Around the Horn In Wholesale Distribution - Episode 35

Sa Sam.

Hey, hey, hey.

Good morning.

How are you, Tom?

Afternoon. Good.

Yep. Good to see you, Brendan.

Nice to be seen, guys.

All right.

My mom's not too happy that we're doing this on Good Friday, but we're here anyways, you know. Okay.

Yeah. Yep. Well, you know, that's the troopers that we are. So west coast time for Tom and I and east coast time for you in, in New Jersey. But we're going to have a good morning. Probably a abbreviate things a little bit because I know a lot of people are sneaking out. But before we dive in, let's do a little bit of an introduction because we want to make sure all of the listeners have all the feedback and information needed. But my name is Kevin Brown. I'm joined by my co founder of Lead Smart Technologies, who's the sponsor of our live broadcast as well as our podcast, Tom Burton. And then Brendan Breen with the Industrial Supply Association. So we. Why are we here, you may wonder? Well, we try and bring all the news together of the week in wholesale distribution, whether it's technology related, economic or economy related, digital transformation discussions, wholesale change, all of the things happening out there, whatever it might be related to wholesale distribution. We try and bring a lot of the key points of that information together, bring a guest on when possible, kind of chat about that, how that is, those factors are impacting wholesale distribution and manufacturing. But we do this on multiple platforms. So this morning we're live on LinkedIn, Facebook Live and YouTube Live. If you're on any of those platforms and you like what you're hearing, click the subscribe or the like button and join us each week again. And then later today all of this will be available recorded on all the major podcast platforms. So we, we're sponsored by the company that Tom and I work for, Lead Smart Technologies. We're a customer intelligence and CRM and channel collaboration platform that is a vertical specific solution developed specifically for the wholesale distribution channel. So we get together, we share across these platforms and hope you enjoy. We're looking forward to any feedback you might have for the future on who we should have as a guest, maybe topics to discuss as well. So let's dive in. Hey Brendan, thanks for joining us again. Maybe you can give us the quick 30 second overview of you and Isa and we're going to talk a whole lot more about ISA and your upcoming event later in the broadcast today.

Yeah, so I'll save, I'll save the goods for the end, so, so we won't get too far into it. But I'm Brendan Breen, president of ISA Industrial Supply Association. We are a channel association that brings together manufacturers, distributors, rep agencies and fantastic business solutions providers and service providers like Lead Smart. We bring all these people together to lead the channel forward, to create a forum where these channel partners can gather, learn together, collaborate, share best practices, build relationships, and ultimately serve an evolving end user. And yes, we do have an event coming up in I think nine days, so my head is a little crazy right now, but I'm super excited to share a little bit more later on in the episode.

Great. I'm excited that you called us Lean. Lean Smart.

Yeah.

Did I?

That's what, you know, those listening podcasts that can't see us wouldn't know, but that's what people think about when they see us, Tom, both of us, they.

Go, why are you called Lean Smart? Anyway, let's do a quick good morning to Tom. Great to see him here as, as always. Good morning to Will as well. And yeah, let's get into the news.

Good. Yeah, we had a lot of folks click the, the, the button on LinkedIn that they were joining us today. So we look forward to some live crowd and then hopefully that's a benefit to the folks listening in later. So first news point and I wanted to reiterate this, you know, as we have a, a group of folks that will be listening in our recorded version of this. What those on the live session are seeing is a, an email that we send out every Friday morning where we brought all these news sources that I mentioned earlier from around wholesale distribution into a single. A email that goes out, we call it around the Horn. Just like the broadcast that we do here. If you don't get that email and you're interested in seeing that, couple of ways you can do it. If you're live with us on whatever platform you're on, just send us a direct message with your email address. We'll add you to that list. And then if you're listening on the podcast, the email address would be helloeadsmart tech.com and we'll get you added to that list. So we're looking at this live and let's dive in. So that first article, how Generative AI can Drive Supply Chain Transformation. Interesting stuff.

Yeah, it's funny. And Brandon, I'm definitely interested in your. Brendan, I'm definitely interested in your take on this as well is, you know, you see all of this stuff and it's every day it's another, you know, here's how AI is going to be Applied. Here's how we're going to use generative AI. But what people don't talk about is, well, all of that's driven by data. And you know, we see this all the time, right? Data, especially internal data in a lot of these companies is less than ready to be used for AI, let's just put it that way. And I think that what, what's really being missed right now is, yeah, there's a tremendous number, a tremendous amount of opportunity to use generative AI and to drive supply chain or you know, other parts of the business. But if that data is not really clean and good hygiene and good integrity and you know, the fact that you even have, you know, some confidence in that data, then there's no way you're going to want to use that from an AI perspective to, to drive the business. So I just think it's funny because it's, it's an area that keeps being overlooked. And I think if you look in the next year it's probably going to be the, one of the most important areas that come up, which is how do you get your data or how do you get ready for AI, especially when you're using internal data versus third party data out from the web. And that was my initial takeaway from that article.

To respond. I mean, I think it's definitely getting your data ready, but I think the other side of this is getting your people ready. I think that there's so many people that are seeing it as, oh my gosh, this is a quick plugin that's going to super make me efficient and maybe get rid of a couple of FTEs for me and cut out, you know, a bunch of this repetitive task stuff. And that's maybe in some cases somewhat true. But to your point, your data needs to be ready for it. But also there's, it's. What I'm seeing a lot of in the news right now is the, the people that are not fearing it and are trying to better understand how they can use it are the ones that are going to continue to, you know, be able to harness the power of it. Those that are just looking to plug it into their existing company. That's not going to be a recipe for success or.

Yeah, that's right. Tom tells me all the time when we're talking with our product team. There's no auto magic here, Kevin. We can't just make things appear because you told a customer we could do something. But I think that's a great point. And as we're seeing technology tools become More prevalent that reference AI. It's interesting because one of the things specifically at the distribution side of, of of the wholesale channel is we, we talk about this all the time on our broadcast, right? It's siloed data, right? We've got ERP data, we have marketing automation data, we have maybe a data warehouse, we have a, you know, volumes or a plethora of spreadsheets throughout an organization and we have all of these e commerce data, all these different data sources and rarely are those siloed sets of data do they have any type of hygiene plan for keeping them. And we have a customer that's a longtime customer of Lead Smart who's hesitant to connect our CRM and channel collaboration solution. Part of what they're using in customer intelligence, their man, they're a manufacturer. And because the data that they have in our system is, I won't call it pristine, but pretty close. And the data that they have in their ERP system is, you know, multiple customers at the same address. Some customers, it's the same customer and multiple addresses because they didn't clean the data when someone moved or whatever it is. And if they were to go try and just go buy a quick, you know, AI type product that was going to try and solve major solutions in their business, they would have a difficult time because they don't have the data clean. So the output of the AI is not going to be what they had necessarily hoped for or just not as reliable, you know.

Yeah, I mean, think about it for yourself, right? If you go, you know, study something and you're getting wrong information that you're studying and then somebody asks you to provide a feedback or opinion on it, chances are you're not going to have the right, right answer. And it's the same sort of thing in that area. And I think Tom May also brings up a good point too, is that a lot of companies are going to be concerned about taking data from third party or external sources because it's like, you don't know, it could be hacked, it could be, you know, there's a lot of things that can be done to affect that integrity. So all of this will get worked out. But I think it's an area that we're going to see a lot more of over the next, you know, coming months, that's for sure.

Well, we know is that we got to get planning for it, right? That's part of kind of this. I thought that made an interesting comment in this article that said the prediction was that by 2026, three years away, 55% of the Forbes Global 2000 OEM manufacturers will have redesigned supply chains based on AI. So there's. We have another article here that we'll probably move past today because it's got some similar information. But the planning's got to start now as I think the takeaway here, right is and we talk consistently about digital transformation, we have, you know, at the end of the day, right, wholesale, distribute, manufacturing. Distribution is or what I like to just call the wholesale channel, right. Typically mature products, mature markets and mature companies. And so they're a lot of what we use the term late adopters, right. And so they might be working with a. You know, I see Will Quinn here from, is with us today from Infor. He probably sees this all the time in discussions is that you've got these organizations that are on 15, 20 plus year old ERP systems with a 10 year old server that's in a closet down by the warehouse that's not getting ready necessarily for where we're headed. And it's great. Will just made a comment here, right. Moving to the cloud makes your data more secure. Having all your data in a data lake allows for deployment of tools like AI. So this transformation is not simple necessarily to do and it's. You got to start with a plan.

All right, where do you want to go next?

Kevin, let's. Why don't we jump, why don't we jump past that data? There just, there was some good information, a follow up article about where and how much manufacturers are investing in digital transformation. There was just one key takeaway I saw from that article and it says more manufacturers are talking the serious talk about digital transformation, but not yet walking the walk toward full implementation. Right. And it makes me think about a conversation Tom, we had, you and I had yesterday was, you know, we'll go to a great example. We're going to talk a lot today about ISA23. We'll be exhibiting it at Brendan's organization's event coming up in Phoenix in a couple weeks. Not, well, nine days you just said. That's a reality check for me. I'm sure glad everything was planned out and scheduled and booked already. But you know, we've got to move past the talk about this and what we were talking about yesterday, Tom, right. Is you know, we get to a lot of events with trade associations and buying groups that we're members of and try and support and we'll meet folks that are like, oh my word, what you do is exactly what we need in our organization. And we need to get there. And then they get home and their head starts to, you know, throbbing with, well, wait, what will this mean in my organization? And they have no plan. And that's interesting about this. Right. But not yet walking the walk toward full implementation.

And we had a conversation about this with one of our buying group partners earlier this week. I think also, though we as vendors or, you know, even professional organizations, in some ways, I don't know that we're helping the cause. You know, we can confuse the message. We can confuse, you know, we were talking about this, Brendan, with a, with a large buying group this weekend about their show and having all these vendors kind of saying the same thing. But. And then the, you know, the customer kind of leaves going, I have all this data, but I don't really know how to turn that into action. And I think there's a real need to, you know, and I'm sure Isa I know does a really good job of that, but how do you clarify some of this so that you're not just getting a lot of vendor speak and then you're, as a, as a customer, you're trying to sort all that out. And it's an area we're working on more and more is like, how do we have more clarity of the communication and how it fits in and how it differs from other areas? Because, you know, to your point earlier, Kevin, a lot of the people are not, you know, super technical people. So we need to make it easier for them to understand this and then, you know, help them get through the process of getting there. Yep. And I think so. We have, we have, we have a part of the responsibility, I think, on some of the talk, you know, not turning into a lock, so to speak.

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, the, the answer or the pressures are real. I think that everybody is screaming, digitally transformed now. And everyone's saying if you're not thinking about it or doing something, you're late to the game. And that creates a little bit of a panic. And then, so I think some negative outcomes come from which are, you know, potentially even new business for a company like yours might be somebody that's not ready. You know, they haven't thought about it enough and they, they haven't really done it, but they're just panicking. And so, yeah, we are trying to create better customers for companies like you guys and for companies like Infor. We want people to be thinking about what their needs are, and then that helps them select the right tools, that helps them select the right path forward. In the right timeline. I mean, yes, we do want to encourage a digital savviness and, and push them towards transformation, but not at the expense of, you know, of the outcomes that they desire. So, yeah, I mean, we're working on it. We've got some good education sessions lined up at ISA 23 that are aimed right at that, teaching people how to prepare for that. I want to go look for a CRM right now. What questions should I be asking? So we're hoping that, that we can continue to do more stuff like that so that we can get people ready and to not panic.

Yeah.

Well, I think it's interesting as you describe that, because it's something that we, we see on a fairly regular basis, is that companies will not have that plan. Right. They'll, they'll not have, you know, worked with, whether it's a trade association or a buying group or just done the research themselves to figure out what is my plan for my technology. Right. Is okay, I need a, I need an ERP upgrade. But with that ERP upgrade, what does that mean to what I want to do for CRM or what I want to do for marketing automation? How is that going to impact my, my E commerce system or other, the warehousing systems I have, whatever it might be, there's no plan. And we see this consistently. And it, you know, it. Tom's team in our organization that manages our implementations that we call it point software, somebody bought that real quick because it made sense when they heard a sales pitch. Right. Somebody else over here bought this. And you've got groups of people within an organization that are using different point software, but they aren't part of a plan that's not been evaluated for how does it fit into the digital transformation in theory plan that they should have and does it integrate and so forth. So anyways, we see something we see pretty regularly.

Yeah. And again, our job collectively, right, as vendors or professional associations or whatever, is to help provide clarity and provide that blueprint, which I think, Brendan, to your point about the panic is, you know, the panic oftentimes occurs because you haven't gone through the process of getting ready. You don't fully understand. And then you feel like you have to do something and then you do something, like Kevin says, where you just go grab something and try and shove it in as a way to kind of band aid, whatever that. And you know, that ends up sometimes taking you, you know, two steps forward, but three back. So I just think it's, I'm, you know, I'm, I'M sorry I won't be at the show, Kevin, but next in nine days. But I think it's awesome. The more and more clarity we can help provide on this is really going to make a big difference.

Yeah, you should go in, Tom, for the golf outing and then I'll come in for the business side because you represent our.

Sounds like a good deal.

Yeah, you would represent our organization better in the golf outing. So let's, let's jump ahead though and because I want to spend some good time today talking about isa, but you know, eprocurement integrations. Right back to this, the same theme of the day so far. We talk pretty regularly in our broadcast each week about the E commerce changes and what's, you know, buyers changing, sellers changing and so forth. But this is a really good piece to talk about a little bit about E procurement integrations and it's really not something we've talked a lot about here, but I just thought it was, it was interesting. This article that we posted here is called Amazon's Best Kept Secret E Commerce or E Procurement Integrations. And just this hit me pretty quickly about 100 B2B E procurement systems. And what they're doing is tying into pretty much just whatever either internal E commerce system that organizations already have, but more importantly directly right into their ERP system. And it's astounding because this other stat for me that really caught me was Amazon business is currently being used by 55 of the Fortune 100 companies, 40% of the most populated local governments, and 50% of the largest hospital systems in the United States. These customers aren't necessarily buying on Amazon. They're procuring right out of their ERP systems. So why does that matter to what we're, you know, what we talk about here and in, in that setting is our audience is manufacturers, typically wholesale distributors and manufacturers reps and just manufacturers and distributors are finding the balance right now. And what is their roadmap moving forward with E Commerce? Right. Because and it's again back to the same discussion about having a plan is it's not as simple as just saying I went and bought a E Comm system or I, you know, have a third party system that lets me load a catalog in and now I have E Commerce. Right. The type of stuff that you're going to be competing against, you know, in theory now, right. If you're trying to deal with large organizations. But coming up more and more is these E procurement systems and other tools that the game just, we just all need to be ratcheting our games up on the stage stuff.

Yeah, I mean, Amazon's just obviously trying to entrench themselves in the business and become part of their stack. Right. And part of the family, if you will. And the more and more that they encroach in there and it becomes convenient, then, you know, it's hard to take them out, you know, so it's smart what they're doing, for sure. I think there will be ramifications over time because they are making it so easy. I know we have an article coming up about blockchain here in just a minute. And you know, that's one of the ways that companies will start to be able to compete with the types of things like an Amazon would do is, you know, how do you effectively use blockchain to communicate with your partners and your buyers or your vendors. But, you know, nonetheless, Amazon's going to continue to do that and it's something to be aware of.

Well, and I think it's, it's, it's not reasonable for, you know, the, you know, 10 location or 2 location or 20 location, necessarily wholesale distributor to think that they're going to play the same game as Amazon. Right. That's not reasonable. But to be paying attention to changing technologies and what's available to the buyer. Right. I mean, it's, it's, it's no different than, I mean, what really just triggered in my mind, right. If you go right now and look at some online images of a construction site that have been taken in the last 18 months, you'll see a dramatically different style of hard hat than you saw or head protection than you would have seen two years ago. Right. There's some international styles that have come in and not just styles, but levels of protection and it's different, Right. And distributors, if you had said, hey, you know what, I'm just going to continue to do what I've always done and sold the old style hard hat. Right. The market is changing. Expectations of the buyers are changing because somebody has come along and educated people that there's a better way. And so we have to look at that of how do we change to try and keep up to what our buyer wants? And our buyer is e procuring not just that we talk about all the time here is that the buyer is changing and how young they are and being millennials, but their style of purchasing as organizations is changing as well.

Yeah, I mean, I think that you have to understand it's an identity thing. Are you a competitor of Amazon? Are you the same type of company as Amazon. If you're a wholesale distributor, Amazon in a lot of ways is a tech company. And wholesale distributors, very few of them would call themselves tech companies. So if they're going to continue to do stuff like this, which they are, this is a tech integration. You know, how are you going to compete? And I think that that's where you need to identify who you are. What can you do that Amazon doesn't even want to try to do? What services can you offer, what support can you do? What kind of thinking can you do? How, how close can you get to your customer? Because Amazon wants to be digitally close to their customer.

Right.

I don't want to be personally close. Try calling customer service and you'll find out.

Right.

So it's, it's, it's a different game and I think that there's, there's room enough for everyone to win there. You just got to understand that that other part of the game is there. And maybe don't, you know, say you have to top Amazon or else you lose business. I think you just have to recognize who you are.

Yep, I think that's a great statement that you made there, Brendan, with that. My view of this is you don't have to try and beat them, you don't even have to try and equal them. You have to understand what is being offered to your customer by others and then decide do I want to try and do something similar that will allow them to e procure or whatever it might be. Back to my hardhat example. Right. You don't have to go change the hard hats you sell. You just have to understand that there's a change going on of things that are available to your customer and make a decision. Right. Okay. I want to reinforce what I'm already doing and the value that I bring. To your point, Brendan, or I want to change to offer something similar.

Right.

But it's that, oh, I don't have to worry about this or, and we see this in some of the events that we attend as well. And we had a comment a moment ago from Marty McLaughlin who will be with us next Friday as our guest. Marty's the chief marketing officer at Affiliated Distributors. And you know, sometimes whether it's their event or one of yours, Brandon's or some others, we do is, you know, we might talk to some distributors who they have a very simplified e commerce system now that there's nothing wrong with that. Right. The question is, do I bury my head in the sand? And I think that's the key takeaway here. Is to not do this. Do I bury my head in sand and say, oh, we did that, we bought X solution. Now I don't have to worry about E commerce. That's my takeaway for this is doesn't matter that you're already doing something. It's what's the change happening and do I have a plan to one understand that change and then to make a decision about am I going to try and compete in that arena or am I going to. To your point, Brendan, differentiate myself where I don't have to necessarily.

Yeah. You also have to ask yourself what, where some of your customers are. And yes, customers buying behavior is changing, but not everybody. You know, there's a huge part of the end user population that isn't going to need a ERP plug in, you know.

Yep. So great point. Tom May, who's live with us this morning, made a comment. Good lead into the customer service article I sent you. He sent me a great article. We're going to post that next week and the around the Horn newsletter. Thank you for that, Tom. So we'll add that in for next week. We had already kind of done, got the newsletter done for this week before I received that. But anyways, there's a lot of change going on there, right. So it's, it becomes critical to, to keep focused on what's coming. So.

And I'll just add one more thing before we leave this topic because Brendan, I think you brought up a really good point. Amazon has its purpose, right? There is a purpose where Amazon fits in really well and then there's places where Amazon is not your right solution for purchasing, but Amazon also. So there's a role aspect of it. But Amazon always has trying to, you know, make themselves as convenient as they possibly can and people appreciate convenience too. So I think what you have to look at is, okay, what's my role, right? How do I add value that would be differentiated from Amazon and then combine that go, okay, that's great, I know what that is. But then how do I continually make the buying process more convenient, more streamlined, a better experience for the buyer? If you combine those two together, that will really carry you over the top. And you know, because Amazon has its purpose, but it's certainly not, not everything, right?

Yep. Well, I think in kind of in closing on this, right. It really comes down to finding our place in the sandbox, right. And understanding who we want to be in, in our business. And to get to Brendan's point earlier, right, Try and call customer service at Amazon, right? It's Even worse if you're a vendor to them. But, but try and get that. And it just makes me think about that, right. Try and get somebody to come on site from Amazon or not just to beat up on Amazon, but Azoro or in other marketplaces. Right. Try and get someone from there to come on site to help you with a cutting tool problem.

Right?

Try and get somebody there to come on or whatever. That's exactly where I was headed next.

Right.

Or fit testing, respirator, whatever it might be. Right. Try and get that help in that setting. It's just not available to you. And that's where, you know, that's where regional, local and even some of the nationals can compete there. The big takeaway is understand what's going on, right. The changes that are happening, what's available to your customer and then find where your niche is within that, which probably includes continuing to evolve your own e commerce solution to improve it on an ongoing basis.

So.

All right, let's jump ahead here. We're going to talk about supply and demand regulation versus blockchain based government was the title of the article.

And are you going to jump past the, the news, the scuttlebutt news, Kevin, or.

Yeah, I was going to go straight to that other article. We'll do the scuttlebutt stuff next. I'm sorry I didn't mention that to you, Tom. Yep, we'll talk about that. Get some of Brendan's feedback, I think Mike. Mark, I'm sorry, Mike Hockett I think is with us today from MDM as well. And Mike did a, a great overview of one of the scuttlebutt articles we'll talk about. So we'll reference his work as well shortly. But I, I wanted to kind of get this out of the way. We'll talk about the scuttlebutt quickly and then I want to talk about isa.

Okay. Love it. So, yeah, I mean, this is one of my favorite articles because, you know, I think AI and blockchain are my two favorite things right now. But yeah, it's really interesting about what they were talking about in there is again, the primary use case of blockchain and B2B is interoperability between companies and how do you communicate securely and with trust and with, you know, confidence as you start to communicate with vendors or companies. Just like we were talking about with Amazon in a minute or second ago. Right. And they were really talking about some of the, you know, and I highly recommend the article because it really did. I thought a really good Job of just going through and looking at some use cases of it, how it can be utilized, things to be thinking about. You know, it has nothing to do with Bitcoin and crypto. This is all using the technology platform to provide that interoperability between organizations and between external and internal, you know, stakeholders that are not in the same organization. And you know, just as a final take on this is that I believe that in the future any type of situation that you're dealing with, with, you know, where you have to kind of cross the firewall, right. You're having to do something with a partner or an external vendor or whatever, it could be a quote or a customer even. It could be a quote, it could be orders, it could be supply chain, it could be all of those types of things. The blockchain will inherently give you a much, much more robust way of doing those things over time. And I think that's what they were really talking about and, and you know, how, how to govern it and all that stuff. Anyway, I just thought it was a really good article. So yeah.

Couple things that hit me right out of this. It talked about inventory has been managed predominantly over enterprise resource planning or ERP systems over the past couple of decades.

Right.

Straightforward. Everybody sees that. But it talks about that 75% of ERP projects fail post implementation. Lots of reasons why that is, but they're never quite exact. I mean unless of course will helped you. That's with us here sold you this system.

There are exceptions, right?

There's a 24 but, but you know, it's not, it's. It's in what we know, right. If when there's challenges with the technology implementations, it's oftentimes the, the user, the organization's unwillingness to make a shift or a change or preparation with this. But the point was that basically all the ERP data that you would work from moving forward is literally. We talk about this all the time in our organization is rear view mirror data. It's past performance and then maybe a little bit of forecasting and stuff. But this really takes that out of the fluctuation out of that when you start doing it live through blockchain of true partnership between manufacturer and distributor or dealer networks with that.

So it's going to open up capabilities for people to much easier compete with the Amazon E procurement systems and all of that and exactly right. I really believe it's going to be a big game changer for that smaller regional distributor on that side. Yep.

So a couple of takeaways from this. It had A list of things but it talked about, you know, the A block based, chain based system outperforms ERP systems. They talk about in numerous ways enable the. The organizations to function in an open environment through decentralized inventory management, single authoritarian or, or control. Blockchain enables multi stakeholder control so you can really look closer at things. There's seven of them here. We won't go through all of them but I thought it was interesting. And they talk about some cool stuff about, you know, what the future state looks like. Smart contracts. You've talked about that before, Tom. Right. Mitigating lead times and inventory control because it's all live in real time amongst the groups, so should be interesting. This is a good one to watch.

So Kevin, we haven't quite kept things as short as we would like to, so.

Yeah, that's typical.

Yeah. Let's. Let's go ahead and talk a bit about isa and I think, you know the. Unless there's something you want to just.

Touch on, we're just, you know, as we always do.

Right.

We talk about a few M A pieces and so forth. We talked this week about MSC posting some great earning results and, and having that come together. Then there was an acquisition, in fact I think it was announced at the very end of last week and after we had already had the broadcast on and it talks about DSG or Distribution Solutions Group acquiring Hisco. And that's what I wanted to mention is that Mike Hockett at Modern Distribution Management did an interview. So that's available on mdm. If you subscribe to that or just go to their website, you'll be able to see that. So that's kind of covers our scuttle. But in a quick little note today let's jump ahead and kind of talk about ISA 23 but ISA in general to start with. So maybe Brendan, having you with us today is great. You're a good friend of Lead Smart and we hope to be a good friend and supporter of ongoing of isa. But why don't you, if you don't mind, will you give us kind of the. The thumbnail of isa where it started, what was the original purpose. And there's been a lot of great changes in the last few years and I'd love to chat about that and then we'll talk about the event.

Sure, yeah, absolutely. So real quick, I mean ISA has been around in some name, shape or form for over 120 years. You know, we have always been dedicated to providing a forum of equal stakeholders to gather and share ideas and Build relationships and do business together. So, you know, we used to have a convention where we brought together three different associations called the Triple Mill, where there was a manufacturer organization, a distributor organization, and even the reps were there as well. And what came out of it was the birth of what is now called isa. And so we've kept that spirit and will continue to push that spirit into the future. But yeah, there has been some pretty dramatic change prior to the pandemic, but especially post pandemic, I mean we, we took, I would say in, in 2016, we decided to really change our brand, put ourselves out there as a, as a, as a modern association with a forward looking way of doing things. We did a lot of upgrades to our convention, a lot of upgrades to our offerings. We leaned into data and we really tried to come up with a new kind of aspirational vision which was to lead this channel forward. There's so much change that's happening from the end user and external disruptors that our members needed a resource to help them see into the future. And ISAAC can collectively keep our members informed and connect them with the right individuals. So moving through the pandemic and where we are today, you know, we are, we are focused on that same goal of leading the channel forward. We have taken really this last year and a half since kind of the pandemic subsided. And we were able to get back in person last year at ISA 22 to really lay the foundation for what we want to do next. And so, you know, I know we're going to talk about ISA23, but I'm really excited about what we start doing immediately after. I mean, we want to push into a lot more thought leadership with guys like Lead Smart, more education and training, bring more tools that related to data and benchmarking and making better decisions, but also lean into what we have always done best, which is networking, networking and more networking. So I'm really excited about the future. But you know, that's, that's ISA in the nutshell right now.

Well, that's, that's great. You know, it's interesting, as you were talking, it made me think, you know, I, we got involved with, with ISA during the pandemic. So the first two events we went to were virtual. Didn't. I didn't have the experience with the organization at prior any prior live events. And then going to Houston last spring for the spring event was just phenomenal and, and I'm looking forward to attending. I guess I just realized I'm heading that way a week from Sunday. So quick, quick reality check there. But the interesting thing for me there, right, is most of the buying group events you don't use, there's distributor, their members, distributor members, and there's the group of manufacturers they partner with. But rarely do you see manufacturers reps, maybe a couple of them.

Right.

And then you go to the next buying group event and same thing, but with their network. Right. At isa, you get the top manufacturers reps in the country and it may be that there's some larger or stronger manufacturers reps, but they're not focused on the future as much in supporting their, their industry if they're not participating in ISA. I, I was a manufacturer's rep for, for 10 years in the 90s and early 2000s and kind of knew of ISA, but missed the boat on participating. But what's great is multiple buying groups that we're partnered with are at the ISA event. The members, many of the members from those organizations that we wouldn't see in one place are now at ISA manufacturers that aren't associated necessarily there. So it's a melting pot that's, that's different than the events that you might go to with a buying group.

Yeah, a couple, couple of things on that. And then I do want to, I want to talk a bit about what we're doing at ISA 23, but I think you're absolutely right. First off, the reps, I think that there is a golden moment for rep agencies right now to provide significant value. And ISA is leaning into that, that notion as hard as we possibly can. You know, it's, it's not an invite thing to have them come. You are part of this channel and I believe that, you know, because of where the end user is and because of what's happening at Wholesale Distribution right now, the door is pretty wide open for you guys to create valuable, valuable product specification, valuable training, things like that, that maybe distribution doesn't want to do and, and is needed by the manufacturer. So I, I think that I am encouraged by the, the reps that we are bringing, but I'm calling on all the rest of the reps to, to come and check us out because there's incredible value and, and I get probably three or four times a week a question of, from a manufacturer, good line saying, I'm looking for reps. Can you help me out? And I go every single time to my list of attendees in my list of certified rep agencies certified through isa. So that's a, that's the first thing. Good.

Yeah, the event. Let's.

Yeah, yeah, let's focus on that. So, yeah, it's gonna be great. We're really excited about it. We did really lean into the, the mantra this year that we wanted to create as an aspirational thing, the best networking event in the industry. And so we did a couple things last year. We were talking about tech rollouts earlier on this and a lot of them do fail. We had a scheduler tool that we used last year that had a lot of issues and a lot of people share their frustrations with us. We fully scrapped that, rebuilt it so that people could make as many meetings in advance of the meeting as they possibly could. And we've been hearing great feedback. There's thousands of meeting on the books already, people chatting back and forth in there. So the tools that we're providing allow for you to pursue that great networking. We also. One of the biggest comments I've always heard is Brendan, I love the booth meetings. They're great. But I get the majority of my business done at the bar afterwards or, you know, outside the hotel. And I'm like, oh, we spent so much time trying to do the booth stuff. So instead of fighting against that, we're, we're offering more opportunities for what I'm calling casual collisions. These ways that people can just run into each other, rub elbows, buy each other a drink or do whatever. We created two new things or three new things. First is the golf event. And I know, Kevin, you're signed up and there's, you know, 110 of your, your closest friends will be there as well. So great course, but six hours of kind of chill networking where you get to run into people, talk to them and, and meet new people. Sometimes when you're sitting across the table at a six foot boot or a ten foot booth, it's hard, it's intimidating. They know why you're there and why you're talking to them. In golf, you can kind of just relax. So we're doing that. We're also doing a 5k fun run the next morning so you can participate in both again, that's a good hour that you can walk, run next to somebody and chat them up. So these casual collisions. There's also a golf simulator on the show floor. A bunch of putting greens. If you want to just pick up a putter and chat with some people. Same way you would at a golf course. Right. So I think that's a, that's another big piece. We also have something that we're trying and, and I'll be the first to admit it, I was A little skeptical. We have a assigned seating lunch where people will be randomly paired up with each other on the last day. I didn't think people would bite. We've have. I think over 50% of our registrants have said, yes, we want to do that. Which means you're going to get to be sat. You're going to get to be sat at a table with strangers, you know, and you get to meet these folks, talk to them about why you're passionate about this industry, learn a little bit about them personally and have a nice lunch together. And again, that doesn't happen without just a little bit of intention on Isa's part. So layer on top of all that stuff, you know, more receptions, more time in the booth than ever before and, you know, just a general good time. So really, really excited about the event coming up in a couple days. And there's still plenty of time to get in there. You know, it's not a big product show, so if you're manufacturer out there, you don't need to ship out, you know, tons and tons of product. You don't even need to have a booth if you don't want to. And if you're a distributor, you know, just pack up a suitcase and come on and join us. But we still have a few foursomes available. Plenty of room on the 5K and, you know, we'd love to have everybody there.

I think it's going to be. It's going to be a good event. You know, it just kind of made me think we were at a. Tom and I did an event in December and one of the cocktail receptions was probably this offline just to think about, but think about for the future. One of the cocktail receptions was in where the exhibitor booth were. Booths were. So people were mingling and cocktailing and so. And we were in the booth with a cocktail, people were mingling and it was kind of an interesting setting that. But people showed up.

We're doing that. On day two of the event, the IMR network is going to be hosting a reception for everybody. So you're wine and some snacks right on the show floor. As soon as we ring the bell that it's over. So everybody gets to, you know, grab a drink and stay there and keep the. Keep the flow going.

So you typically have two events a year, right? Live events. This fall we looking at sales works and women in industry and emerging leaders. Are those the right. Did I get that right?

Yep, you got it, man. So, yeah, we're excited about that. That is the The Monday, or I don't know what's the Monday, but it's November 1st through the 2nd in Orlando, Florida. Really, really good quality professional development and networking. And we're leaning into a couple of new, new concepts here. We want to build off the momentum that we created last year in our first event at a fall summit and, and make it even stronger. So there still will be emerging leaders and women in industry tracks that will be focusing on leadership development and advocacy of women in the channel. And one of the differences, we're kind of going to encourage people to go in, in and out of each track and enjoy some of the sessions in one and maybe one in another. We are going to make a little bit of a change over in the saleswork side. I think that, you know, in the past we'd focus on the relationship between reps and manufacturers. And this year I think we're just going to expand that and say this is really about the channel. So let's lean into bringing some great thought leaders and some good educators in on sales and marketing excellence, you know, and that's available for anybody. You know, most people that are involved with ISA are in some sort of sales capacity and how can we provide value there for reps, manufacturers and distributors, even service providers? So that's a change. But we're again super pumped for the fall. But can I go back to ISA 23 for one? Yeah, one quick thing before we're gone.

I know I actually had another question about that, so I was going to go back to it as well.

So a couple of quick things just to get it out there. Our, you know, number of companies that are attending this year is up by like 10%. Our number of manufacturers up by, I think it's 11%. Number of distributors coming up by 17% and then total number of attendees 18% up. So, you know, we're, we're seeing some momentum right now. We're seeing a lot of growth and there's just a general positivity about this event. So we're really, really, really excited.

Why don't you. What I forgot to ask you earlier. Why don't you. We don't need to talk about all of them because there's a lot of speakers, but maybe a couple of the keynotes. I know Russ from the Brooks Group is going to be there. Mike Marks has got a couple of sessions that are obviously interesting to us, so maybe just kind of overview of the. Of the key topics.

Sure, sure.

I'll.

I'll be as brief as possible. So opening keynote From Bill Walton, bas legend, hall of Famer in general. Fantastic guy. That one's going to be great. Plus he'll be at the reception the night before. He's really excited to meet everybody. So that's going to kick things off from there we go into our breakout sessions and yeah, you're right, Mike Marks is going to do two sessions on CRM, like almost like a beginner session and then an advanced session. We're going to have the guys from Dorne Group talk about resetting the value proposition and articulating the value proposition of channel and distribution. I think it's important from an end user's perspective that they see the value of channel and that can be articulated. Well, we have, like you mentioned, Russ and Lee from the Brooks Group coming on to talk about integrating sales with the rest of your organization. We also have Jason Hein from Acumental to come in and talk about how technology and people can work better together. Meaning don't fear the AI, don't fear the tools. They're, they're your friends and will just make your lives easier and you'll be able to do more time doing the things you want to do, not data entry and stuff like that. And then the last education session of the breakouts, we are leaning into the guru on the entrepreneurial operating system Traction, who is going to come on and help people with an internal operating system on how to create a culture of accountability and really achieving goals.

Yeah, that, that EOS session should be great. We, yeah, we operate on EOS at Lead Smart.

Exactly. It's just a, it's a great way to organize your, your, your business and also bring everybody together. And then as always, we're closing out the whole thing with Alan Bolio from RTR Economics who is just the guy in our space to talk about where this channel is going to, from an economic guidance standpoint. And I think we really, really, really need that right now. Everybody is fearing things that maybe they don't need to fear. And he's coming in to set the record straight about our channel, about our customers, about where he sees us manufacturing or North American manufacturing and that going. So again, rather than look at Fox or CNN or msnbc, this is the, this is the real deal of what's actually going to be happening. So that's going to be a phenomenal session. That's great.

Yep. So we'll look forward to seeing you in, in nine days. That's going to be great. And then we'll look forward to the fall events with isa. If you're listening or you're with us live today. Regardless if you're not. If you're in the industrial world, which is very broad and in channel sales and you're not involved with ISA, it's isapartners.org go take a look. Great organization led by a good friend of ours here, Brendan. Thank you for being with us today. We didn't make that. We were going to cut things short today. We went our normal time. But that's probably my fault for talking too much.

I just have one final question before we go, Kevin. Are you trained for the 5K? Yeah.

Right. I have trained significantly for the receptions.

Okay, that's what I thought.

Yeah. And we'll be training for the golf outing between now and nine days from now. So there will be some. There might even be some coaching involved with that. So I. I think my invitation for the golf outing was the comedic relief. So it's going to be a good event. But more than just this one event, you know, regardless of if you're in the Industrial Channel, you could be in the food processing arena, distribute or manufacture turf, whatever it is. If you're involved in wholesale distribution, get involved in your trade associations, buying groups, whatever it might be to support the channel. Because today we're talking about the Industrial Channel. At Lead Smart, we work with people across multiple channels. 75% of worldwide commerce, basically three quarters of every dollar goes through wholesale distribution. If you're involved in wholesale distribution, continue to prop it up. Focus on getting involved in networking organizations to make it better and obviously focus on that technology growth as we've talked about so much today. So let's kind of wrap that up for today. Tom, anything else to add before we go or. Brendan, Anything? No.

Have a good holiday weekend, everybody. Thanks, everybody who jumped in and contributed. As always, Brendan, keep an eye on Kevin. I'm sorry I'm going to miss it there and sounds like it's going to be a great show.

We'll take care of them. Thanks, guys.

Have a great weekend, everyone. Be safe. Do good things.

Bye.

Bye.