Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution, Episode 101 #wholesaledistributors

Good morning.

What's happening?

Not much. I feel like we're empty nesters here compared to last week.

Thinking about that. Thinking about that. Preparing yesterday and further this morning for today's show. It's like it's just us.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh my word. What's gonna happen?

I think we need to go back to the eight or ten guests every week. Yeah.

I tell you, it's nice to have a first little comment of the day from, from Marty who was with us last week on the show. And, and for those of you that don't know what we're talking about is today is episode 101 of around the Horn and wholesale distribution and manufacturing. And last week we celebrated number 100 with just.

Will says gas flat down. Yeah.

Yeah. So I guess I wasn't Dan. I kind of had my arm going, but I wasn't quite dancing. Sorry, Will. But yeah, what an ensemble I guess we had last week we had seven guests plus the two of us. And our producer and editor John Taylor was with us live as well. And now it's just, it's two old slugs here us talking again today. But I've got quite a few guests lined up for the rest of the year. It's going to be a good year of guests coming, so. But boy, last week was sure fun, wasn't it?

Yeah. And, and, and in the newsletter at the bottom, we'll, we'll talk about it. I put the link to the replay in there. It's cool to watch the LinkedIn replay because you see all the comments and stuff as they come along as well. So. And I think it's well worth looking at and just watching the LinkedIn. So I put the link to the LinkedIn replay at the bottom.

Yeah. And that's had a lot of additional comments I think on there as well. So. So you know, Tom, why don't we kind of dive in. We can reference back to that and tell people why we're here. So I'm Kevin Brown. I'm here with my co founder of our company Lead Smart Technologies, Tom Burton and lifelong friend. It's been years and years. We've been together as friends and working together for the last four or five years now. And we get together every Friday morning on LinkedIn Live, YouTube Live and Facebook Live. And then later in the day on all the popular podcast formats and we talk about what's happening in the global economy, US economy, labor markets, supply chain issues, mergers and acquisitions, sales, marketing, people leadership, all the different topics that we see. Great articles and great Content throughout, throughout the week. We bring all that together in our newsletter. Our newsletter again is called around the Horn and we ship that out on early oh, dark 30 California time, where we both are to about 10,000, I think almost 11,000 folks get that each week and enjoy that. So if you don't get that newsletter and you would like to, we'd be happy to send it to you. You can do two simple things. You can either go to the website for our live show and podcast which is aroundthehornpod.com or you can, you can sign up for it there or you can just send a simple email to hello at Lead Smart Tech and somebody will get you signed up for that right away. And each week as we get together, we review that newsletter that goes out. So we cover all of the different categories. I think we've got six different categories that we cover and we talk about that. So if you're listening on the podcast and the recorded version of things, you won't be able to see that newsletter. So hence you might want to sign up for that or jump on YouTube live or excuse me, YouTube, Facebook or LinkedIn, the lead smart Technologies page and you can get all of that data. In closing on that, we need to talk about the sponsor of our event each week which is Lead Smart Technologies. And Lead Smart has developed a vertical specific, industry specific AI enabled customer intelligence and CRM solutions solely developed for wholesale distributors and manufacturers. We have a version for each and we bring 30 plus years of background in wholesale distribution and manufacturing and into the technology world to make pre developed solutions that help wholesale distributors and manufacturers get deep insights into their customers, their teams and their businesses that they haven't seen before, which really accelerate growth and help the company gain market share and increase revenues as well. So covered all of that stuff. Tom, the last thing we need to say is if you like what we do each week, Please follow the LinkedIn page for Lead Smart Technologies or YouTube if that's where you're subscribing at. Click the follow button, Click the like button, Leave a review if you're listening to the podcast that gets this out to for further broadcast out to other people. I miss anything there.

Sounds good. And if you're online listening, please jump in, say hi, let us know where you're from.

Awesome.

Always good to hear from people that are listening live.

Yeah. So good news. We've got our newsletter popping up here. So we start each week with talking about the economy and supply chain. So. Oh boy, man, what a another week. I, I tell you, I Sent you a text earlier in the week and I said, I'm. What did I say? That there was a 60 chance we might see a cut this week.

Yeah.

But didn't see it. I'm sure you were happy about that and I was hoping to see it just so I could throw a, a picture of a the around the horn logo on LinkedIn post and then a stake underneath it. But the, it was interesting because, you know, there's, there's some challenges right now and I want your take on this as well as anybody that's listening. But, you know, we're at a very precarious place right now of I, I would say, you know, the Fed right now is at a risk of hero or zero. And there's some big challenges right now because if they wait too long, we could get into a real pickle. And I think everybody, the consensus is certain this stock market is baking stuff in already, that it's time. Boy, I flip on CNBC oftentimes. Tom, at lunchtime and listen to the economic news. And what was it, Wednesday when Powell was talking, there was the consensus of the guests that they had was we should have cut. So it's interesting timing. Obviously, everybody's got an opinion, but what are your thoughts?

Yeah, my thoughts are that the Fed has very little that they can do about what happens going forward. So even if they were to cut multiple times between now and the end of the year, I don't think that that's going to have much of an impact as to whether or not we get that quote, unquote soft landing as they're talking about in the article.

Right.

Or that we avoid a slowdown. I think that's what's happening on the slowdown. And, and let's look, look, there's not a lot of data out there, but so you have to kind of piece together the pieces of the puzzle and try and see what's happening. But if you really start to look, right, we've talked about this for months, is the whole consumer debt situation. And I think the consumer debt situation, I don't really think it's clear from the data is catching up and consumers are basically saturated, right. They don't have any more places to spend. Their credit cards are filled up, they've, you know, eaten up their savings, we've eaten up our savings. Right. Things like that. So there's, there's just not a lot of dry powder in the consumer world that's there. The consumer, as we know, drives a lot of the economic growth one way or the other that may be helped a little bit by a rate cut because your interest rates on your credit cards and so forth are. But I don't think that changes the fact that do you have more dry powder to go spend as a consumer all that much. I also think some of the hiring things that we're seeing is not necessarily directly related to business slowdown. I think there's a lot of trepidation on hiring because of, well, should I be hiring, should I wait to see how AI plays out? I think there's a lot of questions that companies are asking before they're making a hire and I don't think it's directly related to hey, we don't have the money or the budget or whatever on those two things happening. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see. I just don't think there's a direct correlation that is going to exist between the Fed cutting rates and whether or not we have a slowdown or a soft landing. I don't think there's a lot of interrelationship. There's some impact or influence. I'm not saying they're completely independent, but they're not directly, in my opinion, directly correlated.

Well, it's an interesting thought. I mean there was a comment in here from one of the economists in this article, this was a Reuters article that talked about soft landings don't materialize from waiting too long. And you know, and so that was to me was kind of intriguing. I think we're at a place the more I think about it and look at and kind of listen to some of the arguments, I don't think a quarter point cut this week would have been a bad idea. I think it would have signaled something.

Right.

And I, and again we have to say this every week, neither of us just, I don't know about you. I took two economics classes in college, I think is what what I took.

And.

But I think the reality out of this is that, you know, a quarter, a quarter of a point or 250 basis points is not going to change things for the negative as much as it could change things for the positive. I think what that SIG would be signaling is hey, we the from the Fed is hey we see and acknowledge kind of what the stock market is already baking in and what can sentiment of people is in general of expecting that let's start something and then see what happens. Because I don't, I don't see that, you know, that quarter of a percent cut, even if things ticked back up slightly is going to have that big of a difference.

I tend to agree. I don't think it's going to have that big of a, it may have more of an emotional impact than it does an actual real impact. But, you know, clearly they're, I think that if there's anything that they're concerned about is the last thing that they want to do is cut and then go, oh, crap, now we gotta raise again. Right. So, and clearly there must be some idea or some percentage of op, you know, percentage probability that that may happen in their minds. That's, you know, again, we don't, we're not at the meetings, we don't have all the insight, but there must be some of that in there. But yeah, I think it could have had a bit of an emotional positive impact.

Yeah, I just, you know, there's a quote in here, it said, market observers have recently questioned whether the Fed has left rates at elevated levels for too long, potentially hurting the chances of pulling off the soft landing where it lowers inflation without badly hurting growth. And so there's a pretty, pretty big issues at risk right now with, with waiting too long. And at my point, I guess my point is, with that is, look, if, if, if the rates end up going from five and a half to five and a quarter, between five and five and a quarter versus five and a quarter and five and a half, does that change that much in the economy? Probably not. You know, and so to start, this might be process might be good with the idea of finding that balancing level, because as this article talks about and you're seeing more and more on the news, is there's a risk of waiting too long and there's significant damage that can come out of waiting too long.

So, yeah, and to my point, I just don't think that's a, I don't think that's a factor. I don't think that, I don't think that the waiting too long or even the volume or the degree that they're cutting is going to make a difference one way or the other as to whether or not we have a soft landing or a recession or whatever. I think we're past, in my opinion, we're past that point. And it's other factors, it's other dynamics other than the interest rates that are determining whether or not we're going to have economic growth or slowdown.

Well, and the risk, right, is the big recessionary risk of the other, other extreme. And that's what people are worrying about, right, is, is what happens all of this. And I think, I think what we need to find a way is to get and to your point earlier, you know, and you've been saying this forever is, you know, the consumer is still spending, right? Well, now that's flattening out because they're, they're tapped out.

Right.

Okay, well now what you've got that happening and we've got super high rates and we have the risk on the other side of it and it's probably time, you know. Will quinn comments here. One cut. His hashtag one cut in 24, which, you know, you might, well, you just picked sides, dude. Trader. I, I do think the longer they wait, unless we see, because we're seeing good news, right within the labor market and we're conceiving week after week we're seeing good news. I think the longer that they wait, the more pressure there's going to be to do maybe even a half a point cuts versus a quarter point cut and multiple of them this year. So we'll see. You know, the jury's still out. We don't want to spend all day on this, but it's, I believe it's time.

Okay, well, I think for sure we will see one in September. Not for sure. I think high probability we will see one in September, barring any strange data between now and then. What I don't know is what will happen after that. I think that if they move too quickly, they could spook the market as well because then they're like, whoa, wait a minute, we are in a recession or we are, you know, it's, it's, there's a lot of, a lot of dynamics and it's not, as you've said all the way along, it's not as simple as just A or B. But anyway, I just don't think overall at a macro level, in my opinion, whether they cut two points or five points or, you know, cut it in half or whatever is going to have that much difference as to whether or not we have growth or we have a recession or a slowdown in 2025.

You don't think taking. Wait a minute, let's pause on that for a second. I want to make sure I understand. So you're, you're suggesting is if we went from rates of five and a quarter down to three and a quarter, you don't think that that would stimulate the economy in a significant way?

I don't think it would change the situation we have right now. It doesn't change the consumer situation of being tapped out. It doesn't change the job market situation. And some of the trepidation that exists there. I mean, it might help some of like we talked about last week on the show, it might help, you know, some of the businesses we're in.

Yeah. I think it stimulates a lot of spending at a business level.

I think, as we said last week, I think in certain verticals it does. But I think overall at a macro level, I don't think it makes much difference.

So maybe we're spending too much time on this. I'll ask you one more question about that because I'm intrigued. Right. And I, I wouldn't argue what you're saying, but what comes to my mind related to that is, you know, and when you think about, and you, I think you used the word tapped out earlier, right. Is savings has gone for the average. You know, for many consumers, credit card levels are very high. Right. But if you took 1 or 2 percentage out of that, that frees up cash for that individual and that individual that's in that spot is probably there because of two reasons. One is they're overextended or two, they're spenders in general. And if they're spenders in general, that they're going to spend that money that's going to go right back into the economy.

But it's not going to be that much. Right. I mean, if you look at credit card interest rates, which are sometimes 20%, 25%, you know, depending upon where you are, I mean, I have decent credit and the credit cards we have I think are 20% or somewhere around, around those. So even if there's a rate cut, you're not going to see a massive difference. You might see it go down to 18% or 17% or whatever. You're still going to have high interest rates on consumer debt. It's probably going to take a while to trickle through to some of the other things that are there. So I just don't think it's going to have that much of a overall impact. I think we're past that.

Okay.

That's all. And I do agree that in certain verticals, like we talked about last week on the show, for sure there will definitely be some impacts. But at a macro level, I don't think it's going to be a catalyst one way or the other as to whether or not we end up in recession or we end up in a growing economy overall.

Fair enough.

So.

Well, you know what? My, my hope is when we do our year in review in January and hopefully we can get some of those esteemed guests from last Week back with us again. My hope is that we have a lot to talk about in what's going on with the economy. Hopefully we're, we're chugging along like we're supposed to be and we've seen some cuts and.

Well, and I think on. It's probably the most confusing economic environment that I've witnessed in my lifetime.

Yeah. I can't remember anything like this.

Yeah. And I do think that the job market, which is what caused the stock market to drop today. Right. The low job thing, as I said, I don't believe that is entirely or even really driven based around the, hey, we're just not, Whoa, whoa, whoa. We got to stop spending money. I just think there's trepidation on how people, how companies are thinking how they're going to use resources and resources they really need. And, you know, do I make that big step in hiring or do I still wait and see? Is AI or other, you know, optimization, efficiency tools going to allow me to not have to make that hire? So that's like, we've never really had that scenario, if you will.

Right.

That we're, that we're struggling with. So there's a lot of dynamics and you. Very confusing. Yeah.

Well, and it's, you know, it's frustrating is, you know, we've used the term in this discussion or weekly discussion here forever. We've talked about this simmering. Right. We've got hiccups, ups and downs, but we don't have any nice consistent movement in any one direction. And that's, you know, obviously we're, you know, we're, we're doing okay right now with it that way. And I think that's what the Fed's looking at. But you had mentioned that the job report that came out, this thing and you know, that was interesting because, you know, it talked about this was for, I don't know what the market's doing right now. But the Nasdaq had fallen 10% after a disappointing jobs report. And it's interesting because they call it, I'm just going to quote from this. It says US Stocks tumbled across the board on Friday after the July jobs report showed more cooling in the labor market, fueling concerns the Federal Reserve's higher for longer interest rate stance might end in recession. So I think that goes back to our, I think there's a lot of.

Lobbying that's going to go on that says, oh, it's all the Fed's fault, it's the Fed's fault, it's the Fed's fault. I just don't believe that to be entirely true. Right. That's an easy. That's an easy way out of it going, oh, it's the Fed's fault. They should have cut sooner. There's a lot more, A lot more to it.

I, I think there is, but I think what you're, you know, what was it. Was it Bernanke that had the. The Fed chair that had the debacle, trying to remember which one of the Fed chairs had the huge debacle in the 80s and early 90s? And I think it was early 90s. And I think there's a lot of this that Powell's trying to avoid that. And I used the term earlier today, hero or zero. And I think you got to be careful. You know, I think the pressure is getting really high. And, you know, he can say all he wants. And to your point, Right. I think everybody's at a space spot now. I think one of the articles I was reading earlier today said consensus on Wall street was 87% of the survey was definitely a cut in September and maybe as much as a half a point. I think there's. Powell can say all day long, you know, that they're not impacted by, you know, the elections or whatever it is. You gotta know that there's one. One side of the aisle right now is pressing for, you know, there's nothing worse that could happen to the sitting president right now and the Democratic Party than for us to dip into a recessionary stand state in September, October. I mean, nothing worse could happen to that. So I think there is quite a bit of pressure. So let's see what. Let's see what late September holds, I guess.

Yeah. And I'll hit Will's comment, then we'll move on here. I think this isn't something we've talked a lot about, but he says the biggest issue is overspending, putting the country further in debt. We now pay more to service in national debt as we do on national defense. Right. I mean, over what, a third of the GDP is government spending. And that's an area as well that isn't getting talked a lot about, but it is a situation as well, which is completely, I won't say completely different. It's different than the consumer debt situation, but it's still a situation of overspending. Right.

Oh, we'll plug real quick, Tom. Sorry. We'll plug real quick one of the other podcasts that you and I. It's probably my second favorite podcast besides this wonderful one, and that's the all in podcast. And that's, you know, some technology executives you've got. What do you think? Like former Google, former Facebook, former Yammer, Microsoft executives that come together each week and they talk about the economy and talk about, without the, the spin on wholesale distribution. They talk about a lot of what we do. But there's a big discussion there consistently about the debt. And, you know, that may be something we should talk about a little bit more. But today we need to move on because we've talked a lot.

If we, if we don't move on, we're going to be here until like lunchtime.

So, yeah, I don't, I don't have time for that today. But before we do, let's just talk quickly about that article we have posted here about the Panama Canal. It's raining earlier, you know, we talked this, in this segment that we talked about the economy, we talk about supply chain, but we've been talking very consistently for the last, probably year and a half now about the issue with Panama Canal and the drought. 2023 was the driest year on record or third driest year on record in Panama. And so you've got the lake on the other side of that lowered the Panama Canal less water and they can move less ships through it on a consistent basis with that. And it has slowed things down dramatically. This article just talks about lakes rising and with the lake rising, they're able to move a few extra ships a day through. And, and as I first read this, I was thinking, well, you know, what's the difference? I think they, they said they're moving to 36 vessels from 34 vessels a day. And it triggered me. So I looked it up and what at top level, top level is like 36 to 40. It can't do more than that. But then I started thinking about it. Well, man, that's, what does that mean? That's such a small increase. But then when you stop and think about it, that some of the container ships are carrying 20,000 containers, right? You move in this case just two more ships a day through, right? You could have 40,000 additional containers. And that is significant, right, that are moving from, and that's how Asian stuff is getting to the east coast of the US and, and, and the, one of the routes to Europe as well. And with the issues in the suez Canal, those two ships or those 30 to 40,000 containers a day become very impactful.

Do you know what the maximum is if everything was all back to normal? What it is there?

40. Yeah, I looked it up this morning.

Okay. Yeah. So I mean we're getting close. It's not, you know.

Yeah, no, no. And, but it's, but what triggered for me on that Tom, was the, the idea that it's less about the number of ships and more about what's on them.

Yep, agreed.

Right, right. And, and, and it just astounds me when you start thinking about 40 foot containers they see on the back of a truck going down the street that you could put 20,000. Some of some container ships can actually carry more than that. You put 20,000 of those on one ship and then you start thinking about the electrical wires, the connectors, the valves that are going to, you know, the raw materials that are going to a manufacturing plant that the, the dust masks that are private labeled by a distributor in Minnesota or whatever it might be. The amount of those things that are going through there that are impacting manufacturers and wholesale just distributors, you know, a thousand, ten thousand containers have great magnitude to it.

Yeah.

You know, so anyways, we're going to continue to, to watch this. One of the issues at hand right now that we're still going to be paying very close attention to is in September is we have the. I can't remember the name of the labor union but the Gulf coast and east coast of the US's port workers are threatening to go on strike. That's not been alleviated yet. Hopefully that doesn't happen because when you put a strike in, in those areas can have a major impact on getting goods and materials through to wholesale distribution and manufacturing. So.

All right, where do we want to go next?

Yeah, manufacturing, distribution. We can talk briefly. The article that we posted today here was related to Chinese manufacturing activity seemed to extending decline in July, previous declines. They were starting to talk about near shoring and on shoring of other countries and things moving to Southeast Asia versus China. So this is kind of interesting. They're tying in this article. I don't know if you caught that, but they're tying a lot of this. What's going on with the struggles that they're having to a depressed. They say the article quotes depressed domestic consumption is closely related to following property values that have left families feeling poor as 70% of household wealth is in real estate and they're really struggling. So that's on their consumption of things internally is people aren't spending money because 70% of their wealth is tied into their house and their market's crashing there.

Well, and it also says job insecurity. Right. And I would suspect the job insecurity is very High amongst, you know. And when is the Chinese New Year.

Usually? February. Ish.

Yeah, it's usually February. Right. And that's when everybody goes away for a month and sometimes they come back and sometimes they don't or.

Right.

Whatever.

Yeah, you're exactly, you're exactly right with that. And that's, you know, and that's going to be impacted on this by this housing thing as well. And to. You want me to unpack what you were just saying there just slightly about that people coming back or not?

Yeah, I just, I just think if there's job insecurity. Right. People are, you know, just like anything else, they're going to be nervous about spending and nervous and then you have your wealth factor and that's doesn't help the situation either.

Yeah, well, and it's interesting. There's a, I'll call it a global phenomenon of Chinese New Year that happens and if you're on the manufacturing or distribution side, you, you know, for a lot of years you'll have felt this is that you come into the, into our. Into what? We're already into the New Year and we have Chinese New Year and basically manufacturing shuts down for minimum of two weeks, oftentimes as much of a month, which gives people an opportunity to get on a train or a bus and go the 20 hour ride back to the province that they're originally from. And if you're a factory worker at pennies a day and you're having dinner with your cousin over Chinese New Year and your cousin says I make two pennies more a day than you do three provinces away, you're not even showing up back at your job, you're just going to that job, hoping to get a spot there. And I've had my experience in manufacturing, distribution, both I've been impacted by this significantly. I did some work with a manufacturing company in the low voltage electrical world and electronics world as well a while back and it was a huge factor that we had to plan for. And then imagine if you're the guy running that plant that says maybe 10% of your workforce isn't coming back after Chinese New Year. So big impact with these things. I do think this is just part of our ongoing discussion though about as we talk about this is watching what happens with, you know, we've been watching for years now, things moving at some level from you've got some electronics, a lot of glove latex and nitrile gloves kind of always been at some level in Southeast Asia, but a lot of other things moving into Vietnam And Laos and Thailand and then across into the Philippines as well. And I think we're going to see more of that. And then we've been talking consistently on this show about Mexico and Latin America and near shoring there. So I think we're going to continue.

I think China has unfortunately got a real problem.

Well, they do. And the other side of that is all the geopolitical pressure that goes with that right now related to, to Taiwan.

And so tariffs and everything else that go along with it.

Exactly right. Great point about the tariffs. So, all right, jumping ahead to E Commerce and our marketing section. You want to jump in on that? Get us started on that one?

Yeah, I mean, I found this interesting. We were chatting about this earlier. Amazon is responsible now responsible for hazardous items sold by third party sellers because they've been basically deemed as a distributor. And so what I. And again, you know much more about this than I do. But what it looks like to me is if you're deemed as a quote unquote distributor, then you are responsible for items that you know, need recall or have faulty items or whatever as the distributor versus the manufacturer of those items.

Well, and typically the distributor in the world that we talk to the most, the distributor is going back to the manufacturer on those settings. But they've got to play a role in this.

Sure.

What Amazon has been avoiding is through all of this is they've been showing themselves as a E commerce provider and not a distributor. And now what the Consumer Product Safety Commission says, nope, nope, nope, you can't, you can't just shuffle this off. You played a role in this and you have to play a role in solving these problems as well.

So what is the protocol between an E commerce provider and a distributor? Is there some.

I don't know exactly how that's worked historically, but I think Amazon has just been kind of trying to wash their hands of all. And of course they've already said they're going to appeal all of this, but I, I think you're going to see a lot of pressure from a lot of places that are going to make people rethink this. This was tied to, you know, it's, this ruling says that they're going to be responsible legally for the recall of more than 400,000 products for the hair dryers and effective carbon monoxide detectors just that they've been been involved with. And you know, it does. It doesn't mean that they're having to bear all the burdens of replacing the product. Right. The manufacturer is still going to be.

Involved but they have to handle the logistics. Right.

Which is right. Exactly right. Which is part of what happens. Right? If, if you sell a power tool or whatever it is now, and you're, you know, Joe's Tool and Equipment in, in, you know, Biloxi, Mississippi, you've always been saddled with that and participating in that process. And what's interesting about this is it's, it's kind of frustrating, is it's just the right thing to do, you know, to be part of the solution for your customer with this. So it's, it's interesting how this is going to play out. They, they just, I think they want to stay away from, from getting saddled with that term distributor because.

No, I totally get it.

I, I don't know this, but my assumption is there's some other tax implications and some other things that go with that. I think there's a bigger issue, and it's why we come together each week is, you know, we use the term, I think, in the, in the intro to the podcast recording John does for us is, you know, we talk about peeling back the onion. If you peel back the onion on this one, this one's kind of intriguing and interesting to me from a standpoint. And we've talked about this before, you know, when Amazon Supply started, now Amazon business, when Amazon Supply started, they basically said, look, we're, we're going after the Grangers of the world. Because I think the number was at the time, I think granger was doing 3 billion through E Commerce. And obviously that's a place that Amazon says, and I, I'll share this again. I've shared it before. I was having dinner. I remember the restaurant and the event and so forth. And who was there having dinner with a couple of Amazon executives, one middle management and one upper middle management. And it turned out at that particular event, my wife was with us, and I think Darlene had mentioned something about the breadth of what they sell. And I asked them, based upon that discussion, kind of something along the lines of, you know, well, what wouldn't you sell? Or something like that. And the executive's response was, you know, I think it was if it's, if it's legal. And I think he said, reasonably moral and can go in a box, we'll sell it. And so when you take that mindset and then you look at the logistics network of Amazon to say, well, why wouldn't I sell power tools and why wouldn't I sell X, Y and Z? Right, in that case. And so that's what they've done. I did want to hit Tom, but I'm going to pause here for a second. You want to hit Jason's comment. I really appreciate this and Jason's a, an E commerce expert out there that, that really speaks well. This, he's just, this is just putting Amazon to the same standards as traditional distribution. Right. So Jason's somebody that we want to get as a guest to come with us later this year. We've just recently met through LinkedIn but appreciate those comments. But when Amazon went down this path, what they were basically doing is saying I'm going to sell the same stuff that you sell in your brick and mortar with all of your people out there, whether it's a Milwaukee tool or a 3M respirator and I'm going to sell it in my format on my E commerce platform and, and I'm going to go after your customers everywhere you're at. Most distributors have seen that as a huge threat. There's a lot of them that you know, I remember being at a trade buying groups meeting last fall. I don't know if you, you were with me at the event. I don't know if you were in this session. We had two distributors up there that both do E commerce. One of them embraces Amazon by being partnered with Amazon and the other one looks at Amazon as the devil. But what I think has happened that manufacturers have had to look at over the last, I'll say 10 plus years is look, Amazon is just another distributor. They're another resource for distribution that end users are going to buy from. If I was a manufacturer, I'd really be looking at this as a great thing to them being categorized that way. Because now when my distributors who hate Amazon want to put pressure on me as a manufacturer, why do I sell through Amazon and you're ruining the marketplace and so forth. We've got this balancing act at the end of the day, right. And I'd love Jason's thoughts on this further is, you know, Amazon is here, Amazon's here to stay. We've got Brian Beck that joins us occasionally from and seba, you know and they work with Amazon's on their Amazon presence. I wish I had saved the information. Brian sent some information out in his newsletter this week about their manufacturing clients presence on Amazon, the growth that they had with Prime Day. But I think this is going to help layer leveling the playing field a little bit is the hope, right?

That's the takeover it seems to me. I mean it wouldn't. Is Amazon being cat classified as A distributor. Wouldn't that be the same as Zorro? Isn't Zorro classified? It would be classified as a distributor.

One hundred and Zorro's, you know, Zoro's part of Granger.

Right, Understood. Right.

Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, and Zora, I don't think, I don't think Zorro is hiding from anything thing. Right.

So I think Jason's right. I think the ruling just holds Amazon to the same standards and I think it's a, a good thing. I think it's going to cost them some, some thing, you know, some dollars and some effort. But I don't think it's a bad thing.

I mentioned you, we talked about this briefly ahead of time. I, I, I, I don't know if anybody's with us from NAW today but I think I might throw this question out to some of our friends at the national association of Wholesale Distributors, as you know their view on this because to Jason's point, again, I think anything we can do to get this playing field balanced will be beneficial to wholesale distribution and manufacturing. So it's good stuff. All right. Tax hungry states I E. Commerce Delivery fees to fund road repair. Well, not surprising, right?

Not surprising.

How do we try and get in somebody else's pocket as quick as we can. But interesting article. This was Reuters article as well and it just, there's states that are doing this already and pushing on taxes and so forth, which is good. But New York, Ohio, Nevada, Minnesota, Colorado and Washington are looking at very specific ways to tax delivery fees which is interesting in that setting because from that one of them was just talking about a, a 35 cent. This particular one was almost 27 cents and another one was 35 cents of an impact on a delivery fee. And that's just going to come to you and me, right. If we're looking at it from an E Commerce standpoint, it's just, it's just going to get tacked onto delivery fees already. So, so prime is going to go up by 37 cents or you know.

Whatever it might be with something. I haven't really thought about it. You know, obviously as you know we moved recently and I do know we're in it. We're in a neighborhood that's like a cul de sac. So there's not a lot of traffic on there and I look out the window from it and I've just been noticing all day long the only traffic that comes down the street is a prime truck, a UPS truck and a FedEx truck. And every once in a while like another delivery type truck. So I don't, I don't think it's necessarily a lot of the, and these are heavy equipment, right? These are things. Yeah, definitely impact the quality of the road and on all that stuff. So I don't know that it's, I'm not sure I'm a big fan of using taxes for that. But I can see where, you know, obviously there's an impact to the infrastructure and the roads as a result of the increased number of, of these delivery trucks.

Well, I mean, they're in, in. Look, that's funny. I'm here in my home office and I hear a truck outside.

Yeah.

And so it's, it's literally, that's pretty, pretty funny timing and it's probably Mrs. Brown getting a, getting a package. But there is, and I live on an even smaller cul de sac with 12 houses and, and it is, there is more, put it this way, there is as much or more traffic from delivery E Commerce delivery trucks coming than there is residents.

Yeah. Oh yeah. By far. By far here. By far.

Yeah. So it's an, it's an interesting thing. But I do. To your point, right. Big heavy trucks. If you live in a major metropolitan area, you're the majority of vehicles you probably see out there are, you know, Amazon. And it would be great to know the Amazon, the statistics related to Amazon's fleet growth in the last three to five years. You know, they have their own, you know, their own airline now as well for, for their packages. So anyways, it's, I, I do think there's some value in the impact that E Commerce deliveries are having. But at the same time it's, you know, you know where it's going to get passed into onto. Right. It's coming straight, straight to the consumer.

Like gas taxes or anything else.

Yep, that's it. Good. All right, let's jump into our last segment here in our E Commerce and marketing segment where we've got experiences everything for B2B buyers. It's not something new for us to talk about this, but some increasing statistics I think is what we're seeing.

You know, it's funny speaking of moving and all that, because we've moved and all the turmoil, right. We've been doing takeout orders way more in the last month than we ever have probably in the last five years. And it was funny last night we were about ready to order something again and I didn't want to order from restaurants that have had a bad experience on their online ordering. So I made a decision to order From a restaurant that we've, because we probably ordered from, I don't know, 10 restaurants. I guess since we've been here.

Just keep going back to that Thai place. It was great. I was up there.

But I just found it interesting. I didn't necessarily make my decision based on the food quality or the even what I was quote unquote hungry for. My decision was being driven off the experience that I was going to have to go through on the, on the online e commerce site. Now obviously that's a very simple consumer example, but I think that is exactly what they're saying here and the we've talked about it in the B2B world is if the experience is not there, I'm just going to go find somewhere else to buy.

Yeah, it's.

Even if pricing is better, right? Even if, if, if pricing is better, I may still go and find somewhere else to buy.

So this is going to impact wholesale distribution a lot of in the fact of contracts. And I think what's going to start happening is in this could be happening already and I'm just not aware. It's been a long time since, you know, I've been calling on, on manufacturing or construction or whatever it is in the, in the field. But you know, there are, when we put supply chain contracts or supply contracts in place with a manufacturing plant or you know, wherever it might be is, we're going to start seeing more and more of expectations growing on the, the E commerce side of fulfillment of that. Right. Because if they want to order in that setting, if they want to order online, their experience, there's no reason not to put some expectations of the experience into the contract. If you're a large company and you've got 20 distributors that want your contract and say seven of those 20 is probably large, say 10 and four of those 10 are highly capable of fulfilling your needs, you could start putting in expectations of the E commerce experience that goes with that because you know, online web store ordering and all of the pieces that morning, we're just seeing the statistics going up every day of how much more that's being used. So I think it's going to be something to watch pretty close. So anyway, some good statistics in that article. Good, good stuff to hit pause for just a second. Those of you who are with us live today, you're seeing the newsletter that we put out every week on the screen and that is called around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing. It goes out as I mentioned earlier today to about 10,000 people. If you don't get that and you would like to please just you could even if you're here live with us and you don't get it, you can pop up to note in the comments, but easiest way to do it is helloadsmarttech.com to get you signed up for that. Or secondly, go to the website for our weekly podcast and live show, which is www.aroundthehornpod.com. past episodes are there, registration or subscription to the podcast formats, Apple, Spotify, all the top ones are there as well and you can subscribe there and we'll get you in the newsletter. Which brings me to the final point related to that is that if you're listening and not seeing, you may want to get this newsletter because if you're listening to the podcast later and not seeing the newsletter, you might certainly want to do that. So last piece of that is hit the subscribe, hit the follow button, leave a review and this will get out to more people. So next article. Tom we move into technology, cybersecurity and AI. California DMV puts 42 million car titles on the blockchain to fight fraud. This might seem odd when we talk about wholesale distribution, but we're going to bring this full circle.

Yeah, I didn't know about this until you put the article in here. I think that's amazing. I don't know if I'm one of them. I hope I am. And basically what they're doing is they're using. You've all heard the term nft, right? Non fungible token, which is which kind of.

We don't hear much about that anymore.

Well, because once AI came in, it sort of trumped all the hype that was going on with NFTs and plus all the money that was being put into these meme NFTs and so forth. But the concept of an NFT is exactly what they've done. They've taken the title of your car and they put it on the blockchain and you get issued an nft, a non fungible token. That's right. And now transferring makes things a lot easier. There's a lot less opportunity for fraud. You know, we sold a car a few years ago, right? I had to go find the pink slip, give it to the guy, meet him. You know, all that goes away with this. And so it's going to make the transaction process a lot smoother. And I think this is going to be, I hope it works well because I think this will open the door for really all types of ownership, even home ownership, car ownership, even things that you buy, right. You know, refrigerators and all of that kind of stuff. The things that can be done with that on warranties and so forth, really, really open the door I think to a much more efficient way of tracking and managing ownership. So.

Well, the fraud, yeah the fraud component of it is really solid too. Right. I just, that that's what really triggered for me was you know, and they're talking about you being able to transfer titles from a mobile app that it's going to be being built. And so, so but you know, there's all kinds of fraud that goes with you know, liens and so forth. And I think we're going to see this as well in the escrow world for cars soon which is I think very interesting for us as well because you know, we hear all these things about, you know, cyber fraud and so forth and people, you know, capturing your, your home title and so forth and having liens there that aren't real and, and so I think this will be a nice application to see this as well. The other thing that this article talked about though that because of the, the, the, the tool that they're using for the blockchain application here is called Avalanche from company called Ava Labs and that Deloitte is working with them on a new disastering recovery platform for the government to use and FEMA to use pilot post disaster. Because we hear all the time about people on a consistent basis after disaster that they, you are waiting in line for days or whatever to file a claim if the claims get lost or whatever it is. So this seems like another good application. I think it's going to be interesting too, you know. And let me ask you a question maybe related to this because you're much more up on blockchain but I just, I can start kind of thinking about when you're, if we think about the manufacturing distribution world, you know, you've got people dealing with RFID tags and stuff like that and that's one thing. But you know, when we start thinking about like whether it's medical devices or gas detection equipment or highly regulated and highly inexpensive and critical infrastructure components, probably tracking those with NFTs in the distribution and manufacturing and an end user world would probably be really valuable as well, wouldn't it?

I would think so. And I would think the aftermarket for those things would make the aftermarket way bigger and easier and even the second hand market. Right. I assume that you know, people buy some of these large things and want to sell them to others and, and things like that. The warranty I mean there's just when you really think about it and all the things that are done now through paper and, and you know, logistically difficult ways of handling things, there's just a lot that could be streamlined all the way around with using NFTs as a way to identify ownership and, and the attributes that are associated with it. Right. That's the beauty of it is that you can basically put any number of attributes on that NFT that then lives on that nft.

Tell me, what do you mean by how does that attribute part work?

Well, I mean you were you know saying earlier, right. It could even be I have an NFT of my, for my house or my car, let's say it's my car. But then I have a loan on that that there's certain, you know, there's who. If the lease, it could be a lease versus a loan. It could be all kinds of different things. Right. So there's different attributes that are associated with that ownership and how that ownership is actually done.

Yep.

Do I have the, you know, do I have the long term warranty? Do I have the this, do I have the that? Those are all attributes of that ownership that I would potentially want to. I mean how many things have you bought where you may have bought like a warranty but you can't remember if you got it or not and if something did happen, where would you find it and you know, all that kind of stuff.

Yep. So great application there that you got that you've described. Right. And that says warranty related. I think that's where we would really see it. Well in a, in a manufacturing distribution world. Cool. So we're still here in our technology and cybersecurity world. Microsoft faulty CrowdStrike update affected 8.5 million users. I have, I'll tell you my first takeaway and I want to, want to talk to you about this because you know part of what people are saying about this the that you know they're saying 81 1% of Windows machines were infected. The problem Is of that 8.5 million whose they were.

Right.

When you're, when it's impacting United Airlines it's a whole different story than you know, Kevin Brown's you know, PC. So it pretty, pretty astounding of the who it impacted versus how many.

Yeah and I don't know, I don't know if there was any sort of selection as to the 1%. Were they more enterprise type customers? I. It's not clear from the article anyway that is, was there certain characteristics of that 1% that you know again lead to. I know that one of the biggest issues right in most companies, they don't. Larger companies, they don't allow you to go in and change your software on your Windows. You have to take it to it and get updates and all of that kind of stuff. Which obviously makes then the issue of addressing this more complicated than if you have your own computer and you're. You can, you know, do your own updates and all that. But yeah, I don't know if this was leaned or skewed towards more enterprise type situations or not.

Well, it's interesting and I think this was tied to obviously it was tied to an update. Security updates typically get pushed right to everybody's computer. So you're not going to have somebody. My next door neighbor's computer wasn't going to get impacted because the likely of them using CrowdStrike was slim and none. It's an enterprise solution in most cases and that's where it was getting pushed out. I heard a really cool example. I can't remember if it was. I have a really close friend and he runs, he's senior level guy with a major multinational. It's interesting there his company is, he works for Allied Universal and huge security provider but he works on the cyber security and cyber threat side of things within their business. So they have everything from a mall cop to a cybersecurity division to a bodyguard and that works within hundreds of thousands of employees. And he said one of the calls that he was. Because this impacted them. One of the calls he was on was tied to 17 hours with a series of vendors for them that were on one zoom call. People coming in and out and jumping back on and solving different fixes. But it might have been him that was telling me this example. But there was a lot of a number of companies who were able to figure it out based upon time zones. They saw what was happening, they hit pause on the update before it got out and impacted everybody. And basically what they were able to do is remotely return off and limit access to the Internet for, for a great percentage of their employees based upon different time zones. So you know, let's just say Eastern time, you know, somebody jumps on and just disables central and west, you know, Pacific time. So they couldn't get those updates until they solved the problem. And they said okay, you can now launch your computer again. But one of the fixes that this article talks about is that what Microsoft was suggesting in this setting as well was tied to here, go on another safe device, go and download this to this file to a USB port. Do you imagine being an IT director for a large company and having to go tell your people, oh, go, go on your wife's Mac and download this file to USB port and then put this on your company computer?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I, I spent some time looking at sadly at LinkedIn of all the people that were traveling that were posting that, you know, blue screens of death on the, on the airport monitor. It's pretty sad. So anyways, hopefully we don't see this again. Now we know. Pay closer attention to your side note on that. I think CrowdStrike is one of the biggest names in cyber security by far.

Yeah, Windows. Yeah, absolutely.

And I know Elon Musk came out and said they will have no business with any of his companies. They're moving beyond all of that. So anyways, jumping into our sales and M and A segment, we'll talk just kind of real quick. There's only a couple of articles there this week. 3M had some nice updates to some growth within their safety and industrial business. Happily see some of those people at some upcoming affiliated distributors and Net plus alliance and ISA events and so forth. So that's good. Some expansion and growth through acquisitions at Southern Glazer Wine and Spirits, the beverage distribution company is good. And then there was an article that we Posted here about 8 tips to master remote sales team management. You know, a lot of these are fairly generic in that article. If you get the newsletter and you're a sales leader, it's, it's worth looking at some of them more of a. And we, we end up this way once in a while, Tom, where, you know, we post some articles. It's got, you know, some generic stuff and I, I don't mind doing those things because even the stuff that seems common sense, there's just really good reminders.

I know, it's good to get reminded on some of the stuff. Right.

To trigger those things. Yep. So jumping into our people and leadership segment, I didn't know that US employee engagement and satisfaction was tracked in the way it, it is, but there's a Gallup survey that's put in here that after hitting an 11 year low in the first quarter of 2024, US employee engagement improved slightly in Q2. And both tracking an increase of American workers and full and part time workers feeling involved and enthusiastic about their work. So surprise.

What this is saying is that only 32% of people are, what would you just say, involved and enthusiastically engaged.

Involved. Feeling involved and enthusiastic.

I mean that's Pretty scary, right? I mean I know this is, you know, this is what Dirk was, you know, certainly talking about last week and, and talks a lot about is.

And.

And certainly in a people business. Right. Of, you know, wholesale distribution and so forth. Boy, that's. I don't know what those, how these numbers are by different industries, but that's pretty scary.

Yeah, it is. And hopefully these, they talk about, you know, having not returned to pre pandemic levels, but they have improvement there. So I think it's kind of neat to something I want to pay a little closer attention now to. And I might text you'd mentioned Dirk Dirt beverage with We Supply America tour and unleash wd and Dirk is the champion in wholesale distribution of people. And you know, it's, it's crediting Dirk that we have this sex segment of the show about people and leadership is because Dirk called us out in, in January when he was with us on the show and we need to talk more about people. So we're trying to post more of those, of those types of articles. And Tom, I'm going to segue here into the next article it talks about. It's from Chief Executive magazine. Next article was are you a gracious leader? And I thought that was kind of cool because it ties right in because, you know, people are people and people have emotions and feelings and, and finding that balance of getting efficiency. And you know, you and I, we together jump in in a half hour from now, we jump into a, a meeting with one of the teams within Lead Smart and we're talking about productivity and expectations for the week and what was accomplished. And there's a difference between being taskmasters and making people feel good and having a culture. And you and I, based upon the company that we run together and started together, we talk about culture all the time. But this article about being a gracious leader I thought was pretty cool. And it gave a description. It says a gracious person is one who exudes kindness and courtesy. A person characterized by charm, generosity of spirit and empathy. And that is a balancing act to do along with keeping people accountable within a business.

Yeah, I think and by no means am I saying this is easy. Right. I know me. But I do think and they even talked about this here, if you have some clear objectives, you have clear key performance indicators, you have clear goals of what you're trying to accomplish either at the job level or the department level or the company level. Right. I think that. And if people know that, I think you it opens the door to being a Gracious leader.

Yeah.

I think it also, it, it makes the responsibility of the leader, though, to get rid of the people that no matter what you do are going to be toxic to the organization.

Yep.

And I think that's one of the biggest issues that, you know, we, we all do. Right. Is we hire somebody who's maybe not the best person for the organization and we just, we don't make that, that move fast enough.

And we had that conversation earlier in the week. Right. We were talking about, we, we operate at Lead Smart on the entrepreneurial operating system, the EOS platform. And part of hiring is there's a matrix that you use with that that ties to your core values of your company. And, and it's so easy sometimes we could say I need that salesperson or I need that I T person because they're the best or they're coming from a competitor or whatever and you can get a toxic environment pretty quickly. To your point.

Well, and I'll hit Will's comment here. Right. Because I think there's a great point says companies are paying more attention how to raise engagement swords versus fixing the issues that cause more engagement. That's easier for the leader. It's. I don't think you can force in an engagement score. Right. Or that we just went through. You're going to have to build that into the DNA of the organization. And that probably starts with being, you know, the leader and, and, you know, the culture and things that are there. But.

Well, I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, I just never would have. If you would have asked me what you think the engagement score is in most companies, I would have probably said 60 to 70%. I never would have thought 30 to 32% or whatever they're saying there. Yeah.

Yep. Well, it's, it's interesting, but I think it ties back nicely. And this ties to Will's comment too. When you're thinking about, you know, engagement scores, just somebody's trying to report to a board or a private equity group or whoever it might be is very different than when you have. And a great example, then it doesn't mean they don't have board of directors and so forth. But you know, all the work that we were just talking about, Dirk, a few minutes, but Dirk Beverages, you know, as he's traveling the country seeing wholesale distributors that are family owned or let's just say independent.

Right.

They might be employee owned or partially employee owned. Great, great example of that is you can have this, you know, emotionally mature and gracious executive level, which is really looking and it talks about things about practicing radical security or curiosity I should say as a CEO and being super engaged with your people and being conscious about conflict and orientation and you know balancing participation. These are the things we see in you know as an example Paul Kennedy was with us last week. You know the President and CEO of fully and 100 employee on Dakota Supply Supply Group. But Paul's just a good human being. He has a board to report to but his team would go, you know, go to battle for him and die for him because of the leadership that they have in an organization. And we see that a lot in wholesale distribution, especially in the. The privately held ones and so forth. So cool article. We, we try and bring it again and we this segment is newer this year to what we do so we're going to continue to talk about leadership and people and how to help our people within wholesale distribution manufacturing. So industry scuttlebutt we talk about each week. Just a couple of targets in here. AD affiliated distributors announced the record breaking sales for the first half of the year. Great to see all of their. The big thing that stuck out for me with them and at Lead Smart Work we're partnered with them as a preferred service provider with AD and appreciate our partnership with them. We did a webinar with them this week and got all their events coming up. But it was cool to see the growth in Mexico with them. That was really neat to see out of that article. So got a little bit of information there too about global industrials growth. And then an advocacy group is being launched in California to strengthen US supply chain. So a few good reads. I'm reading the newsletter as you're scrolling it Tom and I hit a few good articles there which takes us to our Goodreads section. We try and populate some, some news each week. Tying to it might be leadership, it might be executive health, it might be personal development. It's different all the time. But this article is titled the US this from Inc Magazine. The US Men's gymnastic team just won a medal for the first time in 16 years. And it all comes down to the Goldfish rule. So Tom, you any thoughts on that article?

No, I thought it was great. I think it's. It's something for all of us to be the Goldfish rule meaning you know, have a 10 second memory right. And just. And look we're all going to screw up and we're all going to you know, do things that God I wish I would have done something different or handled it differently or whatever and the point is here, push it aside and move on.

Right.

You can't, you know, in this art is saying that, hey look, you know, one of the, Was it Brady Malone? I think they said it was, who had some issues in the pre. Qualification or the qualification.

Yeah.

And you know, then came in, in the actual, in the actual finals and just stuck it and he said, hey, I just had to put it aside. It's like I can't. Right. You know, and you see this in other sports, you know, golf and other sports. Right. You have to, you can't, you can't dwell on your last, last bad shot.

Yeah.

But I think there's definitely an applicability to this into the, the business world.

Well, and you know where this comes from, right? I mean, the immortal TED Lasso and, and that goldfish rule came with it. His quote was, you know, what the hap. He was talking to a player that was struggling. He says, you know what the happiest animal on earth is? It's the goldfish. It has a 10 second memory. Go be a goldfish. Right. So doesn't mean we can't, shouldn't fix our problems. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try and do our best every day. But that's the key. So Will Quinn says again, he has a goldfish memory. Can't remember people's names. Will, when you meet somebody, use their name three times in the first two or three minutes of discussion and it will help you greatly in remembering names.

I don't know Will's name. I just know he's a distribution guy. That's all I know.

Yeah, that's right. He's the distribution guy. That's it. That's it. Very good. All right, last thing we, we publish regularly. A second look, if we have articles that have been there in the past, we have something about more of the Red Sea crisis there, of transiting the Suez Canal and our other article there, as we wind down each week, there's a link here. You can get it at the Distribution Strategy Group's website as well. But they, they do have a great thing where they have an A ticker where they're tracking publicly traded distributors there. We have a link to it as well. It takes you to their website and we appreciate Ian and Jonathan and their team there publishing that. Each week we have a calendar of events that we come as well. It's a mix of our work of, of bringing events together, plus some of what modern distribution management does as well. It's a mix of both of us and so we've got quite a few events coming up. But, Tom, this is where you put the replay, right?

I did. You can see it highlighted there in green.

Yep. So. So if you missed last week's 100th episode with the cast of characters that we had, you might want to go and watch that one again. It's good.

I would highly recommend it. I can't imagine a better overview of some of just the cross section of different issues on distribution that the gentleman that we had on last week covered.

Yeah. And Mike Marks, you know, I sent him a note. I was thinking he was extremely well behaved.

Yeah, he was. He even raised his hand when he wanted to talk.

Yeah, that's right. It was. It was good. So, as he says, you know, when you have compromising pictures of people, they can. Can behave well. So.

All right, let's wrap it up.

That's it. All right. Any big weekend plans? Just unpacking boxes, Getting there.

Yep.

All right. I'm gonna get my feet in the Pacific Ocean, make a few turns and a few waves, and have some fun. So thank you, everybody, for coming together with us. We had some new folks with us this week. We get hundreds of people each week through LinkedIn and Facebook and YouTube and another hundreds and hundreds on the podcast. We couldn't do this each week without you. We don't do it because we want to do it. We do it because we have great listeners and great feedback and great comments. So thank you for that. And man 101 didn't think we'd get there.

And Marty says you need to change your shirt before next week, so I agree.

This isn't. I was. You know what's funny is you've been wearing that shirt for three days. And. And, Marty, this is not the same shirt from last week. I have a closet full of aloha shirts. I will text you, Marty, the. The picture of them all, but for those of you that. That doesn't make any sense to a somewhat similar aloha shirt to the one I'm wearing today was a gift that we sent out to all of last week's guests. And, Marty, yours should be at the tailor probably, hopefully now. So I'll have a different aloha shirt. It's the time of the year for that in my household, so we'll go from there, everybody. Thanks for being with us, Tom. Appreciate all you do. And our guests that were with us today making comments. Thanks so much. We'll look forward to next week. Until that time, be safe, be kind, and do good things.

Have a good weekend.