How AI Will Impact B2B Customer Experience and Manufacturing Alike

Pink shirt. Dancing, man.

Dancing.

Playing drums today or drums, drums and pink shirt. All right. Okay.

My wife said it's not pink. She didn't tell me what color it is, but I'm going with pink along with you. I. I agree.

Yeah.

I only.

I don't think you could call that anything other than pink, at least from. From what I can see.

All right, well, you know what?

I think it's cool.

No offense, but I have to go with what Mrs. Brown says.

Okay.

How are you, my friend?

Doing okay.

Very good. Another week on by it. I don't know what's happening. It's like we're approaching the end of summer, and it feels like it was just the beginning of the year. Yes, I know it's overwhelming. I'm guessing other people are feeling that way as well. But that is the nature of the beast these days. Right? So that's. That's the structure we hit sometimes. So let's. Let's get ready to dive in. I'm Kevin Brown. This is my lifelong friend and business partner, Tom Burton. We get together every Friday Morning here on LinkedIn Live, YouTube Live, Facebook Live, and then later in the day on all the popular podcast formats. What we do each week is we review the around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing newsletter. That's a newsletter that we put together. It goes out to. I think we're close to 11,000 people now, Tom, are getting that. And we try and compile the news of the week in things like the economy and supply chain mergers and acquisition sales and marketing, AI technology, cybersecurity, all of the things that impact wholesale distribution and manufacturing. And what we try and do is unpack those articles a little bit, kind of reference what they mean and what they mean to wholesale distribution, manufacturing. So if you're with us live, let us know. It'd be great to. Just saw Bob Brittain came in giving us a little aloha this morning. I could go change my shirt real quick and follow the aloha theme and. But let us know where you're at that you're with us. If you are, though, listening on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Odyssey, whatever it might be. If you're listening there later in the day, just remember that what you're hearing is our discussion. But what the people that are live with us are seeing is the newsletter that we publish each week. If you don't get that newsletter and you would like to get it, there's two simple ways. You could email us@helloadsmartech.com or go to the website for our podcast, which is www.aroundthehornpod.com, and you can see past episodes there. You can subscribe there and get the newsletter as well. We'd love to send that out to you. So that's just a quick reminder, if you're listening on the podcast, you won't see that. So we do this each week. We have guests oftentimes and we have the same discussion. But there's a couple things I have left to do first, if you like what you hear today or have you been with us before, do us a favor. Hit the follow button on Facebook or LinkedIn Live wherever you might be listening and. Or if you're with YouTube following us there, subscribe. And so you'll get the alerts when we go live. That'll get us out to other people. If you're listening on the podcast, please leave us a review and subscribe as well, and that'll help get that message out to others. Lastly, in closing, we can't do this each week because of the costs that go with this without the sponsorship. Sponsored each week by Lead Smart Technologies, which is the company that Tom and I both work for. Lead Smart Technologies has developed a customer intelligence and CRM solution that's AI enabled that helps wholesale distributions and manufacturers get deep insights into their customers, their teams, and their overall business to accelerate growth. So that's where we sit today, Tom. Ready to get rolling?

Let's do it.

You got a smile and a grin on your face there. What's going on behind the scenes?

Oh, nothing. Just thinking about some of the stuff we're going to be talking about. So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't buy it. Anyways, good morning. Brian Hopkins is as well. Good to have you with us. Afternoon for him, I guess.

Where's the Queen City? Is that New York, Charlotte, I believe.

Is that they call the Queen City. Am I right, Brian?

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. See, I'm not the only one who doesn't know.

Right?

Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, we could have. All right, so our first trivia today is what is the Queen City?

Well, it's a good thing is nobody said San Francisco yet, so.

Yeah, that's true. That may happen, though.

That could be coming. I'm sure Brian will let us know. I'm happy to have him with us as well today because Brian has told me a while back he has a standing lunch date on Fridays with his wife, so she must have punted him for the day. And he's joining us, which is great. So want to get ready and dive in here.

Let's do it.

All right. Well, each week we, as we review the newsletter again, if you don't get the newsletter, please let us know. But we have a series of topics that we go through. We start each week with the economy and supply chain. And part of this has been taken over by a little wager that Tom and I have about interest rates. Tom, what do you think from this CNBC article? Plus we have another article that we post here from Reuters about just the economy in general and what we saw this week. Any pontificate.

What I think is what I told you earlier, if you don't like what somebody's saying about the economy, wait 15 minutes because it's going to change. And I mean if you look at the sentiment and the, just the overall mindset that existed, what, just a week ago when we were talking about this, it's like you would have thought six months went by.

Yep.

So anyway, I mean, I think it's, I, I do agree that there will absolutely be a rate cut in September. I don't think it'll be a half a point. I think it'll be a quarter point unless there's some drastic, something drastic that happens in the next 30 days. But aside from any sort of something drastic and then after that, who knows, right? Who knows?

Yeah, yeah, I, you know, this triggered a question for me and you fought, you, you follow, you've always been more of a stock trader and, and following the markets closer than I do. You know, we talk a lot, Tom, about a computer generated trading or auto trading and so forth that goes on so much of this. But I think what we've seen a lot of in part of this was, you know, the big kind of bloodbath was I guess it would have been two weeks ago today and the following Monday, right. Where the market just started tanking. That all seemed to be not driven by computers. That was, that was driving sentiment by traders in general. That was really trying to kind of force the hand, I think at least a little bit of, of the, of the Fed. Because I think what came out of that was, you know, the, the calls and that's to your point earlier, right. Wait 15 minutes was, you know, it'll be two weeks ago Monday and early next week. But you know, there was people literally, you know, well known economists and traders and hedge funds and so forth that were calling for an emergency Fed meeting. And now there's this kind of balancing act going on as we'll talk about with these articles. But do you have any Thoughts, you know, from your end on the difference between automated trading that's going on and then maybe some of the pressure that's getting put on the Fed by, by the markets. That's probably not done that way.

Well, the drop that happened whatever two weeks ago, that was definitely driven by the algorithms and the computerized training trading. Mainly because of the Japanese interest rate increase and that whole carry trade. The whole Japanese carry trade.

Right.

That a lot of companies have a lot of hedge funds and a lot of computer based trainings of trading platforms and then it all starts to unwind. Anyway. That's a whole nother.

Yeah.

If you remember, I did, I did work for a quant hedge fund. That's right.

I forgot about that. You've worked so many places.

Yeah, I have some experience with this, but we can talk about that more another, another time. But the, what happened was, is that it dropped really quickly because of the Japanese piece. I don't remember what the timing was of the job. I think the job thing was the. Right.

The Friday before the job thing was on Friday. That started some movement and then the, the, the Yen trade piece was, was over the weekend I believe. Right.

And so the two that's were not necessarily correlated but they just happened to be happening at the.

So quick, let's quick pause on things for a minute. What we're talking about with that the Yen trade piece, if I've got this correctly, basically is in Japan they've had zero interest rates forever. Foreign investors are coming in, they're borrowing money in Japan at zero interest. They're moving that out, they're moving it into other funds, they're taking profits from those funds, paying down those loans and they're going through this cycle and it's basically I'll go to Japan to get my free money. Lots of that has happened. Super, super dangerous if you get caught with your pants down. Which is just what happened is all of a sudden the central bank in Japan raised interest rates and actually had an interest rate and all these folks started to panic.

Well. And they backed down. Right. Japan actually was going to continue to raise and they backed down and they said well we can't do this. What happened was. Right.

Is a huge default risk came quickly. Right.

Well what happens is. Right. Is that the, the, the. So basically you're right. So people are borrowing money in yen at 0% and a lot of people just invent. A lot of these traders are just putting it in t bills or you know, taking it and putting it. The challenge of the problem is is they're leveraged on top of that. So they leverage the leverage sometimes 10 times, 15 times or more. So now you have this huge amount of leverage. So even a quarter point increase in the, in the interest rate can cause a trigger, a whole major unwinding of some of the margins and everything that are there. That's what happened. Then jab Japan stepped in and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, yeah, sorry, we won't do this anymore or whatever, we're not going to. And then everybody kind of, okay, recovered and everything sort of went back the other way in the meantime. You know, I think I even said this on the call or on the, on last week is, yeah, there was a miss, if you want to call it in the job thing, but it certainly didn't look like it was the end of the world. That was, that was there. And then you started to see other data that goes, well, wait a minute, maybe we overreacted. And so I think there was a number of things that occurred along the way and yes, a lot of overreaction along the way. So.

Good. So back, back to the articles that we're talking about here and what's, what's really happening. So your take on, you know, the, the bets are locked in for the interest rate cuts. What do you actually see happening?

Like I said, I see September for sure.

Okay.

Quarter point, quarter point. And then I don't, I don't, I think there's only two more meetings after that. I don't think there's three. There's November and December. And I, I think if the economy stays strong like it's showing that it's been or there's not like a major drop in the job market. I think the job. Job market will be the kind of the, the driver on this. If that stays reasonably strong, then I think I have a 50, 50 chance of, of winning. I think if the job markets continues to show weakness, then yeah, we'll definitely get another cut and I'll be paying owing you a stake. So I don't feel good about my, I don't feel good about my position, but I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet.

I'm glad this, this enthusiasm and optimism you have that's so unrealistic is not carried over into business and you're just thinking about it on when stakes are at risk here.

I have to, I have to have delusion somewhere.

The that delusional is. It's the perfect for.

There's a fine line between optimism and delusion. Right.

I'm going to stick with. I think we're going to see and this is what I hope and I hope, I think it's the little bit that I know, I think it's the right move is we're going to do a quarter point three times potentially this year for sure, twice. But I think they want to get closer to one a full percentage versus a half a percentage. And they want, they'll, they'll be cautious how they do it. Now that statement ties exactly to how you started the show. Wait 15 minutes.

Yeah. Wait 10, 15 minutes.

Because that, you know, could change based. But what I mean what we're seeing in the last two weeks, I would think that what they're probably thinking about is quarter, quarter and then let's see what happens in the last meeting of the year. Right. And do we maybe do we just do another quarter with something in the first, knowing that they could do a half a point in the first quarter next year. So we'll see, we'll see where we end up. But a couple of good articles there, one from CNBC that we published today and two from Reuters. And the interesting thing is in my last point on that is the, the Reuters article was about more Fed officials lined up behind the September rate cut and the two that they reference in there had been very, very really bearish on, on doing any cut necessarily any cuts this year. So they're, they're both looking at this, but I think they're referencing quarter cuts too. So you know, again, it's just so funny with the, the idea behind what happens this week versus what happens next week. So tune in next week for, you know, the around the horn and interest rates discussion. So. All right, as we jump ahead here, we're going to talk in this is part of our supply chain and, and the economy segment. Some this is we posted an article here from a distribution publication and it talks about the firmer freight rates on tap for 25. This is U.S. trucking rates. And so they talk about in this article they use five major indices for this freight volumes, freight rates, fleet capacity, fuel costs and financing costs. So this isn't talking about what we talk about typically oftentimes is what's going on in the shipping world and, and supply chain issues tied to container rates on ships or the Suez Canal issues or whatever we might be chatting about. This is about, you know, over the ground rates, trucking rates in the US they look to be having really favorable conditions starting in the beginning of the year and by next spring a really balancing of that. And again Here we are. A big part of it that they talk about here is tied to interest rates.

Yeah, right.

So interesting. The good news is, living here in California, it's been probably over a month since I've had to pay $5 a gallon for gas. So fuel rates seem to be tapering further. And I know for those of you who are listening in, in the. Well, I think for our US Listeners that are outside of California, they probably choke at paying $4 even. But then if we get to our friends in Germany or Italy or other parts of Europe, they're looking at that and saying, what a bargain.

Yeah, well, it's always been a bargain. Right. So compare.

Well, when you look at what last time I was in Europe, I think it was 350A liter. 3, 3, 3, 3. 3.5 Euros per liter was a crazy number.

You know, there's, we didn't, we didn't include this article, but there was an interesting article I read this week where there was a survey done of consumers and there was a belief, a consumer belief that as you hear the inflation rate going down into the 2%, that somehow that is going to equate to price cuts. So in other words, you know, the fact that I'm paying whatever I'm paying at the grocery store, as the rates come down, then my prices are going to drop down.

Right.

And that's a big fallacy. That's a big fallacy. Right. And so. But if there's a perception that my spending power is going to be increasing. Oh, your spending power is just decreasing at a lesser rate. Yeah, basically along the way. But related to that, then they went one step further and said that the spending power, you know, and a lot of whether it's fuel or certainly in groceries and food, probably close to 30% less spending power for groceries and, you know, essential items. 30, between 30 and 50% higher. When you talk about eating out compared to where we were just two or three years ago, I mean, and there is no sign that those prices are going to start deflating even though the interest rates are going down, which I just thought was an interesting viewpoint. I don't know. I want to bring up Bob's question. Are gas prices being held artificially low due to being an election year? It's a good question. I thought about this because gas prices usually go up significantly in the summer and we haven't seen that this year.

Summer blend right here in California. That's, that's our issue. Right. Is they change the additives and so forth to the fuel. Well, Great, great comment on that. As long as they stay down, I'm good.

But let's just keep the election year going, right?

Let's just, Yeah, I was, I was, I kicked off, I don't know, I think it's eight trips over, nine trips over two and a half months earlier this week and was in Denver for an affiliated distributors event that was just a great event. But you know, it's funny, I was thinking about it as I was getting ready to head to the airport. We were talking about, you know, costs and you know, hotel costs and especially when you're at a, you know, at a, at a conference type hotel where you're not, you know, near downtown or you could just walk down the street for other meals. Prices are through the roof in general. But I laughed because I went to, I said, you know what? I'm going to eat at the airport in a sit down restaurant at the airport because even airport food's going to be cheaper than this hotel.

That may be true. You know, pathetic.

Yeah, yeah, the, it is. But, but it was factual when all was said and done. So I, I, it's astounding though that one of the articles that we talked about earlier though did relate to the fact of food costs coming down, although it was eggs and another commodity had gone up a little bit over the last month. But in general we're starting to see a little bit of a dip with that. So I do the grocery, my grocery store. Well, I was just gonna say I do, I do most of the grocery shopping in our house. So I'll, you know, the other party in this, this, this marriage takes care of Amazon and I take care of the grocery store. So. Well, I'll see if I see anything. So let's jump ahead, Tom. Let's get to our manufacturing and distribution segment. There was a segment in here, came from Industrial Distribution magazine and just talked about Applied Industrials full quarter sales being up besides sluggish fourth quarter in general. The only reason I really included that is again a quote in there from one of the executives at Applied was talking about the fact that they believe industrial activity could remain muted near term as customers await clarity on interest rates in the election. So I think we're going to probably continue to see a lot more of this. I'll just say vacillating, simmering, kind of up and down a little bit until the end of the year. I mean the election thing is kind of going to be an interesting piece too that we haven't much talked about.

I wanted to spotlight Bob I have to. He said he went to the movies and paid $28 for an icy, a small popcorn and a medium soda. I hope it was a good icee. Hope it was a large one.

So we talked about going to the movies recently and there's a one of the Sinopolis is right by the house where you can get the fluffy chair and bar service. And we haven't been to that since. I don't think we've been to the movies like that since pre pandemic. And it was 150 bucks to go do that. I think. You know, pre pandemic, I can only imagine what it is now with you have a couple cocktails and a, and an appetizer and a movie and boom.

So, so hey, I just want to go back to this article that you were talking about. What was it in there that is causing, whether it's interest rates and election that people are, are. They're just waiting to see what happens. They don't want to make a wrong move. What. What is it that's going on?

Well, I think what we're seeing and it ties to some of the other the next article we're going to talk about manufacturing tech orders in just a moment. You know, and I can just prognosticate a little bit on this myself. But you know, I think what we're starting to see and talking to some distributors out there is that their customers aren't pushing big levels of inventories up and they're, they're balancing out what they're doing. They're buying what they need, but they're not buying any excess. They're not. And they're being very cautious while they're waiting and see what happens. Because, you know, if you think about it, if you're talking about a capital expenditure versus a commodity for a job or a project, but if you're talking about a capital expenditure and you can look at that and say, wait a minute, if my cost of money goes down by a percentage point by waiting for three months or four months, that's a big impact when you start talking about large, large capital expenditures in that setting. So I think even when we talk about commodity spending in this setting, that would impact a company like Applied as well here is that people are not, not necessarily replenishing in the same amount and so forth. So I think that's what we're seeing. And then I think there's a lot of concern too. And we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. I think it was last week we had an article that they can't remember who published the article, but they had interviewed a number of wholesale distributors across the country and it was one of those articles where you were not unclear on the political bend of the people that they, they had in there. But you know, the concern is in some parts of the country, specifically in the Southeast with battery plants and stuff like that that are, that are being built is that, look, if you end up with the current administration, you know, in the Democratic Party continuing to push through things and wanting to get rid of internal combustion engines and so forth, then yeah, these projects for all these battery plants are probably going to push ahead and other stimulus spending is going to stay there as they're going to push dollars in. You've got the other party whose candidate is suggesting that maybe there's going to be some balancing on these things and, and maybe some of these other big projects won't continue. So you know, I think you've got some, probably some slowdown in some of the large projects as well. So I think we've got to wait and see that. I think right now probably our takeaway today will probably be the election and interest rates are probably going to be the two biggest drivers on things in the next say 180 days. Probably still of what? Because even once we have a result on what we see the year end is with interest rates even, let's just say they drop a half point. It's going to take a couple of months of figuring out what that's really going to do to things. And then the election, I don't know that we're going to see any knee jerk reactions to things.

Well, it's an interesting. As I was listening to you talk about it. Right. It goes back to what we were just talking about. About if you don't like what somebody's saying, wait 15 minutes.

Yeah.

I think that creates a lot of indecision.

Yeah.

Because it's like, well, I don't know, I mean If I wait 15 minutes maybe it'll be better. It's like. Or I don't want to make the wrong decision or make the wrong choice. And God, if I did this now and it turned out I could have waited a month or whatever. So it's an interesting, all of this back and forth sort of noise can definitely create a lot of indecision.

I mean I just give you the most simplistic example of that. I'll use myself. Right. My car lease is up I think the 17th of next month. I went and kind of looked at the numbers and buying it out of the lease, it's worth more than the residual, the payoff on the leases. I'd like to get a new car, but you know what, I'm in the exact same boat because no matter what the rates are, my payment's gonna go down by buying my car out of my lease, which is the fastest and easiest way to do it. And then let's see what happens in January with the, or the December with the year end deals. And maybe we've had a couple of rate cuts and I can almost guarantee you where you're gonna see probably the first big benefit to any rate cuts is you're going to get back to those zero interest loans and so forth. I, the Volkswagen dealership by our house just, I saw the other day they had, on certain models they have zero interest for. It was 18 months or something like that on. So I think that may be the first place we see it. So I'm looking at it from my, my view from a consumer standpoint is I'm going to wait till the end of the year because it's easy to sign a document and just keep my car. Just do that with a bank. Right. Do it electronically. And then you know what, if, if all of a sudden there's, you know, great deals, lease deals at the end of the year, I'll make a move then. If not, I don't have to.

So.

Yep, good. All right, jump ahead here.

Yep.

All right, so we can, let's bypass time that there's. We, we posted an article about manufacturing tech orders growing. There was some similar discussion in that as well about interest rates as well. So while those tech orders, manufacturing tech orders grew, those are that, that data that comes from the USMTO which published by the association for Manufacturing Technology, those are a reasonable barometer to be looking at too. You know, and one of the things that we try and do, I, I think we've got some new folks with us today. From what I saw on a couple of the different platforms where we can see who's coming. We try and look regularly at a lot of the different barometers, so to speak. You know, the Fed looks at some very specific things, but there are some other bellwethers that come in. This manufacturing tech orders is one we look at every few months as well. So we'll always continue to try and look at these different, different barometers, so to speak, that we could look to. Good. All right. Mr. Mr. Mark Dancer, if you haven't seen Mark's substack before, he's been writing forever, I think Mark is a fellow with NAW and he does stuff with, with the National Association Wholesalers. He does stuff with the national association of Electrical Distributors as well. He has a sub stack which is kind of the replacement these days for most. Most. Most. By the way, Tom, let's, let's address Bob's question there really quick. So as we talk about manufacturing tech orders, it's less. It's not really Bob software that they're talking about in that setting. It's technology tools within the manufacturing setting.

That is really robots and things like that. More capex.

Exactly right. Capex would be the exact piece of that. And so when you start thinking about automated CNC machines and stuff like that is a lot of what that ties to. So great question. We appreciate that. So back to Mark's thing. Mark has a substack. It is called Mark Dancer on Flourishing Business. He calls it Food for the Supply Chain Soul, which is pretty cool. So he wrote an interesting article. It kind of ties to some work that he's doing with another gentleman in the tech world. But Tommy, you had some couple of thoughts that you liked about this that talk about tying manufacturers, distributors and the things they can do to help communities.

Yeah, well, he kind of had two, two takes. One, you know, you have kind of two ways of communique, right? You can collaborate better with your partners, right. That's more for your own purpose. And I do think there's a lot of opportunity that's going to be coming for more enhanced and greater and more productive collaboration. But then what he was talking about was how do you then take that collaboration and actually work and figure out within a community, how do you, within an area, right? Region, locality, whatever, how do you help make that community better? By working together with whatever the community challenges and problems are. So rather than just looking at hey, I got my business and I'm selling my stuff to whoever buys and you're selling your stuff to whoever buy. Maybe we look at things a little bit differently and say look at a community. How can we help the community a bit more holistically and work together to accomplish that? Very foreign concept. Very foreign concept. Maybe a bit more of a dream than a reality. But I think that that is an interesting and I think it's the only reason that I consider it maybe interesting is the fact that I believe that that could be possible. Again, when you start factoring in some of the things we've talked about of AI Blockchain, some of the capabilities that are going to Enable this ability for us to become less siloed. Right. It's like you just look at all the businesses that we have, all these siloed businesses, whether it's in our industry or industrial distribution or any industry and everyone just is trying to compete with each other and get their, their bite of the apple versus really the, the opportunity to collaborate more. So I thought it was an interesting take and no, it's good.

You know, I probably going to end up referencing this a few times today because you know, one of my favorite things to do is get out and talk to customers whether they're our lead smart customers or their prospects and people, people within distribution and manufacturing. So I was at this event this week and I got to talk to both manufacturers and distributors. I had an opportunity to speak at this affiliated distributors event on kind of a general conversation and we call it the data gold mine within wholesale distributions businesses. And it's great. I really enjoyed talking to the group. Had a room full of people but then had, I think I had 15 appointments, 1515 minute appointments in the booth and then a handful of discussions at cocktail receptions and lunch and things like that. And there is just still a mixed bag out there in, you know, August of 2024 of wholesale distributors who are still, I'll just, I'll use the word anxious versus scared but still anxious and uncomfortable about sharing significant amounts of data back with the factory and, or their manufacturer partners. And you know, we talk non stop about partnerships and they all go to these meetings about partnerships. But at the end of the day and it, this was not some of my conversations. It's not like it's you know, one branch Joe with six employees. This was some large organizations with you know, hundred plus employees and so forth. I had a couple of discussions and there's just still that caution and you know, it's interesting in this day and age, you know, it's hard to, it's hard to have information that somebody else can't find. You know, really it makes me tie in and think about, you know, historically like a lot of the non compete contract stuff with employees is you know, you can't compete with if you have some very specific data about an organization. You know, at the end of the day when you can buy lists about just about anything you want yet the distributor might know exactly how many pieces of sandpaper were purchased in that factory. But you can buy a list of commodities purchased and, and you know your industry well enough. So I think I just look at it as it's really time for Everybody to look at how do we collaborate and share data? Not just because it's being forced by a buying group or a contractual arrangement that says if you don't share this with me, I won't give you this discount. But really changing that mindset back to what you were talking about and Mark is talking about somewhat in this article is how do we just put our collective voices, data, experience, tribal knowledge, all of those things together too in this article talks about help the community as well, but really help both of our businesses thrive, you know. So anyways, that's, you know, the end of the game on that. So I bought me a comment about poor relationship between vendor and customer. I think what you would really find, at least in the discussions I'm describing is most of these people would still tell you they have a great relationship with their vendors. It's just not a collaborative relationship at the level that it could be. Right now it's easy for me to say we, you know, have our lead smart connect tool that can bring manufacturers and distributors together to share data. But lots of them are doing a great job. But there's still that mindset. Here we are in 2024. It's. Well, I'm not going to tell them who I sell their stuff to. It's like it's not that hard to figure out these days.

Yeah, I think we're going to have to be able to demonstrate some examples of how that really, how that really can improve and change. But yes, I do think there's still a lot of that anxiousness of hey, I got to keep everything tight, tight to the vest.

Yep, yep. If you know, you might sell direct. There is really the idea that the.

Bob was asking about his E commerce creeping in. Oh well then they'll be able to go sell to my customers on their E commerce site or. Right. It's like it's. And it is a bit of a scarcity mentality that there is no shortage. And I think that if we end up, I mean, heck, we even see this in our own business. I find that every time that we partner with others, really partner with others, things go better. Every time that we try and go and no, no, we're going to try and do our own thing. Right. It's harder. It's, it's. And so I just think it's a. The world we're in. Yes, I agree with Mark and I agree that that's the direction to be.

Yeah, there's an E commerce. There's an E commerce component of it and there's a manuf. There's a, the other side of it is there's a manufacturer I can think of in the, in really safety equipment space. And in the last 30 years they've gone, sold through distribution, gone direct without distribution, gone back to distribution and then gone hybrid where they're selling online and a little bit direct to certain types of accounts and selling through distribution. So a big part of this is, hey, if you know where I'm selling your product, you might go sell it to them directly. Or if you know exactly where I'm selling your product, you might go there with somebody else as well. Too many, too many people out there, too much information available and too easy to get the information about what's going on. And you know, great comment. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Partnerships say go together to go far. So I like that. Good. Let's bump into our E commerce and marketing segment. We haven't started on yet today, the future of B2B experience. Human versus machine. This is from marketing profs or marketing professionals.com Tom, any first, first glance takeaways at that?

You know, I, I honestly the article wasn't, wasn't all that thrilling to me, but I thought they made a good, a good point about all of these things are only as powerful as the people and the strategies that are behind them. And I'm really seeing now as we start to have more AI conversations with our prospects and customers, it goes back to the strategies. It's like what got you here won't get you there.

Right. Great point.

The strategies, the approach, the way that AI works compared to traditional technology and so forth is so different. And you can't just shoehorn in these things into the ways that are there. So I like that take about, hey, we need to be thinking differently strategically. We need to be thinking about how we do, you know, do things, how we do, how we do people, all that kind of stuff. It's just, I thought that was a good thing. Some of the other stuff was kind of, you know, a lot of stuff that you've seen over and over and over.

Well, that might, I took a little different take on it. You know, there was a great quote there that they talked about. With great data becomes comes great responsibility. And what I really liked is they were talking about chatbots and all the different tools that we have that we can embrace and enhance in the, in, in the, in our businesses. But they, the whole focus on it, right, was on customer experience and I really liked that. There was a bend to this article that really talked about the human interaction along with the technology. And I talked about this in my talk earlier in the week. And then it was funny. I just. Brian Hopkins was with us earlier, posted a LinkedIn comment this morning about a webinar that, that the distribution strategy folks did earlier in the week. They did it Wednesday because I was literally packing in my hotel room, had my computer on, was listening to it and there was a lot of discussion there about not eliminating people, but how people and AI tools can be working together and, and that this is really, I think, what we're starting to see so much more of. I talked about it in my talk earlier this week and in Denver as well about, you know, don't be too overly concerned about, you know, eliminating jobs. Look at how could you keep your same headcount but repurpose how we're doing things and train people differently. And, and there was some nice pieces of this where, you know, our tribal knowledge that can get into the system. And one of the great examples that was in I'm shifting gears on where we're getting our data from, but on the Distribution Strategy Group's webinar this week was thinking about not necessarily just a chatbot experience, but an experience where the AI can see because you're connected for the phone call into your CRM. If your CRM ideally is AI enabled and can get broad information across your organization like we can with Lead Smart Channel, Cloud, right? Where we're looking at E commerce, we're looking at erp, we're looking at marketing automation, maybe some other data sources where now the AI tool says things like, hey, it's Tom Burton calling and here are the things that he probably is calling about. And now it's like Tom has a line item on invoice 1234 that hasn't shipped yet. It's scheduled to ship on Tuesday. Tom has a backorder on these three things. We don't have an update yet, but we're supposed to be getting an update tomorrow from XYZ manufacturer Tom's account is past due. All of those things that through robust CRM can even be fed right to the salesperson based upon who's calling. So these things start popping up as they're answering the phone, right? So now the customer gets this amazing experience where they got served by AI with their answers super quick. But a human that they have a relationship conveyed the information to them.

Right. Well, and you and I listen to that webinar as well. You can go one Step further. Right. About really providing insight. So if the customer's on the phone maybe and calling about a query or a situation or whatever, and then. But you can also offer some insights in their business that says, hey, did you know? Or you know, hey, I just, you know, wanted to fill you in on this or whatever.

I mean, the white space. It's the white space example, Right. It's like, hey, you know, I just noticed that you used to buy this from us and you're not buying this from us apparently anymore. And, and, and that's doing a customer a service by reminding them, because sometimes they don't even know.

Yeah. But even if it's just there's other things you can, you know, are you realizing that there's a project in your area or.

Right.

Whatever. I mean, who knows, right. There's a lot of different ways add value and then people want to talk to salespeople because they're actually an asset versus something else that's there. So.

Yep, Yep. Very good. Let's jump ahead here. Let's. It's time for us to do our regular con corner, as I call it. Out of the ftc, Lena Khan is jumping into fake reviews on E Commerce. There's probably a need for some of this, but is it from the FTC and is it from somebody trying to grasp a little more limelight before the doors close on them if there's a new. A new. If there's a Republican in the White House?

So, first of all, yes, fake reviews are a problem, but if I have a company or if I have a website and I'm getting fake reviews, then that's my problem to figure out how to overcome that. I can't believe, out of all the things that they could possibly, at the ftc, be thinking about and considering, fake reviews should be high on their list. I can't imagine that that's got to be high on the list of all the other things that they could be dealing with. So I think it's, I think I, I understand that it's a problem. I'm not saying that, I'm not saying it's not a problem, but I think doing it through the FTC and what they're doing is absurd. It's not enforceable. It's just like, what is she doing here? It's just. Now, I know you, you know, we were chatting about this, right. You could see that as, as the ramifications, Right. If you're launching a B2B commerce site or whatever, now you got something else. You got to think about, you know.

Well, that's why, that's why we included this article. Right? Because there's a, a big push for either expansion of E Commerce or getting into E Commerce and wholesale distribution in general. And as that happens, there's going to be, you know, you put up a new website, I'm sure you're going to be hearing from lots of people that want to help you get reviews. Right. Well, we've really gotta be paying attention to this now. The FTC is saying that estimated revenue for services impacted by consumer reviews is $341 billion. So that's why they think that it's okay for them to put their thumbprint on this. But you know, Amazon's working hard on this. They've got together with Booking.com and TripAdvisor and some others, they put together the Coalition for Trusted Reviews. I'm sure that's them trying to bypass having any regulatory impact where they could get fines and so forth. But you know, at the end of the day it's obviously is a big problem and it could be an issue coming up for wholesale distribution as well, which is why we included it. But part of this, I just, you know, don't want to do personal attacks here. But if you watch the history, as long as this show's been around and this particular head of the FTC has been there, there sure seems to be some, some grabs for limelight. And you know, where I'm going to be when I'm not here anymore because she's gone after some kind of crazy stuff over the years, you know, and even some of the stuff she's been chasing Amazon about where they've, you know, they've kind of almost flicked her off like a fly a few times and paid a couple little fines and then she's had some big wins as well. But some of the stuff that they're trying to jump into with the ftc, I really kind of question. But, but it is, there's no question about the impact and it has a negative impact as well. And you know, you think about it, if, if, and let's just talk about this for a second again. If I'm, if I'm a distributor or a manufacturer and I'm selling in marketplaces, whether it's a, a vertical marketplace or it's an Amazon or whatever it is, bad reviews can impact me horribly because of return issues and so forth. Because, because you know, the falsehoods that could be, you know, going along with that. So we have to, it is something to Be paying attention to just how you manage it.

Yeah, no, it's, it's a, it's, it's a situation that should be of course managed. It's applies to your brand, it applies to your result. It just seems like this is kind of a weird way to go about it.

But here's the pro tip of the day for online reviews. Look at a handful of the five stars, look at a handful of the one stars, look at a couple of the ones in between and make a decision based upon what you're seeing.

Right. Well and AI is gonna, is also going to come into play. To help summarize, a lot of these reviews.

Look, already doing it on Amazon, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean the. Amazon's doing a nice job of that already. It's showing you many people are saying this, some default. You know, detractors say this. Overall this is what we're seeing. But you know what, at the end of the day we have to take some responsibility as consumers as well and buyers.

So. Good.

All right, well let's jump into something that I think is kind of interesting about promises. This article is B2B campaigns with clear customer promises triple market share gains. That's pretty significant. So any, any thoughts from you on that before we dive too far into it?

Well, on the other, I think this was a great article. Yeah, this was a really well put together article. Really well written and a lot of good information. You know we were talking about brand. Was it last week or the week before?

Yeah, last week we had a discussion.

About brand call and basically what they're saying here is a way to really kind of put a stake in the ground as it relates to your brand is to kind of come up with what is your big promise. And I agree with it. I agree that if it, if you can be clear in what your big prompt and this isn't like oh, you know you're going to make a million, you know, like not these sort of ROI claims and stuff like that. This is more of as a company and the products that your company sells or what you're bringing to the market. What is the big promise? What is the valuable outcome that you're providing to that? And just be very, very clear and concise with it. And what they said is that companies that do that get a three times more likely deliver increases in market share.

Yep.

And two and a half time increase in brand health. And again based on some surveys and some really good data to back it up so.

Well, I mean think about, think about the numbers that go with that, right. If you're talking about 3x increase in market share, and I mean three times your market share by doing some tools with within marketing. Now this doesn't mean that it's, it's simple and easy to go do, but when you do it right, and it's kind of funny, it made me think about, you know, at, at Lead Smart, we operate on the, the EOS or the entrepreneurial operating system. And that is a component of EOS is, is deciding if you're going to have a guarantee or a promise within your business. And so I think that's kind of interesting. The, the quote that I liked, it says here, this allows buyers, they, they can cut through the noise and messiness of decision making by offering a clear and simple articulation of the value delivered by a brand to its customers. Right. So I understand what this brand does, what they stand for and what they're promising me they're going to do for me. And if I do that correctly, this is saying, guess what? It can 3x my market share. And this is, you know, one piece of research. But what if you could double your market share?

Yeah, well, it makes sense. Right? And I think, you know, hey, at leastmart we need to do a better job of this. Yeah, really, we really, I mean, we need to do a lot better job of this. And I think we have at certain times, I think we've had a good big promise and then something happens and it gets diluted and, and stuff like that. But I think that, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a big, big deal and I do think it becomes the heart. Look, there's so much noise out there, right. A promise like that provides clarity, if it's understandable.

Right.

It's not just a bunch of hype. It's, it's, it's not hype. It's really that promise. As to what you're going by working with my company, what are you, what is the outcome that you can expect? Right, right. And I think it's, it really helps cut through the noise, which is why you see that brand lift that they're talking about there.

Well, it does. And you know, I just went back and I looked at the article real quick there and, and this was a survey of 700 companies, slash brands. So it's not like, hey, we surveyed five guys over here, right. So it's, it's pretty, the magnitude of, this is significant of the details. So I think this is something that I'm going to continue to look for. Information because I think it's pretty valuable to share with our audience here as well. So good stuff there. Tom, you want to jump in and talk a little bit about technology, cyber security and AI? We, we occasionally talk about AI here, don't we?

Yeah, I don't know. We can skip all this.

This week ago. I actually do like there's, there's a good article here posted. Again, this is, I should have said this again a little bit earlier. If you're listening on the podcast, you will not be seeing what the folks that are watching us live or recording on YouTube, LinkedIn or Facebook. We're looking at the around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing newsletter. It goes out every Friday to 10,000 plus people. If you don't get that, we, this is where we get these articles and we review them. You can get that by emailing. Hello at around the Horn. Excuse me, hello atLead smart tech.com or.

Going to the website email address. I wasn't aware.

We'll set that up really quickly. Hello@lead smarttech.com and www.aroundthehornpod.com is the website for the show and you can get a lot of past shows and other information on the website and, and subscribe to the podcasts as well as subscribe to the newsletter. So if you'd like to do that. But now as we go into our, our segment, we go, we have like six segments or seven segments I think now, but technology, security and AI. What does your CEO need to know about cyber security? And my big takeaway from this, Tom, and get your thoughts was they made a comment here. It says 10 years ago cybersecurity was seen as an IT and compliance issue. If there was a breach, the impact wasn't seen as significant and the CEO's role was primarily to make high level decision during the incident. The difference now is the potential threat to business operations and reputations. And CEOs are tasked with integrating cybersecurity into overall business strategy and aligning cybersecurity with business goals. If I narrow this down to, you know, four or five sentences, integrating cybersecurity into overall business strategy and aligning cybersecurity with business goals. Big deal.

Well, and yeah. And going one step further. Right. If you don't, if you don't take this seriously from a business perspective, you are guilty of malpractice is basically what they're saying.

Yep.

So. And that's what they were talking about that guy that the pictures there. I think UnitedHealth, the CEO of UnitedHealth and he testified in Congress and he was. All these excuses. Well, we acquired a company and we didn't get around to putting in our security properly in there. And they're looking at them going, and why is that? Okay.

Yeah, well, they didn't let him off the hook, did they?

No. So no, it's becoming, it become a liability. Right? A big liability. It's not just a technology issue, it's a business issue all the way around.

Yep. No, so something to be paying attention to if you're an executive or senior executive even in, in the, in any space. Right. This is something you got to pay attention to. But I think what's, what's going on now is within, specifically within wholesale distribution is we're seeing far more CTOs and CIOs, Chief Information Officers, chief technology officers that aren't just, they're not just title related. These are people that have backgrounds and experience in doing these things and having those people integrated into executive management making presentations to the board. And this is, this could be about digital transformation as well as cybersecurity. But it's nice to see this in our, I'll just use the terms kind of sometimes slow adopter marketplace of manufacturing and wholesale distribution for overall tech. It's nice to see some of this migration and this move along the way. So it's good. Have an article here about integrating generative AI into supply chain operations. That's from Supply and Demand Chain Executive magazine. Just some good kind of resources in there. Some tips that go with how to do that better and what the value can be. The value payoffs. They talk about pilot programs and assessments and scalable implementation plans. We've talked about quite a few these things before. If you're looking at adding in a lot of AI and generative AI tools into supply chain operations, mostly on the manufacturing side. This talks a lot about. There's some pretty good tips in that article. All right, what are we looking at next here? AI the digital bridge to Industry 4.0, huh?

Yeah. You know, again, it's, it's an interesting, a little bit interesting. And I know we want to move, move along because we still have quite a bit to cover here. But. And we see this, right. A lot of companies, especially in this industry are operating with what they say, clipboard pencils and human. And human only in this case, assembly lines are whatever. We see it in the front office as well. Right. They're using clipboards, pencils and spreadsheets. And then they're looking to leap from there to AI. And at first I was like, I'm not so sure. But as I think more about may actually work because I think that it might be easier for a lot of companies to move from the sort of manual, non technology way of doing things into an AI centric way of doing things and adopting technology that way rather than the traditional technology that we know with the transactions and the dashboards and the reports and all of those things that go with it. I'm not sure, I'm not 100% convinced I want to investigate this for myself a little bit more. But I find it as an interesting thing and that's what they're talking about, is that some of these things can are fading away as people are kind of leapfrogging from manual to much more sophisticated automation.

Yep. So this article, I would agree with you on this and it's interesting. In this article they reference a 2023 survey found that 69% of North American manufacturers were still collecting most of their data through non digital methods. That's got to change fast if you want to keep up. And so this article references Industry 4.0 and it says, you know, Industry 4.0 is also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. What does that mean? 4.0 generally covers four categories of technology. Connectivity and data analytics and intelligence, human machine collaboration and advanced engineering. So I thought those were kind of nice to look at that from those four components of what we're referencing as we talk about Industry 4.0. I'm going to try and remember those for future thoughts. But one of the things that I liked most was the human machine collaboration. So when we start putting whether it's AI tools or machine learning tools and so forth into our operations, I really want to continue to look at this as this, this is people and technology. It's not people or technology. And so often we have that thought that says, well, I have to move everything over to all technology driven. And that's not the case. It is. People love people and people still know great things that machines will never know. And when you put those things together, that's where you get the great power.

Totally agree.

Good, good. All right, let's move into our, further into our sales and M and a segment. AI is a game changer for sales coaching. We're gonna kind of just hit some quick overviews of that. The core of really what that was talking about is that, and this was a survey that was done by a couple of organizations, Trend Index's annual report. And then LinkedIn and Microsoft were both involved, but you know, they talked about the challenges that happen in most sales coaching, which is first off, insufficient coaching. Second, that they call it limited practice, which means they do maybe some role playing and some things like that, but nobody likes that in this day and age. And they said bias in the role playing, traditional role playing with managers and peers can be affected by unconscious bias that can negatively impact the whole coaching session. So, and then, you know, what we're really relying on is how good is our coach in that setting. But the article talked about really some cool things about like just in time learning role playing that is unbiased and that how there's some AI tools that can do that. And it covers three different segments on that in this article. But what is simplistic as you could take this out is using an AI tool that is evaluating phone calls and, or zoom meetings and coming back that says things like, and I'd love to do this and start looking at this more. I look at as an example we, we use within Lead Smart, we use Fathom AI and their meeting recording tool that gives you an AI analysis and so forth. But if we started running that analysis through ChatGPT or another tool that came back and gave us some analysis that says, hey, because this is probably what I would be guilty of is you talked 62% of the time and your prospect talked X amount of time or you missed talking to them about this particular problem that they had mentioned. Those are the types of coaching tools that AI can bring. And now when I'm having a conversation with a salesperson, it's not about my unconscious bias or what I think about something. It's like, these are the details. Let's work together on how we can make this better.

Yeah, and there's been tools like this, you know, that have been used predominantly in the tech industry for a long time. You know, you have the record calls and so forth. But yes, I agree and I think even going one step further from coaching is just overall enablement and enabling. Just like we talked about earlier about the phone call when the. So when a call comes into an inside rep and they have at their fingertips what they need to have the most efficient and, and valuable call with the, with the customer. So, yeah, I think, I agree and I think that coaching is just the start of things. I think coaching then ends up into really a broader enablement plan at that point.

Yeah, the, you know, there has been a few comments that we've had here kind of questioning about, you know, are we getting too wrapped up in AI and missing, missing the core competencies and the core business goals that we need to think about, which is fine. I think the reality of it is we don't need to pick between those in business. Right. We need to be focused on driving our business ahead. Strategy, all of the things that were mentioned in a few of the comments that we've seen here. But at the same time there is no escaping the technology component of these things. So it's not an if and, or, or do we drop everything and go to that? No, we need to do all of those things in our businesses. You know, and I mean you, you made a comment earlier on some things we need to do better at Lead Smart within our business that you and I run. So I think it's not an if or, it's an and not an if or is really.

Well, I do agree that there is a maybe an undue attention on a lot of places on AI as like some sort of savior.

Yeah.

I think what unfortunately is missing is, and I do agree is that with what Bob's saying is that there is a reduced focus on some of the strategy. But I think a lot of that is because we don't know how to actually build the right strategy utilizing AI into the DNA of that strategy. Right. And I think that's going to be a big part of the next 12 to 24 months is how do you really incorporate the AI aspect of things into the DNA of the strategy and the core competencies of the business. That's not easy, but it's because it's so different. It's hard I think. Right. It's easy to incorporate or easier to incorporate things that we know already and understand real well. It's not, not as easy to do that. So as a result we end up playing a lot with AI really rather than building the DNA of what we're doing.

Yeah, I, I, I have a little different take than what I think. It's not too far off but what you're both saying, what I'm seeing from the people that I talk to every day and, and this is the great, great thing about getting out to live events is, you know, in our world and why we're here is talking about manufacturing, wholesale distribution. You know the event I was at earlier this week, there was 30 plus manufacturers and I can't remember the number, I think it was well over 250 distributors represented there. I probably got to talk with 30 different distributors and what I'm seeing is that nobody is pushing pause on anything else that they're doing in their business to Go say I've got to go run and do AI. What they're doing is driving their business ahead and trying to start getting. And it's really. A lot of people aren't even going this far yet. But the ones that are, are looking at and saying, well, how can I use this? I need to understand what's going on. I want to go to the talks about these things. I might even go to some events. I'm going to tune into around the horn, whatever else, you know, whether MDM stuff, naw stuff, NAED stuff, and try and get my arms around this. I'm not seeing anybody saying I. I'm running off the deep end right now. In fact, I would go almost the reverse. That is, if you were to look at. To the majority of the companies out there that are focused on AI versus just technology and business tools in general. But if AI is their total focus is they're not getting the take rates that they would like to from these markets that we talk about that people are managing their business, trying to be aware. But to the point that Bob was saying, and again, one guy's opinion is what Bob was saying, what you're saying. My take on this is that we're probably at the top of the hype cycle. In fact, probably past that now in AI. And now people have said, okay, I put a lot of energy, maybe I went to a conference, watching some webinars, doing some things now I kind of get a feel for it now. Let's see what comes available that can really help me in my business. And now we'll see that fall off a little bit. And then eventually we'll get to that place where AI is ubiquitous in business. But I'm not seeing anybody that's saying, at least in my travels, anybody that's saying, let's drop everything, only work on this.

Right.

So, all right, we don't have to agree every time.

Well, I, I don't think that's happening either. I don't think that's happening either. But I do think it's going to have to start permeating maybe a bit faster into the overall strategy of the business.

Yeah, good. Well, we kind of. We're gonna go. We were gonna go fast on that. We didn't. So let's jump into our. Let's jump into our people and leadership segment. We have three articles this week. One's from HRDrive.com employees have forged ahead with generative AI while companies lag behind. This is a McKinsey report. It kind of ties into what, what we've just been talking about, you know, employees are. I think there was a. Trying to remember what the. The number was. It talks about 91% of survey respondents saying they use AI for work through internal or publicly available tools. But I think what we probably would see if we really peel that onion back, is that they're publicly available tools, not necessarily company tools.

They're absolutely not company tools. Yeah, they're absolutely not company tools.

And there is big risk at that is what is discussed here. So companies are going to need to get caught up on this stuff as well. So any thoughts on that before we jump ahead? We've got a couple.

That was a good summary.

Yeah, good. So another article here about succession planning. Key to retaining supply chain expertise. Millennials. People are changing. I can't remember I heard this stat while I was traveling this week. The number of baby boomers that retire are retiring daily. It was. I was astounded by the number. I mean, literally, I. I was astounded is probably an understatement. So we know on the B2B side of things, that was 62% of B2B buyers are millennials. We're seeing that on all sides of distribution. And now this is talking about on the supply chain of. Do you have a succession plan in place for getting the right people to come in, learn that tribal knowledge, learn the other data that's available there to help things move ahead? So how was that summary? Is that all right? All right. But this one's important. The last one here from again from HR Dive. US women aren't projected to reach full pay equity until 2048. That's 24 years. That's just stupid.

Yeah. I was actually quite, quite shocked about this, about some of the data in here. It's like.

Yeah, and I mean, it's, it's. It says, despite progress in closing the gender pay gap, US women still earn about 15 per less cent less than men. I rarely meet a woman that's not smarter than me. So this, to me doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, I don't. So maybe we need to cut your pay and give the women more, I think, is what we got to do.

I'm sorry, something wrong with your microphone?

Yeah, it's all right. Let's keep going.

All right, we'll dive into our industry scuttlebutt section. We do each week a little bit about Motion Industries and an acquisition. The next we talk about here, it's from Industrial Distribution magazine, a distribution solutions group which is also goes by DSG here in the US closes their Source Atlantic acquisition. Source Atlantic is. I think they. I just, I met with a group from at the event I was at this week from Force Atlantic or Source Atlantic. Great group. Broad Line Distribution. Everything from industrial across to bearings and power transmission was just acquired. The two people I met with were senior level managers and were absolutely ecstatic about this, this acquisition. They go from the Maritimes in Canada across almost all the provinces. I think they're in five provinces in Canada and they're growing. So cool acquisition to see. Congratulations to both sides of that deal. There was an article here that I want to dig into further and read closer myself. It's for modern distribution Distribution management got to spend. We get a lot of our data and share a lot back and forth with folks from mdm. I had to spend over an hour with Tom Gale on from the founder of MDM who's just sold the company to the national association of Wholesalers. And Tom is just a wealth of wisdom. We sat for well over an hour over a beer and just chatted about the market and distribution and just. Tom, if you're listening today, thanks for that time because it was really valuable to me. We had a great time. But they had this article about former steel distributor pleads executive pleads guilty to price fixing and this was related to I think pipe valve and fitting stuff and I'm sorry it wasn't. It was related to rebar and steel within construction. Yeah, don't play those games. Right. You won't go to jail.

So you better get the FTC on them.

That's right. There you go Lee. Back to the con corner in around the Horn in wholesale distribution. So we have a segment each week called Goodreads. Tom, did you take a look at that From Fast Company 5 Strategies to Avoid mid mid year burnout this summer?

I did. I was, I was surprised that they said how many people were the FOMO that people get from watching social media of people on vacation and then you know, beaches and all that kind of stuff. I, I had never thought of that.

It's all the tourism, tourism ad dollars out there and with influencers and so forth. But you know we always try in that good Read section oftentimes it might be from Fast Company or from Inc. Magazine and that, that segment we try and you know not necessarily focus just on, on the business standpoint but sometimes it's the personal side of things too. So again if you don't get the newsletter, let us know and you'll get that each week. I did Want to jump? I'm going to pass by. We have a segment there called A Second look each week. If we've talked about some things before, there's a strike at the world's largest copper mine which threatens prices. Stop and think about that. If you drive down the street, at least here in Southern California where I'm at, it's all you hear about is people knocking over light posts to strip the copper wiring out of it to sell it. And now we could have a shortage that is, is going to threaten those prices even more. So that's something we'll pay attention to. But we talked quite a bit today, Tom, about, about AI and we do that regularly. David Gordon, that publishes electrical trends.com and he does a similar publication for the H vac market and he's been on the show with us. Going to get him back soon again. He did a whole segment on ChatGPT, prompts for electrical salespeople, and I loved it.

I mean, it was real practical, real good, practical information.

So, David, thank you. I know he joins us fairly regularly if you're with us. I thought it was just really solid because it's easy for us to talk at 30,000 foot level about the things that happen with AI, which was what we really typically do. He broke it down and says, so instead of us talking about all the tools that it can help an electrical salesperson or an H VAC salesperson or whatever, he's breaking down prompts about what to ask chat, GPT or whatever tool you're using and that will really be beneficial. So if you don't follow David Gordon on, on LinkedIn, do so. Electrical Trends.com is his publication as well. So good stuff there. So I, I again, I just thought it was so practical.

Yep, it was really well done.

All right, what else do we have before we close it out today?

I think that's enough. I think that is enough.

We went fast. We covered a lot, A lot of ground.

Yep.

Good. We appreciate the comments for today.

Yeah, thanks, Bob and Brian. Some really good insights. Appreciate that.

Any, Any big weekend plans, my friend?

Not big ones, no.

I'm gonna get to the beach. Ankles doing so much better. I've got to be gone a lot over the next few months, so I'm gonna take some time with the wife this weekend and get some toes in the sand.

Send me some pictures and then I can have FOMO from you being at the beach.

That's right. Yes, that's right. I'll send you a picture of my, my IPA and toes in the sand if everything plays out. So we'll go from there. Well everybody, thanks for being with us. I'm Kevin Brown. I'm here with Tom Burton. Tom and I have been friends since kindergarten. We now work together at Lead Smart Technologies. We get to together each week and we talk about trends in the economy and mergers and acquisitions and supply chain and all of these things and hopefully we can bring some value again. What we mentioned earlier today is if you get any value out of this Follow Us Subscribe Leave a Review if you're on the podcast, share with your friends and we'll get the word out and we'll allow us to keep doing that. We couldn't do this if we didn't have the help of the company that Tom and I work for, Lead Smart Technologies. Again, if you're in the wholesale distribution or manufacturing world and you're trying to navigate your future related to the the world of AI, customer intelligence and accelerated growth within your business, we would love to talk to you and share with you how our technology tools can help you in that growth and have that kind of conversation. So that's it for us today. Tom, you're still smiling. I think Bob, I don't know Bob, if we can let him. But I've never been insulted like that in my life. Tom says, I think you're actually fraternal twins. That's it. I'm done. I'm out. I'm not coming.

Backballed from all further episodes.

You know what's funny is I I guess that teaches me for disagreeing with Bob's take on something a little earlier today. So that's a funny closing comment. So at that note, everybody, have a wonderful weekend. We hope to see you next week. We'll have probably new news next week on what how many interest rate cuts they're going to be based upon what happens in the US Economy this week. But we thank you for being with us. Have a great weekend, be kind, be safe and do good things.

Thanks everyone.