Economic Ambiguity and Important Lessons For B2B Marketers.

Foreign.

Welcome to around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution with Kevin Brown and Tom Burton. Sponsored each week by Lead Smart Technologies. Tom, Kevin and their guests review the news of the week and dive deep into the topics impacting manufacturers, wholesale distribution, independent sales agents and the global wholesale supply chain. Whether It's M&A SaaS and cloud computing, B2B, E commerce or supply chain issues, we peel back the onion with our guests into the topics that impact your business the most.

How you doing? Good.

Happy Aloha Friday.

It's just hot Friday.

Hot Friday.

Hot Friday.

Yep. The. Well, you're a little further up the coast than I am. So it's going to be cooler up there. I think I was saying earlier was driving to Bible study last night at 6:30 and it was still over 90 degrees at the coast. So.

It'S going to be 96 today here. 97. 97.

So yeah, we have a warm full weekend. So no beach time till Sunday.

Okay.

Gotta go to unfortunately a funeral tomorrow. So. But Sunday, Laguna Beach.

We'll be there. You and everybody else.

Yeah, but yeah, well, you know, that's, it's. I tell you, we probably Talked about this 100 times before, but September is my absolutely favorite month of the year. Tourists are gone, kids are back in school. It's parking at the beach even on the weekends. You know, it's not as bad as summer, but you got my Darlene was down this week with some friends visiting from Europe on the beach and drove straight in, parked right down the hill. Hardly anybody there. It's great.

Yeah, but it's 90 degrees. I don't know.

Anyway, yeah, that's, that's not what anybody came here for today was to hear about me going to the beach. Right? That's right. It is nice to see you in your 100th anniversary podcast Aloha shirt, though.

Yeah, it's comfortable. It's very comfortable.

It puts you in rare, rare air, so to speak, with some of the luminaries of, of the industrial district. Industrial. But of the wholesale distribution world. So it does put you right up there.

Okay. Well, I'll do what I can.

Very good. And I did my USC Trojan aloha shirt today in recognition of the win last Saturday over lsu, which not many.

Expected, you know, why would they pick their first game of the season against a ranked SEC team? It's like, aren't they supposed to go pick like, you know, somebody they can just, I guess it was Las Vegas, right. So somebody made money.

It's interesting, you know, and this is, we might get Some comments from some SEC people. But historically SEC teams led by Alabama try and get that opening game of the season against a patsy of some sort. Pac12 now, but Pac12 teams in the Big Ten historically don't do that to the same level at least, right? They might. Maybe USC would play or UCLA might play, a Boise State or somebody like that. But those aren't patsies, right. And so going out. But this one was. This one was money, right? It was. It was in Vegas. You know, you got USC going into the Big Ten. Big splash about that. LSU consistently a powerhouse. And I'm an LSU fan. I mean, LSU is my SEC team, but not last Saturday or Sunday, I should say. So good win. See what happens. We got Utah State this weekend expecting a good result there. And let's see what happens when the Big Ten team starts showing up. I.

All right.

We were on a call the other day with the big Penn State fan, right? One of our customers. So we'll USC plays them in a few weeks. We'll see what happens. So, hey, we got RP with us. Happy to have you with us, Ron. Let's see who else we have coming in this morning. If you're with us, especially if you're outside of the continental US we'd really love to hear it. I know we've got some people that were said they were coming from a few different parts of Europe and Canada. We're going to talk a little bit about some economic news in Canada today. But Tom, why don't we dive in now that we're five minutes into the show and I've been talking about Aloha shirts, college football.

Yep, yep.

Good.

Is that what the show is about?

Yeah, well, it's, you know, depends on what we talk about each week.

Right.

So the. Oh boy, our piece. Forgot our pisa. Fighting a line. I. So the. There we go. Well, anyways, I'm Kevin Brown. I'm here with Tom Burton. Tom Burton is my lifelong friend and co founder of Lead Smart Technologies. We get together every Friday morning unless someone is in the hospital, on vacation or stuck on an airplane somewhere. And we talk about the news related to wholesale distribution and manufacturing. We talk about M and A supply chain, the economy, mergers. I said mergers and acquisitions, sales and marketing people. What's going on in leadership? We talk about a lot of different topics. We have that broken down into different segments that we talk about each week. And how we do that is we're referencing the newsletter that we publish every week. It's called around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution that goes out to 10,000 plus people. If you don't get that and you would like to, the fast and easy way to do that would be just to send us a note@helloadsmartech.com or simply go to the website for the podcast. It's www.aroundthehornpod.com. you can see past episodes. You can subscribe to the podcast formats there if you would like and or you can sign up for the newsletter. We do this live on Friday mornings at 9 o' clock Pacific. Tom and I both live here in Southern California and we get together to talk about these topics. We again publish this newsletter. So that's what we're referencing. So later in the day, while we're live right now on YouTube Live, LinkedIn Live and Facebook Live, later in the day, everything that we're doing here will be on all the popular podcast formats. So a couple of things. One, we really want to thank our sponsor, the company that Tom and I work for, Lead Smart Technologies. We have an editor and a producer and people working behind the scenes to get the podcast done each week. We can't pay them without a sponsor and LeadSmart does that. LeadSmart has developed a AI enabled customer intelligence and CRM platform developed specifically for wholesale distribution and manufacturing. It's as I'd like to describe it, it's not your father's Buick. We've historically known CRM to be a big brother tool. And what LeadSmart has been able to do is be an engagement tool to help companies learn more about their customers, learn more about their teams and learn more about their businesses to accelerate growth and serve customers better. So we can share any information with you about that. We would love to talk with you as well and you can reach out to us in any of those same methods. So, Tom, what did I miss there? I think we got it covered.

Yeah.

Yeah. Let's go talk about the news, huh?

Let's do it.

So things are, things are looking weird in the economy, huh?

Boy, that's different. I guess we're going to talk about something different today. Weirdness. Weirdness and ambiguity in the economy.

Yeah. So jobs reports, stock market's been up and down all week. Down this morning, struggles with that, but yet we see some rate cuts coming pretty quickly here. What were your thoughts on this first article that we have from Head from cnbc? It was kind of covered a handful of different items in this need to Know Today article.

Yeah, well, we've, you know, we've said this, or I've even said this despite my, my perilous situation for my stake is I do believe there will be a rate cut for sure this month. Now, after watching or seeing the job report, I think that there's a very high probability that they maybe overreact and do a half a point or I wouldn't even be crazy to do three quarters of a point. They raised three quarters of a point several times before during this, you know, run up.

So that's new discussion. We've never talked about that. Never talked about what about a 3/4 of a point raise?

Yeah, I, I, I, I think it's not highly probable, but I think it's possible just because I think there could be a bit of an overreaction, possibly with the job numbers that came out and the stock market and all of that. But I think, you know, there's no doubt there's going to be a cut here in September.

How many more?

Just one more. Just, just September for this year and.

Then next year for this year and.

Then January look out.

Okay. I will tell you, if we only have one cut this year, you can call yourself an economist and you can go to work for the Fed.

That's right. Well, okay, there you go.

You can, you can be, you can lead the Ventura County Fed office. You know, we'll, we'll develop that because everything is suggesting that, that I'm on the right side of this one and you're going to buy me a steak. So, but I, that is an interesting thought, though, about the three quarters of a point. I hadn't even been thinking about that. And you're right about the, the fact that, that we did have a raise like that.

Multiple.

I've got a feeling we're gonna, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Multiple. 77, 75 basis point raises.

Yeah, I think we're, I think we're gonna see three, I, I think we're gonna see three quarter point raises this year and then watch what January, watch what January, February does before they do anything else. But things are just so fickle out there right now. That's the, that's the weird thing. I mean, this particular article to talk about it, you know, they, they, they talked about the job issues, they talked about the stock market, they talked about hawks and doves, but it said the bottom line. And this was, this came from a gentleman from the, was it from the Atlanta bed? And he was. Yeah, Atlanta Federal Reserve President Rafael Bostic. So the bottom line, markets are confused. Investors want rate cuts because they are a tailwind for markets. But rate cuts tend to be driven by negative economic data. This leads to a confusing scenario in which bad news is good news and maybe the bad news is so bad it could also just be bad. Which is interesting. We've kind of. I like the way they recapped this because we've been talking about this for a year probably, and I think that recap things well, right. Good news is bad news, bad news is good news, and there is a risk switched.

Right. It has been bad news is good news and the opposite. Now it seems to be good news is good news and bad news is bad news. Right. The job thing, you know, the job thing today. Right. You would say, well, that would cement a higher, potentially higher level rate cut. But the market is down because everything now it's. Oh, we're gonna. And I think that is a risk as well. If they do cut a half a point or even three quarters of a point, it could really spook the market. So it'll be interesting to see where that goes.

Well, I think a lot of that's tied to the fact that the market already has the. At least the first cut already baked in.

Yes. Well, they have multiple cats baked in.

Yeah.

At this point, but yeah, they don't.

I didn't want to say that because that makes you sad.

Doesn't make me sad. It's just when they happen.

All right, so could be. Could be three quarters of a point, according to Dr. Burton.

Not probable, though. Not probable. Possible but not probable.

But that does kind of align with your position on cuts in general. Right. Because if they did three quarters of a point, maybe they wouldn't need to do a second cut. And then you.

Yeah, there you go.

You know it's by steak, right.

Get it over with. Get it over with.

Hey, are we gonna live, Are we gonna live broadcast at dinner?

I don't think anyone wants to see that.

So nobody cares.

I don't know.

Paul Kennedy said maybe your wife there.

Or something, but you know that nobody else.

My wife's planning on coming. The, the Paul Kennedy said he may, may just come and join us for that. So we'll. We'll see what happens. So next article we talk about, we're in our economy and supply chain segment in the newsletter. Bank of Canada is already doing it. Right. So they're down to four and a quarter percent. They've done a couple of cuts. They did another one yesterday. I don't know that the Fed in this country pays that close attention to what's going on in Canada related to that. If somebody knows something about that, please Share that. But it is interesting. They kind of jumped ahead and got ahead of the game on this.

Yeah. And I, I haven't followed I don't know what their markets are doing or what the reactions are, anything like that. But yeah, clearly they've outrun us.

Yep. Yeah. Well, it's time.

Where, where are we at?

We're today's the 6th, so we're 11 days away, right?

Yes. Some more or less yet.

Yeah. So it's too bad that's not on a Friday.

So.

All right. We want to roll ahead here. And we're still in our supply chain and economy section. Let's talk about supply chain for a minute. We spent a lot of time we've probably started to cover this more and more in the past year. As we look at Suez Canal issues, look at the the freighter accident in Baltimore harbor in the Chesapeake. We look at Panama Canal, you know, not getting enough rain and slowing down there. That's fortunately coming back a little bit. The Suez Canal issue seems to be getting worse that being backed by the Suti rebels, apparently being backed by Iran. Some pressure heating up with the US Government in Iran relating to that, some threats against some US Ships. Supply chain issues are significant there. I can't imagine what happens if they throw a drone tries to attack a US Military ship of the escalation of all of that. But it's a big deal. Well, now we're we're facing today's article from cnbc, the labor union related to the east coast and Gulf coast ports. So if you think about that, that's kind of Texas ports, Galveston, Houston, all the way across in through New Orleans down into Florida and all the way up the Eastern seaboard. So kind of in the US as everything but, you know, Pacific west coast ports are going to get, are going to get potentially hit with this. And there was some big slinging coming out of the one of the union leaders there and basically quoting we'll shut them down and was very firm. He did a video about it and we're end of the month is the end of that contract and Those ports handle 43% of U.S. imports. So could be a pretty significant issue. Even though companies have already been moving things to the West Coast. The way I read this and really think about this. Right. And we've talked about this before you we, you know, we met in kindergarten 135 years ago. It feels like, you know, 10 minutes away from the port of Long beach, which is neighboring the Port of Los Angeles. And people as early as June were Diverting, ordering early for holiday merchandise. It talked about them back to school. But on those same ships are pipe valves and fittings and you know, dust masks and respirators and conveyor belts and all the stuff that our, our audience talks about. And now we've got this glut hitting west coast ports and the west coast ports, the biggest are the LA Long beach ports. To handle that now we're going to have delays there.

Maybe, maybe. I wonder how much posturing is going on. I also don't know if the government could step in and basically stop a strike of that magnitude.

Well, they, you know, they did, they were able to do that in Canada a few weeks ago with the rail strike there. Right. But what we've seen here is we get typically we get a few days of a stoppage and the problem is that stoppage then starts backing those ships up down the coast towards where I live, you know, 40 miles away from that port. And it takes, it's a, it's a hiccup to get things back in line. So the reason we talked about this is I think it's a little bit of a double edged sword right now. The big takeaway for me is, you know, I think it was Mike Mortensen with Alaska Rubber Group that was on with us earlier this year. And you know, Mike talked about, I think I asked him the question, or you asked him the question about how often they're, you know, really talking to vendors and managing supply chain. And you know, historically you had, you know, vendors as a distributed vendors with meetings when they, or meetings with vendors, I should say, when they'd come in two or three times a year. You might talk a little bit about, you know, pressures in, in Southeast Asia or in China and so forth about manufacturing. But now, you know, Mike's talking about these conversations weekly about what is going on with your supply chain. Because your supply chain is my supply chain.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So something we need to continue to watch. People need to be paying attention to much more than they have in the past. So where are we headed next? Manufacturing, Distribution.

That's where we're headed.

Yep. So Industrial Distribution had a nice article in there. It's written by a gentleman that does some advising for family businesses. And this was about deciding to sell the family business. Do you have any takeaways on that one?

Yeah, I was trying to remember what were some of the, I reviewed the article, but I don't recall all the sort of key experiences. Do you have those in front of you?

Yeah, I do. This Is you saying that you're not prepared but you knew I did.

I didn't prepare on this one. No, I'm prepared on other ones. For whatever reason I didn't get I missed this one.

You know, it's a pretty straightforward I, I'm appreciative of these types of articles. It talks about what basically what they did is they talked to a handful of family owned business that have sold in the last five years or so and they talk about generational difference, differences between generational ownership. And they talked about a few family businesses who were in a position where the other family members weren't necessarily ready to take over. I mean we have a number of customers at Lead Smart who are, you know, third, fourth generation companies and the kids grew up in the business and they're happy to take it over and they enjoy the, the benefits of coming with that. Well, that always doesn't happen that way. And so this article is talking about some of the different pressures. You know, all of the points it talks about it leads to the takeaway. And I'll mention these other points, but the big takeaway on this is the idea behind and I've got an example I'll share in a moment with this is running your business and being prepared to be acquired. And I've always looked at things I was involved in a, I invested in a family owned manufacturing company years ago and one of the reasons I only was there six or seven years in the day to day is because the principal owner sometimes kind of ran the, ran the business occasionally like a, like a liquor store. Right. If there's cash in the till, I can take it. And it wasn't running to the level of operational efficiency that you could ever go through an M and A transaction with the diligence that would be needed. So you know, my conversation when I joined that company was, you know, we need to run the business like we're going to sell the business. And I think that was my big takeaway from this article is, you know, run your whether you're in the manufacturing side of the world or distribution side of the world, manage your books, manage your teams, manage your warehouse and distribution models, manage all of that like today, like you were preparing to be acquired because you become this crazy efficient business that now could be acquired. And if you run into a place where you need to be acquired or you choose to be acquired, your multiple is that much better and the numbers work. And probably the biggest headache it takes away is diligence goes faster and easier.

Well, and even if you aren't going to sell it and you end up doing succession or you end up, you know, someone in the family, right. It's going to be a better business. It's going to be easier to hire. So it's, it's kind of a win win all the way around.

So they were a couple of the things that, to your question, right. They were talking about first off was, you know, gap between generational ownership. Sometimes, sometimes there's a time and it's a need to sell or you know, offer you can't refuse and you don't have the family ready to run the business yet. The other thing that they talked about was somebody nearing retirement, agent age and sometimes it loses the allure and that's what they reference if losing the allure. I think they were referencing a family owned business where there was a couple of brothers that were running the business and they, I'm sorry, in this one it was just an individual whose father had handed the business down and as he was getting older, his kids weren't ready to join the business and they had other interests and he realized if something happened to him, right, everybody's in trouble. And so he prepared well to get ready and he sold the business in 2019. And then this other piece of it ties back to the first one with lack of future management. They talk about is that maybe you've got aging workforce that's looking to retire. You don't have the right people coming in to run the business. You don't have family members ready to go. And so selling the business turns out to be the best thing for the generational wealth ongoing of the family in general in those settings. And those could be, you know, multiple families owning a business. But the big thing was behind it and I, the reason I dropped it into the, into today's newsletter was to get people thinking about is my business right? If I, if, you know, if we had one of these factors happen, right, and we have a, we have a customer, that's a different one that I was thinking about before. That's a, you know, two brothers took the family over the business over and from the father. And all of a sudden the one of the brothers didn't want to be involved anymore and what, what happens to the other brother? He had to make arrangements in that setting. Good, good arrangements. So anyways, that's the, that's the idea.

And I'll add, I'll add Ron's comment here. He's saying it also be hesitation to make the necessary investments, right. To keep the Business current. Yep. So it's like, you know what, I'm not ready to make these sort of transformational changes, so let's let somebody else deal with it. Right?

That's exactly, exactly right. And you know, there, there's the other side of that. Right. Is sometimes and you and I, I've seen this many, many times and they didn't, they didn't talk about this. But there are times, Right. Where you just have an offer you can't refuse. Right. It's like, how could you not.

Right.

Not do that to your family when something comes through. And I would say any, any well run wholesale distributor in this day and age is getting phone calls from private equity groups and, or, you know, other people in their market that are out there that are willing to scoop up their businesses. You've got a whole nother group of people. There's a couple of folks in the, in the industrial space and one in particular I can think of in the industrial safety space that part of their business model is acquiring, I don't want to say distressed, I'll say stressed smaller distributors and that's their business model to bring those in, bring some good people in and bring some market share in. So. Yeah, I thought it was an interesting article. It's good, good to have.

Okay.

Yep. Good. So next we kind of talked about, now we're in our manufacturing and distribution segment going from, from distribution to manufacturing. ABC News article about the White House. This is interesting, right. With the news that we're watching and listening to every day is that this is kind of bipartisan. It looks like Biden will look to squash this. Nippon Steel's acquisition of U.S. steel, that's a little, it's going to use the word protectionist, but I'm not sure that I'm qualified to say that, that that's what it is or not. But certainly they're looking for the unions to bolster them. Unions are concerned about the Japanese company acquiring them in the setting. But Harris has said she would do the same thing and Trump has said he would do the same thing. So any takeaways from you on this?

Well, what's interesting about this is that US Still Steel has come back and said if you squash this deal, we're going to close or have to close plants. Well, guess where those plants are or those steel plants are. They're in Pennsylvania. What's Pennsylvania? Pennsylvania is a big battleground swing step. Yeah. Right. So it'll be interesting to see if this sort of gets, I don't know, is, you know, Biden in the, in the current administration willing to hold the position on that and risk the potential fallout from that. It'd be interesting to see how that plays out timing wise.

Well, there's a whole government effect. I learned in reading this article. I learned about another, another agency in the government that I never heard of that we pay for. Looking at my article, what was that called? Committee on Foreign Investment and their review hasn't come in yet. But you know, this is interesting because the, the spokesperson for US Steel said, you know, historically when we see these issues related to foreign investment, it's tied to national security. The relationship US Relationship with, with Japan is phenomenal. Right. I mean very, very close. So there's no issue about or shouldn't be any issue about the Japanese investing here. And it ties back a little bit too. Right. If you look at this as the, the US need for steel isn't going to change if US Steel slows down and in order to shut some plants down. And we've been talking about the Chinese trying to move steel into the US Avoiding tariffs by going through Mexico. So big, big, you know, circular reference here that is kind of ties into stuff that we talk about consistently. So it's going to impact supply chain stuff too. So we'll watch, we'll watch it. We'll talk about it more. All right. Why marketing and E commerce Next segment, why brand purpose is overrated and what consumers really want. You know, I threw this in there. This is talking about consumers. But Tom, I should have mentioned this to you when I sent you the articles to review yesterday is I'm feeling like and I'd like your comment or anybody that's listening's comments on this and if you're listening on the podcast, send us a note if you have thoughts on this is I just think we're entering a stage and we're in the very nascent or very early stages of where we just there's, there's a very narrow gray line between B2B and B2C as far as expectations of consumers go. And so that's kind of what interested me in this article.

Yeah, I think there's a, I think it's very close as it relates to an individual. Right. We're going to talk about this next article a little bit about B2B versus B2C. But I also obviously in business which we're going to get into, it's not always an individual making the decision or having the decision to be make. Right. In a business of consumer you have the authority to make your own decision generally, or there may be a couple people, but it's not a, it's not a group decision. But on this first article, the, it was an interesting point, I thought, because, you know, there's been a lot of talk about Millennials and Gen Z really backing companies that have purpose built missions and align with their view and they're only going to buy from those companies or they're going to have. But the article was like, well, if you really peel the onion back. Yeah, that's more or less true. Unless they really want to get a better price or they really need something right now, at which point they're going to buy one from the place that has the ability to deliver on what they need to buy. So in other words, they're saying, hey, purpose matters until it doesn't. And I just found it interesting. I don't, you know, there was probably a lot more to understand as you peel the onion on that. But at the end of the day, we want what we want when we want it.

Yep. So I, I think that that ties. Well, this, this article is from Ad Age magazine. It's from a survey, a survey of 8,000 shoppers and 8,000 retailers. And I'm just going to say just plug in 8,000 B2B buyers and 8,000 distributors or 800 distributors into this. 73% of consumers internationally agreed with the statement, I am more loyal to brands and retailers who I believe are authentic. Right. So that's where they started. Right. And so it's, you know, save the world. I believe in your mission, I like your ads, I like your spokesperson, I like all of those things. But to your point, right, a lot of that goes out the window when convenience comes in. Right. It says that Gen Zers and Millennials prefer brands whose missions align with their values and are more willing to support and be loyal to purpose driven brands. But that doesn't mean you should keep telling them about it as it means making them change their behavior. So it says, contrary to widely held belief about Gen Z and millennials, 43% of Gen Z or said they preferred ads to be humorous compared to 17% resonating with ads they were aligned with on social messaging. So I'm not suggesting in this that we need to think about being funny when we're a wholesale distributor. But what I do believe with this is brand matters and brand is more than we have 99.9 on time delivery and we've got 23 locations and a big trucking fleet.

Right.

There are things that go to Building brand awareness and brand warmth that are migrating over. And this particular is, you know, article talking about brand and brand purpose. And you have to kind of have a little bit of both. My takeaway from this is you need both. You need to have a brand that people can become comfortable and have affinity for, but then you need to give them all the stuff that they want. Which the struggle now in B2B is people want an Amazon experience when they're buying conveyor belts.

Well, yeah, all things being equal as it relates to convenience and cost, right. Brand certainly gives you that advantage. All things being equal. But that doesn't mean, hey, I have a great brand, but then I don't have a good experience as it relates to convenience and to, and cost and all those other things. Right? So it's two sides of the equation.

Well, I think, you know, a great example of that because I want to unpack this a little bit. Tom, just for the friends that we have that are, will be listening or are with us live, use an example, right? And I'm not going to suggest that a, that a hundred million dollar a year, a 30 million dollar a year wholesale distributor or even manufacturer could do what a 18 or 20 billion dollar, your granger could do. But the, if you look at Granger, right, If you turn on in Los Angeles or Southern California, if you turn on the most popular news, traffic and weather radio station, right. KNX FM here in, in Southern California, which is the dominant spot for traffic. And I listen to it because of traffic when I'm out and about, right. You will hear consistently throughout the day ads for Granger. And what Granger does is the tagline is for the ones who get it done.

Right?

Wow. I'm, I'm one, I'm, I'm one of those guys that gets it done. I'm the elevator repair guy. I'm the guy that's the plant maintenance manager. I'm the plumber going down the street. There's that, that is building brand, right? When we're starting to talk about an affinity of people coming to, wanting to come to my company. The other side of that is with Granger's hub and spoke model is we can get you anything and we can get you anything. It's not the same day overnight, right? And so now there, that's a good example of people blending those things together in a nice setting that is now starting to take advantage of brand. Brand awareness, brand development, emotional tie to my company because I'm part of you. And then by the way, I've Got an experience that's pretty phenomenal as well. So that's just kind of. I threw out there from that standpoint, you know, a good example for people to kind of think about. If you think you're, you know, ABC Pipe and Supply and you just have done a really good job of getting pipes to job sites, maybe take a look at what Granger is doing or maybe start reading some of the B2B or B2C things that are going on out there. Because as we talk about all the time and what we know is that your B2B buyer is a millennial, soon going to be a Gen Z, or I guess you can never get these right. But that, that's a whole different world that we're living in at bottom line, right.

You have to do both. You have to. Or you should be doing. Don't have to, I guess, but you should be doing both. Is thinking about experience on one side of the equation and brand on the other. And the two of them together should work. One plus one equals three. Right. You should end up getting definitely on both sides of that.

Yeah. Kelly in Wisconsin, being a nice talk comment here about having the right technology, right. Having the right tech behind your business that can power at least. I think Kelly's in Wisconsin. I think she moved from California recently. But the having the right tech behind what you're trying to do, this is critical, right. Because you can't manage these things without understanding it all. So, all right, you want to bump ahead. What's next? Take us away.

This next one is very similar. I guess it's not similar, but it's on the same line. Like clicking with B2B customers for lessons from B to C, from B2C marketing. And you know, they're talking about, obviously, is that in the B2B world, right, we're dealing with generally, you know, larger, longer buy cycles, multiple decision makers, things that are not something that we deal with, as I was saying a minute ago, related to consumers. Right. If you look at marketing in the consumer world, it's considered what is mostly direct response. The idea being is, Kevin, I, I'm going to market to you, I want you to respond and take action immediately based on that marketing that I'm doing. Whereas in the B2B world, maybe that's the response is not, hey, I'm going to go buy something. The response is, I'm going to introduce this into my company. I'm going to make a recommendation to somebody. I'm going to forward it to a colleague. I'm going to do a lot of those things there, which is a different action than in the B2C world. But I think there's some good crossover as they were talking about here as some things that can cross over and can be leveraged on both sides of the fence.

Well, let's talk about that. Let's not just say they make good points there because not everybody's going to go read these articles. So they talk about storytelling, right. Which is pretty common if you look at things in the B2C world and really getting a story about that's going to resonate with people. That's engaging. But clear messaging. It talks about, you know, how are we going to keep their attention, how are we going to keep their affinity to. To our company and our brand. They talk about hyper personalization. Right. We have different Personas within different companies and different buyers or different influencers.

Right.

My messaging to a. A chief supply officer. Right. Or a CFO is going to be different to the plant floor buyer. Right. But that's actually not what we typically see. But we need to really think about that hyper personalization in the B2B world of really understanding our buyer Personas that go with all of that. So we're marketing specifically to. It's funny, right. We just were on the phone yesterday with a agency that does some of.

That.

Work for us, right. Is identifying Personas that are key for us to be looking at and using. They talk about then about data and that being disciplined and integrated across your organization with your data. So some. Some good, good points. I think it's always important for us. I get. I get in a habit sometimes here of, you know, I, I talk about the article, but not the generalization, but not the key points. And not, not everybody that listens in is reading the newsletter or clicking on those links. So those were the key pieces. Right. So storytelling.

Yeah. And. And we are seeing. I'm seeing this even with our customers where there is more of a emphasis now on really understanding who my customer is.

Yes.

Right. What? They're not just a name or an ID and the erp. Right. A number in the erp. But it's like who are the. What is this company? What do they do? Why are they buying from us? Who. You know, that's really having a deeper understanding of who your customer is.

Yeah.

And I have definitely seen even the last year, more of an emphasis on that. I believe that'll be a re. You talk about brand and experience, right. Companies that can really understand that customer in the distribution space is going to Have a big advantage.

Well, and those are going to build the affinity and the longer relationship and the opportunity to do a, you know, looking at lifetime value of a customer. Right. I mean, and closing those white space gaps where we're not able to sell full line. And those things that businesses really need to be thinking about, trying to do more of are going to come from building that brand affinity. And it's more than sending out, you know, having a flyer on the counter or having an email newsletter that goes out about our specials this month and then having a barbecue four times a year at each branch. That's. That's marketing, but it's not the marketing.

And where we're headed, that's not deep. That's not deep knowledge on your customers.

It's not data driven. Right, right. At all. Y. Yep. So.

All right.

Good. All right. Where are we headed next?

Did you want to talk about fraud?

I don't like to talk about fraud, but I think we should.

Okay. Yeah, we have kind of. We have kind of two fraud ones here. Back to back. Yeah.

Yep. So B2B and B2C fraud, both on the rise. The report shows this. Digital Commerce360. We. We share a lot of information from there. And it just, it talks about fraud is on the rise across the board for both sides of things. And a big part of that is becoming returns, and it becomes a big struggle for folks in that setting. Any thoughts on your end?

Yeah, I mean, I would be. You know, they were talking a lot about returns. Right. As being one of the primary areas that are. And I don't know, you know, you might know better than I do. Is returns and fraudulent returns a big issue in the B2B world and in the distribution world? I could totally see it, obviously, in the Amazon world of consumer. And it was funny when I. I brought back a rake I bought at Lowe's the other day. What do you buy a rake for? For. For the yard.

You know, you don't do that. Come on.

Yeah, people. Yeah, yeah, I do. I have. Me. But the. When I brought the rake back, the guy, like, practically did a forensic analysis of it to try and figure out if I had used it before, like, really, like, picked it up and looked at it and make sure it wasn't bent and then asked a bunch of questions which I had not experienced before. I. I was actually okay with it. I didn't feel offended or I didn't. You know, it didn't really affect my. My opinion of Lowe's by doing that, but clearly. Right. People Are buying stuff, using it. But they said they call it rent for free. And the thing there. I just don't know if that's a real problem in the wholesale space.

It's becoming. It's becoming more of an issue. And I think we talked about that. You know, the. It's becoming a potential larger issue where people will get something in. A great example of it. Because this happens B2B and B2C, in effect, it just. Just triggered in my head is that. Think about when a storm's. A hurricane's heading in, right. What happens when everybody runs to their local wholesale distributor or retailer. They want to buy generators.

Right. I would. Generators.

Well, but think about generators.

Right? That's good. Yeah.

Plywood I'll probably take back. No big deal. But if somebody wants to go buy three generators that are $450 each just to have just in case. Right. And then you. You go through that and you get the unboxing experience. You get the potential damage. So that's why people have looked in that setting in the B2B world just as well as the B2C that some of these things you can't return. Right. And we see that. I mean, are you going to have that with a. You know, with a lumber distributor? In fact, that's a bad example of maybe a pipe valve and fitting distributor. Maybe not as much the same. But you do run into that when people have overages and so forth. And it becomes oftentimes a packaging issue as well. But again, the same crossover is the tools that people are trying to use to do this are electronic. And if you're offering electronic ordering, there can be some funny business going on with all of that. So just good things to kind of pay attention to. And part of it happens sometimes too, with people worrying less about, you know, in this setting. And I was just kind of looking at some of the charts that went with this article, you know, is empty box fraud. They chart talk about chargeback fraud and so forth. Of. Of course we returned that. No, we didn't. No, you didn't.

If.

Yes, we did, you know, or this didn't work quite right. And that happens across the board as well. And then as we start trying to do more digital transactions, as we're migrating from analog to digital transactions, I think during that crossover time, we're going to be having to learn about the power that comes from managing things digitally. And so that. That's an issue at the moment.

Yeah, that's about generators. I could. Yeah, I could see that being a. Yeah. Sort of event driven sort of purchases that are, you know, well, I want to have it on hand and I don't need that anymore. And that's still a cost.

Yeah. Or I mean you see something similar with people if you know, wanting to over buy related to a. Over buy related to a project even or a job, you know, so. And most distributors do a reasonably good job of having a the relationship with their customers. It's like, hey, you can, you know, if you have 20 boxes of unused, unopened, unused nails from that project that you didn't need and X amount of sheets of plywood, bring them back. We'll take a good look at it, we'll credit your account and it's fine. But as we start moving to the digital age with more, with more of this, there's some risks that go with it until we get those systems refined better.

Okay.

That ties into, you know and I was going to mention too, we always like to kind of share some plugs for some of the people that provide us some of the information and articles that we talk about it. Distribution Strategy Group did an event that tied in a lot about this about returns and managing returns. RP that was with us earlier in the show made a couple of comments. He was actually on that event and then as one of the panelists and they talk quite a bit about returns and managing returns efficiently. So if this is something you're thinking about in your wholesale distributor, that would be good. Just it was on Wednesday. I can't remember the title of it, but it was on their Wednesday webinar. Wednesday. Yeah, Wednesday. And this is Friday, September 6th, so it would have been on the 4th. I believe they held that and they talked a lot about these types of issues in that.

So yeah, I want to hit Kelly's comment here. I think this is really good insight. You know, she said think 200 websites would B2B in the getting fraud in our level is a training issue. We have AI security now and apps connected to B2B E commerce that will flag authorize.net which is the credit card processing has velocity filters or holds before checkouts. Clearly defines terms and condition related to return. No cash return, credit only. I think this is exactly what they were talking about in the article too is much more restrictive things that are there. Sounds like that's happening already based on Kelly's experience in the B2B world.

Yep. And she's been in the B2B world for a long, long time. So a good source. Thank you Kelly for that. That's good that's good. All right, Tom, from a time standpoint, let's keep bouncing. Here we go into our technology, cybersecurity and AI segment. Deep fake scams escalate, hitting 53% of businesses. Any takeaways on that one?

You know, I think this is going to be the, one of the most biggest security related things that you've got to get sorted out. The quality of the videos, whether they're deep fake videos, deep face, deep fake audio, even deep fake emails. Right. Is just getting more and more, if you want to call it impressive, I guess, for lack of better. So you've really got to have the right. It's going to get worse. It's going to get worse. And you talk about, we were talking about training issue, right? Training and organizational issue. I think any organization has got to basically incorporate this into their policies and the training that they do with employees. Just like you would do safety training or anything else, you know, HR training, any of this. This would be almost an essential element of it.

Well, Tom, I think that the challenge comes is, is this is such new, you know, territory, right, for us in these things. And to me, you know, people talk all the time about existential threats of AI and things this, this is probably reading this article and I was thinking about something else and kind of my personal life as well, about the risks of these things the other day. And this is probably the first time that I've really taken a look at the risk of some of the things that you can do with AI. I mean, we talk about the big stuff and. But you know, the end of the day, and I think it was. And I, I was going to text him this morning and ask him about this, but when Ian Heller was on, when we did our, we did January show, we did the urine review with Mike and Dirk and, and Mike Marks and Dirk Beveridge and Ian Heller. I can't remember if this was an actual story or if it was fictional that Ian developed, but if Ian's with us or anybody knows, just let us know this morning. But the point was, right, you're an electrical distributor. You've got a customer that you work with on a consistent basis, right? It's ABC Electrical Contractors and they're huge account for you. And Joe from ABC Electrical Contractors calls in his orders from his truck all the time. And all of a sudden customer service gets a call from a number that says it's Joe's number. And Joe says, we're just starting a new job site. It's on the corner of Maine And Oak street. And I need you to drop off, you know, 200 spools of XYZ type of wire. And that wire has to happens to be full of copper. Right. And because ABC Contractors and Joe have been doing business with your company since your dad started it. Right. You don't think twice about a customer service knows that's Joe. Well, guess what? In that setting it's not Joe. Because a spoofer, deep fake type person went and saw, oh, this is a big contractor in the area. They found Joe on Facebook where he's done some videos from vacation. They recorded his voice to make a deep fake of his voice. They can easily spoof his number when calling in. And that order is coming from a deep fake. And that order of say $10,000 worth of copper wire is going to an empty lot with maybe, maybe there is a job site but it's getting dropped off and there's somebody going by to pick it up that's going to sell that wire and get the cash. Right. Did anybody do anything wrong in that setting on the distributor side? They just did their normal business practice. It's Joe. Joe calls from his truck on Tuesdays and Thursdays or whatever it is. So that's a big deal. Right. So I mean they're talking about 53% of businesses in the US and UK have had some type of, been some type of a target of a financial scam. So that we're talking. What I was just describing is on the getting product out the door stuff we're not talking about. And by the way, this article is from cfodive.com and a great publication and they're saying that 43, 53% of businesses in the US and UK had been targeted. 43% of them had fallen victim to something. I might, maybe I'm soapboxing this a little bit, I don't know.

But no, I mean it's, it's. You're right. I mean we talk about this with, you know, way back in January when we did the show with Ian. I think it's, it's happening now much faster because it's so easy to do. Right? Right. There's so many tools that. So again, it's not going away. The only way you can handle it is to incorporate the right policies in the organization to be away with, you know, get away with it. So whether you have a special code or you have other things that Joe needs it to provide. Right. It's like you can still provide that customer experience, but you don't have to Know, open yourself up to that level of, I guess, ease of, of fraudulent activity. So.

Yeah, well, I, I, I think maybe we can try and be a voice for this about some of the tools that you could do. Right. Because I think this is going to be, we're going to be talking about this a lot more over the next few years, I think.

Yeah.

So, yeah, this is, this one makes me nervous. You know, not a lot of this stuff makes me nervous because I think it's reasonable to be able to overcome a lot of these things, but this one's going to be hard. So putting those things in. And I think what we're going to see is a lot more than just, you know, cyber security software for companies. And we're going to see cyber security consultants and best practices policies. Yeah.

I have, I have a friend who has a security company. All they do is training. All they do is security training. And he's getting close to being a half a billion dollar company. Wow. Not one piece of software. It's all, it's all training.

So they might, he might be big enough to come in and do some work for us at Lead Smart.

Yeah, yeah. Maybe not quite, but you know, it's.

I mean, it's something we need to be thinking about in our company too.

Right.

What do we click on? So, all right, before we go on to any other segments here, what's your AI Persona? Tom, do you know your AI Persona?

Yes.

Where do you fit? There's five of them here.

I'm all of the above, I think, in there. Yeah.

Isn't that great? So here's what they are. They're. This is an article from HR Dive magazine and talking about getting a AI within your business. So they have the. Where did it go here did we start? We have the maximalist. They call it maximalist. 30% surveyed are all in on AI. 63% of that group use it a couple of times a week and 65% actively encourage others. Next we go to and it says four out of five of those people are under 44. You don't qualify. Well, I'm sorry, we don't qualify. Then it talked about the underground group. 20% of workers surveyed, they 7 in 10 are under 44. And this group is using AI on the sly. Their company doesn't encourage the use of AI at work and they don't have much going on there. Then we talk about the rebel. 19% of those surveyed, 66% said they never use AI at work. And almost as many said the technology is a threat to society. So they're going to follow a demographic that says, I'm going to bury my head in the ground.

Yeah.

And then there is the super fan. Huge AI fans, but are cheering from the sidelines. This group is diverse in age, signaling AI curiosity spans all generations. The key to their engagement is set them up with trainings and encourage learnings to see the value. And then the last one is the Observer. The last third is interested in learning about the tool and developing appropriate skills, but don't basically have the time or the engagement to do it. So I'd say I follow. The observer for me is the. I want to do more. The super fan is part of the same, is I'm a super fan but have limited aspects outside of what we do and what I use in our business. Nothing rebel for me, nothing underground for me. And then that the maximalist is. I'm trying to maximize my use of it more every day. So where do you fall?

I would say I'm definitely a maximalist.

But, yeah, there's. There's something before maximalist that you are.

Oh, there is? Yeah. Well, I mean, we won't repeat that on the call.

No, no, you're. You're well known as. As becoming more and more well known as an expert in the AI field and the tools that you're developing with your team. So I don't know what you would call that.

Yeah, I know this isn't in our. This isn't in the article, and I know it's not covering. I just want to kind of, you know, state something that I think we'll hear first because we have a. Apple's making a big announcement on Monday, you know, and I. I think we've even had commenters and people on the show that say, God, I'm so sick of AI. I'm so sick of hearing about AI and, you know, the. The hype cycle, where the hype is wearing out. I think we're about. I know I'll say. I'll go one step and say, I know we are about ready to enter into a new chapter of AI that I don't think anybody or very few people have thought a lot about, about what it can do and what it will do for you. So I think you're going to see very different Personas here for the article here in the next six months, because I think we're going to. What we know is AI today and what AI is even come the end of the year is going to be very different.

Well, I think you're right. With that. And I think what we're going to see very quickly is your phone is going to take you into a whole new world of experience of what could be with AI.

Right.

And I don't know if that's what they're going to be announcing at this one. I haven't paid attention to it, but.

It says, I mean, the new phones are coming out. IOS 18 is coming up. It has the Apple intelligence to it. You're going to basically have a little mini model on your phone. I mean, you really start to look at what's possible with that.

Right.

And even not just consumer wise, but in B2B, it starts to be pretty, pretty mind boggling.

No, I think, I think that's exactly it. But let's just quickly. And I want to move ahead, but I think you're teasing a little bit there that we should discuss briefly. Hey, thanks, Bob, for coming.

All right, well, we're going to wrap.

Yeah. Appreciate you all being with us. That's funny. We always love it when Bob's here. That's great. Those of you listening in on the podcast, again, you're not hearing the. Yeah, I shouldn't say that. You're not seeing the newsletter that we have in front of us as you talk about this much earlier. And we have comments that are coming in on the live show and we have somebody that just dropped in with us last minute as we're just a few articles away from winding down today.

And Jeff agrees with Creates with me also.

So, yeah, no, that's, that's what we're going to come back to that. So hold on to Jeff there for a minute. But what I did want to say, Tom, is, you know, if you're listening on the podcast, we're reviewing our newsletter that we publish each week. It's called around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution Manufacturing. If you would like to get that and you don't currently get that, please let us know. You can do that by emailing us@helloadsmart tech.com or you can drop in on the website for the podcast, which is www.aroundthehornpod.com. you can sign up for alerts, you can sign up for the RSS feed, whatever you want to do there, as well as the newsletter, which is what we're talking about today. So shifting back to this discussion about AI, I think what we're talking about here is having your mobile device. And I was just noticing because I could get a new laptop in the next week or two, new MacBook, and their new chips are AI enabled for the stuff you're going to be able to do on your computer for running models that'll be local to you. So we think about an AI and we need to break this down I think a little bit, Tom. We think about large language models, right, which are large data lakes, warehouses full of information from whatever that that model builder wants to be included in that. We think about OpenAI and ChatGPT. It is basically the world around us up to a certain date and we can ask that questions. Well, now imagine what you can ask ChatGPT about why Napoleon did this or did that. Right. And get wonderful resources or ask Perplexity and get the reference points of that same question. Now what happens is on your mobile device, right there is. It's a small language model running, but it is the Tom Burton language model about all things Tom Burton. So how did you spend your time? What restaurants did you order from? What did you order, how many duplicates you have in your contacts? And why do we have those. Everything about you in your life that your phone has that data in there. I happen to have my phone connected to a Dropbox that has my whole personal world in there. And SharePoint for our business now we start seeing this emergence of information that's we're not only don't need to go.

Look for it, we're going to be.

Prompted with it and it's all about us versus going out and searching for things about how to make sushi. It's going to be prompting this and saying, hey, Kevin, you ordered Rainbow rolls and Caterpillar rolls from this place. Would you like me to show you how to make them?

Yeah, exactly. Right.

And say that again. I love it when you say that.

I don't, I don't know, I can't remember what I said. Okay, but now take that one step further. So you're now a salesperson at a distributor.

Yeah.

And I hand you a company phone that's preloaded, if you want to call it that. Right. Great thing that it means to be an outside sales rep in this territory with these products, with these, you know, things that are here with these customers, all of those things is. It's, it is going to be. And the capabilities which is. I know we've gotten way off track on this, but the capabilities of even the models and what OpenAI will be releasing this year and so forth. I think we, I know, like I said, we are entering into a new chapter. It's funny, I was at a barbecue over the weekend and it was just interesting talking to People that believe that AI as it exists now is what it is forever. Yeah.

And well, that's coming on earlier. Right, right, right.

And, and we're going to see a whole nother major, in my opinion, major, major increase in just capabilities and just, you know, ability of use cases and value also comes with everything else that we've talked about that goes with it. But yeah, you know, positive value is the opportunity, so.

Yep, good.

Well, I want to, I want to get Bob's comment though, because it's.

He brings up an interest coming in this late.

Yeah, we're going to let him come in later. Yeah. All right. We're gonna. As he says, when it's on our phone, nothing will be sacred. Give it time and AI will start charging for the personal data it gathers from us. I don't think that's completely crazy. Right. I think as it aggregates data and provides you insights or whatever, you know, it, you'll have Siri Pro or something that you'll end up potentially paying for.

I just want Siri to work.

It will work. It'll work a lot better with.

Can't wait. Can't wait. I've been horrible today.

Yeah.

Good. All right. Sales and M and A two articles we have here as we move into our sales and M and A segment. Good article here in Industry Week magazine, industryweek.com about manufacturers prime for mergers but waiting for forecast ability. So this is tying a little bit back to what we're talk a lot about as we're getting into election season. There's a lot of people waiting on what's going to happen with interest rates and then what's going to happen. What, what can we expect from the world and the economy post election? And you know, it's crazy. It's. I, I would really like to keep the radio and the news off till November 20 or so, get through all the hype and, and figure things out. But a good article about on the manufacturing side. Don't know if you had any takeaways on that one.

Well, just, you know, it's, I was going to mention this earlier. Right. I think we're in the maybe economy right now. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. Yeah. I think this is a, a good example of this. And you mentioned elections and you know, I think even hiring. Right. I think one of the reasons we're seeing a slowdown in jobs is people are like, well, I'm not sure if I should hire, you know, should I be thinking about AI or, you know, whatever. Right. Who knows what it is or just like a. We're in this maybe the state of maybe. And again this is just another example of that.

I think it's good. They talked a lot about, you know, the private equity side of things in manufacturing. It's interesting. They also talked about deals that would be moving some, some folks are a little, they use the term paralysis right now kind of watching on things. But they also talked about deals that are getting done are oftentimes getting done out of private equity funds that are ending hitting their end of their investment life cycle. So they got a fund that needs to. And I've always, I thought this. And we don't. We rarely talk a lot about venture capital here but you and I have had involvement with it many times in the past and been investors ourselves. And is the, the perfect world, right? Is. And I heard a VC talk about this one time at a Consumer Electronics Board association board meeting I was invited to sit in on and listen in on and they were talking about, you know, the best, best case scenario is because we all think about sometimes dumb deals get done. It's like why would you, why would you have done that? Sometimes there's money needing a home and it has a very narrow window when it has to be spent. And so sometimes there's deals And I've always thought that the person that can figure out and understand looking across private equity and venture capital and understand somehow know what the life cycle on those are on those funds when dollars have to be deployed, that's a winning time to go figure out where you want to raise. Yeah. So be difficult to do. Well the follow up article to that is from Modern Distribution Management. They talk about August M and a recap, second busiest month so far of 2024. They put some good, good data out of that one. Did you Tom, did you grab that chart? We won't spend a lot of time on it, but I don't know if you grabbed that or not. It's okay if you didn't. Yeah, there you go. So we can see this is a good example of the cycle that we've had. If you're listening on the podcast and not seeing our screen, this talks about deals published per month. January 37th and we've kind of had some 37, 36 and then it looks like we had May was the top and then August was at 35 deals. So pretty steady. We had some down, down months last year in July and again in September but, but some pretty steady growth across there. So I think we're going to see A lot more of that happening after the election. There's a lot of money on the sidelines. So we'll see where that, where that pops back in. So, so, Tom, I'm, I'm distressed. We're moving into our People and leadership segment. How do you support employees in distress? Tell me you don't.

You don't have them go talk to other distressed employees. That's, that's the answer right there. Okay, so.

Good.

That's what the article is saying, basically. It's a Harvard Business Review article saying that generally, hey, if I'm having a hard time at work, right, I'll go find somebody else who's having a hard time. Miseryless company, basically. And what they're saying is that generally makes it worse. So don't go, you know, look for somebody else who's having that same problem to, to try and sort it all out with.

Commensurate.

Huh. Commiserate. Yeah.

Yeah. So some, some people might ask why are you two guys talking about HR stuff? Right? It's last, I guess it was January, the show we mentioned earlier and we had Dirk beverage on and Dirk's with, doing his tour with the We Supply America tour. I think he's got a couple more stops left. He was home for a week or so. If you don't follow Dirk on, on, I think Dirk was going to be with us today. He said if you don't follow Dirk on LinkedIn, you're missing out some of the stuff that he writes. He's just a prolific contributor and he's out touring the countryside. And, and so Dirk called us out and I'm really appreciative of it, is that we didn't talk enough about people and, and leadership and, and the humans behind wholesale distribution and manufacturing. So we added this segment literally the next week. And so this is a great article. It talks about, again, you mentioned Harvard Business Review. It talks about, you know, sometimes in, as leaders, you know, we're busy, we don't think about this. We want to send somebody down to hr. But talks about focusing on the person in distress and focusing on, you know, what is going on with them as opposed to comparing ourselves to them, validating what's going on with them and understanding the severity of it, asking questions so they can share more about things and then consider who in the organization is the best person to be of support and help to them in that setting. So I like that article. It was good. Ties. Well, as we talk about the next article today, as we kind of move along developing top Talent, the Olympians of the workplace. And we've had a lot of good specifically tied into the People in Leadership segment that we do each week since the Olympics last month. This was kind of an interesting article about developing top talent and using tools that athletes use. Right. Anything you see there you liked.

No. I mean, I think, bottom line, right, we hear this all the time is people don't leave companies, they leave managers. And this was, I thought, some really good advice for a manager about how to potentially, you know, do a better job with it and help develop your. Your team.

Yeah, I mean, it talked. I think what I liked about it is it really related to the idea of a. Of what a coach would do with somebody. Right. Establishing clear expectations, give them the tools and empower somebody to grow and help them unlock their potential. And that's what coaches do. Right. And we want to do that in the workplace, so. Good. Well, we're gonna. We're gonna turn into great HR people, Tom. We're gonna learn from all this.

Yes. Well, I need all the help I can get.

Yeah. So a couple of things. We usually don't spend a lot of time talking about our industry scuttlebutt, which is our next section, but a couple of these things I wanted to hit big. Acquisition announced earlier this week surprised a lot of people. I actually texted somebody that I respect in the electrical distribution world about this acquisition. Sonepar acquired Summit Electric. Summit headquartered in Albuquerque, 23 locations. They had looked like they were going to start doing quite a few acquisitions and stuff themselves. Ed Gerber, the former president of the Industrial Supply Association, Guess it's been close to two years now, joined Sona, part of or joined a summit to help kind of turn around and see what was next for them. So this was an exciting announcement. I mentioned our friend of the show earlier, Ian Heller from Distribution Strategy Group. Ian's on the board of directors, I guess I should say was on the board of directors of. Of Summit Electric as well. So congratulations to Ed Gerber and everybody at Summit and the folks from Sonopar, kind of wondering if, between Sonopar and Wesco and a couple of others, if there's going to be too many privately held electrical distributors in the US Soon. But we'll watch what happens. Our friends at Enduries International fastener and industrial distributor in Wisconsin, and I say them, call them friends because they're friends, but they're also a lead smart technologies. They use the lead smart channel cloud product from us. So we're happy about them. They announced an acquisition this week, two great announcements of new hires within their organization at a senior executive level in the last few weeks and then an announcement of acquiring Servetronics as well.

So I'm going there later in the month. Is that where I'm going? That picture?

That is the building you're going, Tom. Yes.

Okay, good. I'll know it. All right, good.

Yeah, that's right. In putting the deal together with them a while back. Yes, that is where. That is what the building looks like and it's huge.

So.

And then our friends at Tipco, we've got Rob and some of his team from Tipco join us on the show pretty regularly. And they did another acquisition as well. So congratulations to everybody on the acquisition hunt and. And so forth. So we end our week with our Goodreads segment here. And this one is about the new CEO at Starbucks. Did you catch that article?

You know I didn't. What was the five word phrase?

That's great. I'm going to share this with you. There's some cool stuff coming out of him and it's as simple as this and this. They said this is what got him the job. And the phrase is I know what to do.

Okay, well. And he had the pedigree to back that up too. Think about it.

But I mean, think about any setting right, confidence, the, the confidence and enthusiasm that you'll build from the, those around you, whether they work for you or they're you're looking for a job when an issue like that comes up. Being able to say, this gentleman's name is Brian Nicholl. He's the previous CEO of Chipotle. He lives, I don't know, not even 15 minutes from me in the high end district of town. But you know what? When you're able to instill in people the idea that says I know what to do now, you're going to eventually have to back that up. Right. But when you can go in and build that confidence. He did that and he said because Starbucks was in a world of hurt with some leadership challenges they've had and he was called by a. I think it was, was it the, the person that they're referencing? I think it was a, an intermediary. I'm sorry, it was the chairman of the board of Starbucks, Melody Hodson. It says here. She reached out to him. He was happy at Chipotle, doing phenomenal things at Chipotle. The day this was announced, Starbucks falling stock went way up and Chipotle's fell. He said he took the, took the call and she says. Hobson says she clearly remembers what he told her. He said, I know what to do. This is a speed bump in the company's history. This is not something I fear going into because it can be fixed and it can be changed, and I know what to do. Okay. All right, well, guess what? He's commuting from his house in Laguna beach to Seattle on the G50, G500, whatever it is, Gulfstream jet. They're opening an office for him here in. Over by John Wayne Airport for him to work out of when he's in town. And they've given him kind of carte blanche to go do things. But that. And they use the term emotional intelligence, which I struggle with. You know, what that really is sometimes. But I thought it was great. So I know what to do. That's the takeaway.

All right. I think that's a good way for us to end off.

That is a good way for us in the day.

Yeah.

So you're gonna go build some new AI tools and delete Smart Channel Cloud this weekend? Is that what you're doing?

I know what to do.

That's awesome. That's great, Tom.

Good.

All right, well, I'll talk to you Monday and let's. We'll see what you built. That's right. That'll be good. All right, well, thanks to everybody who was with us today, the folks that commented, the folks that were the lurkers that just enjoy being with us. If you're listening again in the podcast, we appreciate it. We do this. We try and do this every week. As I said, unless somebody's in the hospital, on vacation, or on an airplane, eventually we're going to be able to do them from airplanes. But I can't imagine sitting next to one of us trying to do the podcast. But we appreciate everybody being with us. We couldn't do it if you weren't here, and it wouldn't be worth doing. So we're. We're appreciative of that. The other side of it is if you want to give us a hand with things, you can do a couple of things for us. If you're joining us live on YouTube live subscribe, hit that subscribe button. You'll get an alert little beep every week that we're going live. If you're on Facebook or LinkedIn Live, just follow the LinkedIn or the elite Smart Technologies page. You'll get those alerts. We're going live. If you're listening on the podcast recorded later today, we appreciate, we hope you.

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