Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution - Episode 151

Some pretty fancy moves for a gray beard like you.

You know, it's funny, every time I grow any facial hair that comes in mostly gray, people ask me if I color my hair. Yeah, like, I don't care what color my hair is. I just would like more of it to stay attached to my. My scalp. But, yeah, it's funny. Beards, beards, mostly gray and head has none of them. So maybe my beard needs some.

You can grow gray like the rest of us old people.

That's right.

Yeah.

Well, you know, you are quite a bit older than I am. It's.

Right. Yeah.

You know, seven months. Oh. What's happening with you?

Not much. We got a lot to cover today. Some great stuff about the AI, A couple AI, the AI, New AI app that came out, some stuff about stable coins. There's a lot of cool stuff that's kind of happened in the last week. You know, the Fed meeting starts next week.

Yeah, well. And yeah, plenty to discuss there. Plenty of geeky stuff to go with it. We'll talk a little bit about the Phillips curve today, too.

We will. Okay.

Threw you out for that, didn't I?

Yeah, I'm ready for that. Bring it on.

Very good.

All right, let's go.

Let's do it. So, hey, I'm Kevin Brown. I'm here with my lifelong friend and business partner, Tom Burton. And we get together every Friday morning, barring airplanes, vacations or hospitalizations, I think is the title to that. I'm going to write a Jimmy Buffett style song to that, I think. And we chat about the news of the week and we do that based upon how it relates to wholesale distribution and manufacturing. In fact, the focus of our show here is really trying to what we say, peel back the onion or unpack a little bit about what's going on in the economy, supply chain, maybe even a little bit of politics here and there and how that relates to wholesale distribution. But talk about mergers and acquisitions and sales and marketing and AI and robotics and all kinds of wild stuff because future is changing quickly and we all struggle to keep up with the news. So we try and get together on Friday mornings and we discuss what we put out in a newsletter. And that newsletter is called around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing. If you don't get that newsletter, we'd love to get that out to you. It goes out to over 10,000 people each week. You can request that very simply. If you're active on LinkedIn, you could just search around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution. Newsletter should pop up the show page should pop up as well. We'd love it if you'd follow that. But you can also send us a email to hello atLead smart tech.com and we'll get that out to you right away as well. And happy to do that. And then finally we have a website for the podcast which is www.aroundthehornpod.com and you can sign up for us the subscription to the podcast on Apple or Spotify or wherever it might be there, as well as sign up for the newsletter. So lots of ways to get that out. We get new requests every week and we love to get that information out to you, so we're appreciative of those who are following us here. Couple of things that we always request is that if you like what you hear, you share the information with your friends. Nothing better than to get out in front of more folks in the wholesale distribution manufacturing space and the supply chain world and share this information. So if you're listening on Spotify or Apple or another podcast platform, again, you won't be seeing the newsletter we're discussing. We're happy to send that to you. But additionally, if you would click on the the subscribe button and not only that, but if you would leave a review, it certainly helps us get out to other people. If you're on YouTube, just do the quick subscribe button and you'll be alerted every time we go live and share a view there would be fantastic. And lastly, if you're with us on LinkedIn, go to the Lead Smart Technologies page. Give us a follow there. All of our past episodes can be reviewed there as well, as well as we're live on that page as well today, so that'd be helpful to us. And finally, before we dive into the news, we couldn't do this each week without the support of our team. We've got a back end person, Lily and a front end person. Let me see, a front end person Lily and a back end person John Taylor. And they do a wonderful job of coordinating the show for us. John does all the production and editing workforce before it goes onto the podcast formats and that costs us money. So we do this through the support of the company that Tom and I work for, Lead Smart Technologies. And we at Lead Smart we've developed a product called Channel Cloud. And Channel Cloud is a AI enabled, what we call smart CRM and customer intelligence platform. It's built solely for wholesale distributors and manufacturers. And what we do with that differently than most traditional technology companies and CRM related companies is we do it Again, what we call smart CRM, we connect to disparate systems that are siloed data across your organization, your ERP data, your marketing automation, your e commerce data, other data across your organization that you have that would be relevant in understanding your customer better. We bring all that together on one single platform where we can use AI tools like our Genius feed and other tools that are launching soon that help you get a deep understanding of not only your customer, your team, but your overall business. And in an age of AI, as we're going to talk about today, is there's nothing worse the way we live today with siloed than siloed data. And then when we get into an AI world, there's nothing worse than AI siloed data. So we bring all that together so you can make smart decisions. And we do that in a way that's cost effective, fast implementations and very quick roi. So if you and your company are digitally transforming, if you're stuck with vintage or what we call dumb CRM without getting any return on investment for that or any other digital transformation initiatives that you have, we would love to talk with you about what you're doing to grow your business in an AI world and share what we do. So, Tom, that's it. Got that out fairly quick. Ready to roll?

Yeah. And I was going to say good morning to Bob, but I think we already ran him off because of our AI focus today or one of our. But hey, if you're listening, love to please check in, say hello. Always does a lot for the show.

Right. So let's dive in, huh? Start with our economy and supply chain segment.

Okay.

Right.

Guess what? We have a Fed meeting next week. Did you know that?

Changing your mind? Yeah, actually, Yeah, I did. 29th and 30th, huh? What's that? Tuesday? Wednesday?

Yep. So the, the poly market is changed a little bit. It is down from 4% last week for a 25 basis point decrease to 3% this week. So I guess that the rest of the world is not following my enthusiasm of my 20% chance of a cut.

Tell us all what Poly Market is again, Tom. Not everybody's familiar with that.

I mean, it's a betting site, but it's also kind of a crowdsource research site.

It's become a lot more than that. Right?

Yeah. So because there's so much there, right? There's this is, you know, basically what the world believes will happen and for the most part is remarkably correct. Much more than other sort of research or, you know, surveys and stuff like that. That tend to go out the.

Called the presidential race and all the congressional and Senate seats almost, almost ideal. It's really kind of become a, a benchmarking tool as opposed to just a, an online betting source. So kind of, kind of interesting to look at what polymarket does on an ongoing basis, you know. So we got this decision coming up. We have a good article here from Kiplinger that you added in yesterday that talks a little bit about that. You know, yesterday was interesting. I saw in the news in my fuzz that I had yesterday, had a couple of diagnostic medical procedures yesterday, had to get some anesthesia. So I was in a little bit of a fog yesterday afternoon, but watched the president with Powell touring the, the Fed offices. And as Bob says here, Powell was squirming a little bit yesterday. I know you don't watch the news, Tom, but did you see any of that?

I did not know.

So picture, picture Powell, who is not a small man, but he's, he's small compared to Trump. He's thin and quite a bit shorter. And both of them in hard hats touring the interior construction of the Fed building.

And isn't that what he's accusing him of overdoing?

Well, they started that they were going to have a 1.9 billion budget, I think it was. It's now gone up to like 2.6. And the 2.6. And then Trump came in with some numbers yesterday while they were doing the tour that said it's now 3.1 or something like that. And Powell looked very, very concerned. And Trump had some piece of paper with him and Powell asked to see it while they're in the news conference. And Powell looks back and it took him a moment to catch it because he was really caught off guard, which is the reason Trump does these things. Right. And he actually caught that the numbers got added in from a pr another building and a prior year remodel. And so, you know, he pushed back on it. But Trump had somebody walking with him. I don't know who that was. That was like, no, no, no. This is these kind of tie together in this big project. And you know, it comes down to it and you know, I'm going to just not just say the president, but this administration has their focus, right. They have an agenda and it's key. And Trump has a different style of getting to. Yes. And he's going to come at you in every way, shape or form. So because of that, I'm still not going below 20% regardless of what they're saying at 4% I think, you know, you were at 20 last week. What was I? 25, I think.

Yeah. You were higher.

Yeah, I, I, it's not going to shock me if we see something we just the challenge I think that we've got going on right now and is that we've got these, this kind of push pull and it's, it's almost. Even if you were to take out the, the, the tariff, so called instability or factor that goes all this, you still have as we've got articles we'll talk about in a moment here, you know, the next article we have today is from Reuters talking about labor market being steady, job claims at a three month low. You've got inflation that's kind of just floating there and everybody's chicken little, I should say everybody but many are chicken little that tariffs are going to cause inflation to go up. But you've got this dichotomy between the labor market and inflation. Right. And the risk is as they describe and that was as I was through this curve at you with this, this, what's it called, the, the Phillips curve has been around forever now I think since the 70s. But it talks about the relationship between inflation and unemployment. Basically talk says that in the short run that there's an inverse relationship meaning lower unemployment is associated with higher inflation and vice versa. But it's not always consistent in the long run. But it's a major factor of what the Fed is looking at in this setting. So it's kind of a, it's kind of a dichotomy. We've got a push pull here right now. That's going to be a struggle.

Well, I mean again the, the data we, we and kind of moving ahead to the second article here. Right. With jobless claims being down then they don't really, they're justified if you want to call it that by not to not cut anymore and continue to wait and see. Right. I think that as we've talked about the reason to cut is not necessarily because we're seeing either inflation dropping considerably or unemployment kicking up considerably. It's like there's probably room for a quarter or 50 basis point cut which would really help our, you know, our debt financing and our debt that we're paying every month that would potentially spur some of the, we're going to talk about this AI action plan here in just a minute and a lot of push to build infrastructure and manufacturing and so, so there's a lot of other, again I wouldn't say go cut two points. Right. That's not the right. You know, don't go back down to zero or whatever we were before. But I think what the point being is maybe there's room for movement and I think that's where the pressure is coming from.

Well, absolutely. I mean, you look at the debt. Right. I haven't crunched the numbers. We talked about some numbers you had looked at and I did some a few weeks ago. But I wonder if the. I wonder what how many basis points cut. I bet it's a half to three quarters of a, of a percentage point cut it would take to even offset the added spending in the big beautiful bill.

Yeah. I mean that bill though, is, is kind of. You're only looking at what. Anyway, we shouldn't get into that. That's a whole nother thing. But it definitely would offset again, more money that's going out the door for debt service.

Well, you look at that in the tariff income and if the tariff income is now going to become more clear, we've got. That's next Friday. Right. Is tariffs going in the place. We're going to talk about that here in a few minutes. So I just think it's just a unique place and I, and maybe that's just my own personal bias, which is. It's okay. That's why we have our show.

Right.

We can have our bias here is that I just think we've got to look at more than these traditional metrics.

Right.

Because now when you're looking at this is from the standing of the labor market. The thinking. Right. With PAL talks about this all the time is that, well, you know, if labor is, you know, the labor market stays steady and jobless claims and so forth, or unemployment is very low. The idea behind that is in the model that he's using in this setting is it says, well, that means people are going to, that are getting jobs, are probably going to get paid more, people are going to spend more and there's a risk of higher inflation. So you have this inverse relationship there. That's. I, I just don't know that when.

You start, I think you just have to take a step back and look at it more subjectively and what's the right thing to do for the overall.

That's my point, Tom. Right. Is let's let.

We.

I don't know that we should continue to look at these. There are four or five factors that say this is the only thing we.

Have all these objective, objective levers. Right.

Right. And, and so let's, let's either change those levers or add additional levers to balance those out. And when we're looking at where the debt crisis is right now. Right. You've got a lot of factors there, and there's more and more. I wish I'd saved some of it. I read a few things this week. There's more and more discussion that the risk of actually tariffs having a great impact on inflation are pretty low in comparison to the, you know, the sky is falling view that we had over the last few months.

So, anyway, we'll see. I'm. I'm. I would like to see a cut, and I'd like to see. Not just because I've. By 20, I would just like to see a cut. I think it would. I think it would just add a little bit of tailwind to everything else that's going on and trying to get done and as well as, you know, helping the debt situation, to your point.

And the President's point is, you know, I think there may both of you, you know, have said, and I would fully agree, is lower them. See what happens.

You know, don't.

I don't. I don't believe 2%'s a number that's reasonable. There's probably all kinds of things that could happen. But go, you know, go half a. Half a point and see what happens. So I think that, I think that's kind of what Bob's saying here, too, is, you know, the government works slow and the administration is working at light speed.

Yeah. So adjust. All right.

Tom, do you have a direct line to the Powell and the Fed?

Yeah, I'll give them a call after we're done here, let them know what my thoughts are.

I mean, you could be the E.F. hutton of the, you know, 21st century.

That's right. Well, they're probably listening to the show.

So for you millennials that are listening, Google EF Hutton commercial from the 1980s. Okay, so. Very good. All right, you want to talk a little bit about the strategic plan for AI in the White House's AI Act?

Yeah. So was it yesterday or the day before the Trump administration unveiled this AI action plan? Actually got a. I got it here that we can show.

Oh, wow.

This is the actual document.

Is there sharpies involved here?

Sharpies. No sharpies.

No sharpies. Okay.

No, but I think it's about 90 pages long. It'd probably be worth, you know, dropping into chat GPT and, and having it summarized. But it's really based around three things, Right. As far as an action plan for AI. One is how do we accelerate innovation and remove any barrier to innovation. So regulatory and so forth. What do we need to do to just keep pushing America to innovate and push forward on AI? Number two, probably the most important one is infrastructure to support AI, whether that's the data centers, electricity, rare earth magnets, things that are all the things that are required, right, to not just run, you know, software AI, but also physical AI with robots and everything else that's associated with it. And then the third pillar is, is, you know, be a lead in an international AI diplomacy and security. And really look at, you know, how do we kind of become the guiding direction or how AI is used and, and the security of it and so forth. But you know, around countries and what countries do we allow to have access and so forth along the way? So, you know, this is a plan, right? This is like a strategic plan that was put together. What I think is, it's just rather than what I think we had before was what was the. In the Biden administration, they put together this sort of regulatory executive directive or executive order. Right, right. And I'm not saying that the regular regulatory aspect of it is wrong. We'll get there. But the regulatory aspect of it should be aligned towards the plan and the strategy of what we want to do with it and how we want to compete. And the whole premise here, right, is how to make the US the leader in AI and basically really push forward and become the dominant player in AI and not let China and some other countries overshadow what we're doing here.

Did you, did you catch any of the, anything from the, the, you know, we talk oftentimes here on the show about probably the most listened to podcast out there besides in globally. Probably besides this podcast is the all in podcast that we both listen to regularly. They did an event in Washington D.C. earlier in the week. Did you catch any of that?

Yeah, that was the AI Summit where this was announced and Yep. So actually rolled out at the AI Summit that was. Was I think they hosted with another consulting company in, in dc.

Did you catch Jensen Wong's comment from Nvidia?

I saw a couple of them, yes.

So he was asked what is America's most unique advantage that we have over other countries globally? It's astounding. And I, I'm going to say this comment. Let's the, let's not think about what you feel about the person I'm going to mention here, but about what's happened with this bill and kind of what's going on related to infrastructure. So he was asked what's America's most unique advantage over any other country in the world. And his comment response was America's unique advantage that no other country can possibly have is President Trump. I was astounded to hear him say this out loud. He highlighted, he said without. In this is because of this bill and the energy component of it is, he said, Ian highlighted the importance of that. Without energy, we will not be a world leader in AI. Right. And right now, if we're only trying to focus on one type of energy, we're not going to be able to support the infrastructure that's needed. So again, forget about your thoughts on the president that we have currently. Think about what's trying to be accomplished with this bill and then components of the big beautiful bill that support this as well as all of the other things.

And remember that this is not a bill too. This is, this is just a plan. It's not a bill. It's not locked or anything like that. Yeah.

So but with this, right. This, this plan tied, being tied to the other infrastructure plans which tie to tariffs and reduced taxes and that is reduced interest rates that we were just talking to. If these things can come together, including the pieces that we talk about here. Right. The strategic plan on AI things look pretty promising for AI in the US as, as from a leadership standpoint, especially because of a video we'll show on next week's show about some robot robots that have been launched this week. And it really looks like China's really got the. But I mean, there's some cool things happening in Silicon Valley and with Boston Scientific and so forth related to robotics. But I just, I saw a video this morning of like a, just a humanoid robot that's just under $7,000 that'll be available soon. That's doing some pretty crazy stuff. So we'll talk about that on next week's show. I did when I saw it. We didn't have time to prepare for it today. But when you start looking at these things and pulling this together, it's going to be important to keep, keep the lead in this, in this country for the businesses that we talk about in wholesale distribution, manufacturing and how that this will serve them.

Yeah. And the bottom line, Right. Regardless of the business you're in, the action plan is trying to put a tailwind behind, you know, the, the industries and all the sort of ecosystem around that to make something happen. Right. Let's find ways to make it happen rather than running into all the barriers and challenges of getting something done.

Good.

No, and I think it's, it's similar in a way to kind of like the space race of the 60s.

Yeah.

Right. And instead of the, you know, who's going to get to the moon first? Right. It's going to be who is really going to be. But I think the, the consequences and the opportunity of this is very different than just going to the moon. Right. Obviously there was a lot of technologies and everything that was developed as part of that process, but if you actually become the leader in the field after, you know, X period of time. Right. That's, that's very hard to undo and there's a lot of upside and advantage for that.

Well, and we, and I think your, your comparison, Tom, the space race is really probably a really good one because, you know, there as we went through that, you know, you know, in a previous generation, there was a geopolitical component to that as well. And we have the geopolitical component to this as well and the struggle that's there. So Bob says he's right. I assume he's talking about the president.

I think he's thinking about the Nvidia CEO's comment.

Oh, yeah, could, could, could. I mean, it's, that's a pretty powerful thing for an individual that's a business leader to say. Now, obviously these, there's ulterior motives always to these things, but before we jump ahead from this time, I mean, he's.

Going to be the Nvidia and these guys are going to be some of the big winners.

Right?

They're the winner.

They're the winner regardless.

Right.

They're just probably a little bit bigger winner on the US Side of thing as a US Company. But they're, you know, with the adjustments of the chips that they've modified that can now be exported. It's a big deal. Tom, the national association of Wholesalers came out late yesterday with a kind of some key init, key points to this with their support of all of this. So since they're our friends in Washington there, I've had Eric Copland, their CEO, with us on the show, and we'll have him again with us soon. And Dan and the team I met with a couple weeks ago while I was in D.C. and we'll be back there hopefully meeting with them again in a within the next month or so. But I'm always appreciative when they come out because they come out from a standpoint. And oh, by the way, I'm sure who worked on a big part of this was Brian Wilde there, legislative head. And Brian's going to be on the show with us here as well. I met with Brian while I was back there recently. But the key pieces of this that they talk about in their release was one, the exporting key of US AI capabilities. Commerce and State departments will work with industry to provide secure export packages, including hardware, software models and standards to allied nations. Right. So a big part of this is getting ready to be able to say, China, you're over here. But now all of these other nations we can work with as well on, on expanding the use of our technology. But a big component of this was removing regulatory barriers. So federal agencies will have eliminated regulations that have been big obstacles for AI development. And it's. The act is also going toward the, the, the plan will remove these barriers. And then also they talk about soliciting private sector input on additional upcoming reforms. But the big piece of this too is it relates to a big part of our audience here, right, as we talk about wholesale distribution manufacturing is the data infrastructure. And there's two components of that. There's what's. What needs to be built. There's the products that need three components, I guess, the products that need to go into those buildings, and three is the people. Right. So big component of this about H Vac and electrical and plumbing tradespeople that are needed. So we're going to see a big boost in that, which is what's needed in general, you know, selfishly from, from our standpoint is, you know, a company that makes technology for wholesale distribution manufacturing. It's all the better because when you're hiring more contractors to work, you've got more people buying materials, hence the distributors are going to be buying more things. And it just flows all the way through to companies like ours as well. So good stuff from this. I'm appreciative of NAW's kind of recap of this as well as how it impacts. And we have a lot of great companies using the lead Smart channel cloud platform that are in the H Vac plumbing and electrical space. So it's good news across the board there. All right.

Should we move to Japan?

I don't want to move to Japan, but we could talk about it, right?

Should we talk about Japan?

We can. What happened?

Looks like again this week there was a quote unquote, massive deal with Japan that includes reciprocal tariffs of 15% on both. But it opened up the door for, I believe, US automakers and agriculture people that have before never been able to get into Japan to start potentially making sales into that area.

And the one thing $50 billion investment too.

Yeah, well, they call, I think Trump called that their signing bonus. Right. The signing Bonus was a $550 billion thing where, yeah, the, and I'm not sure, I, basically what it sounds like I haven't really researched in general it sounds like, is that this will be used to build infrastructure, whatever, whatever return is made on those things. So Japan invests in it, we build stuff, we get a return on it. The US keeps 90% and 10% goes back to Japan. So I think this was, I need.

More deals like that.

Yeah, I think it was a little bit of a signing bonus in a sense that, okay, maybe they let them, let them, you know, skid by on some things that otherwise wouldn't need to have been included. But they said, hey, in exchange for that, we'll put some serious money into the US and we'll invest in the US and the majority of the profits can stay in the U.S.

So, which.

And again, that's kind of just to your point a minute ago, that's going to be more building, more H Vac, more plumbing, more. All of those things are all things that are going to come out of that, that piece that was there.

Well, I think you're spot on with that. Anytime you say I was right, I think you're spot on, which is good. But you know, it's interesting because they're just coming up to, I, I don't know if it's an election or a big political event that should, and there's been some turmoil there in Japan. So I think this is a big deal for their, their group that's putting all this together. What's interesting, this is, and this came out right away, the, this probably could be a template for other large deals, specifically the EU deal.

Right. And I think it could be a template for Korea as well, because Korea is very similar, you know, in terms of what they do and how they operate to Japan. So there was talk that this could very much be a similar template with, with Korea and countries that are similar to the culture and the, and the scenario of what you have with Japan.

Yeah, the, you know, Europe is putting together, the EU right now is putting together their, they called it their trade bazooka. The retaliation. There's an article I read this morning on cnbc. I'll just hit the bullet points from it. It says the EU could be preparing to use an anti coercion instrument to try and DETER A looming 30% tariff on its exports to the U.S. a number of EU member states, including Germany, reportedly support an anti coercion measure against the U.S. if the block cannot reach trade deal with Washington. They called it their, they're having an anti coercion instrument that they'd you, they developed in the past but had never been used and they call it their trade bazooka. But the idea behind that is, you know, their pushback and you know what they'll try and charge on, you know, pushback tariffs basically in the eu I don't think the US Government is overly concerned based upon the amount of trade that goes on there in comparison with other countries. But I think if there was a way to get the EU and I think this is a big picture issue and smarter people than me that are working on negotiating this. But I think if you could do something where you've got this, okay, you.

Got.

Vietnam in place, you've got something in place now with US and, or Canada and Mexico, probably more work obviously to be done on that to make that balance out. But if you could get that 15% or some type of deal similar to that in the EU that you've got with Japan now and Korea, South Korea as you're describing it, with you kind of got the bases covered. There's probably some Latin American countries that would benefit from, you know, a similar deal. But if you did a very similar deal with the EU as with Japan, I don't know that there's the dollars it could be in the value of the investment coming from the eu. But if you could get those deals in place, we probably have this taken care of now. Right. Because China is going to play out how China is going to play out. It's almost like its own separate need.

Yeah. It's its own animal. Yeah.

So I think if you could, if you could get the EU to a similar deal and to your point, Korea, I hadn't heard about that. But if you get South Korea and Europe in a similar deal to Japan's, do some balancing with Canada and Mexico, we probably have the baseline now and could take that back to putting some stability to the Fed to take some other actions in general.

Well, and you have all the other August 1st, right. Is a week from today. And unless that gets extended again, supposedly that's when a broad range of reciprocal tariffs roughly in the 15% range are going to kick in. I know there's, it sounds like there's been a lot of frantic sort of last minute negotiations with some of those smaller countries, but.

Yeah, and I guess it goes back. I just maybe don't understand enough of this and need to research a little bit Further, but the EU is a big deal, right. Having a deal with Peru, you know, or the Vietnam one. Vietnam one was important because of the backsliding stuff coming through.

It's a proxy for China. Yeah, yeah.

So. And you can probably look at that in Indonesia and some other places where you've got to be cautious about that and get that in place as well. But I think the EU is a really big deal and then getting clarity on everything of a reasonable number that's going to work with Mexico and Canada and then let's get on with it. Right. Put those flat, that flat number, whatever they decided to be 10, 15% across the board on the rest of those countries and then go work on the China thing. To me that seems like it would be extremely beneficial and we get a great balance out especially if we could get some great investments from the EU like came from Japan coming into this country. It's like there's, there's a potential from some great, for some great economic stability and pushing interest rates down which just does so much on the home market and in business investments. And you know, the audience that we talk to here on this show the most is, you know, and we've been traveling, you and I were visiting some customers a few weeks ago and last week visiting with many, many wholesale distributors at the trade event we were at and I'm getting ready to go to another one in about what about three weeks and we'll hear the same thing that people that are very, very cautious. Right. And if you're contemplating wanting to open multiple new branches or investing in some infrastructure, you know, I was messaging this morning with a large electrical distributor that's, you know, decided to pull the trigger on a big ERP improvement. They're hitting pause on all other software for a moment and big investment there. But that took a big decision include really that their board was involved in on big spending because of some of this instability. So if we could get those deals in place like we've just discussed, get a get up at least a full, you know, full percent interest rate cut, probably get a good tailwind going.

Yep, yep, good.

Mark says our great guest from last week, Mark Gillum talks about as a comment here we are moving back to an era where countries are competing against each other which requires a revised approach by politics. Business will benefit or suffer on the back of this. I think if done correctly and things continue to play out like they look like they could. I think there's a big benefit there.

Yeah. And I, you know, I don't know If I'd call it healthy competition, but I think healthy competition and I think this whole AI plan is based around the fact that we need to be aware of what China is doing in AI. We need to be aware of what China is doing related to infrastructure and energy and not find ourselves basically way behind the curve, which could easily happen because they are investing a ton in this area.

No, this AI race is not one based upon this new plan by any means. Right. There's, there is years of work to continue to stay, stay ahead on this. And you know, it, it's, it's the long haul of wanting to lead on the AI plan on this as well. But, you know, I think part of what goes with this too, Tom, is that, you know, there's a lot of emotion that goes behind the tariff thing that with people in general. But I think when you start taking a step back and you know, when I, whether it's social media or it's conversations at events or, you know, I guess LinkedIn is, at the end of the day, is social media still. But when you see some of the comments, sometimes I look at these things and say, are you looking big picture? Are you looking at all of the ramifications of the parameters? And I think what, what happens a lot of times is, was we look at the, specifically at the tariff is tariffs. Here is what the administration is saying is, look, we want a balanced playing field and we've been on the, you know, and it's even ties to which, you know, I struggle with. But even some of the things like, you know, NATO and things like that and climate research and a lot of other global partnerships that are going on, I'll call them global organizations that this administration has said, hey, we want to pay our fair share, not carry the whole thing. And if you, if you look at the balance of trade deals that the US has been facing for many, many years, it's just been extremely imbalanced. We just haven't talked about it or heard about it because it was just what was sort of.

Yeah, I just kind of organically went that direction as we move forward.

So I think the risk is that somebody has to say, okay, I may have these big cautions about what tariffs might do. Are they going to impact inflation, whatever it might be, is. But what is the other impact of staying status quo that we've never really dug into?

And we have a real risk here.

Right, Exactly. Especially.

Right. And AI. Right. And infrastructure and so forth. So you have a real risk of just becoming lackadaisical. Right. And the risk hasn't been to the way that it's been up until now when you look at the AI race. So it's. Anyway a lot of things have come together at a certain period of time and things are changing.

Well so, so let's do one last thing before we dive out of here and into our next segments. In the next segment we'll just kind of jump. There's. We have three articles there but one in particular is from our folks friends at MDM Modern Distribution Management and they have a great article. In particular is from our folks friends at MDM Modern Distribution Management and they have a great article in there from earlier called Taming the Tariff. Yo Yo A Building the muscle for 2026 and they just hit some, some nice points and they talk about analytics and automation must replace guesswork. They said too many distributors are still manually calculating the impact of tariffs, pulling spreadsheets, calling suppliers and guessing at pass through rates. The approach only slows down response time. They talked about having a control tower that creates speed and clarity. I'm just going to hit a couple of these real quick. It says in a volatile environment one of the biggest risks is confusion when tariffs shift, who decides whether prices change, how fast based upon what data and who informs customers. Without a structure to guide this process, companies default to hesitation or internal conflict. That's where the control tower model comes in and they go in a little bit more about how to develop that. I just think that's so powerful. Right. Cause we've talked to quite a few people who have said well we've got a committee that meets a few times a week or whatever it might be but do we have an implementation plan? Do we have the checks and balances that says when we get this data from a supplier we do this and when we get that data from a supplier we do this. And here's how it's communicated internally and externally. Love the control tower concept today.

Yeah. I assume it's like you know, having a center of excellence, right. So to speak for the, for the tariff thing and yeah it makes a lot of sense. Right. Because you could actually have a lot of, you know, just like a control tower would. Right. Planning for contingencies and, and I think the yo yo is the biggest part. Right. Because their point was it could be 10% today, it could be 25% tomorrow, it could be back to 10% the next day. There's just a lot of different variability. But having the strategies and we've talked a lot about the strategies and leveling out different pricing and looking at, you know, a lot of different. But if you have an org or a central part of the organization focusing on that, then it just becomes, I guess, part of the DNA of the organization.

Yeah, I think that's spot. I just thought this was a very well written article they talked about, you know, now is the time to train for disruption. Right. It says the next three to six months are a window. We don't know what 2026 will bring, but it'll likely be messy. There are trade uncertainties, global elections, and continued restructuring of supply chains. And one of the things they talked about earlier in this article as well, and a couple others is, you know, we're still coming off the back end of all the supply chain disruption of the pandemic.

Right.

That's not all, you know, rosy days yet from all of that. So they said what's holding many organizations back is mindset that they haven't trained or made decisions. Said disruption fatigue is real, but so is complacency. The assumption that things will settle down in 2026 is not only naive, it's dangerous. The next wave of disruption will reward teams who have been learning through this action through action. And then they talk about budgeting process will reveal who's ready. I think this, this is great. It says by the time 2026 budgeting rolls around, the best distributors will be excellent in all three areas. Automated insight, coordinated decision making, and resilient talent. They will not simply build a budget, they will build scenarios, assumptions and guardrails. Great points.

Yeah. And the tools are there to do that now. I mean, you can do those things, right? So.

Yeah, let me just. I don't. I don't know. I get excited once in a while about this is Stephanie Liazou L I O Z U writing for and. I don't know. I'm sorry, Stefan. I was gonna. Said Stephanie. I apologize for that, Stefan. I just don't know how to pronounce that. But a great article about taming the tariff. Yo, yo. Building the muscle for 2026. One of the better short recapped articles I've seen in a bit about this. So don't forget, that's why you come here every.

That's right.

Friday morning to find out what the best articles are out there. Which reminds me, tomorrow, I forgot to do this. The last two weeks. I try and do it halfway through the show. We're more than halfway through again. I'm Tom. I'm Tom Burton. That's Kevin Brown.

Maybe we should just move on maybe.

I'm still under the anesthesia. No, we, we need to talk about and remind people this. If you're tuning into the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whichever podcast platform it might be, you're not seeing the screen. You don't get to see us, which might be a blessing to you, but you don't get to see the newsletter. And the newsletter that we're talking about is the around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing newsletter it goes to. Please let us know. You can send a simple email to. Hello, you're not seeing the screen. You don't get to see us, which might be a blessing to you, but you don't get@leadsmartech.com we'll get that at you right away. If you're active on LinkedIn, you can just go on LinkedIn, go to the Lead Smart Technologies page and you'll see a link to the newsletter there. And you can request it there and sign up for it to get it through LinkedIn. Or you can go to the website for the show, which is aroundthehornpod.com and sign up there as well. So if you're listening and not watching, you don't get to see the newsletter that we're looking at. But that's what we're referring to through all these articles. So, Tom, let's bump ahead to our E commerce and marketing segment. You want to dive in on that first article there from Forrester.

Yeah, it was a little bit of a different article. It was talking about how a marketing organization positions themselves within an organization. Right. So it would, you know, a lot of companies don't fully understand what marketing is doing or why they're doing it and, or even understand the value of it at the executive level. So the point here is that if you're trying to explain to your executive teams and, and so forth about marketing and what you're trying to accomplish, tell stories. Right? So take a couple, you know, a couple, couple of challenge or. Yeah, a couple of business challenges. Build a story around that and then explain, you know, what you're doing or what you believe should be done from a marketing perspective to accomplish that. And I think we see this a lot in distribution, right. It's changing where I think marketing is becoming definitely more strategic in the organizations and not just kind of a sales assistant role or a, or whatever. But I still don't think there's a lot that's fully understood about what could be accomplished with marketing and what could be done to really help grow a distribution or manufacturing business.

Well, I mean this, this Forrester article here is, you know, talking a lot about the storytelling component, which is, is so critical. And historically we've just, you know, seen so much from a marketing standpoint that just says buy my stuff. Right. In, in that we're just going so far beyond it. I do think it's important if you, if, if we were to highlight Jason's comment here. Glad he's with us today. Jason. We're trying to find a time to get him on the show and we haven't been able to do that. But you know, he also says that people come for the scintillating personalities. So I'm assuming he's talking about our guests.

I'm thinking when we have the guests. Yeah. Right.

So good. All right, Jason, I, I will get you scheduled quickly for the nice compliment we've been trying to find, find a time to get him. Jason is a world renowned e commerce b2 b e commerce expert. So we'll get him on as soon as we can. But I like this. You know, I've talked about forever in my career, I mean, more than a decade. I've talked about, you know, as I describe it, as a revenue department versus a sales and marketing department. And we have a department that works together functionally to get things done. And in all honesty, you can drop the E commerce group right in there. And, and, but sales and marketing, you know, we've, we, you and I have lived through our career of the, you know, as I always describe it, right. Sales says marketing sucks because their leads are bad and marketing says sales sucks because they don't, they don't convert leads. And we've got, we live in a world where we have so much data. We, and you know, and it, we had this discussion a lot at the Affiliated Distributors E. Common and Marketing and IT event last week in Orlando. And you know, we have so much opportunity now and, and it's a big part of what we do with our technology at Lead Smart is, you know, I describe it as your customer has at least three journeys with you that are going on at all times. There's probably five to seven, really. But the critical ones come from a standpoint of we've got our ERP data, which is the rear view mirror of what's happened in the past. We've got a marketing journey of what? What are they engaged with? Are they watching videos on our website? Are they reading our content? Are they subscribing to our newsletters? Whatever it is, we got a marketing journey and we've Got an E commerce journey. What are they doing on our website? Are they. They watching abandoned shopping cart data? What are they researching? We have really three different journeys that we need to be tracking and when marketing and sales are completely aligned. We've given lots of examples in the past about some cool stuff some of our customers are doing on our software platform. To bring those things together, we really, really can accomplish a lot. But this talks about. I want to talk a little bit more about the, the story component of this that this Forrester article talks about and it talked about. Start with the business purpose of your story, right? Before you build your story, ask what am I trying to achieve? And so few people are still doing that, right? It's like I need to get more people at an event or I need to get more people to our website or whatever it might be. But it says second is know your audience to align your story. You already segment your customers. Do the same with your stakeholders. You need to align a story internally and externally. And it says build a narrative, not a report. Structure story like a campaign. What was the challenge or opportunity? What actions did marketing take? It just goes through. So I thought this was. There's five steps that it talks about.

I think I'd be good for any corporate initiative, right? I think the structure makes sense for anything that's a corporate initiative that you're trying to push through. All right, Like a smart CRM project, for example.

Brilliant.

Yeah.

That's why you get paid all the big dollars, right? You come up with stuff like that.

Maybe we better write a story.

All right, very good. What do you want to jump to next?

Well, I think related to this, we'll hit on this next one, how to build a trusted B2B brand in an AI first world.

Look, this is marketing props.

This is good marketing profs, right? And they talked about three things. Well, you know, first of all, right, we're all skeptical, I think more and more about what we read and what we see. Is it AI? Is it. Not only is it accurate, but was it even generated by somebody or was it generated by AI and so forth. And the quantity is overwhelming. And so what they're basically saying, which I don't agree with or I do agree with completely, is how do you kind of weave that buyer journey, that yellow brick road, so to speak, that you're taking them down with third party. So three things that buyers tend to trust. Third party reviews, customer case studies that highlight real outcomes in peer recommendations in communities where they already spend time. Right. So what does that mean? They don't really care a lot about what you say, they care about what others say. But if you can help facilitate that journey so that they're getting to the right place and hearing from the others and so forth, then obviously you're going to have a much better situation rather than just waiting for something to happen along the way there. So anyway, I was just basically talking about how do you build that into your, your sales and marketing process. And I think it's certainly appropriate to really any industry.

Yeah, I think your comment too about, you know, trusting third party reviews and so forth, I think a lot of that comes out of the B2C world. Right. And. But there's a big risk of that in the B2B world as well that people need to be aware of and cautious about as well. So good, good article there as well.

All right, where do you want to go now?

Why don't we jump to. Let's see, where did we go there? Lost you. Let's jump into our security, cyber security and AI component here, huh? There was a, an interesting article. This is our friend Mark Brohan. We got to get Mark back on the show and saw Mark a few weeks back in an event and super guy, I think he was actually going to join us today as a listener. But good article here about robot management as emerges as core supply chain role. It says by the end of the decade, 1 in 20 supply chain managers, managers will be responsible for overseeing robots rather than human workers. According to some recent Gartner research, the shift reflects a growing resilience on automation. Warehouses and fulfillment centers, labor shortages, cost pressures and the need for greater efficiency are driving that shift. So you know, we have quite a few customers that we work with at Lead Smart who have auto stores and so forth, as they sometimes refer to them in their, their warehouses. We've seen a couple of different, I've seen three or four different types of my customer visits. And you know what's interesting in this is we've got product that gets loaded into these big, we'll just call them mini warehouses that the orders can go through and get picked and get ready to get ordered, get packed I should say. But we're very much nearing a place where those humanoid robots are going to come in versus little bots that are moving around a facility. And, and that is going to be a big shift moving forward again, we'll, I'll try and get everything ready for next week for another couple of videos, but we are very near having a series of different types of humanoid robots moving around picked and get ready to get ordered, get packed, I should say. But we're very much nearing a place where those humanoid robots are going to come in versus little bots that are moving around a facility. And our facilities could be, as you know, everything from monitoring the perimeter of our facility to having a camera that can look at, you know, pipe stacks or brick stacks in a yard and doing inventory counts and so forth to our janitorial staff as a humanoid robot saw a video of one the other day that actually will walk itself over to the battery stack, reach its arms over the back, remove its battery pack and replace a new battery. And that is going to be a big shift moving forward again. We'll. I'll try and get everything ready for next week for another couple of videos. But we are very near having a series of different types of humanoid robots moving around our facilities could be, as you know, everything from monitoring the perimeter of our facility to having a camera that can look at, you know, pipe stacks or. Or brick stack into itself and get back to work.

Right. Yeah. You know, it's one not to. It's a little bit of a sidetrack, but this goes back to this AI action plan. Right. One of the things that people or we tend to not really think about is these robots. How do they operate? They operate off of batteries and they operate even like bag magnets and sort of magnetic. Right, Right. Just to get them to operate, how they move, how they come together. Right. All of that is rare earth. And if there's talks of being billions of robots in the next 10 to 15 years, that's a lot of little magnets and a lot of batteries and a lot of other things that I don't, you know, I don't think in.

A yard and doing inventory counts and so forth to our janitorial staff as a humanoid robot saw a video of one the other day that actually will walk itself over to the battery stack, reach its arms over the back, remove its battery pack and replace a new battery into itself and get back to work.

Right. Yeah. You know, not to. It's a little bit of a sidetrack, but this goes back to this AI action plan. Right. One of the things that people or we tend we've again, this was part of the AI action plan is not just electricity, but how do we get these rare earth and these minerals and everything that we need to build this stuff. And again, not rely on China. Right. That can pull the plug on us at any point in time and then we're screwed.

Yep. I Think.

Not really think about is these robots. What how do they operate? They operate off of batteries.

That's spot on. You know, I've added a feature I've talked a lot about in the past. I should say a lot, but mentioned a few times. You know, I've been promising Mrs. Brown to have a humanoid robot here within a few years. The guy said 18 to 24 months. I'll probably be proven wrong on that. But I don't think by too far that we want one here to clean the house and weed the yard. But I think I want the kung fu version.

And they operate even like bag magnets and sort of magnets version as well.

So when we travel right. The house is secure and try and break into our.

Right. Right. Just to get them to operate. How they move, how they come together. Right. All of that is rare earth. And if you know there's talks of being billions of robots in the next 10 to 15 years.

Our house. You got a kung fu housekeeper here that can take you out.

Okay.

How's that?

It sounds good to me.

Yep. Very good.

Just make sure you have plenty of batteries.

Well, it's going to change its own. Right. They'll be in the garage.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

I guess I need solar.

Yes.

I don't have solar yet.

Well, you can do that when you replace your roof. That's a lot of little magnets and a lot of batteries and a lot of other things that I don't. You know, I don't think we've. Again this was part of the AI action plan. Is not just electricity but how do we get these rare earth and these minerals and everything that we need to build this stuff. And again not rely on China. Right. That can pull the plug on us at any point in time and then we're screwed.

Yep. I think to bring that up.

Sorry.

Glad Darlene's not listening this morning. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for the. Thanks for starting my weekend off. Right. Need a new roof. So let's roll in here. Amazon's director of security on locking down Enterprise AI Any quick comments on that? Spot on. You know, I've added a feature I've talked a lot about in the past. I should say a lot but mentioned a few in that.

You know, I think it's just the same. It was the same similar thing that we've been talking about for weeks. Is continuing to obviously put cybersecurity at a higher level already. What does it say? AI security issues have surpassed ransomware for nearly one third of security times.

You know, I've been promising Mrs. Brown to have a humanoid robot here within a few chiefs.

So the sort of AI I don't know exactly what they consider to be AI security issues because it would certainly potentially align towards years.

I think I said 18 to 24 months. I'll probably be proven wrong on that. But I don't think by too far that we want one here to clean the house and weed the yard. But I think I want the kung fu version as well. So when we travel.

Right.

The house is secure. We try and break into our house. You got a kung fu housekeeper here that can take you out. Okay, how's that? It should write fully aligned. Right. With the ransomware component.

Right, right. And the fishing schemes and all that kind of stuff.

Well, and you know, we've had some discussions recently, the two of us have with some.

It sounds good to me.

Yep, very good.

Let's make sure you have plenty of batteries.

Well, it's going to change its own. Right? They'll be in the garage. Yeah, yeah. Yep. I guess I need solar.

Yes.

Kind of, I'll say world renowned. Both educators and developers in the AI front talking about, you know, some of the risks that go with just letting your company data out there. And you know, we've talked to quite a few people recently who have purchased, you know, company wide and this is. I probably don't have solar yet.

Well, you can do that when you replace your roof.

Had to bring that up.

Sorry.

Glad, Glad Darlene's not listening this morning. Okay. Thanks to five or six people now about this recently who have purchased company wide chat, GPT licenses or large groups of people within their company but haven't really talked to too many. In fact, I don't know I've talked to any who have a really clear plan on how they, what the usage expectations are and how secure it is and what do they have locked down for information that can't be used there. And some pretty big risks that come with all of that. And I think it ties tightly to both. Thanks for the. Thanks for starting my weekend off. Right. Need a new roof. So let's roll in here. Amazon's director of security on locking down enterprise AI. Any quick comments on that?

You know, I think it's just the same. It was the same similar thing that we've been talking about for, for weeks. Is continuing to the ransomware component.

Now there's just, you know, and going back to our friend Ian Heller, you know, made the comment on this show, you know, I think it was on our hundredth anniversary Show. So a year ago plus was talking about, you know, and I mean, and if you think about where we've come in a year. Right. Ian talked about the AI generated voice that calls into a, say, an electrical distributor that says, hey, this is Tom Burton with, you know, ABC Construction or ABC Electrical. I need a truckload of copper wire sent to this location for job number. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, historically, you know, I'm, I'm Fred at the counter. Yeah, it's a great customer. I'm just going to go do that. I send a truck and now that truck goes to a location that's not really a job site and I never get that money back. Well, we didn't have. I mean, think about the videos you're seeing on social media and, and your kids are showing you if you're not doing it yourself about, you know, that are just being made so quickly and clearly. I mean, just look at the silliness from the, the Coldplay concert and all of the meme videos that have just come out of that last week where the astronomer AI Companies CEO was out at a Coldplay concert with his mistress. I saw a video yesterday that was literally a deep fake of can't remember the guy's name. The lead singer from Coldplay that talks about how his, the astronomer.com CEO's wife knew he was cheating and through some friends was able to get to him at Coldplay and that this is what they did to expose it. Right. And I mean, it looked as real as real could be. And now there had already been things that had come out that debunked all of that. But you know, the idea of not just, I mean, you could, right now I could take, you know, Joe the buyer, if I found who Joe the buyer was at or the, you know, at ABC Construction Company. I could just need to catch one of his Facebook videos talking to his son on social media about something and, and create that a video of him very clearly. So you know who you're getting orders from, how you're getting your orders now. And that's just one of the simplest methodologies. Besides all of the ways that, you know, people could be doing some things to create phony invoices using AI.

Right.

So that kind of ties into, let's just kind of tie in. Tom, I'm going to ask you to kind of take the lead on the next article.

Yeah. I wanted to hit a couple things here before we jump to the next one. You know, we were going back. I wanted to hit Jason's comment here about the B2B reviews. You know, back to the previous. This to me sounds like a very good software application. Right. That in the B2C world, right. B2B review or reviews are like, hey, that was a great burrito or the pizza was awesome or it was good service. Right, whatever. But his point here is that in B2B you really need to be much more specific. Like what's the vertical app in the vertical. The application, how were the gloves and his example being used and so forth. Within that situation, I think having places where reviews could have much more depth of what he's saying. There would be a great tool for pretty much any B2B thing. And I don't, I'm not aware of any. Are you aware of any in the distribution industry for whatever. For reviews or of that level?

No, but some of them. Well, some of the marketplaces are all working on that now, but I think we're going to. Seeing more and more and more of it. Yeah, Jason, Jason, if he's still with us, might be able to comment on that.

Yeah. And then I agree with Bob that the biggest ticking time bomb is with AI may be the lack of accountability or the. Where does the issue of accountability lie? When AI messes up or even when you're using some of the deep fakes and other things that you're talking about. There's not a lot of accountability. There's not a lot of anything related to that at this point. And I do think that is something we're going to obviously have to deal with more and more because it's just sort of like, well, it's the way it is. And obviously as businesses, we're going to have to become more and more accountable when that occurs and figure out how we address those things. Yep.

All right, valuable insight. Thank you.

Should we talk about stablecoins?

I think we should because it does kind of tie into all of this. Right. Ties right back out of. To having a secure currency as well.

Yeah. So you probably, I think this may have been a week ago now, but you probably heard about this thing called the Genius act and this was actually signed into law, interestingly enough. It required a vote of over. It required 60 senators to vote for it. It didn't pass.

12 of them understood it. 12 of them understood it.

Yeah. But to me that's amazing to get that bipartisan sort of support. I guess there was some last minute sort of negotiations that occurred and things like that and maybe a little strong arming, but nonetheless it got over the, the, the point so the question is what is it? Right. It is a framework, a legal framework for and gotten structure for how to use stable coins in the US financial system. And probably know what is a stable coin. A stable coin is a crypto, is a cryptocurrency which is backed by generally a dollar, but it doesn't have to be a dollar, it just has to give commodities.

It could be crypto, it could be the US Dollar, it could be, but it's got to be backed by something. Right, Right.

But, but a stable coin generally is saying okay, if I have a crypto stable coin, there is a dollar somewhere backing that up or a US treasury bond or some physical asset behind it. You can argue whether the dollar was an asset or not, but nonetheless it's backing up that and so that there's no. If I want to turn in that stable coin or convert it, I know there's something behind it to actually accomplish it. Right. So you don't have runs and things like that where people would want to all of a sudden get rid of their stable coins. The, what the act really starts to lay out is it takes away a lot of this oversight from the SEC and some of these other organizations that. And there's another bill coming out later called the Clarity act which is for other non stable coins, but that's probably a few months away from being passed. But this one really then puts the responsibility of regulating stablecoins at the banks and at the local levels and so forth versus the national sort of SEC and all those things that are there as well. You say so what I didn't say. Well, some people may. Well so what? Right, right. Maybe thinking so what, you know, what's, what's, what this is going to do is really open up the door probably in the next 12 to 18 months because there's some other things that still need to be ironed out on this behind the scenes and some regulatory things is that you'll see these stable coins start to become really prominent and more mainstream for payments and the payments can happen much faster. The it's much less expensive it can be, you know, so I mean think how hard it is right now just to like send money from one place to the other. With, with traditional fiat currency it's really a pain in the, it's slow, it's expensive, it's difficult. And what I also found interesting is with stablecoins because they're digital, right. You can build in digital contracts right into the coins themselves. So for example, let's say that you have a stablecoin that has built into that some logic that says when a delivery is received. So let's say you send something and you. The delivery is received, signed up immediately. At that point it kicks in and makes the payment. So you don't have to do anything, right. It's all being done through the digital piece that's there. So. And I do agree. Well, Bob brought up this is another point then I'll shut up. Is to say opens the door for the central bank digital currency. I think this actually eliminates the need or reduces the need for the central bank digital currency, which we don't want. Right. Which is allowing the government to have a direct control over a digital currency and can literally turn off who has access and so forth along the way. So I think the stablecoin peak opens up and bypasses or at least reduces the threat of that central bank digital currency. Boy, there's a lot we covered there.

Yeah, let's. I think I got lost for a second there. Go back to that whole. I don't think we hear a lot about the central bank digital currency. So let's send. I think this is an opportunity for us to. This is kind of a new concept, right. We've talked about crypto on the show before but you know we, if you, if we start take a step back and think about the model, right. That most of our listeners work within, right. Is unless you're talking about an E Commerce transaction. But you know, even still if you're working with a typical customer, their E Commerce transaction with you probably has the same terms. So we think about somebody sends us an invoice, right. Whether that's. Or a purchase order, whether that's you know, written on a piece of drywall or it comes electronically, we get that, right? We ship something, we get an, we get an invoice, a confirmation of shipment. We send an invoice. They have 45 day terms or you know, 1% 10 net 30 whatever it is. And there's that window of payment, right. And then that payment is going to come from eft, credit card or even in this day and age people left plenty of people still sending checks, right. We get the occasional customer buying our technology that still wants to mail a check and so that that still happens. So let's look at if that's our standard historical since the dawn of time transaction. Tom, would you and I throwing you, putting you on the spot a little bit here. But take that show what could be and, and how this would play out. And you talked about it already a Little bit. But let's really unpack it a little bit further with the time we have left today.

Well, so let's just use the worm. Digital currency, right? That's a versus the traditional fiat currency where what you just described. Right, Right. So the digital currency is potentially replacing or augmenting what you would do with traditional currency. And just, I guess the simple answer is, is that it can happen much faster at lower cost and with more intelligence along the way. Right. So to your point about the invoice coming out or the delivery completing or whatever, rather than sending an invoice and waiting for something to happen, it could actually trigger automatically a payment at that point. Or it could trigger a payment that automatically happens in 30 days. If there's a 30 day window or whatever.

You can still have your terms. Right. You can just have those parameters that are set. And where would you do all of that? You do you see this happening through an ERP system?

I would, yeah. I mean there'll be all kinds of software that will be incorporated in to manage digital payments and digital currencies versus just traditional credit card and checks and so forth along the way. So I guess just think of digital currencies as a much more sophisticated and intelligent, faster, cheaper, safer way of making transactions. Okay, then what's a stable digital currency or stable coin? It's a digital currency that is backed up, as we just talked about, by a dollar or some asset. So that if you ever wanted to convert it, you have something to convert it into. And you know, you actually, you know, kind of like the old days of the gold standard, right. Against the dollar. This is saying that there's some asset backing up. The, like the, you know, like Bitcoin for example, is not a stable coin. There's nothing backing it up. There's nothing that is, is no asset.

It's a little scary when you think about what those, what those cost. Right, right.

Then taking it to the next step about the central bank digital currency. There's been talk for a long time and there's countries that do this where the central bank of a country creates a digital currency and that becomes a digital currency for the country. Right. The problem with that is, and you've seen this actually has occurred in other countries, do you want the government to be controlling your currency? So for example, if they don't like, you know, if they don't like something you say or you do or whatever, they could literally just say, oh, Kevin's no longer going to have access to a digital currency. Plus they then know Everything that you're doing with that digital currency, what you're spending on how. Right. So you're talking about getting their taxes right. And you talk about Big Brother. Right. The central bank digital currency opens up the, that real risk of that Big Brother and all the things that go along with that along the way. So there's been a lot of pushback. Well, there's been a lot of advocacy for a central bank digital currency, but there's also been a lot of pushback on it. I believe the stablecoin initiative that we just talked about reduces the risk of that central bank digital currency because they basically just opened up the door to all of these different, different coins and different transactions and so forth. And they're are saying let's go, let's be diverse rather than having everything centralized. So hopefully that answers some of those, those questions.

I think you did a nice job of that, Tom. I think it's, it's new, it's moving fast and it's going to be part of our world pretty quickly. And I think, you know, you're already seeing, in the technology arena, you know, and you're seeing companies that are using this and using these, these implements and tools already, but it's going to become, I think, very, very mainstream moving forward. So it's something, I think it's something we should probably stay on top of because I think our, probably our average listener is either either unaware or confused or could use some, some guidance on it. So we'll, we'll continue to bring these.

Articles and digital currencies in general. Right. And blockchain and digital have had cryptocurrency, have had so much headwind, so much ambiguity, so much lawfare against them over the last, you know, it's like people, it just has never been able to get past the early adopters.

Right.

What this does is it now opens the door for this to now move into much more of a mainstream application. And it will happen because it is cheaper, because it's easier, it's more efficient, all of those things. It will happen and probably within the next, I would say 20, 27, it'll really become much more mainstream.

Like when we, let's say mainstream into typical manufacturer, wholesale, distributor.

Yeah, just on how we make payments. Yeah, just how we, how we see and do payments, you know.

So we've got conference season coming up, Q4, late Q3 and Q4. I've got six, seven events I'll be at at least. I think this is a conversation I want to bring up with some people and and start asking, you know, what they're doing as, as wholesale distributors or manufacturers. Are they looking at this? You know, I mean I think if you would have a on average and I, I'm going to throw this out. This is just one guy's assumption. Love it. If somebody would challenge me on this if they don't agree would be I think right now if you were a wholesale distributor, let's just say office products or building materials, it doesn't matter. And you went back to your manufacturers, partners at your suppliers and said hey I want to put a digital relationship together where I'm going to pay you through stablecoins that are backed by a US dollar and I've got a whole system in place. Most of their vendors would very much struggle with the conversation. So it's going to take a big education to get these things figured out. So good. All right, let's just because of time today Tom, let's kind of hit kind of scroll through. Normally we would dive into deeper into our sales and sale sales and M and A segment had a couple of articles there. There's a good one from a Ford Forbes contributor why trust not tactic wins the sale. I think that's an ongoing tie into even some of what we were discussing earlier the collaboration with sales and marketing which is good article there. If we jumped further there's an sales and marketing management article about storytelling. We talked a little bit from the Gartner earlier today about or storytelling. I'm sorry that was marketing profs talking about storytelling. Good tie in with that. Any takeaways from that you wanted to hit?

No, I think we, we kind of hit on those earlier. So.

So then we hit our people in leadership segment. We do each week. There was a CNBC had a good article that we've got in the newsletter. Again if you don't get the newsletter from us just reach out to us with a simple email to helloadsmartech.com and we'll get you the newsletter. But there's a CNBC article it said in recent layoffs AI's role may be bigger than companies are letting on. And I think we're going to start seeing this pop up in some lawsuits over time. Is people, you know that it's it's not going to be the mass layoffs you're necessarily seeing from a you know a Microsoft or Amazon and some of those layoffs but probably more so in mid size organizations where people got caught up in a you know, AI analysis of reviews and metrics and so forth. But are Missing some data. I got a feeling we're going to see some lawsuits coming from that. So good article there. And then also one of the things we're going to be seeing. It's funny, I looked at this other article from Inc. Magazine about how to spot a deep fake job application. Probably tied more to applications than resumes. But you know, we've got, I've got. In fact I've got a meeting with our HR people later today talking about not just the AI component of this, but just in general with multiple positions open at our company right now is you know, what have people done with AI and resumes and applications. So we're gonna. Something everybody's gonna be needing. Needing to tackle more soon.

So yeah, I didn't go through that article but what would you. What's. What would happen if you receive. I mean what are they expecting to happen with a D?

I think it's a big, A big component of that is actually tied to the time waste that comes from it as well. And the, and that becomes a pretty significant factor that goes with it. And then the, the component of actually not figuring all of that out and hiring the wrong person.

Right.

Not hiring. Not hiring Joe versus Fred hiring something that came out of their data and, and their. And so forth. And then the other part of it is, is for remote roles, right. Is somebody figures out that hey, I could get you to hire a bottle on my end that I could be managing and. Or get access into your organization before you figure things out. So.

Okay good.

Anyways we can kind of scroll through Tom, let's kind of wind things down for the day today. And our a handful of good articles on our industry scuttlebutt. And then the one last one is and if you had anything specific to chat about this every week we have a segment of the newsletter called a Great Read or a Listen where we feature a podcast or an article. But this one was from obviously put.

Cyber security at a higher level already.

Kind of they'll say world renowned both educators and Inc. Magazine again and it talks about people are starting to talk More like ChatGPT says a new study found that Chat GPT is changing our speech patterns with its favorite words popping up more frequently in our conversation. Developers in the AI front talking about, you know, some of the risks that go with just letting your company data out there. And you know, we've talked to quite a few people recently who have purchased, you know, company wide and this is preputations. So is mankind doomed?

What chatgpt's favorite Word.

Yeah, I just, I mean we're using it for so many, I mean I've used it, you know, multiple times. I've used complexity, I've used Gemini, I've used chat GPT just in the time we've been on our show today.

So does that mean like every time you say something I should reply, Kevin, that is a brilliant idea. Let me take you through that. That is a great question.

You've known that for over 50 years, Todd. Every time I speak you should respond like that.

My ego is really pumped up when I do chat GPT. All the times it tells me what brilliant questions I'm giving it.

Remember when we were, we were working two, three months ago, we were sitting in the, in the conference room and we had my laptop connected to a screen and talked to five or six people now about this recently who have purchased company wide ChatGPT licenses or large groups of people within their company but haven't really talked to too many. In fact, I don't know I've talked to any who have a really clear plan on how they, what the usage expect to monitor. And we were already working on, we were working on trying to remember it was something related to eos. I think it was, I think, you know, I think we were recapping our core values for the company expectations are and how secure it is and what do they have locked down for information that can't be used. Right. And I was asking some questions and because it was using some documents I'd loaded into a, a helper GPT or helper agent that I built for this and, and the response is coming back, patting me on the back from the things you and I were coming up with was pretty amusing. So yeah, positive reinforced there and some pretty big risks that come with all of that. And I think it ties tightly to both enforcement.

Right. It wants you to keep, keep going and get your ego boosted up for all the great questions you ask it. So.

Yes. Very, very good. So good. All right.

All right.

Any big plans for the weekend?

Not too much.

Nope.

Good.

Well, I'm going to get some beach time ransomware component now there's just, you know, and going back to our friend Ian Heller, you know, made the comment on this show. I mean that's my big focus. Going to go visit mom and then get some beach time in. So we've not got enough time in yet. And we're coming up on my favorite time of the year where, where I live is late August and early September is the best time of the year. Here because the kids are in school and the Turks, you know, I think it was on our 100th anniversary show. So a year ago. Plus was talking about wrists are gone, there's parking at the beach. So. But got a little bit of work to do this. No. And I mean and if you think about where we've come in a year. Right. Weekend as well for some of the projects you and I are working on. Don't have to travel though for two more weeks. Full two weeks still home. So that'll be good. Anyways, thank you to all the comments we had today. The people that were chiming in. The comments we get each week are extremely valuable. We're appreciative. We talked about the AI generated voice that calls into a say an electric. Couldn't do what we do each week without the audience that we have. It wouldn't be worthwhile. We get a great alcohol distributor that says, hey, this is Tom Burton with, you know, ABC Construction of people that support the show. So last little request, if you like what you hear, please hit the, the share button, the follow button, the review button. If the platform you listen to or ABC Electrical, I need a truckload of copper wire sent to this location has a review. And that lets the algorithms that catch this show get out to more and more people each week. And four, job number, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, historically, you know, I'm, I'm Fred at the Beacon. We can bring whatever value we bring to others. Keep the comments coming. We're appreciative of that. And the last thing is, again, couldn't do what we do each week without the support of the company Tom and I work for at counter. Yeah, it's a great customer. I'm just going to go do that. Well, I send a truck and now that truck goes to a location. So if your company is looking to continue to digitally transform and understand your customer data, your organizational data and your team data, better to make better decisions in your business. And extinction. That's not really a job site and I never get that money back. Well, Delray, growth and understanding, we're the right tool to do that with and we would love to have a conversation with you about that. And you can reach out to us at any point in time on any of the same platforms and we'd love to do that. So Tom, I wish you a great afternoon until we talk again and everybody else, have a fantastic weekend. Be kind, be safe, do good things.

Have a good weekend.

We didn't have, I mean, think about the videos you're seeing on social media and, and your kids are showing you, if you're not doing it yourself about, you know, that are just being made so quickly and clearly. I mean, just look at the silliness from the, the Coldplay concert and all of the meme videos that have just come out of that last week where the astronomer, AI Companies you know, CEO was out at a Coldplay concert with his mistress. I saw a video yesterday that was literally a deep fake of can't remember the guy's name. The lead singer from Coldplay that talks about how his, the Astronomer.com's CEO's wife knew he was cheating and through some friends was able to get to him at Coldplay and that this is what they did to expose it. Right. And I mean, it looked as real as real could be. And now there had already been things that had come out that debunked all of that. But, you know, the idea of not just, I mean, you could. Right now I could take, you know, Joe the buyer, if I found who Joe the buyer was at or the, you know, at ABC Construction Company. I could just need to catch one of his Facebook videos talking to his son on social media about something and, and create that a video of him very clearly. So you know, who you're getting orders from, how you're getting your orders now. And that's just one of the simplest methodologies. Besides all of the ways that, you know, people could be doing some things to create phony invoices using AI.

Right?

So that kind of ties into. Let's just kind of tie in. Tom, I'm going to ask you to kind of take the lead on the next article.

I wanted to hit a couple things here before we jump to the next one. We were going back. I wanted to hit Jason's comment here about the B2B reviews back to the previous. This to me sounds like a very good software application that in the B2C world, B2B review or reviews are like, hey, that was a great burrito, or the pizza was awesome, or it was good service. Right, Whatever. But his point here is that in B2B you really need to be much more specific. Like what's the vertical app in the vertical. The application? How were the gloves in his example being used and so forth. Within that situation, I think having places where reviews could have much more depth of what he's saying, there would be a great tool for pretty much any B2B thing. And I don't, I'm not aware of any. Are you aware of any in the distribution industry for whatever. For reviews or of that level.

No, but some of the. Well, some of the marketplaces are all working on that now, but I think we're going to seeing more and more and more of it. Yeah, Jason. Jason, if he's still with us, might be able to comment on that.

Yeah. And then I agree with Bob. The biggest ticking time bomb is with AI may be the lack of accountability or the. Where does the issue of accountability lie when AI messes up or even when you're using some of the deep fakes and other things that you're talking about. There's not a lot of accountability. There's not a lot of anything related to that at this point. And I do think that is something we're going to obviously have to deal with more and more because it's just sort of like, well, it's the way it is. And obviously as businesses, we're going to have to become more and more accountable when that occurs and figure out how we address those things. Yep.

All right, Valuable insight. Thank you.

Should we talk about stablecoins?

I think we should because it does kind of tie into all of this. Right. Ties right back at. To having a secure currency as well.

Yeah. So you probably, I think this may have been a week ago now, but you probably heard about this thing called the Genius act. And this was actually signed into law, interestingly enough. It required a vote of over. It required 60 senators to vote for it. It didn't pass.

12 of them understood it. 12 of them understood it.

Yeah. But to me that's amazing to get that bipartisan sort of support. I guess there was some last minute sort of negotiations that occurred and things like that and maybe a little strong arming, but nonetheless it got over the, the, the point. So the question is, what is it? Right. It is a framework, a legal framework for and gotten structure for how to use stable coins in the US financial system. And probably know what is a stable coin. A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency which is backed by generally a dollar. But it doesn't have to be a dollar, it just has to be commodities.

It could be crypto, it could be the US Dollar, it could be, but it's got to be backed by something. Right?

Right. But a stablecoin generally is saying, okay, if I have a crypto stablecoin, there is a dollar somewhere backing that up or a U.S. treasury bond or some physical asset behind it. You can argue whether the dollar was an asset or not, but nonetheless it's backing up that and so that there's no if I want to turn in that stable coin or convert it, I know there's something behind it to actually accomplish it. Right. So you don't have runs and things like that where people would want to all of a sudden get rid of their, their stable coins. The what the act really starts to lay out is it takes away a lot of this oversight from the SEC and some of these other organizations that and there's another bill coming out later called the Clarity act, which is for other non stable coins, but that's probably a few months away from being passed. But this one really then puts the responsibility of regulating stable coins at the.