Around the Horn In Wholesale Distribution - Episode 50 with Special Guest Dirk Beveridge!

Good morning.

Hey, hey, hey.

Good morning, gentlemen.

Good to see you, Dirk, Welcome.

I am thrilled to be with you guys. Thanks for having me.

Fan. Fantastic. You know, Tom and I are both here in Southern California and you are. Tell us where real quick because you have the latest background.

Yeah, I'm in Lake Placid, New York. This is so beautiful. I decided to step outside of the Airbnb and. Yeah. So I hope this is okay being outside.

We hear you, we hear you. Great. I'm ecstatic to have you with us. We've been working on this for a long time, so we thank you for being with us. We're going to kind of talk about you and what you do, but for those who have missed you and all the things that you publish and the great content, we're going to talk about that in a few minutes. But to kind of get us started, I'm Kevin Brown. I'm here with my lifelong friend and co founder of Lead Smart Technologies, Tom Burton. Tom and I get together each week and we do this live session on LinkedIn live, YouTube live, Facebook live, which later in the day after the editors get their hands on, it becomes a podcast that's available in all the popular formats. What we do is we publish a newsletter that goes out every Friday morning. It goes out to thousands of people. It is called around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution. And what we do is we try and take the information we what's going on in the economy, what's going on in mergers and acquisitions as they relate to manufacturing and wholesale distribution. We talk about technology, AI software, all different types of things, e commerce and so forth. And we're going to be doing more of that today with our great guest, Dirk Beverage. Before we jump in and talk to Dirk real quick though, we again, if you don't get that email newsletter, let us know you can do it two ways. We just launched this week a new website. It's called aroundthehornpod.com and you can see all of the previous episodes there as well as sign up for the newsletter. Or you can send us a simple email@helloadsmartech.com and we will get that newsletter out to you. What we do on this show each week though, is re review that newsletter. So if you're listening on the podcast later in the day or anytime in the future, you will not be seeing that screen. But we'll give you another reminder later on that what we're doing and how you can do that if you're listening versus watching us live. So that's the Scoop for who we are and what we do. We're going to talk today about data, how to exploit it and leverage it further in your business. We're talking about some buyers journeys and some E commerce topics. We're going to talk a little bit and this, I love having Dirk with us for this. We're going to talk a little bit about kind of a newer phrase that we hear more and more now about emotional intelligence or lack thereof maybe in some instances, and a little bit about some HR topics. So we're excited about that. Tom, anything to add before we go talk to Dirk about his activities?

Well, I wanted to say good morning to Brian and Will Dirk. Will. I don't know if you're able to see the comments, Dirk, but Will is already written a blog about you and all of this. So you know we're going to be viral here before too long. There you go. And Ron and Mike, good morning.

And when and time when we get the distribution guy, Will Quinn.

That's right.

Writing about all of us and sharing stories about this, this show.

Right.

We, we know, we know you're doing good things.

You know, we've made it. And by the way, I was on, I was on the phone earlier this week with Will, had a great conversation. We've got him booked, I think in September to join us. I do need to check, since this is a, a commercial show that we have here, are we allowed to say the distribution guy without rights and permission? Well, I mean, that's, that's registered trademarks. He is the dude.

I think he'll take it. I think he'll think that we'll talk about him.

Yeah. All right.

Yeah.

And especially if I can, guys, real quick, especially on your 50th episode.

Thank you.

Congratulations on your 50th episode. Kevin, you gave me something data yesterday. Not very many shows get to number 50 or number 10. So. So, yeah, congrats.

Yeah, well, thanks. We appreciate that, especially coming from you with all the speaking you do and the writing and so forth. You know, I just read something recently. I think I mentioned this on a broadcast a couple weeks ago. Is that someone shared with me. I think it's less than 20 of B2B podcasts ever make it to 10 episodes, a very small percentage. So being at 50 is great. We're going to try and do maybe a little bit of a celebration of some sort on number 52. And so, yeah, it's exciting from, you know, some kind of, as I was mentioning to you earlier real quick, from some humble beginnings, I Had this idea about a newsletter. Tom said, let's go on LinkedIn live and talk about it. And here we are a year later and you know, we're rising up the ranks. I had this great opportunity earlier in this week to talk to a wholesale distributor in Florida and he said, hey, I heard about you guys. Because I, you know, searched on Apple podcasts, wholesale distribution. You guys were the third or fourth to show up. He goes, I haven't listened to more than like five minutes the other one. He goes, but I've been coming every week, so something's going right.

High fives all around, guys.

Thank you. Well, it's important with the guests that we have with folks like you, we've got I think what is there, 20 weeks or something like that left in the year and I think we've got 11 or 12 slots already booked up with great people. So Dirk, thank you for that little plug. Let's do this though. We need to know about you. We want to take just a couple of minutes. Tell us about Unleash wd. Tell us about your speaking, tell us about the tour you're on. We'll do a couple of moments briefly on that and then we'll dive in. Because folks that are with us today that don't know you need to be following you and watching what you do about wholesale distribution.

I think everybody here knows them.

Yeah. So let's go on.

Let's just real quick. I got to tell you something funny. I got a note the other day about the podcast from one of the. We use a couple of tools to track and manage.

Yeah.

You know, we are in the top 100 podcasts, in fact top 70 podcasts. Most popular in Zimbabwe. So that was highlight of the week. I didn't know we had listeners in Zimbabwe, but we do. And so not everybody knows Dirk, but everybody should. So why don't we hear a little bit about your travels this summer and, and, and unleash that super quick.

Thanks.

Yeah. So unleash wd. We're a second generation business. My father started consulting business, speaking business in 1969 and dad's no longer with us. But yeah, our passion for years has been the independent family owned distribution business, employee owned distribution business. Our legacy business has been sales and sales management. Over the years we've designed amazing value oriented, solution oriented sales programs for organizations and coaching posture sales management systems. After 9 11, I found the passion for innovation and I came to the conclusion that innovation was bypassing distribution. That led me to work with the national association of Wholesalers to do what I think was the first research report on the state of innovation throughout distribution. That ended up in our book Innovate How Successful Distributors Lead Change in Disruptive Times. And then Covid and make a long story short, we had to figure out what we were going to do to continue to support distributors in this time. So I wrote an open letter to distributors titled Shift to Tomorrow. Help us raise our eyes towards the horizon to look and what do we need to do to come out stronger on the other side. And in that letter, for the first time, I used the words the noble calling of distribution.

Stop.

What does that mean? I don't know. I had never used it before. So I had to stop and think about it. And you know, we're. We're working with an $8 trillion industry, you guys, that's the third largest economic engine on the planet behind the GDP of the United States and China. I think that's noble as hell that these distributors are creating that economic engine and the vitality for our country that creates over 6 million jobs in this country. And those aren't just good paying jobs, which they are. I believe they provide purpose and meaning and fulfillment for people. I believe work is noble and that's what this industry is creating. That's what these family businesses are creating. I find that to be noble. And then you look at our plumbing, you look at our electrical, you look at our building materials, you look at everything that we use and how we work, live and play in this country. And it goes through the docks, the doors, the people of distribution. And I find that to be very, very noble. So yeah, we're out on the third season of the We Supply America tour championing the these amazing people of distribution. And we're learning some great, great lessons and we're honored to tell the story. And Will Quinn is here. So I have let me give them a place. We would not be doing this without the amazing team of IN four. They saw the idea of We Supply America. It was nothing more than an idea on a napkin. And they said we're all in. And so we could not be doing this without Infora. And this year the great people at Whitley have joined us as well. Great accounting consulting company. So that's who we are, that's what we're doing. But I am thrilled to be out of the RV today and with you guys.

Yeah, awesome. Well, and you're gonna have a great time this weekend in upstate New York there. So happy to have you with us. We got some good folks coming here. Mike Franz has joined us. Crystal from Saskatoon. That's pretty cool. So we've got a lot of nice guests here. Our good friend RP Ron Paulson. I don't know if you know Ron, he's a neighbor up not far from you. I think Ron's in Mundelein, up as a retired Ranger exec. Great, great human being. So good group with us today that we can see so far. Let's dive into the news because we want to talk about some of this stuff and get, get your take on some of these things. Well, Will popped up here again. I'm sorry. Jerk.

That's all right.

I've got these, these comments coming through. But you know, we, we typically do a quick little look at the economic news that might have come out and we talk about it pretty quickly. There's just some music talk this week about cutting tool orders now above the 2022 levels. We won't go in depth into that, but you know, this is a report that's come out, comes out from two different groups and that puts this together. But it's kind of, it's been out now for I think 11 years they've been doing this and it's kind of a good bellwether looking at what's kind of going on in the manufacturing side because manufacturing in the US typically is tied to some cutting tools. And so this cutting tool index is a help. So we see some, some movement in the right direction. We, I think, you know, we talk a lot about a simmering economy each week. I think we talk about pretty regularly. There's, you know, stock markets kind of pushing again, like I want to go do big things. Fed's kind of doing their thing over here. And so we try and watch some of these things because, you know, Dirk, now I'll throw this out to you quickly is, you know, I, I talk every day to wholesale distributors and manufacturers around mostly North America. You do as well and you're visiting them right now. The mood I talk to with people is great. You know, I, I, I was on the phone yesterday with a wholesale distributor that since the beginning of 2020 has had four, added four branches and they had been a family owned one branch operation for the last 30 years. Yeah, business is great. People feel solid about what's going on in their organizations. Are you seeing the same?

Yeah, I am, I, I am, Kevin. I am seeing the same. There is questions right, relative to where these economic indicators are going to be pointing in the future. I tell you when I see those, I always need to preface myself Preface these types of conversations that if you're looking to me for economic insights, you're talking to the wrong person. All right, that's number one. But I look at that headline that you showed put up there, and where my mind goes is, you know, what is the mindset and what is the ambition of. Of leaders today when they're seeing that data? Right. You know, historically, so many businesses have ridden the wa. The wave, the ups and downs of the economic terms where I think the most lessons are learned are from those leaders, those businesses that buck those trends and have the mindset and ambition. Ambition to take more than the market is prepared to give, because we can't impact that. But what we can impact is our strategy, we can impact our talent, we can impact our culture to really do what we need to do to earn more than the market is prepared to give us. And. And that's what kind of excites me about that, that type of data is finding stories behind the data like that.

That's great. No, you wanted.

No, I completely agree. Right. There's opportunities.

Yeah.

Even when you believe things may be on the lower part of that wave versus I believe there's a lot of opportunities. And especially now with all of the things we talk about, all the innovation opportunities that are right now, to jump on that and then come out of that curve real. You know, people often say, I don't have time. Use the time to come out of the curve stronger. And I think, you know, there's clearly.

Opportunities for that without question. And again, well, I think that comes from mindset and ambition. Go ahead, Kevin.

No, I. That's exactly right. And I, you know, you were talking earlier about some of the statistics, you know, about distribution, really. And wholesale distribution, manufacturing, kind of powering. Right. The American economy.

Yeah.

And if these leaders had the mindset of, you know, Tom always says this funny off. Lift the kimono here for a second. You know, Tom can tell you at any time of the day pretty much what certain stocks are at during the day, but his mantra is don't watch the news. And, you know, there's some value to that because I tend to flip the radio on with the news on in my office, and you hear this drone going on of. Of, you know, negative stuff. So if you were to watch CNBC and listen to what the Fed is saying and what this is and what that is, you could get sucked right into that mindset that says, oh, I have to be, you know, uber conscious, you know, conscious about spending this or spending that. But what I'M seeing in my discussion with people is, hey, I'm paying attention, but my customers are still building stuff. I could serve my customers better if I invested in technology or more training for my people or whatever it might be. And so I think we have that mind shift mindset within manufacturing and wholesale distribution. And I wouldn't even say in this country in general that says we're going to keep moving. Right. We're going to be cautious, but we're going to keep moving. And I think that's a little bit what you're seeing probably out there is that investment in people with a positive attitude that says we're going to, we're going to push the edges of this. Maybe a little trepidation I might have, but I'm going to be strong.

Yeah, Kevin. Investment in people. You talk technology, investment in processes, investment in inventory. How many times have I heard the stories of that, you know, with COVID Can I tell you a real quick story on this whole. So back in the financial crisis of the 80s, remember when unemployment was.

I was too young for that.

Yeah, you son of a bit.

All right.

That's a lot.

That's not tr.

But you know, one of the greatest leaders that business leaders that I've ever had a chance to work with is Andrew Berlin, Berlin Packaging. He retired several years ago, but man, I remember when, when unemployment was just growing like crazy and he had the mindset, I loved his position. He said, I'm going to create my own jobs bill. If we can't get a jobs bill out of Washington D.C. i'm going to create my own jobs bill. And while everybody else is laying off businesses, he created his own jobs bill. Jobs. What did I say? Jobs bill.

Yeah.

And, and, and brought in the Strategy to hire 40, 50 salespeople at a time when everybody else was laying people off. And again, it comes down to, you know, your belief in the future. It comes down to the vision you have for your organization. It comes down to this ambition you have and then having the mindset and then the courage to act right when others don't.

That's awesome. I love that. And you know, it's funny you mentioned that because we're going to talk about an article in just a little bit about layoffs and hiring the bold and the weak.

Yeah.

And so that'll be coming up here shortly. So that's good stuff. Tom, you want to take us into this dataworks that some of the stuff that FedEx is doing, using AI to fortify supply chains.

Yeah. I mean, you know, Obviously they have a lot of money to invest and have invested a lot of money into this and have been for a lot of years prior to, you know, the whole AI hype, right. Over the last few months. So they are. But I think they're continuing to optimize and just looking. I think the quote that he said in there, right, is that the, the delivery of the package is more important than the package and having the data of the experience, right. The experience of the delivery is more and more important than the, or as important as the package itself. So I think what they're really learning and I think you're going to see you know, even like right now, right, when you go and track a package and it's, you know, you put a number and it kind of just comes back with a list or whatever, you're going to see a lot more conversational AI back and forth, all kinds of things that you're going to see coming. I think AI or FedEx is just a really great example and use case of what's possible. And a lot of these big companies, I think this, you know, goes back to Dirk, what you were just saying, right? Having the courage. One of the ways you, I find that companies get courage is they see what others are doing and they see then how that can apply into their own business. And so I think, you know, whether it's FedEx or any of these big companies that are obviously have the resources and the dollars to jump into AI in a big way, you can really learn from what they're doing and then start thinking about how you can apply that because you don't have to have a trillion dollar budget to jump in and do some of these things right here.

Exactly why I posted this and encouraged us to look at this article today. Because again, story behind the story, right, is FedEx is doing these unique and interesting things. What they were talking about is using AI to not just track a package, but they're tracking what was the weather like when that package got delayed, right. What was going on with our fleet, right. And, and we talk about this consistently. And you know, Dirk, this is. We're kind of throwing you into the lion's den here, right, with some of this stuff right now. But you know, we talk consistently here, both in, in Lead Smart, that spot, our company that sponsors the show, and then Tom and I in these discussions about manufacturers and wholesale distributors, but specifically wholesale distributors are sitting on gold mines of what we see typically as siloed data, right. I've got E Commerce data. Maybe that's kind of growing because I've been doing E Comm for a few years. I've got, you know, hired a new marketing person three years ago, and now we've got some really good marketing automation data. Email opens, videos watched, whatever it might be. We've got more. Most importantly is ERP data. Some companies might have ERP data going back 20, 30 years maybe.

Right on.

Right. And I mean, we talk to people that have legacy ERP systems that are, you know, a server in a closet down the hall that somebody checks once a day to make sure the green lights are still on. And. But, you know, 15, 20 years worth of data. And that's every invoice.

Yeah.

You know, that they've ever done. Right. Every return, every miss shipment, every delay from a manufacturer. And that's why I wanted to talk about this a little bit today, because what's available in wholesale distribution, and this is just a good example of what FedEx is doing in this setting, is that we have this opportunity to take all that silo data together. Obviously, we're a technology company that does that and really kind of deciphers that and displays that into actionable tools to grow business. And that's what we're encouraging across the board within wholesale distribution in particular, is to get access to that. And AI is just the next wave of things we can do.

Yeah.

To lots of tools out there besides ours that, you know, are doing things with AI, but get the analytics, that learning that comes from that, because what that typically does, that we see, is when we're bringing all that data together, we can serve the customer better, and we serve the customer better. The customer ends up buying more. Customer ends up buying more. Our sales people love the technology and leadership gets more data than they would ever imagine about their company.

There's the flyer.

Everybody wins. Right? It's a cycle.

Yeah.

Without.

I. I love it. Kevin and Tom. Thanks. And Tom, you. You took it from me as well. What stood out to me in this article was Fred Smith's article. I'm gonna. Fred Smith's quote, you said. He said, the information about the package is just as important as the package itself. And he said that 45 years ago.

Yeah.

Okay. And he said that 45 years ago. And what that brought to me, guys.

Is.

Years ago, Kathy Mozzarella, the CEO of Graybar, she was on my podcast and she gave me a half a day in her office, and we're talking about, you know, the future and the like. And then she just offhandedly said, you know, Dirk Grave, Are just opened up an innovation lab down at the University of Illinois at Research Park. I said, wow. She said, yeah. So things. One thing led to another and I worked with the American Supply association and they're bored. They eventually have opened up DNEXT down there in innovation lab as a result of this conversation. But the first time we went and toured the gray bar d next lab. This is probably seven years ago. Okay, guys. I remember sitting in that boardroom in their innovation lab and they put up a slide about the interns they have hired in that lab.

Okay.

And the title data scientist just jumped out at me.

Wow.

Yeah, wow.

When was that?

Let's say seven years ago.

Okay.

Okay. And I'm so, you know, I don't know if any distributor that I know of sure have hired data scientists. But here's the thing. As I'm going across the country now that we supply Americora and I'm learning about these organizations, they are evolving, they are getting the picture. And more and more I am seeing data scientists being hired into not the Fortune 500 gray bars of the world, but the local independent family employee held distribution business. And I think it's a tremendous trend. And then the last thing I'll say there is, Tom, you had mentioned something about, you know, having the big money to invest in AI and the like. And I'll go back to what I know we all believe in and just Bill Condren, the CEO of the Granite Group in our We Supply America film. I just remember him saying, you know, one of the things that, that he believes in in his organization and tries to get through others is you have to continually be. Be making small bets. Right. So yeah, let's learn from FedEx. Let's take that quote from Fred Smith saying that the information about the packages is important package itself. And let's use that as a flag to say, all right, what are the small bets we can take to dive into our marketing data? To dive into our ERP data? The small bets to start learning about how we can really utilize this going forward.

Yep.

I love that. So it comes to my mind and it triggered for me as you were describing that Dirk is as I was reading these art. This article in particular I was thinking about, you know is. Is the customer think about. Right. Fred Smith's comment from 45 years ago when I think FedEx was a. Was a project he did in graduate school.

Right, Right.

And then executed against to talk about.

And got a C on. And got a C on that I.

Didn'T know that's Pretty cool. And here we are. Right, Right. But life beyond DHL all of a sudden happened. But it made me think and I said, well, because I was talking a few minutes about customer data, it made me think is, is the data more important than the customer? No, we can't get up the customer to do business. But, but maybe it's the data about the customer that makes the customer that much better. And really we're missing the value that we have from our customers if we're not taking full advantage of the data that we can get from them to serve them better.

Right.

Because I mean. Go ahead Tom.

To me, the, the data at the end of the day is all about the experience. Right? How do you use my point. How do you use the data to increase. I mean that's what, what Fred Smith's comment was. Right. About the information about the package that provides a superior experience to a, a shipping process. So I think, you know, obviously there's using data for our own internal use and analytics and all of that. But at the end of the day, if we keep looking back and continually looking. And even what you're saying, Dirk, continually be making small bets, but make those bets and the alignment of improving that customer experience is sort of the tip of the spear. You'll keep improving the experience up. And that's, you know, you look at Amazon, FedEx, all these companies that have that reputation, that's what they continue to do and have done for many, many years.

And if I can just add to that real quick. But again, to me it's going to come back to the mindset. Right? Because Tom, if we think the customer experience that you're alluding to. Right. Is going to remain today. Because you know, we've all heard that, that, that narrative out there. Well, my contractors aren't ready for xyz. Right. And if we're, if we're held back by that, we won't have small experience.

That's right.

Experiments in terms of utilizing. So it comes back to the mindset. What do you believe in terms of customer experience? Can we learn not just from the Chick Fil A's of the world, but can we learn from the federal expresses of the world who believes the data is just as, as important? If you believe, if you have that mindset, well, that's going to lead us down a different path.

Well, spot on. I, I love that. And where, where this, you know, kind of takes me from this setting is I was on the phone with a large distributor earlier in the week and we were talking in a group of us. And I was commenting about changing buyers. Right. All the data out there right now says that the vast majority of B2B buyers are millennials. Right. And that they're looking for experiences and that they use doordash and they buy their movie tickets online ahead of time and they might have gone out on the date the night before in Uber and they want to migrate. And I use the phrase in the discussion that the lines between our personal life and our business life are graying quickly. Right. And in somebody's comments, we just don't see that, you know, they're looking for. Our customers are looking for, you know, traditional buying, and they're looking for, you know, lowest cost, price and service levels of this. And in my mind is thinking, we have to be looking at what's coming. Right. It's that Wayne Gretzk, I live in Southern California, so I'm not a hockey authority. But it's that old Wayne Gretzky thing.

Right.

He skated to where the puck was going, not where it was. And that's what these little bets are going to allow us to do.

And if you do my two things on that. All right, Kevin. So one, I go back to in my book, Innovate, you know, how did I define the word innovation? I define innovation as leading customers to a better future for which they are willing and capable of rewarding you. Leading customers to a better future if we simply wait for the customer to tell us this is how they want to buy. I got to tell you something. That's when you're going to be trapped in commoditized hell because everybody will have heard that.

Yep.

So the real innovators are going to be the leaders. Right. Being out front, as you're saying. The second. The second. The second, in a similar fashion is I love the thinking of the founder of Panera Bread and what he said something similar. What he said is we look to understand what the customers are going to want tomorrow and we innovate into that. Yep.

Right.

There's a secret. There's the secret.

I think. I love that. So this article came from VentureBeat. It's titled How FedEx Data Works is Using AI to Fortify Supply Chains. The reason I mentioned that is for if you're listening on the podcast and you don't get the email, you could look that article up and they talk, I think later on about five pillars about embracing change and customer centric points of view. Good article. If you get a chance to look at that. Let's jump ahead Though. Tom, you want to take us into this next article about manufacturing CEOs?

Well, I think it dovetails exactly what we've just been talking about. And by the way, I have been getting a couple text messages. We saw something here that some people may be having problems with their LinkedIn feed. So I apologize. I've checked everything on this end, so hopefully LinkedIn is cooperating with us.

So, yeah, I've got it running here on my phone and on my personal feed as well. And it's so far, so good, Mike.

I think you're just going to have to cancel your meeting, so.

Yeah.

What's Mike doing?

Yeah, come on, Mike. So anyway, I digress. Now, we've been talking a lot about this and what this article was talking about is that, you know, more and more manufacturing CEOs are saying they're investing in artificial intelligence with 80% planning to deploy within their operations within the next two years. And, you know, that makes sense to me, obviously. I think if we were to really look at that, especially in the manufacturing aspect of things, I'm sure there's a lot of AI that's being employed. What I'm interested in, Dirk, from your tour, your experience and all the companies, the distributors you're talking to, are you seeing the same from the distribution perspective? Are you seeing more and more distributors and CEOs saying, hey, we've got to really take the AI piece seriously as it relates to, again, going back to. We just talked about, you know, driving revenue, customer experience, all of that. Or what do you think? What do you think the sentiment. Sentiment is on that, right? Yeah.

Honestly, since I've been out on the road this summer, honestly, I'm not hearing a lot about AI at the stops that we're going to, it hasn't bubbled up much in the conversation. Now maybe that's because I'm not leading the conversation there. Okay. But I really haven't been hearing a lot about it.

Yeah.

I'll leave it at that.

Yeah, it's. And, and I'm wondering if, you know, again, from a, from a district, what we were talking about earlier. Right. Is there enough use cases or examples yet that are. That are. That are like that. Aha. Like, oh my gosh, I got to do something about this. That we just don't have enough yet in the, in the distribution side.

Yeah. Can I tell you, can I riff just a little bit? What's going through my mind on that? Yeah.

So.

So if I, if I were right now with a group and this conversation bubbled up in, in a boardroom around with the leaders of the table right now, right? What I would do is I would say, all right, guys, let's stop, right? AI, it's, it's the rage we're talking, by the way. It is the future. It's going to be part of the future. Let's acknowledge that. But we're not getting much traction around it because it's this nebulous thing of AI, Right? So what I would do is I write up on the board, what are our strategic imperatives as an organization. You know, is it customer experience? Is it operational excellence? Is it sales growth? Is it attracting new customers, Is it retaining customers? Let's put those pillars up on the whiteboard, all right? And now let's start asking questions, let's start doing the research, let's start pulling in subject matter experts and, and let's start asking the question about. We're hearing about this AI, but specifically, let's talk about relative to customer experience, operational excellence. And I think that's how the conversation needs to go.

So I know what you're going to be talking about next week on your travels now.

Let's go.

It is.

I'm glad, tended to hear you say that. We, we have heard and it's interesting. I think she's with us today. Kristin Kreich Keeley was with us a couple of weeks ago as our guest, and she's facilitating for isa, I think got a note here a moment ago that Brendan Breen is with us from isa and what they're hearing, interestingly enough, and I love that this different view of what you're seeing in your travels is ISA is doing their summer sessions right now, which they've got. I think there's eight different weeks of it. Tom's been on two different ones. I'm on a panel next week with them. And it's the number one thing that's being asked about is AI from distributors, is AI and how it's what. What they need to be doing, how to understand it, what's it going to have an impact in our business? We're doing a. A webinar early next month on basically the overviews of AI and how wholesale distributors and manufacturers should be thinking about bringing that into their business. So it's going to be interesting. But I'm glad. I don't want to rose color my glasses. Right. From just what we heard from that ISA thing. And I may or may not hear with what you're hearing and your travels is very helpful. And we, Tom and I were talking the other. We had Marty McLaughlin on from surely the Distributors a couple of months ago and Tom and I have been friends since we were kids and we were poking at each other a little bit and he, he got a, he got a good, good laugh out of that. And you know, we don't have to, we don't have to see the same things from the same lens to, to understand that there's value in both sides.

So, so cool. May I just. If you don't mind, if you don't mind a quick little plug. If you don't mind, if people really want to dive into this as well. We just launched last Thursday a seven part technology series with our partner in four and it's titled Lessons of Technology for Next Generation Distributors. And you can just go ahead and Google that, we can send you the link as well. But four of these seven podcast episodes, video episodes, actually focus on using AI in terms of driving automation in times, in terms of driving operational excellence, the changing customer journeys. And there's really a lot of great insight in this series so I'd recommend people check that out as well.

Yeah, that's awesome. You know, our, our sponsors lead smart, but we got a Will's plug in Infora with all these links in here, so we maybe need INFOR to help sponsor the podcast as well. So Tom, we need to, we need to bump ahead from this time wise.

All right. Are you able to hear me? I lost power here, so I was gone for about a minute and a half. Just.

We got you.

Yeah. I just want to add one more quick thing on this topic is the three things that I hear all the time and talking with our customers that are distributors and we're looking at their world from a sales revenue perspective is how do I retain my customers, how do I increase wallet share and then how do I procure new customers. And I think there's a lot of opportunity as we've talked about on the show over and over for AI on that, but I don't think we've done a good enough job of demonstrating it, how it can be done. And I think that's the next chapter here is we got to show, right? Show and tell.

Tom, we lost your, lost your microphone.

How about now?

Yeah, good.

It's going to, it's show and tell on what we're going to do on that. So I think that's really what we, is kind of our next step on this as a, as an industry is start showing some of these examples.

So can I jump on that real Real quick, Tom, because you brought to me another conversation I had with Andrew Berlin, who I mentioned earlier. And guys, I'm having dinner or lunch with him one time, Bethany Hepburn, my VP and I are having lunch with him at the Cubs game, actually, and we're talking about some things. And one of the things he says is, he says, dirk, so many leaders can talk about the why and they can get excited about it. Very few want to get down to the how. Very few want to get down to the execution, what needs to happen to make the how work. So I think what you just said is awesome that you're going to go down that path, but it's also a great leadership lesson and kick in the ass, if you will, to say, are you just speaking around the edges of things as leaders, or are you truly focused on implementation, working through the challenges and the hard, figuring out the tough problems that are in front of you, and really working on the how we're going to move this forward.

Yep. No, totally agree. It's. It's real. It's the big jump, right from the whiteboard to the actual implementation.

Big jump.

So. All right, well, I'm sure we could talk a lot longer about this.

Yeah, I had three or four things I wanted to add, but we're running short on time.

Sorry, guys.

No, no, this is good, Dirk. We do this every week, right? Tom is sending me notes. We got to move, we got to move. And then we get towards the end and there's more things we wanted to say.

But I want to get to your special feature.

Yeah, let's do that. Let's jump ahead to the special feature. Kevin.

That's fine. Let's do it.

So, Dirk, take it. Start us off here. This is. Well, let's read it. So. So the. The article is Threads. Threads, the new Facebook social media app, Twitter competitor is the most. Is the fastest downloaded app ever. Elon Musk's response is the one thing a leader should never do.

Derek, I'm going to jump in though, first, please. Okay, let's talk about what this is. Yeah, it's. It's a competitor to Twitter.

Yeah, right.

There's been many before, right? There's Blue sky that's come out. There's recently, there's a few others that have come out. This is owned by Meta. It's connected to Instagram. Dirk, have you got an account there yet?

I. I have. I have intentionally purposefully decided not to get a kid's account.

Quickly tell me why.

I don't have bandwidth for it and I Know, I should be experimenting with it, but I, I don't have the bandwidth for it. We, as a business, strategically, we're all in on LinkedIn.

Sure.

And that's where we're at.

And that all eggs in one basket in this, especially with a market that you're focused on, is very, very reasonable as well as us. I did it. I grabbed an account and it forced me to. Let me rephrase it. I didn't do enough work to figure out if there was a way around connecting it to my Instagram account. I did it with the same Twitter handle that I use, and I wanted to capture that in case it was valuable in the future.

Yep. Smart. Yep.

And, and Tom did as well, like, you know, and so forth. But what it did is it forced me. I popped a couple of videos that I had made and that are on Tick tock and, and LinkedIn and so forth, and I got flooded with personal friends and church buddies and sailing friends and, and, and I went to a few of them by instant message and said, this is, this is my business. Catch me on Instagram that I go on once every three months if you want to talk personal. So it's interesting, but the point is, fastest downloaded app ever, right?

Yep.

Quickly came in as a competitor to Twitter and, But the story behind the story here is how Elon Musk has responded to this. Yeah, so, yes, there's this thing, there's this thing called threads. I know there's people here with us today that don't know what it is. It's the competitor now to Twitter. Now let's dive into the story behind the story.

So is that to me, Kevin, you. So, so here's where I got excited when you sent me the email about this and the emotional intellig thing and all that. And I, you know, I got excited. In fact, I, I started thinking about it in the RV as I'm driving through the Adirondacks last night. And I got it.

And so sorry for you.

Yeah, it's beautiful. And you got my blood boiling now. But so, and then just this morning, I took a look at this Jason Atten, who wrote the article.

Right.

And all this. And obviously looking at his, he's, he's an Elon Musk hater. So, so I look at this and I, I, I want to take a different tact. And okay, emotional intelligence. He wrote this letter, he got his lawyers involved, and this article is saying, how bad is Elon Musk? How bad is his emotional intelligence? And my immediate reaction is, okay, all Right. One, I'll bet on Elon Musk. Number two, how do you not. And yeah. And number two, emotional intelligence. Is it important? Darn right it is. I can tell you a story where I didn't have it and I just blew. I mean, it is important, but is it the only thing that leaders know or leaders need? And I say absolutely not. And so, you know, I look at Elon Musk's vision, his innovation, his risk taking, his perseverance, his work ethic, his strategic thinking, his engineering acumen, his execution, his ability to attract talent and even his communication. I mean, he's been able to move society towards different business platforms and all that. So if this author wants to get clickbait, in my opinion, talking about emotional intelligence, let them. But I'm going to focus on the good things that I can learn from Elon Musk and that's what I'm going to dive into. I don't know if I took us off base there, but that was my reaction.

It's a, it's a good, it's a differing opinion than mine and I'll share mine now. 100% agree. Right. You can, you can't argue. And I didn't post this or share this with our group to beat up on Elon Musk. Right. How could you bet against the guy?

Right.

I raised sailboats. One of the reasons that earlier in my career I never had the opportunity to sail a race to Hawaii was because I couldn't be away from my business that long. Now I have friends that just did the Trans Pack race two weeks ago from Long Beach, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. Direct race, no stopping, no slowing down 24 hours a day. Everything you got.

Right.

I was relegated to do the Chicago Mac race because it was over a weekend. Yeah, right. And I could sail those 350 miles and, and be away, but I couldn't do it because it couldn't be away from my business. Now everybody on the boat has Starlink, right. From Elon Musk.

Yeah.

And they're posting 30 minute videos on and on and on and on and on here. But. So you can't. Tough to argue this, what he's accomplished, but what I want, why reason this is here is a little bit different taste that I have than you had.

Yep.

I'm going to bring it back to our audience of wholesale distribution and manufacturing.

Yeah, right.

His emotional intelligence up, down, however you view it. I read this morning he's taken some shots at Elizabeth Warren, the senator, pretty hard shots at her right now. Whether that's a good idea or bad idea? I don't know. But what I do know is that every day we all have an opportunity to serve our customers and our employees at a higher level. And what happened here is a competitor of Twitter known as Meta, with multiple platforms has been looking at this space that Twitter is in and they've not done anything. And the new owner of Twitter, who cut what, 80% of the workforce, whatever was business decision, you can argue that good or bad, somebody else pounced on that and is having some good opportunity.

That's a great point.

Great response to that. In you did this and you did that, I think is a little bit. It's not. Not unlike him.

Right.

And the lawyers attack. Now they're trying to protect a brand. And that brand they've been cutting, they've been doing weird and different things that. Now I will say I don't use Twitter all that much, but you know, four or five times a week at least my experience isn't much different. But the power users are having a little bit of a different experience. Somebody made some business decisions with the business. That business could be Joe's Plumbing Supply or it could be Twitter to change their business model that maybe isn't either in their employees best interest or their customers and a competitor seized it. And my take on this whole thing and the discussion today was about the view from a. If I'm a wholesale distributor or manufacturer, how am I running my business? How am I taking care of my people and my customers so that I don't need to worry about competitors to the same level, nor attacking them for hiring my people because I had to have layoffs. Just a little different spin.

So. Comment, please. So one, I, I love the comment. You, you, you're. You're dead on. Right.

That.

What a great business lesson that Zuckerberg just taught us. Right. When you see weakness, right. And if you've managed your business to be in a position to innovate and invest in another way to seize an opportunity. There's a, there's a great, great business lesson there.

So I love both sides of this discussion. Right. Tom's gonna add some here in just a second because I like your take on that as well. Right. There's different, there's just different views of all this. And our goal with being here every week is.

Yeah.

Tom mentioned at the start of the show. Right. Today we talked about the story behind the story and how can we look at these things to help our audience get better at what they do? And if we're really good at what we're doing. There's less for somebody to come in and attack. And the lesson for me should be. And I and Tom, and I've learned this lesson in our business career, is that, you know what, if you're missing something over here, not taking care of somebody here, somebody's going to come in over this. And it's not spilled milk to cry over, it's how do I go fix my business? Yeah, Tom.

Yeah, I just think. To wrap up, I wanted to touch on a couple of the comments here. First of all, Will was saying Threads started out with a bang, but it's significantly fallen off. I personally think that Threads is going to be a flop. That's my take on it. I think it's. There was a lot of downloads.

I got a stake at Chuck's against that in the next. I think there was a lot of 18 months.

I think there was a lot of downloads because of the curiosity factor. And it was easy, but I don't think it's really going to take off to be a force. But, you know, hey, I've been wrong before once or twice.

Well, let me throw something just. Tom, before you finish on that, Mark Cuban, some of the other biggest Twitter guys are now using online tools to publish to all of them. So there is. I, I think. I don't. I don't. I think Will's comment, and I would agree with you, not that that's going to be a flop. I think it's going to take time.

But I just don't think it's going to be relevant. I don't think it's going to be relevant. I think it's going to go away.

You're betting against Zuck?

I am, yes.

I would.

Okay. I don't think it's going to be relevant. And I think it's going to end up much like what was a Google plus or one of those that. That existed before.

Right, Right. Just. Just as a reminder, Snapchat thought that as well.

About. Like I said, I've been wrong before.

Kevin, man, you're selling hard, dude.

He went and bought a bunch of Facebook stock.

I sold a bunch of Facebook stock a month ago.

The other comment I wanted to bring up here is Brandon. You know, he's. He was talking about Elon Musk. Right. I believe some people get to a level in life that their perfect EQ is no longer important. And he doesn't care. Right. And he doesn't care. And you could, you know, to your point, Dirk, he may have earned that Right. To some degree. On all the things he get. Is it right or wrong? I don't know, but it's, you know, I think he's at a level that we're not. The rest of us are not.

But Tom, can I, can I jump on that? So he is at a level that we're not. But again, I think there's a leadership lesson and I think, I think what we, as leaders individually and for our companies, we continually have to ask ourselves, what do we stand for? And Elon Musk knows very strongly and yes, he's in a position. Right. To, to step. He knows who he is and what he stands for and he will not deviate. And I love, I love the story about Apple. You know, when, when you remember the terrorists in San Bernardino.

Sure. An hour from here.

Right. And, and so the FBI wanted Apple to unlock this. What did Tim Cook do? Tim Cook said, no, we stand for privacy. And here's the phenomenal thing to me is 62%, I'm a huge Apple fan. 62% of Apple's customers wanted Tim Cook to give in and unlock that phone.

Right.

But he said no because he, like, you know, they know what they stand for.

Right.

What do most leaders do? What do most businesses do when they get pushback, when they're really tested on their beliefs? Many given. And from a business perspective, from a marketing perspective, now again, we're stuffed in sucking commodity hell as a leader. People don't really know who you are, what you stand for. And so I think that's one of the lessons that comes out of this article is ask us what do we stand for.

Completely agree. Yeah. And I'm, and I'm just going to make one last word. I know we've got to zip through Kevin here, but the reason, the reason I don't think Threads is going to be relevant. It's not creating any new, nothing new. There's not, it's a, it's a replication of Twitter. Right. And so Snapchat to Kevin brought. That was a very new concept where you take the picture, it disappeared in a minute or whatever. It was a very new and unique use case. And that's why I don't think it's gonna hold. But hey, like I said, I don't know, a lot of money going behind it. There's a lot of, a lot of emphasis. We'll see how it plays out.

And I think you're hard pressed to bet against either one of these guys.

Yeah.

You know, I think they canceled the cage match fight that they were talking about because.

Did they.

Because Musk's mother got involved or something before we jump on and we don't have a lot of time and there are other things we want to talk about. Take. Great discussion, both of you. I think we all have similar but a little different taste.

Good.

Which is why we're here.

Yeah, right.

This wouldn't be any fun if we all fully agreed. And. And I will tell you though, Dirk is the other side of that is Tom has had better success in his stock picking than I have. I will acknowledge that as my lifelong friends.

I think we should all sell Facebook short now after. Right. Kevin's recommendation.

Yeah, that's.

Hey, I know we're up on time real quick. What went through my mind just in that last 30 seconds is I wonder now, based on what you guys said, if Zuck's response with Threads was strategic and business driven or was it emotionally driven? That would be a question.

It's a great question.

So boy, if I would love to unpack that if we had the time, because I think you could argue either side of that.

Yeah.

Equally. Right. So before we jump off of this great discussion, Tom May in up on in North Carolina, old good friend of the show and myself, says sounds like a living mission statement. And. And that I'm not going to throw that bomb. I just did. I'm sorry, because we don't have time to talk about it because there are a couple other things we need to talk about. But I do think there might be a little bit of that specifically in Elon Musk's world about a mission statement kind of adjusts to, you know, what I'm going to go build and do next. And you know, Brandon's comment is. Let's not highlight that one, Tom. But yeah, billionaires fighting it out is really what this. Some of this comes down to. But good discussion. What we can learn from it, in my opinion though, is if we're taking care of our customer and we're innovating in our business and we're taking care of our people, we're not going to have those problems. Right. So each week, again, if you're listening on the podcast and can't see our screen, we're looking at an email newsletter. We do weekly. It's called around the Horn and wholesale distribution. If you don't get it and you would like to www.aroundthehornpod.com has all of the past podcasts there beautiful pictures of Tom and I. They've just astounding. And there's no such thing as beautiful pictures of Tom and I. And then good though you can sign up for the newsletter there but you can also do it by an email@helloadsmartech.com Quickly, industry scuttlebutt. We talk about a couple quick happenings. Fastenal, some big numbers in E Com. This is not traditional E Comm as most people think about. This includes edi, you know, billion dollars in the, in the second quarter includes edi. It includes online orders against contracts and things like that. But they're growing and growing. We're seeing more of this Martin Supply, David Ruggles and the family down there. And the group at Martin in Alabama just brought in a new IT and operations leader which is a big, big step forward in digital transformation. I've had a couple good discussions with David. David's been here with us listening in a number of times. So I wanted to shout out to that because watching locally owned wholesale distribution companies innovate by hiring for digital transformation deserves a shout out, you know. And I'm sure you know all those folks down there too, don't you Dirk?

Yep, I do.

Yep.

So you had mentioned ASA earlier and membership there talking about sales being up 5% in May. So that's good news across the board. So last thing, our Goodreads section that we do each week and I'll have you, Tom, Tom, I'll have you mention before we leave today something really quick on the tech talk video about large language models. But Shopify, Dirk, you've done earlier this year a big, you had an. I think it was in Nashville, was it? You're all for HR leaders.

Yeah.

So Shopify the online e commerce mega mega company, latest weapon in its war on meetings. They're putting a price on people's meetings. So they put a tool in it. I think it was in January they went in and canceled every meeting across the company and put in this new setting within their calendaring schedule, scheduler that shows everybody. So if I clicked on a, on a meeting and I was inviting Tom Burton and Dirk Beverage to my meeting, it was going to show me and I put a half hour meeting and it was going to show me the value of that or the cost of that meeting the organization. So what are your guys's take on that?

Yeah, go ahead Dirk.

One, I, I love assigning, you know, raising the awareness of the cost of me. I love that. I think it's brilliant. The other thing I think is how many times have you have we all heard people complaining about the number of meetings they have to go to and that they're on the thread and they're sitting in there. They don't turn their videos.

You just said threads. See, it's taking off.

He bought Facebook stock, man. But, but our just published future of distribution research report. One of the. There's some really fascinating studies that are data that points coming out. One of them is that 88% of US leaders in distribution believe that it's, it's crucial that we focus on employee experience to the same or greater degree than that distributors have traditionally focused on the customer experience.

Right, right.

We have to change, we have to re. Emphasize the employee experience. And I think what Shopify did here in this meeting is one example of focusing on the employee experience, not just the cost of those meetings.

Yeah, I agree. I mean one of the biggest things that. And you know, Microsoft just released Copilot this week speaking of AI, the mic, which is all the AI tools for their office suite. Right. But a lot of their marketing and positioning on it is sort of giving time back to the workforce. Right. How do I, you know, we spend as a, as a, as workers, we spend a lot of time doing a lot of crap. Let's just face it. Whether it's emails or writing stuff or whatever, and we don't do enough innovating as we've talked about earlier, or really creating what we're trying to do in our job. So I think by, yeah, there's some time saving or some cost savings, but by really recognizing how much time is being spent in meetings and how much. Let's think about it, right? In a meeting, how many people end up just sitting there because they have to be there or soaking it up, really contributing to it. I think it's a really, really interesting way and I think it will save money, but it will change the employee experience and allow the employee to be more productive, to get more done, to feel like they're being, you're, you know, they're getting. Everyone wants to get done at the end of the week. Right. Feeling like I, I got something done. Yeah, I think there's an opportunity for that.

Can I tell Kevin real quick on site? The other thing, guys. When I left season one of We Supply America, you know, I had a premise and our future distribution report proves it out. I had a premise that humanity is going to play a more important role in leadership going forward. And last time, what you just said, what you just described is humanity and leadership looking not just at the financial cost of those meetings, but the human cost of those meetings. I think it's brilliant. Yep.

That's, that's phenomenal. And that, that's what was kind of been going something through my head on this is I like the idea that we have some awareness.

Right.

I don't think we need to pummel people with those things.

Right.

And one of the things the article said is, you know the average meeting I think that came out of that article is this was an Inc Magazine and it talked about there being, what was it the average was like 700 to $1,000 per meeting in before you had an executive come into it. And then, then it went up and it said something like, you know, people wouldn't go spend $585 on a business dinner, but yet they'd spend, you know, X thousands of dollars on a meeting that might not be relevant. So I like the idea of there being an organizational awareness.

Yes.

Of maximizing the use of our time. Tom, I think you were talking about innovation as well as Dirk with that is if we get out of some meetings we can probably innovate. I look at how I can't get my to do list done, let alone some of the rocks in our organization that take Tom and I taking time away, the things that we need to plan for of working on the business versus in the business. So I think this was a great kind of awareness piece for us. So we got to go. Dirk, where are you at next week? Where's the next couple stops?

Yeah, so I've got stops up here in the New York area. We're going to be on Long Island. We're going to be in Buffalo. Buffalo going to be in Niagara Falls. Guys, here's going to be a first. We're doing some strategy work with John Brooks, a family owned business out of Toronto. Kind of cool. Our first strategy meeting with the two emerging leaders who are going to take control of the company next month is going to be at a KOA in the rv.

Oh, I can't wait. That'll be fun.

Okay, that's, that sounds, that's, that's optimizing meeting time.

There you go. I like you're going to be right up there by Lockport. Are you going to connect with Jennifer and the Knit plus team over there?

You know what, I meant to. I haven't even reached out to him. I would love to.

Jennifer's here I think today. So is she.

Jennifer, we'd love to stop by and see y'.

All.

She may, she may be at that KOA campground for that meeting.

Yeah.

Come on, swing through. So you're up in that neck of the wood. So, Dirk, my friend, we can't thank you enough. I have one favor to ask you.

Yeah, talk to me.

Will you come back again later in the year?

I would love it, guys. I'm absolutely honored. And let's not wait for another 50.

No, no, no.

I would absolutely love to be.

So the mic drop comment of the day goes to our friend Will. It's only. We were talking about the value. It comes out of meetings. He made this comment a little bit ago. It's impossible to sign a value to Dirk's time. And let me.

Let me get a screenshot of that so that when we renegotiate the in for sponsorship.

Okay, I will do it. I'm going to post it on threads. There you go.

Very good, Tom.

And then nobody will see it.

Tom.

That's right. Sorry.

Mark Cuban will comment on it. Boy, that just triggered a couple of cool things about that article. But we don't have time for today. So listen, as always, Dirk, thank you. Thank you everybody that was with us for your comments. The last thing we'll request from folks here today is if you like what we do each week, whether you're on Facebook Live, LinkedIn Live. Maybe guys, if you're Twitter fans and Musk fans, maybe we should be on Twitter live as well. But if you're on any of those platforms, click the like button, click the subscribe, tell your friends, take a screenshot, email it to your cousin that works in wholesale distribution or manufacturing. Help more people. Join us. We're going to continue with great guests. We've got Ian Heller from Distribution Strategy Group coming in a couple of weeks. David Gordon's coming, Art Schwartz, I think all people you probably know, Dirk. And thought leaders, writers, researchers. We're looking forward to those discussions. If you have somebody you'd like to see us have as a guest, let us know. But keep coming back. Share with us what you think we could do better. In closing, Dirk, have a wonderful weekend with your family. We'll talk to you soon. Be well, do good things and certainly be kind.

Yes, have a good weekend.

Nice seeing you guys. Thanks for having me.