it just spurs kind of a, a spring of thought and, and, and ideas for either improvements or new areas to sort of tackle or look into because you know your business, but you also don't know what you don't know. So when you get the knowledge and you start to understand, then you can connect dots that you may have not even seen before. And I think that that's Probably the most exciting part of my work for the past, you know, 2 decades at the Atlas Network has been that exactly what I just said, being able to connect dots for small to mid-sized businesses that they themselves don't see because they don't understand this industry. But I do, and my team and my company does. So I could look at a company and they could start talking about they're doing this, they're doing that. Here's where they've had a challenge, so on and so forth. And very quickly I can say, well, did you ever consider doing A, B, C, and D? And the light bulb goes off and they'll say, I didn't even know I could do that, or I didn't even know that that was a possibility, or I never even thought in those ways because we've been doing it this way for so long. So, you know, if you can't meet with a company like mine, like the Atlas Network, or service providers like what we do in supply chain, global supply chain solutions, then picking up a book like this Is your next best course of action because it could, you know, create new opportunities for you that you may not have even been, you know, thinking about.

Yeah, I think so too. And of course, we'll have a link to the book in the show notes. We'll also link the the Atlas Network so that people can click through and learn more about that because like I said, there are plenty of business owners who might say, "Wow, I've got to reach out to this guy Kareem." So another great example of how supply chain relates to I'd say all of our lives is Donald Trump was just reelected to president of the United States, and a big talking point for him is China and raising tariffs. How does that affect us as business owners and also us as consumers?

Yeah, absolutely. And I've been talking a lot about this recently. I actually just did some interviews over the Thanksgiving break here with Fox with Fox Live, and I was also on Yahoo Finance, and they were asking me these similar questions around Trump tariffs for President-elect Trump. And essentially what I could say is it will directly impact consumers for sure.

How?

Because if we're going to have tariffs that are 25% on goods from Mexico and Canada and, you know, an additional maybe 10% on goods from China, Those costs are going to have to be managed somehow, and the choices really come down to the businesses themselves. So let's talk about that. So if you are a particular business that's, let's say, in the luxury product space or some area where there's enough margin, you may choose to absorb those costs on the behalf of your customers so that they don't feel a difference. And because the margin and they're higher you know, luxury products, it may not make a difference one way or the other. You may, if you can't do that, you may have to pass those costs off to your customers. And that is where consumers will feel a difference with regards to particular products. And we know that, you know, everything from food and agriculture, which we get a lot from Mexico and some from Canada and so on, electronics, automotive industry, some of these are very highly reliant supply chains on the global industries, that the global landscape. And so if you can't absorb those costs and you have to pass those costs off to your customers, then in that case you could create scenarios of potential inflation through time. And through extended levels of inflation, you could then even potentially have the worst case, which is recession, where people just aren't buying anymore because they can't afford to buy. And this becomes a real challenge. So, you know, the businesses are going to have to look at if they can do a few techniques in order to not create scenarios of inflation or potential recession, which would be, as I mentioned before, either absorbing costs, passing those off, negotiating with their suppliers themselves to see if everybody can sort of split these cost differentials or share the cost differentials. Maybe they have to do some reclassification potentially of their goods as they bring them into the United States under different tariff codes that obviously need to be within legalities of the law to do so. And then finally, in a worst-case scenario, they would have to recreate supply chains. Now, in some spaces or some industries, this may be a faster shift or a pivot, and in others it may take years of infrastructure So it's a calculated decision for a small business to say, am I going to invest a significant amount of resources to build new supply chains? And then in the end, you know, maybe these tariffs will reverse or will change through time. You know, politics change and so forth. And then, you know, was it worth making the shift over or should we have just sort of shared these duties, these additional costs or pass them off or whatever they may have done otherwise? I mean, the idea of having economic sanctions to curb behavior between nations is not a new one. This has been done many, many times throughout history. But when it really starts to hit the American consumer, it must be actively monitored by our government to ensure that we don't go to those places that are really, in the end, detrimental. To America and to the American consumer, which would be, as I mentioned before, the levels of inflation and potentially even recession. I talk about some of this in my book where I discuss a theory which is called supply chain socioeconomics, where I discuss some of this and the push and the pull and the divergent interests between different players within the supply chain. But it even impacts the consumers as well. And this is a perfect example now with these tariffs where the only way to really make sure we don't go too far is with active monitoring to ensure that we're not pulling back in buying behavior too much, which would be an indicator of, you know, over, you know, inflation and then potentially moving towards recession.

Yeah, it's such a wildly complex industry, like you said, and there's nobody that's just Simplifying it, breaking it down, helping us understand it like you are. And it does reach every area of our lives and businesses. And I think that this election was a really good example of that. And I think that, that what you just talked about can help pretty much everybody see why it's important to understand it.

Yeah.

So if there's somebody listening to today's podcast who's on the fence, they're like, Karim, you're a really smart guy. The book is interesting, but I still am not sure if I want to buy a copy yet. What's your final word for that person?

Yeah, I mean, the final word is, is that again, knowledge is power. We are in a global economy now and, and have been for a while. And the only way to truly understand is to know as much as you can. The book that I wrote is geared to be an easy, quick read, which is understandable by many different groups. Whether again, you're a student or a small business or a supply chain expert, whatever it may be, there's something for everyone in this book. I tried to make it as relatable as I could. We have a great website, which is supplychainupsanddowns.com, which talks about the book. And if you want to sort of have a flavor as far as just my thoughts around how the supply chain works and the industry at large and so on, I have a significant amount of social media platforms that you could look at from YouTube to Facebook. And my main website, which is not theatlansnetwork.com, but for my sort of thought leadership and philosophy and leadership is kareemkafouri.com. Any of those places you could take a look and see lots and lots of great, you know, videos about various topics that touch the supply chain. And then if you like what you're hearing and seeing through my philosophy and leadership approach, then, then maybe you want to say, say, all right, well, I think the book would serve me well. So that would be my kind of final words around it. You know, it's a very exciting, interesting industry. It does touch all of us. And it's important for you to know as much as you can before it's kind of too late and you get to these places where, you know, products aren't on the shelves or prices are skyrocketing and nobody understands why that is. Well, it'd be good to know why that is. And maybe even be able to be ahead of that a bit because you understand the, the mechanisms that exist within this industry.

Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing advice just to read and implement the book so that you can understand more. What's one final piece of career advice you have for a young professional interested in this other than reading the book? Any specific areas of the industry that people should be paying attention to?

I would say it's not, it's not so much a particular area of the industry. I think it's more about what we talked about before, which is, you know, we live in a global economy. That's what we— that's where we live today. Technology makes that world smaller. And in order to really be able to function and work actively in the realm of business, even if it's not supply chain, you have to have a global mindset. And the supply chain industry highlights that very much so, that actions that are being taken on the other side of the planet impact consumers or behaviors on the other side of the planet. And so, you know, with that in mind, my big word of advice more than anything else for people who are considering, you know, career changes and so on is to really just have a very global mindset. And think about, think about global citizenship and the idea that we're all on this, this rock together, right? We're all on this planet together and how we're going to actively be able to work to improve our daily lives and the lives of not just us, but others throughout society. Yeah.

If you think about how disconnected we were, let's just say 30 years ago, and about how connected we've become over the last 30 years, I can only imagine that over the next 30 years, It'll become even more important to understand these subjects because we are all global citizens on the same floating rock, and we should all start acting that way. Well, Karim, it's been an amazing time with you. I'll link everything in the show notes today. There's one final question which we typically ask, and it kind of goes like this. Imagine the book disappears, your social media disappears, your Fox News stuff disappears, but you can leave the world with one simple message. From the book, what would that be?

I would basically— it's interesting, that message would be the one that was said over and over again during the pandemic, which is we're all in this together. And I don't necessarily mean it specifically from the health perspective. I mean it with regards to just the way that we all interact with each other as global citizens. And that's the reality. I mean, we, we are all citizens of Earth, right? When we break it down, it's, it's not so much about, you know, my country, your country, your state, my state. It's about the Earth. The things that we do, you know, impact each other, whether it's pollution or, or business opportunities and supply chain or whatever it may be. There, there's interconnectivity that is happening. So We're all in it together, I think, is really kind of the, the idea more than anything else.

What a wonderful way to wrap up today.