Around the Horn - Episode #18

Hey, Kevin, good morning.

Morning, Tom.

Welcome to episode 18. You've put up with me for 18 Fridays in a row. So congratulations.

The Fridays are the easy part. It's the last 50 plus years that had been a challenge, so.

Oh well.

But it's all relative. It is all relative. But you know what, it's. I'm excited that, that, you know, here we are, we're 18 weeks into this. We're coming up on the end, end of the year. We'll talk a little bit about the schedule for the rest of the year shortly. But it's kind of cool, you know, it's. I'm enthused the feedback we're getting. You know, we've got, I think we get a lot more people actually watching the recordings of what we do was what I'm getting from feedback from people, from messages and then, you know, as we're live today on LinkedIn with probably a small group of people that are actually live, we actually have another larger group that's on YouTube live and on Facebook that comes into those as well. So, you know, this has been kind of growing for us and we're getting some good feedback. And so, you know, what I'm kind of excited about is I've just been, been mentioning this week I'm going to jump ahead of myself a little bit here, but I've been working on guests for later this year and going into. And going into next year. So let's come back to that a little bit and talk about what the plan is for that because I want to get some feedback from some folks as well on some things. Things. But here we are. So how about if I do our regular weekly intro on why we're here.

Well, Tom, Tom's here early with us, so I want to make sure.

Thank you for, for being on time today.

Tom, he has definitely worked his way back into good graces.

He's always been in my good graces. He had to get back with you. So Tom, as we worked together years ago on a project and he provided the sales operations and data that made me look smart in some meetings. So I will forever be indebted to him because it's, it's helped moving forward in some things. So, you know, as you know, right, I need smart people behind me to make, to make me look pretty good. So if I look good, it's usually because it's you people like Tom May or Darlene that said that's behind it all. So. But anyways, those of you that might be the first time with US today. I'm Kevin Brown, this is Tom Burton. We're the co founders of Lead Smart Technologies. We've created a CRM and customer relationship management system and customer intelligence system that helps both manufacturers, distributors, dealers and anyone in the wholesale distribution change and independent sales agents and so forth get a deep look at what's going on. Not just on the customer side of their business, but the analytical side, the data that comes in across the board and comes into their business so we can give relevant insights into how to better manage customer relationships and grow their overall business. So that's what we do. But every week we get together on Friday morning, we send out this newsletter that Tom's got posted here and from that we try and collaborate or bring together and consolidate all of the data or as much of the data as we can that's going on in wholesale distribution around mostly North America. And we talk about that here on around the Horn. So let's get started tomorrow.

All right, here we go.

Yeah, so that first article, you know, it's kind of interesting. It talks there about September manufacturing technology, technology orders declining. That's on the kind of the technology side of things where we talk about, you know, whether it's 3D printing or big CAD manufacturing systems, cutting tool systems that are automated. But it's interesting, you know, that article starts off with a little doom and gloom, but the reality of it is it's as it down 12% versus last year, but up 13% from the prior month. So sometimes these headlines can be a little deceiving.

Sure. You can spin the statistics a million different ways right along the way.

Yeah, exactly. Right. Well, it's the interesting is they talk about in that article there's something they call the IMTS effect, which IMTS is a big manufacturing automation show, an event that happens on even numbered years in Chicago. And there always seems to be a bump around that fall event on the IMTS year. So I hadn't heard that or read about that before. I'd heard of that, that the event, but not that effect that they talk.

About that sounds like they need to make the event. Sounds like they need to make the event every year.

Yeah. Really. Exactly. You know, I mean, I guess in, in, in challenging economic times, you may want to maybe be doing this multiple.

Times a year and the speed of which technology changes. Right. Two years is a lot. That's a long time. Really. So I mean there could be, you know, I mean in a year there's a lot of advancements. So anyway, not to, not to go off Track.

No, I think it's, I think that's a valuable point, right, that, that things are changing kind of quickly. You know, this is typically at this event, this is a big, big automated machinery and stuff like that that comes from this. But the technology behind that and even, you know, when you think about the CAD systems and so forth that, that are used for, for setting these types of things up, you know, that that is updating on a consistent basis, much like the SaaS software world that we work within. So it's interesting, you know, I think it's important for us to ongoing, you know, keep kind of an eye on some of these barometer effects that can impact wholesale distribution and, and see how they might slide in, which is why we post these pieces about economic growth or decline each week. Trying to keep. Right. We're always trying to keep the spin on the positive versus the pundits that say we're going to force ourselves into a recession. So let's bypass that industrial industry buyer challenges there and go now to that construction backlog piece. You know, that's kind of an interesting thing. It's really, as you look at it, the kind of challenge I think that they're seeing with this is that this is mostly outside as they talk about here from that Associated Contractors and Builders Group or Builders and Contractors Group. You know, they're seeing a lift from the infrastructure bill and stuff that's been out there. Right. But then they're seeing a decline in some other areas, which is one of the. My takeaway from that article. I don't know what your thoughts were, but my takeaway from that really was they're seeing a little bit of a decline on commercial buildings because of work from home. And, and I thought that was kind of intriguing.

Is that what they said, work from home or there's.

There's a piece tied to that.

Right. Okay. Well, that's, that's a bit of a leap, but I think there's. Yeah, I think there's a lot of variables here. Right. That, you know, there's not any one thing that I think can even point. You can look at the cost of building, the cost of interest rates and the cost of financing. And there's. There's a lot of things that I think right now probably, and maybe even the work from home. Right. The necessity for larger office spaces may be dropping as well. So there's probably a lot of different variables in there. I believe this is going to be a bit of a roller coaster over the next year anyway. And, you know, it'll be interesting to see where it settles out. But I think you'll see ups and downs and backwards and forwards and things like that with not a lot of clear guidance I think through the next year.

Well, we've talked quite a number of times on this and I've mentioned on as we get together on Fridays here about this. You know, the reality of it is that, you know, from a building standpoint is, you know, who knows how long kind of this downturn and pressure that we're feeling in the economy right now is really going to last. But I think the reality is, you know, my hope is that it's just going to be another year or two at the most. Hopefully just, you know, we get through next year and things start to turn around a little bit. You know, the reality of it is for many of our, and we, you know, we have customers in the building trade in the building products arena that use our, our software and you know, those folks are working on bids and so forth that you know, their, their contractor customer bid a year ago, year and a half ago. Right. Because we've got these forward looking large, large projects that are going on, whether they're related to infrastructure. It's just the hospital that's being built or remodeled or whatever it might be. So I think we're going to kind of see some ups and downs like you said through this is we're going to continue to see that.

Did you want to go backwards?

Yeah, let's go backwards there.

Okay.

I don't like to do in life but you know, talking about this topic here, we're going to shift over I guess now in our conversation a little bit about E Commerce, which you know, we've talked about quite a bit in the, in the last month or so and we're going to continue to do. We had our webinar with Brian Beck just recently. Brian's one of the foremost authorities on B2B E commerce, specifically as it relates to wholesale distribution and manufacturing in North America. We'll see Brian again in a couple of weeks at the, the Affiliated Distributors E Commerce and Marketing event in San Diego. So we're looking forward to that. But we're going to continue down this path. But it's just interesting about this challenge. It talks about that, you know, industry buyers face challenges in increasing E procurement. And you know, I just, as you read this, we're seeing more and more and more statistics coming in about, you know, online purchasing. And it says one of the quotes this here says that more than half of B2B buyers or 52% in the Amazon business report that they put out said that insufficient online information about supplier characteristics is why they can't support find suppliers that fit the goals of their business. Right. So this data in key in having this online presence is critical, right?

Well it's, you know, and take away for a minute whether it's E Commerce or not, what to me what this all relates to and is the buyer, you know, two things, right? The buyer wanting to be more in control of their own research and journey. We know that. And more of the self serve approach, right. So whether they're doing their own shopping or their own research or whatever. So if the buyer is, is more, is in control of their journey and driving their journey and they're doing more self serve type of actions, then yeah, then you have to fill the gap, right? And it's important to fill the gap not only with content, but having the right content at the right time. We can talk more about that in a minute. And it's not just about product information like product pricing and product catalogs. It's all kinds of things related to the use of the product and why you would need the product and the demand. All of those things. Right. Fit into this area here. I find this interesting here where you know, the top five biggest procurement challenges. This came out of that article that by the way that, that we were just talking about it adjusting to new employee needs due to remote work. And you know, I was thinking about that is that like even you know, how things are shipped and managed, if an employee is working remote and they need something, right, it needs to be shipped to their location, not to the home office or whatever the case may be. So there's logistical issues that go along the way there as well.

I think you're right. There's a lot of factors that impact all this. So let's kind of look through these and talk about these points that came out of this research a little bit as far as those five biggest ones there. So product range, right, is really critical. And I think part of this goes back to, I think about it as the, you know, the Amazon effect in general, right? What's, what have they created for us? They've created for us, you know and I'll tell you a funny story about our house yesterday is, you know, related to Amazon is we have an expectation, right, that we can see lots of reviews, that we can see multiple buyers, that we can see product details, probably a video, maybe even about the product being used. And I click a button that's very easy for me to do, and I get what I want. You know, in our house yesterday, we had a. It's kind of silly. We had a couple of household items coming from Amazon, which my wife was, you know, wanting to make sure they arrived. I had something coming for our business that I needed because of an upcoming trade show. I need to ship some stuff to the east coast for the Industrial Supply association event in two weeks, and that was supposed to go out today. Oh, guess what we have. As you know, Tom, we have one street that comes in and out of our development that we live in, and they were paving yesterday so the Amazon truck couldn't get in, and there was angst around the household. It's like, probably.

Probably in the whole neighborhood. I'm surprised there wasn't a riot, of course.

Great point, right? Great point. We have. What do we have, like, 10 houses per cul de sac and six cul de sacs in our. In our development here. And it's just astounding to me is like. I'm like, well, I hope they try and deliver it again. You know, when these guys are.

They just need those drones. The drones could have dropped it off.

No, they don't. Don't get me started on that. Because the. The city had the inspectors flying drones over this paving project. So we had that buzz going. I just. I hate that. So that's. Sorry. Sorry to digress there, but it's just interesting, right? That Amazon effect is out there. And so, you know, people want that, whether they're buying, you know, supplies for an office or they're buying supplies for a factory. They want that access to wider range of products and understanding price ranges. They want to adjust. They talk about, you know, new remote work, as you mentioned earlier, right. You might need to get stuff to, you know, people that are working in a different location and quantity needs. You know, I think I mentioned a few weeks ago, you know, a trip that I took with in her. It was up in the Pacific Northwest. And the wind farm story I tell about the guy working in the trailer on the wind farm that says, you know, we buy a lot from these local distributors in the Pacific Northwest. But, you know, he described that if I buy from distributor a, they'll fulfill 30% of my order in the next day or two, you know, this guy will get 70%, this guy will get 40%. And what they had always been doing is saying, well, I'll buy this from him because he can get it to me tomorrow. I'll buy this from the other guy. Because he can get me these other items. And we had all these deliveries going, which, right, you now you've got purchase orders that go with that, you've got people paying attention to it, you've got accounts receivable, you got all those back office issues that go with multiple purchase orders. And he just said, you know, this, and this was seven years ago, probably maybe longer. And he said, I use my Amazon prime account and everything's here the next, you know, within two days. So we've got that issue that's going on.

Sure. So we don't need to go through every one of these. But I think that they all kind of start to dovetail on each other. Right. Do you have the right quantity? Do you have the needs? And you know, I think number four and five is a little interesting too because it's, you know, looking ahead and saying, okay, well, how can you help me predict, how can you help me anticipate, how can you help me guide to the right suppliers based around the goals of what I'm trying to do? Right.

And I like that you described there. I think that interestingly enough though, moving ahead is that it's not that you as a distributor or a wholesaler or a dealer have to have every item that's sold in the marketplace place. Right. And it's not that you have to have the perfect setting for them to buy. Everything from you online. Right. To something that you talk about in your book and we talk about regularly.

Right.

Is that we look to follow what the customer's journey is of how they want to buy. And what we're learning about how they want to buy is they want to access data online, they'll see the salesman. We'll talk about this in this next article that we posted this morning as well, about they want to see you when they choose, they want to see you. And it makes me think of an example. We have a new distributor customer of ours in Arkansas that's an industrial supply company. And their website, they're very straightforward. These items available today, basically these items are available in a certain period of time because they're shipping from a third party warehouse. And people just, you know, they want to buy how they want to buy, but they most importantly probably want information about what's real as opposed to, oh, available today. If it's not available today, just tell me it's not available today because I may choose, I want to buy from you because of all of these other features and I'm good to wait for a week for that. These items I need in two days and you have those. It's, it's just that I think that's.

A really good point. I think when you're providing information, what, what they're, what you're looking for is the good, the bad and the ugly, if that's what it is. Yeah. But communicate it and do it in a way that you know that you are, that the buyer feels like, hey, you're helping them. Right. Or helping them make whatever decision they're gonna. And they're gonna respect that. Right. Because no one's gonna be perfect. Of course. Yeah.

Well, and I think, I think you're right on. As we talk about that, it's interesting, you know, Tom May makes this point. He got a box within a box with an empty box inside of it from Amazon. And, and you know, I think there's some shine off because coming off that apple right now, Amazon has grown. They've, you know, you know, as I used that term earlier, the Amazon effect.

Right.

That we have these expectations of things. But what's really interesting that comes out of that is, you know, they're not perfect anymore. Right in. And we see, you know, I'm sure most people have had a damaged item because, you know, Amazon might be using a third party contractor. You know, stuff getting, you know, the ring camera that shows the stuff getting tossed from 15ft away to your front porch. And it's interesting, you know, I had lunch yesterday with one of our software architects and developers that works on your team, but he lives down by me and we had lunch yesterday and we were chatting and he was talking about buying some, some health care supplements, some vitamin type supplements and the packages were opened and had been repackaged. So someone on that supply chain side missed that. Hey, you know, the FDA or whoever manages all of that really doesn't want you shipping, you know, health care products that have been opened and reshipping them as new.

So probably wouldn't be compliant somewhere along the line there. So.

Yeah, so I just, I think we're going to see some of that, a little bit of that shine coming off the Apple. So let's kind of jump ahead to that next article which just dovetails right in this about digital content. So I thought that was kind of interesting as, you know, as we looked at that article that's there and it talks about digital contact matters for distributors and then developing.

Right.

Because you know, you have varying degrees within wholesale distribution, specifically at the distributor dealer side of things where people are. You might have a salesperson that had some technical Savvy that somebody moved in, say you're going to run E Commerce, or they might have gone out and hired or they might have a whole E Commerce department, right. Within these organizations, they're all different. But this content becomes extremely valuable and important to people as they're working through this. There's Susan Merlot that was on with us a month or so ago, who just published a new book through mdm, Modern Distribution Management on digital marketing and so forth for distributors. You know, she referenced in this article that, you know, GARTNER Talking about 72% of buyers today would rather not engage with a sales rep and said this is a figure is a jump from 43% a year ago, 33% before COVID So I think Covid has kind of got us back doing even more of this online shopping. And it's forced, Tom. And I think this is something that's important for us to think about, right? And I think Will Quinn from Infor talking about that, he just made a comment this morning about value added services being key to distributors differentiating. And that's right. And that's, I think, where we see this, where the salesperson will now become part of this process, that manufacturer that sends a field sales guy out with a distributor to a joint call on an end user about a cutting tool or whatever it might be. But, you know, I think what's really related to this, that we might be missing as we look at E Commerce as a whole is we went at least a year where very few field salespeople were actually able to go anywhere. You know, I heard an example at a trade event a while back from a cutting tool company that they said they put virtual reality glasses and cameras together that they dropped off at their customer to give them video feeds of what was happening with some cutting tools because they couldn't go into the facility. Right. So our buyer has made some of these bigger shifts, not just because of E Commerce, but because of what the pandemic forced. And now we're seeing this moving forward to these statistics that Gartner has come out with, you know, 33% to 72% of buyers would prefer. And it's really about working with that salesperson. It says the quote here says buyers will still engage with a distributorship after doing their research, though, to confirm that they want to have that interaction, right. With to confirm their purchase decision and possibly even to close a sale. So, so I think you've talked about this and you talk about it in your book, right? That's the buyer is going to decide when they want to invite you in.

Well, and I think I use that same Gartner quote in my book. I'm pretty sure it's in there as well. But it's growing. It's growing all the time. But you know, one of the things that, that I talk about in the book a lot is what I call the yellow brick road, which is the yellow brick road of, of content and information that guides that buyer from their initial research to the point where they're willing to do business with you. And it's great for me to see that we're seeing the, in this industry, right. We're seeing more and more of awareness that that's important. And if I look at some of the customers. Right. That we've been working with over the years, the content of anything they were creating was simply product information, right. Product brochure, product catalog, maybe a spec sheet, whatever the case may be. Right. But now we're seeing that that content has to align with that, what I call that yellow brick road that not only talks about your product, but talks about any of the items that a customer or prospect would be trying to understand, learn about how to use it.

Right.

As Will said a second ago, how do I differentiate myself in terms of the use case or of the strategy? All of those different things are all part of a content strategy. And I think we're also going to see here more and more. Right. Where people in the wholesale distribution arena are going to be using video more or even live events like we're doing here or things like that as a content strategy.

Right.

For their prospects to help them again get through their, whatever their yellow brick road is. And especially, and this really hit me on that webinar we did with Brian, you know, a couple weeks back, as you get more and more vertical centric e commerce and vertical centric, a lot of vertical centric distributors, right. Having that, you know, very specific subject matter expertise becomes more and more, more and more valuable. So I really believe this is going to be a huge emphasis over the next year. And I'm excited about it because I think that I saw it happening maybe in some other industries earlier, not quite happening in this industry, but I think it's catching up and it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, I think, I think you're right on track there. And you know, going back to Will's comment and I couldn't, couldn't agree with that more.

Right.

And it, this is not necessarily something new. Right. I remember back to the days and me being a manufacturer's rep and carrying a bag of samples into an end user is they needed to develop confidence in you, one that you knew what you were talking about. And I work as, you know, work mostly with, you know, safety and related either environmental or safety equipment which are regulated, they can impact people's health or well being or life even. And certainly, you know, working poorly with either environmental related issues and, or safety related issues, you know, you can end up with all kinds of big fines and so forth. So they needed to develop a confidence in you. Now what we're just seeing is a shift, right, in a digital world that we're living in that people are saying, okay, well part of my developing a confidence in you, Mr. Distributor Dealer, is e content, right? Because that's how I live my life. I buy on Amazon, I buy with DoorDash, I buy with Grubhub, whatever it is, I've changed. Right. And as we talk about constantly, right, the majority of B2B buyers are millennials now. So we have to address that. And I think that really ties in. And I'm appreciative of Will's comment, right, because value added becomes very different as we move more and more to a digital world. Right?

Well, I think there's two, I think there's two parts to that equation though. There is the content itself, right. And the quality of the content. But by doing, by showing your buyer that you're making an effort to create that high quality content, you're now, it now comes across that you care about supporting the journey that they want to follow.

Right? Right.

So it's got a, it's got a one plus one equals three opportunity there. As you, as you do this, I.

It'S funny you you said that because I was just thinking as you started to talk about the same thing that says, you know, you don't have to be perfect at this, right. You have to show your buyer that you are, you know, and your customer. And Tom, Tom's point that he brought up here, Tom A's point about, you know, website taking advantage of website search engine optimizations and better contact content. And as you do that, right, then you'll rise in the search engine in rankings, maybe get on that first page without having to spend a lot of money on ads and so forth, which is important. But, you know, I think that part of this is that just the willingness to show the customer that, hey, we're moving in this direction with you. We don't have it perfect.

Right.

I just kind of wanted to quote one last thing. Here that Susan quoted and this is I think from her book, but quotes in this article and she says distributors who want to be included in that research that that buyer is doing and who want to be considered as a viable option during the early and middle stages of a buyer sales journey are learning that to be a viable option it's imperative that they provide the digital content their buyers are looking for. And I think the differentiator there is the content that the buyer is looking for, not what you think you want to provide them. Yeah.

And when you talk about what the, what the content the buyer wants, it's the, what is the topics and what is the information. But it's also at the right time.

Right, right.

So you know, I need give content and different, different information at different times of that buying cycle. And so it can't be a one size fits all along the way. Hence the, the road, the yellow brick road concept that you're going one step to the next down, down the line.

Well and I think that let's just, I'll kind of wrap this up with right. We, we see quite often and I think, you know, we'll, we'll. Will Quinn, here's with Infor and if you don't follow the journey of a road warrior traveler. We connected a while back on LinkedIn and he is at. I thought I go to a lot of shows and events but nothing like what he's been accomplishing in the last couple months. But what we see when we're at a lot of the trade association meetings and the buying group meetings is there are some great companies out there who are wholesale distributors who can fulfill, you know, I'll call them resellers or wholesalers who can fulfill online orders for distributors. And some of these large organizations, they have very nice E commerce packages that you can plug into your website. That's a starting point. But that isn't where. Right. Because those people aren't necessarily thinking about what your customer needs are. They're thinking about a generic package. So it's nice when we see people get started, but where we want to get to and where we want to be long term is as I'm developing this for my business, if I'm a building supply material or building material supplier in, you know, New Mexico or Arkansas or wherever it might be, I need to have my e commerce system and my content driven towards what the buyers in my marketplace are looking for.

Yeah, I think this would be a great topic for us to do with Brian back again is do a kind of a virtual Experience. Right. We're really looking at the experience aspect of it, which includes, you know, obviously the experience of the transaction, but the, the experience of the research and the everything that leads up to the transaction.

Right. I think that's good. We should talk about and we're planning to do more events with him next year. We've got some plan for specifically for a couple of the buying groups that we're. We're partnered with as well as directly with him on, on, on our website or our, our social channels as well with the webinar. So, you know, some. As we talk about every week, right. We talk about industry or a general business and economic and technology issues that we've done already this morning. And then we always share a little bit about what's going on. I think, you know, I mentioned this every week. We just don't have room to do this here. But you know, there was I think four or five other transactions announced this week in industrial and construction world in the M and A side of things. Always positive, you know, sales growth third quarter from another large organization is great to see. You know, as we look at that and then more partnerships and stuff being done. So it's good to see what the industrial sanitary service supply Issa is doing with that because putting these partnerships together and leveraging other people, you know, to grow your business is great. So that's good. I'm glad. Thank you for putting this in. You did this this morning. This link to a webinar replay of. We've mentioned Brian I think two or three times today. We really appreciative of our relationship with him. And you know, it's pretty funny I think about this is here I am in South Orange county in Southern California. Brian's out near Pasadena, Europe and Santa Barbara. And the three of us have never sat down together. So. Beauty of technology, right?

Yeah. And I, you know, I listened to this webinar replay three times because I was doing some editing and I had some computer problems and it crashed and.

I had to redo and I yeah.

So I was like, how did I listening to you and Brian. But as I listened to it, you know, a couple of times, there's some really, really good information. So I highly recommend if you haven't, you weren't able to attend live to, to jump in and take a listen to it. And it was just some really, really good information that, you know, Brian in particular brought to the table. And I think what we were able to do was add some color to that as to what we see in the world with Lead Smart and some of the things there. So anyway, well, not to be self serving but I think it's well worth listening because I listened to it now three times.

So I think we're allowed to be self serving a little bit here and there, right? We're not, we're not schlepping software this morning. We're just talking about that webinar. So I think that's good. But thanks for putting that link in there. So lastly coming, kind of talking about some of the events coming up and I want to just take a minute or two and, and kind of talking about what's going to be happening with around the Horn as well. So we're off the week after Thanksgiving to the I'm off to the ISA event. We're helping sponsor that. I play a very, very small role in some of the introductions with that, but we're looking forward to one. We're going to I guess we can just say it here, but we're going to announce a new version of our product of Leads More Channel Cloud for independent sales agents and manufacturers rep at this event. And so we're looking forward to that event. So I'll be in Orlando for four days. Then you're going to be on the east coast as well that week after the Thanksgiving holiday with seeing one of our customers and helping with a kind of little more technical integration than we normally do. It's I think one of the first times we've needed to go see a client over the years that we've had LeadSport Channel Cloud in the market. But I'm glad you're doing that. So a couple of things. Next Friday I will be sleeping hopefully at 9am after the enjoying the day off and the holiday weekend and the fall. So we won't be here on around the Horn the following week. We'll be both traveling, I think airplanes when we would be normally doing this event. So we're going to take those two dates off. We'll probably, I think we'll just publish what that plan is and then we're only going to really after today only have two more shows or broadcast this year. Looks like we're going to have a guest at one of them, if not two. But I wanted to close today, talk a little bit about. Well before I talk about that. Then the week after, two weeks after the Thanksgiving holiday we'll be together in San Diego at Affiliated Distributors E Commerce and Marketing Summit. We're pretty excited about helping sponsor that and meeting some existing customers and some folks that are close to coming on board with us. So that's another great event we're looking forward to. But let's talk about guests, which is I think really important. Whether you're watching us live today or you're watching this recording, send us a note. Whether it's on a social channel or you email for us is easy. It's helloeadsmart tech.com with topics that you'd like to see us discuss. If you think we should be talking a little bit more. Maybe whether it's E commerce that we talk about or maybe it's one of the topics I had this morning, I think we want to work on early next year is about the challenge that people are having with hiring. Right. We probably will get some. We've got some ideas about some manufacturers and some large distributors that we might be having join us. So types of topics you might be interested in seeing. We'd love to see Will. Thanks. Brendan was on with us I think show nine or ten. We actually invited Brendan back. Brendan's a good friend, as you know. Great guy. We invited him on today to kind of pitch the ISA event. He couldn't do it in preparation but he'll be back with us in the first quarter for sure. Looks like Jennifer Murphy from Netplus alliance is coming on. We've got some folks from affiliated distributors and one of the ones that I'm pretty excited about coming up in the early part of the first quarter is we don't have the date confirmed yet but gentleman by the name of Richard Jones is going to join us and Richard is the global sales director for a UK based personal protective equipment company called Port west and they have hundreds of salespeople. I think they're doing business in nearly 100 countries around the world but they've come into the US market in the last say five years, five to seven years. I might be off on those numbers but I've invited Richard, he's agreed to come join us. The reason I want to get Richard in with us is I want to talk about how distributors work and operate and or procure the products that they sell versus other parts of the world. And I think it will be a really inviting time for us to spend together with Richard when he comes on to talk about literally he was at a show this week in Paris and the week before in Dubai and then they have their whole US operations now. So I think that's going to be really exciting. I appreciate him joining us. We just had a suggestion about some automation and distribution. I think those are great topics that we'll work on. So you know that AI was just mentioned there as well. You and I have strong opinions about AI. And so we'll, we'll what is and what isn't AI versus what's being pitched as AI sometimes. So I think that those are good topics. So we'll look forward to more of this. We've gone way over today, but that's because of how much I talk. But Tom, what would you like to add to what's coming up?

Just to clarify. So the next, the next episode will be on the 11th of December. So we'll be off the next two weeks and then we'll be coming right back. We'll be, that'll be right after we're done with the AD Show. So we'll do one on the 11th, one on the 18th, and that'll sort of officially in season one of around the Horn. And then we'll be like you said, we're working out season two, which will start in early January again. And so, yeah, any of this feedback is great and we appreciate everybody who's listened and all the great feedback. We've learned a lot from doing this. So it's been a lot.

It's been good. We appreciate, as I mentioned earlier, right. We get more comments after this airs than we do during this airing. But it's, we're happy to be doing this and we appreciate the support we've been getting. Tom, I'll just ask you this while we are in front of people is maybe in the weeks that we're going to miss, maybe we can pop up our banner, you know, and still like out put like out fishing on the around the Horn banner or something so that people, you know, if they were to look. Because we do have people that go and check regularly and we can just pop that banner up as a reminder.

Okay.

Yep. So just, just our little, you know, banner about join us for around the Horn to say out fishing on vacation or whatever it might be. So hey, thanks everybody. I hope everybody has a fantastic weekend. A lot of people are taking part of next week off. If you're doing so enjoy that, be safe. Great. Thank you, Lars. Lars is a global VP with 3M. Great guy. Appreciate your comment and we'll talk soon.

Have a great day, everybody. Okay.