Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution - Episode #149

Sam.

All right, here we go.

I thought you were too tired for dancing. Is that your new. New sweatshirt?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Pretty nice.

Thanks.

From Annapolis Yacht Club.

It's nice you to buy that for me the other night.

Great.

Gracious.

As far as you know. As far as you know, I did that. Yeah.

Yeah, it was fun. We were Monday, Tuesday, in Buoy, uh, what is it, Upper Marlboro, Maryland, area, with the great folks at Thomas Somerville Co. And spending some time with them and working on their technology and digital expansion that they're going through there. So that was kind of fun. And we got. We got out to the. The shoreline and out on the river there near. Not far from Annapolis on Monday night, and I cracked some crabs and you peeled some shrimp. That's kind of fun.

Yes. Yeah. So more fruitful. I think.

You. You achieved more. Yes. And you achieved more with less mess. And that's our.

That's our theme here. Efficiency.

Efficiency.

Do more with less. That's right.

Do more with less. It almost sounds like an AI discussion.

That's right.

But. And then the next night, we went to Annapolis Yacht Club in Annapolis, Maryland, and had a love leaving there. And I bought a nice new sweatshirt because it's cloudy and cool here this morning. I don't know what it's like up where you are.

Yeah, about the same.

Yeah. So I. I got a note this morning from Lillian, our marketing group, and I was asking her to do some stuff for next week's event. She was shaking her head because she didn't realize I was. That we're both back on the road. It's great having you on the. On the road with me. You're not always the road warrior. And so it's kind of fun having you this week. And you got home a day earlier than I did. I finished up. We finished up on Tuesday at those meetings. And then I headed Wednesday to see Dan Schuberth and Adam Eisenberg and Brian Wild and Bart Tessel and all of the great folks at the national association of Wholesalers and Distributors, what gracious hosts they were. And got out on the town a little bit with Adam in D.C. on Wednesday night.

Did you go visit the White House?

They asked us to, but this, you know. In fact, they kept texting, and there was a motorcade outside to bring us, but Adam had this cool spot he wanted to bring me to, and so we went there instead.

So you were just busy? Yeah, I didn't. Couldn't fit it in. I get it.

You know, and I figured, you know what the White House probably needs our guidance and they could just pick it up on Friday morning here, you know.

Yeah, well, I know they wanted some guidance on, you know, should it be 2% or 3% inflation and things like that. I mean, you know.

Yeah, the, the resources that they're currently using are not the appropriate ones for, for guidance there. And we're gonna, we're gonna talk about a lot of those numbers today as we get started. But yeah, it's great. You know, I made a LinkedIn post yesterday and you know, when you get to our age, travel gets a little bit harder and you know, it's not as simple and there's aches and pains that, that go with things, but man, I just, after the NAW visit, anytime I travel, I come home with new insights, new understandings, new perspectives. And it's, it might be from the person sitting next to me on the, on the plane. I sat next to a woman coming home yesterday who's. Her and her family have rented a house right by where Darlene and I live because they were displaced with the Altadena fires and she's a corporate lawyer traveling, trying to keep her kids sane while they're out of their home. You know, and it just, you just meet people and see different perspectives. But you know, our, our Thomas Somerville meetings were fantastic and, and then the NAW guys again, I think some of them are with us on the show this morning, listening in. Thank you for your hospitality. Just always good discussions and perspectives on the industry, which is kind of fun. So in the next week off again on Sunday to Orlando for the Affiliated Distributors Functional Success Summit. So they're doing a. They put two events for their members together with, that they previously had into one. They had an IT and HR summit that they did. And then they had an E Commerce and Marketing summit and they brought those together in a, in a three day event starting on Monday. So I can't get to, nor can you get to Orlando before their afternoon events start. So we're heading out on Sunday, but that'll be a great event and then I'm home for I think three weeks, so.

Okay. All right.

Knock on wood. Or what do they say? So somehow let's keep the universe in alignment that there's no additional trips in between. So anyways, good to see Will Quinn, our good friend there that's joined us this morning. I'm sure we'll get some other folks popping in along the way.

It's been a couple weeks. We missed everybody.

That's right. That's right. I, I Didn't miss not having a show last week. It was a quiet, easy, easy Fourth of July. You, you had a house full though for the weekend, right?

Not till Sunday.

Yeah, okay, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Well, anyways, let's, let's dive into our show here instead of chatting about travel and, and all of our friends. So I'm Kevin Brown. I'm here with Tom Burton, my lifelong friend and, and co founder of Lead Smart Technologies. Tom and I get together every Friday morning to discuss the news of the week. And I guess maybe we'll be doing a little bit of the news of the last two weeks. So we didn't have a show last week, but we talk about the news related to the economy, supply chain mergers and acquisitions, manufacturing, distribution, sales and marketing, IT technology, AI, of course, robotics, all kinds of different things. And what we try and do is peel back the onion, so to speak, on that, and talk about it as it relates to wholesale distribution and manufacturing, which is the audience in the group of people, people that we work with every day in that setting. So we do this by means of a newsletter that we put out. That newsletter is called around the Horn and wholesale Distribution manufacturing goes out to 10,000 plus people each week. And we review that newsletter here. If you're with us live, you'll see that newsletter in those articles. If you're not live, and we're live on LinkedIn Live, YouTube Live, and Facebook Live this morning. But if you're not with us live and you're listening on the recorded podcast on Spotify or Amazon or Apple podcasts or wherever it might be, you won't be seeing that. So if you'd like to get that newsletter and you don't, there's three simple ways that we can get that to you. The first is very simple. If you're active on LinkedIn, just you can go to the Lead Smart technologies page on LinkedIn and there will be a newsletter button there and you can subscribe there or literally you can just search around the horn in wholesale distribution and that will pop up. We have a page for the show as well. So you can subscribe there and you can subscribe to following what we do at Lead Smart as well. And you can also send us a simple email at hello, lead smart tech.com and we'll get that newsletter out to you. That's helloadsmartech.com and we'll get that out to you. Our third and final, we have a website for the podcast and the website address is www.aroundthehorn pod and you can sign up for that and you can even subscribe to getting the podcast sent to you regularly as well if you do that. But each week we do this, we're going to have some guests in the following weeks. We've just had a wonderful set of guests this week. I just made arrangements with Brian Wild while I was back at at naw. Brian is that I think he's executive vice president of all legislative issues and legislative analysis. Brian and I have met a couple of years ago, had some great discussions along the way. We got to spend some time chatting at the Industrial Supply association event where about four hours before, three hours before, Liberation Day announcements came out back in April, Brian was doing a fireside chat with Brendan Breen from ISA there and we were able to chat afterwards. So we've got two shows that Brian's going to join us for over the next couple months and we're going to talk legislative initiatives and obviously a lot about tariffs. And we have Brian with us. So Brian and I had a great meeting when I was at NAW this week, so looking forward to that. So again, we're happy you're here with us. We couldn't do this each week without the support of the company that Tom and I work for. There's quite a bit of cost that goes with producing the show. We have front end people and back end people working on this and producers and editors and so forth. So Lead Smart Technologies is the company that Tom and I are the co founders of. Lead Smart has developed a product called Channel Cloud. And Channel Cloud is a AI enabled, what we describe as smart CRM and customer intelligence solution that also provides some great sales enablement solutions with that as well. And what we provide through that Channel Cloud tool is really deep customer understanding. We can dive deep into what's happening in both our customer, our teams and our total business to gain insights that we've never really seen before on a single platform that really works across our organization. And we do that by bringing corralled information as we describe it, Tom, you've got a dual screen highlighted there, but with a mouse that's moving a thousand miles an hour. But we do that by bringing siloed or corralling that data from across your organization. So manufacturers and distributors have just an abundance of data in their marketing automation, their E commerce and their ERP systems and other systems. And we bring that data together in one single platform. And we use AI tools and other tools to uncover how to best grow your business, serve your customers better and understand things. So if you're digitally transforming and looking to grow in your business, we would love nothing more than to have a chat with you and share how we can support you like we support other companies for exceptional growth. So, Tom, you want to dive into the news here.

You know, Will, Will ask us if we could give a take on the, the spat between the president and the federal chairman. You know, funny you should ask, Will, because I think that's. Is that really. Well, that's kind of the first one here. First, first couple articles anyway, so. Yes, Will, we'd be happy to.

Yep. Well, and I welcome Will's comment if he wants to type in there, what his, his thoughts are as well on, on that. I've got a feeling I might know, but look forward to that. Well, that, that article is an interesting one, that first one and this one that's actually, we rarely start our, we get a handful of articles regularly, probably a handful a month from Inc. Magazine, which is a great, I kind of call a small business magazine. And this one was entitled President Trump's Tariffs Complicate the Fed's Next Move. You want to kind of dive in on some of your thoughts on that, Tom?

Well, just to kind of, I guess, recap the article. Right. Is the Fed has continued to say we're going to wait and see. I guess waiting and expecting the worst, or at least that's what they're implying, right. Is that inflation is going to increase. So the last thing we want to do is jump the gun yet. Inflation hasn't really increased, although there's all this project, you know, prediction that it's going to as it, as it goes forward. But there hasn't been any real evidence of that. And you know, the Trump administration is of course, then on the other hand saying lower rates, lower rates, lower rates. This isn't really, you know, the tariffs are not creating inflation, all that. So there's a lot of, you know, finger pointing and stuff back and forth. I think in this article they said, they said that the current probability is almost zero for July and 62% for September.

Well, it dropped to 62% from 75.

Yeah.

Right.

I actually believe that there is a shot at July. There is a lot.

Say that again.

Yeah, no, I actually believe there is.

A, I, I totally agree.

A 20 shot probably maybe a little bit higher. Maybe a little higher. We should go take a bet on Polymarket or one of those betting sites and yeah, make a bunch of money. But the, you know, there's so much, there's such a fiscal impact by Reducing the rates to the national debt. The debt is being refinanced as. Refinanced in large amounts as we speak. Even a slight adjustment, even a quarter point reduction would reduce the interest that we're paying potentially by billions of dollars. So I think there's a real rational reason to say, okay, yeah, it's good to wait and see. But you know what, as we sit here and wait and see, we're spending a lot for that or it's costing us a lot for that. Maybe we cut a little bit, you know, even a quarter point. I don't think it'll be no way more than that.

I don't, I don't think, I don't think it'll be a half a point. No, you know, 50 basis points in, in July. But anyways, I'm sorry, I've got some thoughts. Continue.

I'll just finish up here. But, but I think then, okay, and if, if, look, the risk is you may have to raise again, but you may have to raise again for other reasons as well. But in the meantime, let's potentially reduce some of the costs that we're spending on the debt. Even if, you know, even a little bit is a lot. And given the amount of debt means $4.5 trillion of debt that has been refinanced or is being refinanced this year, that's a lot. That adds up to a lot of billions of dollars every month in potential savings on those things here.

Well, I mean, look, look at that. Right. What was the number you roughly came up with? Was a night 90 or no, what was, what was the number on, on with a quarter, a quarter point reduction?

I think it was like 125 billion.

Okay.

This was very back of the envelope math. So.

Yeah, but if you've got, if you've got the interest payment is over the course of this year is a trillion dollars, is that approximately right?

I think, yeah, yeah.

So trillion dollars in interest payment, you've got I think 95 billion that have already come in from tariffs with a goal of 300 billion this year. And if you get, you know, let's just round it to $100 billion from a quarter point reduction, if you could put it that way. So let's say over the next, you know, in July and then September, if they did a quarter now and a, and say three quarters of a point, we've reduced by at least half those interest payments. And that does amazing things for the economy.

Well, just reduce, you know, we're all trying to reduce the national debt in our expenses. Right. That we're doing. So it's. So anyway, I think there's a.

But there's a bigger, there's a broader point to that, Tom. I mean we were talking about the impact on the debt, but what does it do to business growth in general? Right. It's going to full. And that's, it's this, the whole, I mean this is the, this is the struggle. Right. Because the wait and see thing is, you know, and I listen, I guess we need to say this every single week is that we're not economists. You study consumer computer science, I studied business. But I think I'm just going to go back to, you know, what I just keep saying about the inflation number is I don't know that 2% is the right number. I think now you're starting to see some other people, you know, coming along with that idea that, you know, we've, we had something in an article a few weeks ago and I think it was bessant that was saying that that number could be even a little bit higher. But this wait and see thing, I don't think it's really necessarily anybody's benefit right now. CPI is not doing what you would expect it to do in this setting. Right. And so the consumer pricing index and that is, is pretty flat in comparison to where you would expect. And what I think Powell is waiting on, I, and I'm not trying to bash the guy too much, but I just, I just did a Gemini search of who is the worst Fed chairman and Gemini said while there's no universally agreed upon worst Fed chair, Arthur Burns and Jerome Powell are often cited as contenders for that title. Burns is criticized for his handling of inflation in the 70s while Powell faces scrutiny for his recent policies and their impact on the economy. And I mean that just this stuff, quick one this morning from Gemini and I'm sure it's grabbing some of the most recent news but you know, Powell was criticized for, and I'm sure this is his caution besides, you know, I think we talked about this on our most recent show was that I think we both agreed there's probably some political, you know, heel digging in and you know. Oh yeah, yeah. Type thing. So I, I think that right now he's in a position where he could be an absolute donkey, so to speak, at the end of all of this because he, he raised late and he's dragging his feet on cutting into your point. And again, I don't think either one of us know what every implication of cutting is, but you know, the president and plenty of other economists are saying you can ratchet back up.

Right.

I mean, I hate to say it as cavalier as what does it hurt? Because I know that there's more behind that. But I don't think from a hue, from an economic standpoint, the things I'm reading, there's no great risk to that.

The risk is you're, you have to come back later and say, oh, we shouldn't have done that, or now we have to, you know, raise or whatever. But I just think, look, let's wait and see. But let's wait and see and act on the data that we have right now and let's wait and see if we need to act again. That would be the, to me, the more logical way to go given all of the variables that we've, that we've talked about.

So, so if you're a Fed chairman or, or let's just say you're, you're a Fed chair, Governor, what, what's your, what, what do you look at for the rest of the year? What would, what would your recommendation be?

I would, I don't know the rest of the year, but I would say definitely a quarter, quarter point in July. There's no meeting in August, quarter point in September and then evaluate from there. Right. So why not?

Why not? If there's no major impact between July and, and September, why not go a half a point or more?

I think it would be again, if I wanted to win. Right. If I wanted to win my argument, I would probably have a much higher probability of winning my argument at a quarter point than a half a point. Aside from the winning the argument or winning the debate aspect of it, in theory, I don't think it would be the end of the world to cut quarter point and then a half a point. But I don't, you know, again, if you just kind of look at the negotiation, that doesn't seem probable.

Well, it's interesting, the interesting term you use, negotiation.

Yeah.

Because.

Well, I mean, the governors, it's not supposed to be.

I mean. Yeah, they're. I guess so you mean when the governors meet.

Yes, I'm talking about within them.

Yeah. I'm sorry.

Yeah.

But that's kind of what it's almost turning into right now, you know, back of White House and you know, so we, we've got a few articles here. There's, you know, the first one we talked about, then we've got an additional article about the Vietnam deal that was struck, shows that China tariffs won't fall much Further. And now, you know, what we're starting to see is, and we can tie a few of these articles together, right, is we've got the tariff component of this. That's the pressure, but as tariffs. And we'll talk at length here in a moment about tariffs. But what we're looking at right now is an administration that wants sweeping change globally that will benefit the US and now the pressure of calling Powell a dummy from the White House has not been effective. So now it looks like they're kind of going after him from a standpoint. And we're going to come after you from different angles about looks like maybe some mismanagement or overspending of the renovations of the Fed offices.

Okay.

Right. I mean, that's, that was the big thing over the last couple of days. Right. And when you talk about that, just going to look at this, we have it in one of our articles. And what are they saying about that exactly? You know, they, their Trump officials are criticizing Jerome Powell for ostentatious office renovations. Right. So, and, and this is coming from a handful of, of angles from within the administration. But if you stop and think about that for a minute, Tom, what's, what's really attack coming from angles. And it won't shock me if next thing there needs to be a Congressional Budget Office investigation of this and then what pops up next about Powell? And they've got a guy that they, you know, and Powell says there's no way he's leaving, but all of a sudden, if there's enough pressure from enough angles, people cave.

Yeah.

I mean, I, I literally, and I mean, this might sound a little bit conspiracy theorist, but I don't think this is too hard to connect these dots. Right. That if all of a sudden there's, you know, multiple investigations going on about him and I can guarantee you from, you know, everything that we've, we've seen over the last, you know, previous term of this administration and this administration, they're not afraid to go after anybody about anything. So I would assume there are all kinds of investigations of Powell going on because they've, I'm sure, got somebody that they're ready to put right in there that would make some major, major cuts.

Yeah.

So you have a big grin on your face. What are you laughing at?

No, no, I just, you know, it's like a soap opera, you know, one of the, you know, House of Cards or one of those TV shows.

Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's not, I wasn't thinking soap opera. I think it's A big, you know, big political drama, you know, of, of. And it's, it's, I, I, I only saw, I've never that House of Cards show. I, I probably saw 10 minutes of two episodes. But, you know, the things that I know about that and it's, I think there's, if we, we were talking about this when we were in, in near D.C. when we were together, and then I was in D.C. for a couple days, we have no idea what's going on behind the scenes, you know, I mean, to the magnitude. But I can, it won't shock me at all if we see other accusations of Powell and pressure and then guarantee you if that happens, then the administration is pressuring all of those other Board of Governor members to, to, to side with them about him leaving and put somebody in and they get 2 percentage points. And now all of a sudden, you know, our discussion of what we think might happen or could happen, we could see before the end of the year, if they get somebody out, you're going to see at least one, if not two points.

Sure, Yes, I would agree with that.

It was interesting. And just as kind of a side note, it's funny, Mark says we do not need any more drama, we just need certainty. I could apply that, Mark, in every aspect of my life, but, you know, he's right. And that's what everybody's looking for, a certainty and that's what Powell's looking for. Right. But you're not going to get that. And I think that's what we probably have to get our head around is there's, there's, and look, you know, I can't remember what the numbers was, but was, but like, what was it? Can't remember how many people vote, but was something like 77. Was there 320 million people in the US 70. What was it? 72 or 77 million people voted for this administration. And they say every day they're just outdoing what they were, you know, voted in to do. Now, how they go about it is a little bit rough around the edges. Right.

Maybe next time the voters will want to know exactly how it's going to be done versus yes, right.

Very, very well said. But, you know, to Mark's point, and Mark's a great friend and he's going to be joining us on the show. Can't remember if it's either next week or in the next couple weeks. Mark just moved to the US from the UK and what it kind of makes me think about is the House of Commons in the, in The UK and the wigs and the yelling and screaming and almost throwing things at each other, it almost makes the us, The House and the Senate look a little calm sometimes. So. But I'm looking forward to having Mark with us. He's a. He's a really fine gentleman. So I'm looking forward. I think he just moved to Charlotte, if I remember correctly, when we talked a month or so ago. So. But agreed, you know, everybody's looking for that certainty. I just don't see that there's any reasonable thought that we will get certainty on anything from this administration. Right.

It's not just the administration. It's just certainty on what is. What are these. The consequences, good or bad.

Yeah.

And what are, and what are the impacts of this? I don't think that anyone can really predict. So you just have to, you know, play the cards that you have in your hand at the time you have them. Right. And, and not try and speculate what your card's going to look like in six months. And so that's why. So this goes back full circle. I think there's a reasonable opportunity that you could see a quarter point cut in July just for that reason, that there's enough of the Fed governors that say, enough, let's just play our cards that we have and, you know, if we get crappier cards down the road, then we'll adjust and play accordingly. So.

Yep.

Anyway, let's move ahead.

Yep, you got it. Let's jump to. Well, let's. We need to talk a little bit about tariffs here. Right. Which is what. What our articles kind of adjust to. So there's been an adjustment made to the big scorecards that came out on April 1st. I guess it was with our Liberation Day. And now we've had been doing quite a bit of, of negotiations have been going on with different countries and some things settled with the UK and now Vietnam and so forth and a handful of other countries. But now it's down to letters going out and the administration has basically said we got to get things done here. They pushed the July 9 date, which was yesterday, out to August 1 to get some ordeals done, and they're pushing out letters. I'm. I'm wondering if what we're going to get next is truth social and X posts about what the, the administration's expectations of, of the, the tariffs of some of these other nations are going to be.

Well, that letter, by the way, is in the first article in the Ink magazine article. I thought it was great, or I thought it was interesting. Let me say that. So what I see happening here is, you know, because of sort of the kicking the can down the road, moving dates down.

Right.

I think a lot of these countries have been hesitant to just. Well, it's just, you know, they're going to do their own wait and see. Right. Why should I rush to the negotiation table? Because you know, why don't we just let it. See how it plays out. So then, but then this strategy that if you read this letter it's almost like the assumptive close.

Tom, do you have that? I'm going to send you a screenshot real quick. This is worth pulling up here. I, I forgot that that was there and I'm glad you just brought that up. Let's see if I can get that over to you.

I can do it. I can do it.

Okay.

This is the article and the letter is here. I can't, I can't make it much bigger.

I just, I just sent it to you in teams as a, as a. See if that may work better. It's really interesting. I forgot that it was there. It, it's. This is to his Excellency Shiba Shigera, Prime Minister of Japan. Dear Mr. Prime Minister is with great honor for me to send you this letter in that it demonstrates the strength and commitment of our training relationship and the fact the United States of America has agreed to continue working with Japan. We're willing to work with you. So it's, it's pretty intriguing how that Tom, obviously is a Firefox screen there. There we go. Now you've got it there. But he just goes through and explains the expectation and it says therefore we invite you to participate in the extraordinary economy of the United States, the number one market in the world by far. We have had years to discuss our trading relationship with Japan and have concluded that we must move away from these long term and very persistent trade deficits engendered by Japan's tariff and non tariff policies and trade barriers. Our relationship has been unfortunately far from reciprocal. Starting on August 1, 2025, we will charge Japan a tariff of only 20, only 25% on any and all Japanese products sent into the United States separate from all sectoral tariffs. Goods trans. Shipped to evade a higher tariff will be subject to that higher tariff.

Yeah, so basically don't try anything funny.

But that's the whole point of what's going on with the, the Vietnam because there was so much being trans. Shipped through Vietnam. And what I, I'd like to see the letter to Vietnam versus this one from Japan. Because from that standpoint, Tom, is.

I don't think Vietnam got a letter, though. I think Vietnam.

No, Vietnam came to the table.

Right, right, right.

They didn't. They weren't. And to your point earlier, right, in the eu, there's, in one of the articles we have is that the EEU is not, I won't say aggressively, but they are proactively in discussion. They had a, there was an announcement, I read this morning in the news that they had already had multiple discussions with the White House this week. But when people are sitting on the sidelines, you're getting letters and saying this is what's going to happen and you can come racing back to try and work something out, but we're not. I think this is the, the shot across the bow, right, that says if you want anything better, you better come back with something, you know, from this. But to that point about the.

You've been put on notice, right. The letter is basically putting you on notice. Yeah. And, and you know, basically saying, okay, this is going to be the deal unless I hear otherwise. Right.

Well, and it's, it's what I love about this letter in, in, it's, it's funny but I mean it's just straightforward. This isn't, hey, you know, here's a bunch of attachments and addendum A and all of this.

Right, right, right.

It is, it is a page and an eighth. Yeah, right. Of one letter signed by the President. It says, it, you know, the last section of it says I'm. Because we have so many people that. Listen, Tom, on, on the podcast formats. I'm going to read a little bit more of this. It says if for any reason you decide to raise your tariffs, then whatever the number you choose to raise them by, we will be, we will be added onto the 25% that we charge. So if you raise by us by 25%, your 25% I told you about in the previous paragraph is going to 50. Please understand that these tariffs are necessary to correct the many years of Japan's tariffs and non tariff policies and trade barriers causing these unsustainable trade deficits against the United States. This deficit is a major threat to our economy and indeed our national security. Exclamation point. We look forward to working with you as your trading partner for many years to come. If you wish to open your heretofore closed tariff markets to the United States and eliminate your tariff and non tariff policies and trade barriers, we will perhaps consider an adjustment to this letter. These tariffs may be modified upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your country. You'll never be disappointed with the United States of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter. This reads like something we would send to a distributor or something with a small price increase or hey, your cloud storage price is changing. This is how this reads, right?

No, I think it's, Look, I, it'll be, and I, it'll be interesting to see what happens. But it is sort of the assumptive close because he's like, I think the point is, well, while they're waiting for people to come and want to negotiate, just give them the bottom line and they'll either accept the bottom line or they'll do something different. Yeah, right. And so what's interesting about all this too is the markets. I haven't really checked the markets too.

Much today, but I have them, have them right here. It's not been a good morning.

Yeah, but it hasn't been massive. There has not been, no, there's no.

Huge sell off or anything like that. Right. I mean, I don't know what the VIX is today, but the VIX was hit pretty hard a couple times earlier this week. The volatility index from the Chicago board of exchange, 16.43, up 4.12. Okay, so.

Okay, yeah. I mean it's not. The markets aren't going berserk like they were before.

Yeah.

And so anyway, it's, we'll see how this plays out. But I thought it was an interesting strategy and I, I do agree with you. It's nice to have a letter that's a page and a half versus, you know, a 50 page dissertation with all these addendums and all this kind of stuff.

Well, and it's, it, it ties really well, Tom, to in fact essentially Bob's comment here. It says it isn't threatening, it's just a, this is what it is. No ambiguity. And you know, he commented, he goes, you know, that's how good leaders and executives communicate. It's very, very straightforward. But what, what's interesting about this is, you know, I, I think about when you see the Secretary of State traveling, right, and he's sitting around this, you know, 30 foot long, you know, gold leafed mahogany polished table with you know, big leather chairs and everybody has their name tag and you know, they meet the, it's pomp and circumstance to get everybody into the room and then they meet for an hour and then they do a big luncheon and press, you know, press coverage stuff and then they go back for another two hours. And then they, they got three hours of work done over two days, but then they, it's three months before they go back to have conversations. And I'm sure a lot of these trade meetings are, you know, it's not like they're locked in a room for, you know, 10 hours until they're coming out with a response. So this is just a different take on it all.

Yeah.

You know, so anyways, I think what's, you know, what we're seeing is that, you know, the, the, the tariffs are, are in, you know, the ones that are in place that we're charging now. I think it was that one of the articles Talks about that's $95 billion have come in already from it and that's meaningful. Right. So, you know, when you look at that from that, you know that's approaching 10% of what the, the, the debt payment is for the year.

Right.

So if we get up, as we talked about earlier, right, if we get up to that, really the 300 million and then who knows what the, you know, those numbers could be? You know, we do that and the adjustment you were talking in interest rates, we could have half of that, half of that interest payment taken care of. And this, you know, I, I'm not. We talk a lot and we quote. Sometimes you and I talk a lot separately about probably the, I don't know if I don't want to say your favorite, but my most consistently listened to podcast besides the one that I talk on is the all in podcast. And you know, they've got one of their. David Freeberg there is really an expert on the death and the, the debt and his view of it is the potential death of the United States. And I mean there are major issues to the economy of the United States if we don't get our arms around the debt. And so one of these days I need to do a little research and look at some of his research and share that with the, with the show. But it's not just, oh, we have a trillion dollars and we throw those numbers around sometimes like they're not that billions and trillions, but the impact that it could have and us not being able to make those debt payments is, is the worry.

Right. Well and the alternative of printing more money, which is what you would do, it's if there's a point where you run off the cliff with that perspective. So look, it's clear here. Well, it's, to me it's clear is the strategy of the administration is let's see if we can outgrow the situation. Right. Or we can grow ourself out of this situation. So whether that's through tariffs, whether that's through tax cuts, whether that's through manufacturing credits, whether that's bringing more manufacturing onshore, whether that's using AI for efficiency, whether that's driving how do we increase the GDP and our growth enough that we can somehow outrun and overcome this tsunami of the debt and the deficit? Because it's clearly not going to happen entirely through cutting. Right. That's fair.

So no, I mean I, the, I think the reality is we need to boost the economy and we can do that through interest rates and, and other methods. Right. We can reduce the debt by growing gdp, but certainly the tariffs issue here can help with more money coming in. And I mean I, we've had this discussion. I really want to be cautious to not, you know, take a position on one side of the things or the other, but I think where the President is at or this administration is at right now is it could potentially be the most memorable or impactful administration ever or it could be the biggest fiasco ever.

That, I mean we have to, we have to stick the landing. Right. And yes, that's not an easy thing to do.

Yeah.

But if we stick the landing on it, then yes, you're right. If we trip all over ourselves and you know, fall on our head, then that's a different story.

Well, and we're, we're, you know, seven, barely not even seven months into the administration. But back to goals are borders, fentanyl, balanced trade, reshoring of manufacturing and boosting manufacturing tax cuts and more jobs.

Right.

What am I missing out of that?

Yeah. And just enabling growth. Right. Enabling domestic growth.

But, but if we're, but if we're reducing our debt or at least managing the debt payments to your point, the best way to out in. And I don't, I don't see any other way to outgrow that with gdp. The challenges that are faced there, unless we can create a whole lot of jobs in manufacturing in this country are going to be just some great things to go with that. And that ties back to the initial Discussion we started 40 minutes ago this morning was on interest rates and the stimulus that can come out of that. I mean we just were with a large regional distributor and you know, they would love nothing more, I'm sure than to open more branches and expand their business. We work with quite a few, you know, three, four or five hundred million dollar a year companies who are looking to double in size over the next five years. And that includes new branches, it includes new product categories and includes more people. And you can do a whole lot more when the economy becomes a little more stable and you can access money.

Right. Now, again, going back to Mark's point earlier. Right. Is how do we incorporate some more certainty into that equation as well, which does seem to be lacking. But do you, I mean, do you.

Think, you think we're gonna. There's a, a possibility of seeing certainty in this administration? I mean, maybe some, but I don't think so.

I don't, I don't think for the next couple years, I don't think we're going to have a lot of certainty and stability. Right. There's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of pieces that are coming together. I think we're still in the early innings of a lot of the things that are attempting to be done. So, no, I, I don't think we're going to see a lot of certainty and stability. So we just, you know, have to kind of adapt and, and try and ride the wave the best we can.

Yeah. Yep.

No, Bob, we weren't, we didn't vote whether or not PAL needs to be replaced or not.

Bobby should go back. Yeah, Bobby should go back and listen to the recording later. The early part of the show. We did talk about that there is a reasonable chance that, that his 1989 tax returns are being manipulated right now by foreign agents to show some, something that would force him out. But who knows what'll come out of all of this. But anyways, right now I think we're, you know, we're. Where are we the 11th of July. We've got till August 1st. I think this is going to be some fodder for this, this show ongoing for discussion about, about what goes on both with the Fed and what goes on with tariff. So why don't we kind of jump.

You know what? I'm going to do it. I'm going to do at the end of the year. I'm going to take all of our shows, which you can do that now.

Yep.

Put them into AI and find out how our predictions came together.

Those pretty great.

Yeah, that'd be an interesting.

John. John has, our producer and editor has all of the transcripts already loaded. So you just, we just get with John and, and, and go for them.

All in the Notebook. Lm. All the YouTube links and.

Yeah.

Have a ball, you know. Anyway.

So, Tom, before we jump too far ahead though, one of the articles that we were kind of scrolling through There was from industrial distribution, and the title was three months after his previous tariff push terrified the world economy, Trump bets this time is different, says the new approach is at odds with how trade agreements have been built over the last half century. And there was a comment in here that I just thought he said. In this new round of tariffs being announced this week, Trump is essentially tethering the entire world economy to his instinctual belief that import taxes will deliver factory jobs and stronger growth in the US Rather than the inflation and slowdown predicted by many economists. On Tuesday, he told the Cabinet that past presidents who hadn't aggressively deployed tariffs were stupid. Ever the salesman, Trump added that it was too time consuming to try and negotiate trade deals with the rest of the world. So it's just easier to send them letters as we talked about and read the letter. But I just. It's really an interesting comment, and this article is written by Josh Boak, and it said that the administration is essentially tethering the entire world economy to an instinctual belief that import taxes will deliver factory jobs. And everybody historically has just tried to find other ways to work around these things. And this is looking at balanced, fair trade. So I do think it's a big approach. And, you know, I would love to go spend the good. Spend some good time in the uk maybe in Germany right now, maybe in Hong Kong, just to kind of listen to what you're seeing there. Maybe it's time to do a road trip just to research the. So for the show, but to see what, you know, what the world's view is. I need to call my uncle in Germany and have a discussion with him. So anyways, we can roll ahead into manufacturing and I mean, do we want.

To kind of zip through? I mean, and then kind of let's get from. Move from tariffs and taxes to more technology and. Yeah, stuff like that.

But before you go, there is. There is an article in our manufacturing, the distribution segment there that the. Where did that one go? Lost where you are there, that last one there. Just our friends.

Yeah, Yeah, I like that article.

Yeah.

One of the quotes in there was. Did you notice the quote in there is Grow for free, Right. That's the organic growth strategy that they're trying to implement in there.

Everybody is out there listening to Tom and his organic growth. It's good. You should write a book about organic growth.

I think growth. I think Grow for Free is even better. That'd be a good title.

Yeah. Well, and then put like some alfalfa sprouts on it for the organic component. Anyways, this is you know our friend Casey, the CEO over at Watson Glove and his team. Great, great folks and we love every time we chat with them and see them regularly at industry events. This was a nice thing that was done by Industrial Industrial Supply Trends. This was our buddy John Gunderson who's been a guest on the show and I see John regularly at the events that I travel to. So it was nice. We just wanted to call out both the the work that John and David Gordon do with Industrial Supply Trend and Electrical Trend and H Vac Trend and articles that they publish are great. So if you don't follow David and David Gordon with Electrical Trends and and H Vac trends on LinkedIn, that's a great one to follow. As well as John Gunderson. So good article there. We had a handful of other good articles, but let's based upon time kind of roll ahead. What do you want to talk about in our E Commerce and marketing segment? What stood out to you? Tom?

This first article is actually quite good. The B2B buyers choose vendors before the buying process begins for Forester finds that 92% of buyers start with at least one vendor in mind and 41% already have a single preferred vendor selected before formal evaluation begins. Now my guess is this is more probably technology centric, but I do think that it would makes, you know, be make be also very relevant into the hard goods in the distribution world as well.

I'll give you an analogy to that, Tom, because it's what came to my mind when I saw the article and decided we could post that or share. That was, you know, when, when I was the road warrior of loading up the back of my car with samples and literature boxes and heading out. When I was a manufacturer's rep for many years, you know, yeah, we had cell phones, but not like certainly no smartphones. And yeah, we had laptops and we had I think at the time my company had ACT as our early stage. You know, these days when we look at what smart CRM does, that was you can probably do just as much in Outlook now as we could do then. But things were different, right? If you had when if you were an end user running a factory or a large construction company or contractor, you relied on the people that came to see you or the people that called you. But you know, it was oftentimes more of the people that called and made an appointment to come in and talk with you that you got a lot of stuff done with and you had your favorites and then you got a Better price on some things here and there. With. With that. Well, now, right in. In especially with the fact I was just on talking with this the other day with one of our customers about this was, you know, with. I think we're close to 70% now from Gartner's research of B2B buyers or millennials, their habits are just different. And that's what this article is starting to address as well. And so, yeah, I might be. And I'll just give you an example, Tom. Further, this is. I. I might get to. I might go to work for XYZ factory that buys janitorial supply from this company. They buy industrial supplies from that company, and they buy safety from this other company. And then they have an account with Granger where they could buy it all. And there's a preference there because the guy that, you know, I work for is more of a analog guy than a digital guy. And so he has some of his favorites. But if I'm that millennial that's coming in now, I know how to use AI to go find out where these people are. I know how to use tools to try and figure out what other people might even be paying for some of these things. And so now, yes, I go into that thought process with, you know, we have a relationship with ABC Supply here in Iowa or whatever it might be. But now I know how to use tools to go find other things. So I think this applies across the board. Whether you're selling rivets or widgets or you're selling a technology product, is we've got our incumbent, maybe even where we have a contract of some sort. But now we've got this capability and, you know, with.

In.

With something I actually should have added in. We can talk about that next week.

Right?

ChatGPT just announced that they're going to have their own browser. Perplexity, which is kind of my chosen AI search tool, is launching their own browser. I'm on the wait list for it already. And the things that those. And then obviously Gemini is doing a nice job within Google Chrome now, but the data that's at our fingertips now is just so much different and so much greater than ever before. It doesn't matter what arena or market you're in. This article, I think is really interesting. And I think this was from our friend Mark wrote this, right? Yeah. Mark Brohan. So I'm gonna see Mark. We'll see. You're gonna be with me. You'll see Mark next week. I don't think Mark's been on the Show. But I don't think, Tom, you've been able to meet Mark face to face. You'll get to meet Mark next week.

So I, I agree. I think that we're seeing this even in our own business, right? A lot of the prospects that come to us, it's, you know, and a lot of times there's games, right? Hey, you know, we need to do an evaluation of, you know, these three or four companies. But wink, wink, we wanna, we like, we like what you've done or we like what you're saying. We want to potentially move in your direction, right. So I think that a lot of that decision though is made not just by the price of your product or even the features of your product or whatever, but it's based around the trust and the, and when I use trust, the know like trust aspect of things of the business. And a lot of times that no light trust isn't just. Well, I feel like they're trustworthy. But am I able to get sort of what's the value add, right? What's the value that I'm receiving above and beyond the transaction of whatever product or service that I'm. That I'm doing there? And I think we've talked about this over and over. I think this is becoming more and more the differentiator and the more and more that you can add value right above and beyond again the primary transaction of the product or service, then you have that potential tailwind to be one of those top people that people are going to consider when they're making a decision in the B2B world. So it's just an interesting. Because I agree with you, they can research all the other things online. They can certainly learn about you, they can hear about you, they can hear us talk, they can do all of those things. Those are all things that help to build that relationship and that value.

You, you can sit by the phone and find a new chain or hoist distributor by sitting by the pool with your phone. You know, I mean that the things that we're able to do now are just, it's just astounding in comparison. So I think that all ties together with it. So the times there are changing is I guess the, the, the real thing to look at, right?

Yeah. I don't know if you have Internet problems, but you keep going in and out.

I don't think so. Can you hear me?

Oh yeah, you're. You come on and then you, you. I don't know if anyone else is catching this, but you come on and then you Freeze for five seconds or so, and then your voice speeds up again, and it's kind of herky jerky.

I think that's you.

Okay. All right, well, we'll see.

Internet seems fine. Let's see. Let's see what happens. All right, we're winding down. Yeah, yeah, Good article here as well. Jump down. So tying. Actually, before I jump ahead, tying back. Tom, can you hear me?

Okay, I can hear you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So tying back to that. Digital Commerce360 articles B2B buyers choose vendors before the buying process begins. Next article is about the Q A article from Digital Commerce360 as well, about why Omni Channel is mission critical for distributors. So that becomes the key component of this is, are we omnichannel? Are we digital? Are we E Commerce? Are we still field selling? Are we inside sales? Are we pulling all this together?

Yeah, it must be your. It must have had a lot of thoughts. Must be your new microphone, because other people are hearing the same.

So am I still doing it?

Yeah, it's still doing it.

It's just.

Yeah, you just did it a second ago.

Well, let me switch microphones. How's that?

No, no, I don't think it's the microphone. It's got to be the Internet connection somewhere.

Okay.

But anyway, we will. We will. We will move on. You. You're not, like, completely disappearing. It's just sort of a freeze and then coming back.

Internet's strong because I was just searching something.

Okay.

Should I. Should I dive out of the show and come back in?

Tom, I mean, just stop watching Netflix and stuff. Turn that off while we're doing this.

I have ESPN on with some soccer going, so.

Yeah, so that's the.

That's YouTube TV.

That's right. So knock that off. All right, let's keep going.

Yep, yep. And we're gonna wind down here in a few minutes anyway, so why don't we dive into the. The last article there was how marketers can respond with empathy to consumer tariff shocks. So good idea about marketers from that standpoint, also playing a role in helping people understand tariffs.

Yeah. All right.

You want to roll in. And I do.

That was another good article, actually. Just. I'll touch on that real quick. Is it goes back to what I was just saying about building trust. Right. And building that value is not just saying, hey, our prices are going up. You know, hey, nothing we can do about it, but basically having the empathy to say, we understand that we're all impacted by this, and we're doing our part to Figure out the best solution for you and for them. And please, you know, we want to partner with you and work through this versus just again giving them a letter back to our letter that's saying prices are going to increase. Yeah, it's empathy and, and that, and not just empathy, but they're in there. They have some skin in the game as well. And I think that's a very, a very good approach and a way to build more value and build more relationship as well.

Very good. All right. Into our technology and cyber security and AI. Anything trigger for you out of this in particular?

So, you know this first article, the productivity paradox of AI adoption and in manufacturing firms. I'll just make a general comment. This will apply to this as well. But you know, we've talked a lot about the, you know, the Gartner trough of disillusionment and so forth. I, I think we're seeing that now.

Tom, before you go, not everybody probably knows about that. So just brief overview of the hype cycle and so forth and the trough that you're talking about.

Yeah, so in the, in Gartner has this hype. I think it's called the hype cycle and tripe. So you have a new technology comes out, everybody gets super excited and you know, it's going to change the world and then it doesn't happen quite the way that they expect and everyone goes, oh, this wasn't as good as I thought. And then you start to get more practical application and, and so forth. Right. So the hype, kind of the roller coaster of big hype and then big disappointment of that hype, you know, the hangover, I guess, from the hype. And now you end up kind of coming back out and ending in a different place. I think for sure we are now seeing this with this concept of AI agents, right? Is there has been so much talk about agent. Agent is some sort of magic wand and magic pixie ducks that's going to do things. And people are really starting to understand that in order to actually build and use agents, it's not as easy as you would think. And this would apply to the manufacturing and any of the businesses that are there. So I think we're starting to get. And interestingly enough, one of the biggest challenges with building these AI agents is understanding your business processes and your workflows and being able to codify those in a way that you could train or at least instruct an agent or agents of what to do. Right. Companies don't know what their workflows are and their processes Are. And they can't define them. And they, if they could, they can't agree on them because there's so many of them and so forth. So what we're running into is not so much the technological barriers of the, of AI, but the. Some of the preparation that is required in order to take advantage of it. And I think this, this article touched on that. But we're seeing that in more across the board is there's this recognition now that, okay, the agents certainly have a lot of potential, but there's a lot that we have to be able to implement and do in order to take advantage of.

Well, I mean, listen, Clippy or Copilot is, is not all it's cracked up to be. And just because you have a free AI tool with your Microsoft 365 subscription does not mean that you're now powering through things with agents. Now there are some great wholesale distributors, manufacturers I've talked to, that are really working on a lot of these workflows and pulling those things together. But what I see and then this is almost like 10 to 1. Tommy, can you able to hear me or am I still.

Yeah, you're doing better now, so I guess you must have shut off ESPN or.

No, what I did is I put three more hamsters on the wheel to power the Internet here.

Okay.

And then I've got a little bike. Yeah.

So they're sustainable energy. That's good to hear.

That's right. And I've got a little cycling wheel under my desk and I'm just pedaling that as well.

I can see you sweating there. Okay, good, good.

I think this is probably 10 to 1 in discussions when I talk to even, even 30, 40, 50 branch distributors who are, you know, approaching a half a billion in sales, large teams. What's happening to them right now is they might be doing some basic stuff with some ChatGPT licenses or some things like that for some of their people. You know, one of the big takeaways from distribution strategy groups, AI for Distributors conference that they had a few weeks ago in Chicago was about getting guardrails in place for, you know, what information is going out into the AI world. But separate conversation with that. But is that what people are finding is that their businesses and their business practices, or lack of business practices, as you were describing, workflow, you know, their lack of true sales processes, their lack of a true data hierarchy and how they're managing their data, a lack of technological advancements in general, are now getting themselves in a place that says, can we really get the return on investment from AI because our inputs aren't strong enough because of where. How we're kind of struggling with these things. Literally, you know, talking to some very, very large companies who have no truly defined sales processes. And I think to not throw any rocks at any of those folks in that setting is, I think the takeaway here, Tom, is what got you here is not going to get you there. And so the way, I mean, the.

Tribal knowledge, right, and, and we hear all the time, I mean, a lot of the organizations we talk to are very proud of their tribal knowledge, which is fine. There's a lot of value in the tribal knowledge as long as you can extract that tribal knowledge and, and leverage it. Right? Yeah. And it's not leveraged when it's in a handful of, you know, two or three people and a bunch of notebooks and things like that. That is not going to be something that's going to be leveraged in the.

Organization or, or we've just grown organically because we've worked really hard and we've hired some good people, but we don't even have the methods and the processes in place. And some things that you want to do with AI, you need to have some processes. Well, to get the best outcome, you need to be better than just. We've just worked hard and grounded out and we've grown and acquired some people and hired some good folks.

But that's the difference, right, between the chatbot, which we've all experienced, and using agentic workflows or workflows with, hence the word right. Workflow means process. And if you want an agent or a series of agents to automate or replicate or augment a process or a workflow in your business, then you have to be able to define what that workflow is and what you want the outcome to be. And that is what we're finding is much more difficult than we thought. And I think, you know, what we're realizing, right, as industry people, is we're going to. We are having to help companies at least start to put some structure around. What are those workflows exactly, right. What are some best practices? What are some, you know, what workflows really matter, which ones don't? Because the other challenge we see right, is very easy to go into a rabbit hole on the workflow and never come out again. You know, the analysis paralysis part. So anyway, my point being is the trough of disillusionment I don't believe is so much because the technology doesn't continue to expand. It's the infrastructure, the know how and the again workflows and processes that we have to be able to have to support the application of those. So.

Yep. Well in, in my travels and whether it's trade shows or events or conferences that I'm at on an ongoing basis, it's exciting to see the enthusiasm of a lot of people there. The number of people that are really getting some true results are small in comparison. And you know, and I, I want to be really cautious because I, I, you, you would be tough to find somebody in the distribution world with my background that is more bullish on the future of technology including AI. But I think we're at this place now where we're almost at a tipping point of people needing to take some steps forward and really bring the, and do something. Because you know I, I've been, I was just talking about DSG's event. I've been to NAW's events was just with the great folks at NAW the other day. But it's at these events it's, I don't want to say it's the same cast of characters but it's a very narrow group of people and I, I think let's just, I mean NAW shift event a couple months ago, probably 3 or 400 companies represented there. Same thing with maybe less. Probably 2, 300 companies represented at DSG's event that are really going out. And when you start thinking about the, the depending on whose research you look at somewhere between 80,000 and 250,000 or more. You know, depending who you talk to. Wholesale distributors in, in the US that's a small fraction of people that are even going to the events to really go try and learn. So we've got a long way to go. Good. So next article there was just. We don't need to spend a lot of time but one of the largest distributors of technology products and hard goods, Ingram Micro is just recovering after a big ransomware attack. And you know they're a just was looking at that. They're about a 48 billion dollar a year company. You would think that they were putting a lot of time and energy into reducing the risk of cyber attacks and so forth but they're, they're suffering it as well. You know I think there's the. I'm going to throw this out Tom. You, you've got maybe better understanding of these things and I'll just throw this random thought out. Comes to my mind is you know, the tens of billions of dollars a year companies are obviously all at big risk of cyber attacks. But when you start looking down range a little bit and I'll say the hundred million to a billion dollar a year company, there's a lot of dollars that could be extracted in ransomware and things like that from those companies. And I would think I could probably go hack in. If I'm a Russian or a Chinese or whoever it might be hacker that's looking for ransomware, I probably stand a lot better chance of getting a quarter million dollars out of a 200 million dollar, your wholesale distributor that is not technologically advanced from a cyber security standpoint. And I'm probably going to get into their system faster and easier than I'm going to get in Ingram Micros. So you know, we, we try and publish something every week about cyber security and I think this is something to really be paying attention to.

No, I agree. It's a, obviously it's a continual problem. It's not, there's not a magic wand issue, you know, answer to it either. Yep. So. But unfortunately yes, the risk definitely goes up and I do think yes, small businesses or small, medium sized business are probably in some cases the, at the highest risk. Yeah. Because it's, it's lower singing fruit and well anyway, I, I don't want to, don't want to give anybody any ideas but I do think it's a situation.

No, it's, it's, it's, it should be, you know, cyber security should be right on top of everything else that we're looking at. Maybe at the, for some companies it should be at the top of the list. Right. Because the deep fakes, you know. And it reminds me back Tom to and I think it was on our hundredth episode where we're 149 today. Right?

That's right.

149 times we've done this. It's astounding. It's almost like I've known you for a long time.

The episodes.

What's that?

You've known me for 149 episodes.

Yeah, I feel like it's 149 years. The, you know it's funny, I, I was, was joking with somebody a while back. They were commenting about us knowing each other for 55 or whatever years it is now. And I told him, I said yeah. I told Tom a while back when, when we both retire, I don't ever want to talk to him again. And I think it was Darlene, my wife said yeah, until you guys do your next deal.

Right.

So I don't think we'll ever be unhitched but the, the, the point about all of all of this in kind of trying to tie this thing back is that now is the time to really kind of be taking a look at this because Ian talked about, and that's what I was going to mention is Ian, I think it was in our 100th episode, Ian Heller from Distribution Strategy Group was talking about an example of a deep faith fake voice calling into an electrical distributor branch and saying, I need X amount of copper wire delivered to this job site. And historically we would just go do that. Right? And that could be tens of thousands of dollars just getting dropped off because somebody had a PO number on a phone call. Well now the risk of that, and that's not even somebody hacking into your system, that's just a deep fake AI coming and doing that. So the risk of things out there right now with the, some of the AI tools are astounding. Closing out on this segment, Tom, final article ties back to the first one is from Industry Today a good article about master your manufacturing data to supercharge AI. Having an understanding of our data is critical. We talk about it all the time. If, if you're in a position where you're trying to figure that out as a wholesale distributor or manufacturer, we're happy to talk to you anytime about what that means without any pressure of a sales call about lead Smart. But we, we deal with people in managing their data every single day. So happy to talk.

And you've got to look at the data. To my point earlier again, I'm kind of learning this as we move along here. When you're looking at your data and how you want to use that data, you have to take into account the workflows and the processes because the workflows and the processes are going to be triggered and, or driven and guided by that data as well that you're, you're utilizing and you want to be able to, when you start talking about the unstructured data, which is the best practices and the information about, you know, all the stuff that's not in a spreadsheet basically.

Right.

Having that available to enable the AI aspect of it is even becoming more and more important. So yeah, it's, it's, it's really got, it's really got some multiple dimensions I guess to the strategy that you need to be thinking about.

Very good. Just before we roll into our sales and M and A segment for the last few minutes of the show today, the NASDAQ is into the green now.

Okay. Okay. That's because people are listening to the show and they're realizing that it's not really as bad as they thought and everything's going to be fine and that we're going to cut rates in July. So. Which we've told them as well.

So half point.

Yeah, a quarter point.

And today might not be a bad day to buy some Salesforce stock.

Yeah.

So down. I was down. It's down 1.64% or.

Yeah, but it was up earlier. It was up earlier in the week. So I don't know.

Yeah, there's. I don't think there's anything tied to it. Just I, I like to.

Just. Traders. Traders.

Yep. So good. All right, so any triggers for you here on any of these three articles? Three or mid. Three mid year strategy shifts from sales and marketing management. The number one strategy will make your sales calls more successful from Inc. And you know, those interest you.

Yeah. I mean that three year strategy again kind of comes back to what some of the things we were, we've been talking about. We've talked a lot about. I think there were three shifts that they talked about. I'll just hit them real quickly. More alignment with sales and marketing. We've talked about that over and over.

Preaches about that.

Right. Reskilling sellers and you know, a lot of. We even had some conversations about this last week in the meetings we were in. Right. Is how do you re skill sellers and how do you align them towards, you know, very clear goals that align not only to what they do but how the company works and how they incorporate technology and, and so forth. And then the third shift was leveraging technology. So alignment, reskilling and technology. These are things over and over that we've been, we've been talking about.

Well, I, I think this is an interesting point, right Tom, is this, I think just some of the perspective that you kind of. We bring from, you know, having a background in wholesale distribution. But as well as though being a technology company is. I would say you might have a different take on this from numbers. I'm just going to say 70% of the companies that I talk to, which is multiple companies every day.

That I.

Talk to and they're mostly, I'll say 70% wholesale distributors, 30% manufacturers have never even had a CRM of any sort in their business. I mean we have major companies that, you know, household names and wholesale distribution that are using our platform now that have never had a CRM, let alone an AI enabled smart CRM and customer intelligence solution in their business. But yet you have these a lot of these companies who have never done that, never tried to get adoption of that, who are now thinking about and looking at the big wave of AI tools that they could go buy and they're getting inundated with, you know, at the DSG event there was 41 companies that sell technology solutions for wholesale distributors. And I don't think any of them didn't mention having AI just because that's what everybody does at this stage where they have it or not. People say that and in that setting. But you start thinking about the shift that's needed and you know that's needed in that setting of reskilling. Right. If you're concerned about, you know that your people don't log in regularly to your, your ERP system. Right. Or if you have a CRM of any sort or even maybe a, a mobile BI tool or something like that, if your people aren't using that and you're not ready to reskill them to even do those basics, the idea of getting them to understand how to become a, a junior prompt engineer to get data from their AI tools that you might be going and buying is kind of futile, I think.

Yeah. No, I mean you're, it's. Again, we talked a lot, a lot about this week at some of our meetings. Right. Is what is the future of the skill that is required for not only outside sales, but inside sales. Even, you know, counter sales people, branch people, all of those types of things. It's, there's definitely a lot of shifts there. So anyway, I thought that was a good article of.

No, it was recent. Totally, totally agree with that. Very positive from that standpoint. Let's kind of jump ahead here and let's roll into the people in leadership segment. We had a couple articles there from one from HR dive, AI using managers rely on the tool to decide who gets promoted or fired. It says 6 in 10 managers who use artificial intelligence, nearly all 94% of them used to make decisions about their direct reports. That surprised me.

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't read it in detail. Did it say that, you know, what they were using to, to drive the data from that or how are they using AI to make those decisions?

No, I did, I was just going to say this. When making personnel decisions, managers use AI to determine raises, promotions, layoffs and terminations. So 78% raises, 77% promotions and 60% layoffs and termination. 64% said more than seven and 10 leaders said they use AI to help them manage their teams and they have confidence that they have that it's making fair and unbiased decisions. Which is kind of interesting. Right.

Because where is it getting its data? I mean, what is it, what is it using to make those decisions?

Well, you would have to assume they're loading in. I'm just looking if it says anything.

But are they loading in like job reviews or.

I'm sure, yeah, yep. It says, for instance, GoDaddy uses promotion flagging to identify protest potential eligible employees. So I'm sure they're loading all of their reviews all of the days off. Have they had, you know, awards given to them? Any, any AI, any HR data that they're keeping. Right. Performance. I mean, I, I would suggest the baseline of it all. I don't think the article said spec specifically, but you have to assume the baseline of all of it is performance review. Right. And then if you tie, if you type performance review to data that people are keeping in spreadsheets about salary ranges and bonus ranges compared to other people in an organization, you start loading all of that stuff in. You want to go figure out how to, to do your layoffs. There's all kinds of slicing and dicing you can do now that you can never do before. Right. Show me all my people that have this level of performance review have met these goals and make 10% more than the average employee. I mean, that's, you know, very straightforward prompts if you put the data in correctly and yeah, you can come back and look at the tiers. If you're thinking, I'm just thinking about layoffs, it's like, well, why, why wouldn't I want to lay off my underperforming, overpaid.

Well, I guess you could also take it one step further. Right. And use the AI to identify maybe too many layers, you know, is there too many layers of management? What is really the value of some of these jobs that are here? Right. And identify jobs that may not be, you know, really providing the value to the organization or are not needed within the organization. So yeah, it's, it's. So AI is not just taking people's jobs, it's helping people potentially. I mean, if you look at all of what Microsoft just laid off more people yesterday, I don't know, 9,000 earlier.

In the week, wasn't it?

Yeah. And I think it was 10,000 before. Yeah. I mean, if you're, you know, laying off or considering layoffs of that magnitude, I could see where something like this could be useful from. I'm not saying it's working or I advocated, I could just see how people would use It.

No, absolutely. Good, good. Well, Tom, let's kind of scroll through a few things here. We've kind of gone a little bit long today. We have a section called Channel Leaders on the Move. The one thing I was going to mention this week in two segments here, we talk about organizations who are adding to their. Their executive teams. Gray Bar, Big National Electrical Distributor named a VP of AI and Digital Transformation, another one of those. As mentioned earlier, A.O. smith, another large manufacturer, names a chief technology officer. So gonna see, I think more and more of that coming in. What's going to be interesting is to see how those people can really get their arms around all of the other issues that we were talking about earlier today about, you know, processes, workflows, systems that are in place, disparate data around organization or silo data around organization, and then challenges of adoption. So nice to have a title, nice to have a person in the spot. But those are herculean efforts that people are going to get their arms around. So industry scuttlebutt, we can kind of scroll through there, a couple of acquisitions. But Hardi, the Heating and Air Conditioning Distributors International, and I should say Heating Air Conditioning Refrigeration Distributors International posted an article about their revenues for their May distributor revenues that they track those each month swing to a modest decline. So we're partnered with Hardy. We've just recently expanded that partnership with them. Pretty excited. They're just a great, great trade group, solid management team. Their marketing team's fantastic. We're participating in their December national event and I'll be speaking at their marketing Summit in September. And they're taking. They're taking me to two of my favorite spots in the country, New Orleans and Las Vegas.

All right.

I just, I'm not a fan of either one.

So party time.

Yeah, I should send you to both. So anyways, that kind of winds us down for the day. One of the things I did want to mention is thanks to our good friend Mike Hockett from mdm. Mike listens in pretty regular. He's been a guest. We need to get Mike scheduled again. I saw Mike at the NAW MDM Shift conference a couple of months ago. Had a good chat with him and, and talked nicely about him. When my meetings at NAW the other day, Mike did a bunch of research with his team and put together this great new calendar so. Of upcoming industry events. So thank you, Mike, for doing that. We've added that to the events that we already have published. So if you're in the manufacturing wholesale event space and you Want to see what's going on with buying groups, trade associations, and general industry events as a whole? Make sure that you get our newsletter. And we talked about that at the beginning of the show.

Wow. Let's look at that. I didn't realize this. I guess Lily added all this. Look at all of these.

Lily was busy yesterday.

Holy crap.

Yeah.

You're going to all of these, right? No. Oh, my word.

Tom. No, but a lot of them. Way too many of them. So just scroll up from the bottom there, since you're at the bottom. That one. The hardy one.

Yeah. We don't need to go through all of them, but.

No, but there's a lot of them. There's seven or eight of them that I'll be at.

All right. I'm going to this one right here, this first one. So.

Yes, you are.

So.

And. And then we'll see what else I drag you to. You've been to FabTech, the one in September before.

Yeah.

You like that?

I did, actually.

All the welders.

Yeah, no, it was kind of in, actually. Good.

Hey, you want to get out of here?

Let's do it. Let's let everybody get on with their day.

Let's. Let's just kind of recap what we do every week. I'm Kevin Brown and I'm here with Tom Burton. And we talk about wholesale distribution and manufacturing. We look at the. What's going on in the week or what's going on around us regarding the economy, supply chain, wholesale distribution and. And sales and marketing and M and A and all of those things. And we do that by the use of the newsletter that we just had up. And again, if you're listening on the podcast or any recordings of the show and not seeing us, you don't see that newsletter. So we'd love to get that out to you. So if you'd like to get that, you can just simply send us an email@helloadsmartech.com we'll get that out to you right away. You can go to LinkedIn and look up Lead Smart Technologies, follow our page there and request it there as well. And. Or you can go to the website for the podcast, which is www.aroundthehornpod.com. you can subscribe to both the newsletter as well as any of the podcast formats there. So we love it when you're with us here each week. What we're one little simple ask that we have of you. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, subscribe. But don't just subscribe, go Leave a review. When you leave a review, that pushes us up a little bit higher in their algorithms and gets us out to far more people. If you're on YouTube, certainly hit the subscribe button and you can even hit the little bell there. So you'll get alerts when we go live and leave a review there or a comment there as well. And that's extremely beneficial to us. As we said, you know, 200 plus thousand wholesale distributors in the U.S. and tens and thousands of manufacturers that go with that. And when you extrapolate that globally, what we know is that 75% out of every dollar goes through a manufacturer and a distributor globally. And we would like to impact that more. We typically have, Tom, five or six different countries represented listening in. Sometimes it's as much as eight or nine each week. And so we'd like to get this message out more. So if you like what you hear, share it with your friends, help us out a little bit. We work hard on this. John Taylor, that does the back end of this as an editor and producer, will be working hard this afternoon, and Lily works hard on the front end. So it's the four of us that are involved in this along with our guests. So we'll look forward to seeing you again soon. We've got some great guests coming up. If you've got suggestions on guests or topics to discuss, please share those with us. In fact, I remember, Tom, I got a LinkedIn note. In fact, we need to do this. I'm going to share this with you before we go, if I can find this very quickly. Jeff Lancaster said, Kevin, great podcast. Would love to hear a discussion on sales forecasting and strategies during this time. So, Tom, I think that to me suggests a around the horn 2.0.

This seems a 2.0 episode. Yeah, let's do that. That's. We could definitely talk a lot about that. Good.

All right, my friend, I will see you Monday in Orlando. Enjoy the weekend with your lovely wife Lauren, and we will wish everybody a wonderful weekend. And thank you again for being with us. Be kind, be safe, and do good things.

Have a good weekend.