How Real Is The Economic Recovery In Wholesale Distribution? With Guest Lindsay Young

Foreign welcome to around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution with Kevin Brown and Tom Burton. Sponsored each week by LeadSmart 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.

Hey, good morning. Oh, I'm very sorry, Lindsey, that you had to start the show watching Kevin dance. But you know.

Every Friday come on in and listen and watch. It's going to happen. Hey, good to see you guys. I just realized, Lindsay, our great guest, that I misspoke. So I'm going to introduce you really quick. Joining Tom and I today is Lindsay Young, the founder and expert media person and writer and editor and all the stuff that we're going to talk about with you with three Aspens Media. As I pop the quick note to invite people to come join us live to my LinkedIn network, I put Aspen's media. So I know there's a story behind three Aspens that you can tell us in a few minutes. So sorry about that, but great to have you with us today.

I'm not offended at all, Kevin. We it's a very simple story. The company was founded on the back deck of my old house and there were three aspens there. That's it. There's no other significance to it. Aspens are amazing trees. Yeah, we tell, we tell distributor stories. We help them tell their stories and share their expertise and we also help companies who are serving the distribution market. So I've been in this market writing and editing and working with experts in this market for almost 20 years now. So I'm excited to be here.

You don't look old enough to be having done anything for 20 years.

Thanks, Kevin.

Very, very good. So we're going to talk more about you and your work as we go through the day and so forth, but let's kind of dive into things today. My name is Kevin Brown. I'm here with Tom Burton and as we mentioned with our friend Lindsay. And we are here for around the Horn in wholesale distribution. And what we do is Tom and I are the co founders of Lead Smart Technologies and LeadSmart has developed an AI enabled CRM and customer intelligence solution that's built solely for wholesale distribution and manufacturers. So we don't work with folks outside of that arena. I bring my 30 plus years of experience in wholesale distribution and Tom's 30 plus years in technology to serve this market segment. We get together every Friday to talk about a newsletter that we send out every Friday morning, which is called around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution. Well, what we do with that is we bring together kind of news of the week in mergers and acquisitions and changes in the economy and trade shows and events and sales and marketing and obviously technology that can support wholesale distribution and manufacturing. And we talk about the impact of those articles in and what's going on in the world and how that impacts wholesale distribution. So we try and get great guests. Today we have Lindsay, if you don't get that email newsletter and you would like to, simplest way to get it is to send us an email. Email address is helloadsmart tech.com we also have a website for the podcast which is around the horn. Excuse me, aroundthehornpod.com it and there's an opportunity there that you can sign up for the newsletter and all of our past episodes. So live on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn this morning on the Lead Smart Technologies page later in the day today. Today's Friday, October 6th. All the popular podcast formats will have that. But if you're listening on the POD and not seeing us live, what we're reviewing here that you can't see are the articles that came out in that newsletter. So if you'd like that newsletter, let us know. So, Tom, Lindsay, anything to add before we dive in?

No, I just. Well, say welcome, Lindsay. And I saw Ron coming on as well. I. I feel like this is going to be a reunion of people who just came back from the DSG AI show. And yeah, we're going to talk a lot about AI today. And if you're listening, jump in. I'd love to hear. I wasn't there, but I'd love to hear if you were there, take your take on what you got out of the show, what your takeaway was, and we'll try and incorporate that into some of the things we're talking about today.

So, yeah, RP ended up home sick. So, rp, we felt you, we felt your presence there and your desire to be at the event. Lindsay and I were there. We're going to talk more about that today. So very good stuff. Yeah, that's. And I know we've got quite a few people coming today that either here or on the pod as it's recorded later. So we're going to talk about a lot of stuff today, right? We're going to talk a little bit about some things in the economy, a lot about AI just based upon what we've been at this week and some of the things that are going on, but quite a few different topics that we'll look through. A little bit about reshoring and then a little bit about M and A activity as well. So kind of first thing we typically talk and dive in a little bit about, talk a little bit about some things in the economy. It's a good Reuters article earlier this week that talked about the purchasing managers index that's put together regularly about the September numbers bump on that. And so there was kind of some good news and the quotes that I kind of saw and what, what triggered for me right is that US Manufacturing took a step further towards recovery in September as both employment rebounded and production picked up. So you know, kind of good signs in that arena of talking about, you know, soft landing narratives that we've been hearing. So any thoughts on that?

No. I mean it was interesting about some of the prices falling considerably. You know, Ian talked about this right. Remember a few weeks ago about deflation and potentially the opera, you know, the situation that can occur especially from an accounting standpoint with deflation. So I don't know if there's anything that take away from that. But again, seems like what we talk about every week is, I don't know, not really a clear guide but not certainly the sky is falling either.

So yeah, I, I was, I was listening yesterday while I was getting ready yesterday morning I had CNBC on in the hotel room and they had, I can never remember the gentleman's name but he's like older than dirt and they always have him on as a, as a sage, his economist and, and writer and been in multiple government administrations and so forth. But you know, he was kind of talking about and I, I'm sure there is arguments on both sides of this but his thing was I don't know how the Fed could try and raise interest rates any further. He was like they have to be done. And so that was kind of good to hear. I think. Tom, my, my takeaway on your and I, I triggered on what you said too about price drops. I don't know that that's necessarily. And I, I trigger on the exact same thing as I mentioned. I don't know that that's necessarily related to a deflation risk. I think it could be tied to supply chain issues more that there's some pricing stabilization happening or some price drops tied to some, you know, we averted the port strikes and some things like that that have been happening. I'm Hoping that that's kind of what that's tied to.

Yeah, could be.

You know, on the ground level, we work with some buying groups and associations. We do an industry outlook for one where we're serving their members quarterly. And that data, you know, from distributors at the local level still shows optimism for 2024. And to me, that says a lot. And maybe, maybe that needs to be measured a little bit more. It's hard to say. But, you know, more people are seeing sales grow and are expecting sales to grow than not. So.

Yeah.

And it supports this news that you guys just highlighted.

Well, I think, I think you're spot on with that. And I, It's. We would be remiss not to talk about the sentiment. Right. It's. We were talking before we went live today about, you know, travel schedules and, you know, I, I was just with you, Lindsay, in Chicago for the last few days, and I'm going to see you again in, in Denver on Monday and I'm off to Phoenix on Tuesday. And it's just that it's event time, right. And I'm not hearing one iota, whether it's from our customers, it's our prospects, or it's shows and events and industry stuff of anybody feeling like they're going to face struggles in their business. Now, you know, maybe you might see some people, you know, in wholesale distribution, manufacturing, maybe they're going to hold off on some hiring, you know, maybe and look at what looks like in the first quarter. But I, frankly, I haven't even heard of that. But I could see some people, you know, maybe we'll open that third branch or fifth branch or 25th branch, you know, second quarter instead of, you know, right now. But I'm just not hearing anybody. There's not one iota of doom and gloom, Right?

Yeah, we'll see when we, you know, there's a few weeks of more. You and I are traveling a lot this month, so just see what we hear at those events.

Yeah, I think that, No, I think that's a good point. Yeah. Just. But, you know, we're. I'm on the phone every day, you know, or zoom with either a group of distributors or individual distributors and, you know, they're driving their businesses forward in general is, I think, the sentiment that's there. So I, we look at, typically every week we look at, you know, one or two, you know, economic impact factor with this. And this was just, I, I've had through the whole, you know, and it's interesting, right? And this is the, I think Kind of the beauty of Tom and I with different backgrounds right.

In.

In hosting here is that oftentimes Tom's mind works both consumer and commercial side. And my mind never thinks about the consumer. It's like that's just going on over here. I'm thinking about what's happening in distribution and manufacturing because it's just my world. But I think the sentiment is very different when you look at the commercial side of the world versus the consumer or retail side. So good stuff. Let's jump ahead, huh?

Do it.

So, you know, once every couple months here on around the Horn and wholesale distribution, we kind of break out of a mold and we talk about AI. It's just, you know, occasionally it, it pops up. It seems to me like maybe it.

Might be a thing every quarter or so.

Yeah, yeah. So anyways, here's this article from Fortune magazine that Zach Cass wrote and Zach was head of Go to Market at Open AI, that company that seems to be getting some popularity recently about Chat, GPT or whatever it might be. So great article. So I'm tongue in cheek there, but one of his quotes, he talked about, you know, the real change not coming from the epicenter, but he was talking about, you know, AI reshaping industry dynamics, driving productivity and fostering unprecedented efficiency. So three pretty powerful statements.

Yeah, I was thinking a lot about this article and even some of the takeaways that we're going to talk about on the next article. The fact of the matter is we're all a startup again, right? Whether I'm 100 year old company or early stage company, we're all startups. You heard it here first. Yeah. And there was a comment that was made this morning, a bit of hype, I'm sure, but by the CEO of JP Morgan that, you know, he believes that in a few years while I'll be doing three day work weeks, because there just won't be the need for the number of employees and the amount of hours that we put in each week. As again, that's kind of hypey. But the fact of the matter is, and I'm sure you saw this at the show, which we're going to talk about a lot, is this is a radical shift of mindset. It's a radical shift of business model. It's a radical shift of how we work with customers, how we work with partners, how we work with everything. We're all in startup mode. And the other interesting thing I found when I was thinking about that, because Kevin, we've heard, you know, we've had calls with distributors where they're like, oh, we can't afford to invest in this or we don't have the dollars or the budget for this or whatever. As a startup you have to invest. Right. Why do startups raise money? You have to invest. You have to invest to, to get off the ground and to get into a place where you can be competitive. The same is going to be true in our world. I truly believe that. And this article, I thought really, you know what Zach was saying and some of the takeaways here really hammered that home is like the clock is ticking. And I don't think that people yet are really even appreciating what is the transformation that is going to need to occur in order for you to remain competitive at that level. But anyway, that's my take is we're all a bit of a startup at this point where even if I'm 100-year-old company or a one month old company.

Yeah, yeah.

The.

He made some comments in here that I thought were, you know, and he did the same. And we're going to talk in a moment about this event this week and that we, that Lindsey and I were able to attend and so kind of jump ahead and that's why I included this article from Zach. And yeah, I don't know that everybody has the exact same take that on some of these things exactly. Just from a timeline and an impact. But you cannot argue the magnitude of what's happening. Right. So his comment here was the clock is ticking and for those lagging catching up might soon be a. So this is a term I've never heard before. Task. Either of you heard of that before?

It's like a reference to something, something in mythology, right?

Yeah.

And basically it's something that can't be. You can't overcome it now.

Yeah, right.

It's, it's it. You, you may be left behind. And. And his follow up to that was as AI Reshapes Industries. The real danger isn't just falling behind, it's becoming obsolete. You know, will there be a place probably for a distributor that's, you know, not using AI in their business or a manufacturer that's not. I suspect that there will be but they'll be the one, one location person that has a very unique, very niche business with non technologically advanced customers because you know what we're looking at here is customers are bringing this technology into their businesses.

Right.

And boy, we just. Back to what we were commenting on earlier. Duncan Stacy who runs a large distribution company just commented he Says price is dropping and costs increasing. So the eight old college buddy of mine just popped up here. Look at that. But Mike came out of retirement and joined a podcast this morning. But Duncan, if you wouldn't mind popping a note in there and maybe expanding upon that a little bit, that would be fantastic. He's. Prices dropping, costs increasing. I'm going to go on with just that. You know, what we were talking about with AI, and maybe we'll see if Duncan shares a little bit further with us on that thought process. But I just think right now is when we look at wholesale distribution manufacturing, right? If you're a manufacturer selling into distribution, you have to be. Every one of those companies has a whole band of competitors that are doing something similar that want that business at the distributor. If the distributor is taking advantage of AI and other technological tools to advance their business, why would they be focused on a manufacturer that's not doing similar stuff to them? So we've got this, you know, this loop that's looking at this, right? And then the end user, if the end user is putting AI tools into place, right? What if the AI you the end user, right. Or the consumer of wholesale distribution or distributors products, starts using AI tools to scrape Internet sites, right. Or web pages to look for data sets or whatever it is, and you're not ready. Right now we're in this loop that if you're not in the loop, there's some big risk.

Yeah, that stuck out to me too, Kevin. I had made a note that, you know, he particularly calls out small companies in the risk if they don't plan now and just wait, see what happens. And I'm like, I remember kind of back in the day when E commerce was starting to rise in distribution and you know, in B2B and a lot of the smaller companies, either because of resources or time know, kind of stepped back and waited to see what would happen. And I wonder if that's going to happen again this time. I think the difference, I feel like AI feels more urgent though. And the good news, I think, based on what we learned at this conference was I think it seems like AI might be more accessible and more broadly applicable across, you know, across all of their departments. Right. So there's more opportunity to incorporate it into, at an easier access point. The other note I just wrote down though, as you were talking was, you know, and this is something they mentioned at the conference as well, is that right now AI is novel and new and oh my gosh, what the heck is happening? This is crazy. Wow. But I Think someone, maybe Zach, maybe someone else said eventually AI will be just as ubiquitous. There's another big word as the Internet is now, right? We don't think, look at the Internet right now, now it's just part of our daily lives and AI will eventually just be incorporated into everything, right?

That's actually as we, when we move ahead here in a moment to talking about the event. In my presentation I used that term exactly was look, we are going to be in a spot and it's sooner rather than later. It's going to happen much faster than with AI than it did with the Internet. We where it's just going to be part of our life, right? And in my presentation I talked about that relating to cell phones, right? Who would have. And it was funny as I was thumbing through some, some of the. While I was waiting for the Internet to get live on the plane last night so I could actually work, I was thumbing through some of the free movies that they had on my phone and one of them was about RIM or BlackBerry and there somebody made a full film about them, right? And here they were this stock market darling until Steve Jobs stood up there and said Internet, right? Phone. And the whole thing and the world changed, right? Because what happened was, and I don't often think about this related to that technological shift, but what happened is it changed the whole telecommunication market because everybody was fighting over selling minutes and now they're selling data and they had this whole new data thing that they could sell. So we are at this place right now where we're going through this shift and it's just going to happen. And they commented about that in most of the presentation. Other presentations that we saw were it's going to happen faster. It's just going to be part of our day to day life.

But I think there's a bigger point here that I think that maybe is being missed because yes, it's, it's, it is true to compare what's happening with AI with Internet and E commerce, but Internet was basically, it opened up the door to communication in a much broader way. It didn't really radically change. I mean it did change, but it didn't radically change the way we did business, what we did when we went to work and so forth. The mobile device is the same thing. The E commerce was a new channel, right? It opened up a new channel for us to make sales with our customers. The overarching impact of AI And I've just been, even this week I was just like looking at some of the.

Oh we lost you. Tom.

Sorry. You're here.

Yeah, you know, it's, it's actually, it's. It's the mute button I want for you. I just don't have control over it. It just.

Ouch.

Go ahead, keep going.

Don't get me. All right. Anyway, so the Kevin and mute buttons, I wasn't. Anyway, I won't, I won't go there.

So my wife, My wife has one.

Yeah, that's right. So anyway, the point being is that AI has this sort of transformational tentacles that go into so many parts of the organization, from the lowest level employee to the most of the senior executive and everybody in between. So I think that the overarching impact and the overarching transformational aspect of it is much bigger and much broader than we had with the Internet or E Commerce or some of those things. So I think, yeah, it was. You could probably get away with waiting on the E Commerce side or watching to see how it goes. And I'm not a hypey guy, right. I'm not a big hype guy, but I agree with what's in this article. I believe every day, I believe that the longer people, companies wait, including our own, any company, right. The longer we wait, the longer we don't leap into this and truly understand it and start putting the things in place to kind of become that new startup I just talked about, every day we're losing ground and every day we're putting ourselves more at risk and very different than what we had to do when we were watching E commerce or mobile or some of those other things. It's not the same thing. It's not the same impact. And we're going to talk about some of the tools that have been released even this week. It's just like mind blowing some of the things that are happening.

Yeah, no, anyway, absolutely.

I wanted to hit on some of these comments too before we moved on here. Duncan had a good comment. You know, deflation is real, right? Labor contracts, auto workers all affect our fueling costs and we, we work on margin dollars of the spread. Hold on, I can't see that. Never mind other operating costs. Very interesting time at A and human intelligence. So yeah, there's a lot of different dynamics going into the thing here. And also wanted to hit on Ron's comment here is, you know, we're in the beginning of an inter or having been there at the beginning at Granger and now seeing AI platforms with the work I'm doing, AI is going so much faster and I think he's hitting the what I just said and the results are so much more impactful and faster throughout the whole process. So it's anyway, I don't think that Zach's article is, is maybe as hypey as maybe some may, may read it to be.

I, I, and if I, if that, I'm glad you said that, Tom. If I made it sound like I thought it was hype. Yeah, it's not at all my, my thought. I think there was and we're going to talk in just a moment about Zach's presentation and Lynn Chase says and a few of the other presentations. We'll get there very quickly, but I think there's people that have maybe a little shift on timelines. Right. Right. Whether it's next year that we'll be able to cure cancer or it's 15 years and maybe next year versus 15 years isn't the right term. Is it seven years or is it 10 years? That's the, that's the differences. I don't think there's any question about the magnitude of this. And I think your point is good, Tom, because, you know, while the Internet did in fact change our lives and, but it took a long time, I would suggest, for it to really impact commerce, especially B2B commerce. And these, this shift with what we're looking at with AI is very different. So, you know, RP talks too about, you know, what he saw at Granger very early on. You know, in, in RP is a Ron Paulson here that's made this comment. We appreciate him. Good friend of the show. He's on with us soon, I think next week or the week after RP's on with us. Retired senior executive from Granger. Right. And so always look to those thoughts and Duncan's comment earlier. Right. Duncan's the owner and CEO of a large pipe and plumbing and valve company in Canada. In fact, Duncan, we hope to see you get to shake your hand face to face in Phoenix next week. I think we'll both be there, so hopefully we'll get to do that. But yeah, there's, there's shift and this shift is happening fast. Right. So it's good stuff. All right, should we jump ahead? Let's get this recap going. Well, we kind of talked about a lot of stuff from, from this AI event. So the distribution strategy group from the Boulder, Colorado area of Ian Heller and Jonathan vine to, you know, standout thought leaders within wholesale distribution and certainly here in North America, if not globally, put on this great event. I just devastated with all of the hard Work that they did and everything that happened and beautiful reception on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. Ian tests positive for Covid. And I don't know if he's with us this morning. Ian, if you are, drive safe because he's driving back to Boulder from Chicago. Which one?

Quickly.

Top tip of my hat to him and great appreciation for somebody that's responsible enough to stay off of an airplane when they have Covid. Because, you know, think about, you got to find a way to get home.

Right.

And. And many, many people I'm sure would just still put a mask on and jump on a plane, but Ian's driving. That's kind of him. So. But great event that they put on. Lindsey, why don't I kind of let you. You were there. I was there. Would have loved to have had Tom. We'll get Tom there next week as well. Why don't you give us maybe a recap of kind of. You do some work with, with distribution strategy group as well, don't you?

Yeah, I was there supporting them this week.

Once you overview the event for us in general.

I mean, there was so much. Right. But I think kind of high level, it kind of came away. And I'll be curious to see what you think. Kevin, kind of feeling equal parts terrified and excited about the power of AI. I really love that they brought in these kind of legit, you know, this wasn't just like distribution, specific, specific experts around AI. This was leading experts on AI. People who have been working with AI from back when it was just kind of a theory on the horizon. Right. These are people who've been on the forefront of AI for decades. So that gave us a much better picture of what AI is, what it can do and where it is going. I do feel like, while I was terrified of, I don't feel like I came away thinking that, you know, Terminators are coming anytime soon, right?

Not. Not at all. I left encouraged, frankly. You know, with it all. Let's. Before we dive further into this, let's paint the picture, right? Distribution strategy group, thought leader, researcher, speakers, event hosts, keynote speakers. What else would we say of Ian and Jonathan and their team? Is that pretty much.

Yeah, they do a lot of research, they bring a lot of thought leaders together on their websites, publish content, all kind of with the goal of helping distributors run their businesses better, kind of.

They put together what arguably is the first conference of its type for wholesale distribution. And to Lindsey, your point, earlier, they brought people that aren't distribution experts together and we had two days of speakers and they were great. We had some companies that like our company lead Smart Technologies. It was one of the sponsors. Sponsors also had an opportunity to talk not necessarily about their product, but about AI and use and applications. We all got a chance to do that, or most of them did. I certainly had a chance to speak yesterday. Great event. And we all ate breakfast, lunch and, and, and appetizers, at least in the evenings together. And it was an intimate group. There was, I think not including the sponsors. There was about 250 people there and, and I don't know, we talked about this before we went live this morning. I don't think it's unreasonable to, to underestimate the people that were there as true. And I'm sure there's tons of people that will look at this event now and go, I wish I was there. And others that maybe thought about it, you know, and would go again. But this is kind of that first place that we've really got thought leaders and early adopters and high quality people that are wanting to understand this and how they're going to use this for the change that's coming. All came together who are service providers, manufacturers, distributors, which is what it was focused on. Right. But what I was intrigued by, and I had a number of conversations with private equity folks that were there. Ah, so the money's there too. And that was kind of intriguing for the week. So we're going to talk about a little bit of a few of the presentations and so forth and in a moment. But I kind of wanted to paint the picture of where we were. We were at the, you know, the Chicago o' Hare Marriott. And it was, it was what I describe it as. It was big enough that there was a lot of really good people to engage with, but it was almost intimate. Yes, it was. You. We sat together on Tuesday evening at the reception with one of the keynote speakers who. And you know, we're going to talk about Lynn Chase here in a couple of minutes. But she was just there like almost like an attendee, you know, and she's a global thought leader in AI, right?

Yes, yes. That's not even exaggerating. She is a global thought leader.

Yeah. And she was just like, she's. She's going to come on the podcast with us soon. Excellent. Yeah. And it was funny. I was, we chatted and we were talking about sailing and then AI and then, you know, life and her work on the Mars Rover 20 years ago in the Arizona mountains and, or Colorado mountains and you know, your kids and it was just all this great conversation going, so I'm looking forward to the next event. But let's talk about a little bit about what we saw from it. What were some of your big takeaways?

Yeah, you know, one of. I was really happy to see a lot of discussion around the really practical applications for AI. You know, it was repeated multiple times, all the various areas that you could apply AI in. Right. So I feel like it kind of grounded the discussion around AI a little bit. Yes. We talked about the big, like, let's solve cancer, all of the big things, which was really exciting and really intriguing. Um, but they really got down to brass tacks, too, and I really. I really enjoyed that. You know, as you know, we talk about how this is not. This is much more expansive than just e commerce is, you know, that sort of thing. And as for my company, I'm a writer, I'm an editor, we support distributors and companies in creating content. That was one of the applications they talked about at the event. Right. They kept bringing up how mark sales and marketing could use AI to generate content, which makes me, of course, want to think about how we can adopt AI tools to support our processes. But then I was also reassured multiple times by speakers who said, there's still a required human element in everything we do with AI. Right. And that, to me, was very reassuring. You know, you're automating the functions that are more machine, like, so that you can spend more time doing, you know, what makes us more human. I think so.

Lindsey, you're. You're so understating that.

Right.

Talk. Talk about the napkin. The napkin from the Tuesday night reception. I have a napkin in my briefcase. Oh, talk about. Do you remember what I'm talking about now?

When Lynn asked me?

Yes. I mean, that was a powerful moment for me. Right. And literally, if you heard me scrambling and bending over, I'm like, oh, I'll never find it. He wrote it on. Is in my briefcase.

Yeah.

Question.

Yeah. She asked me if I was having an existential crisis because of AI and its potential to replace or threaten the role that a content creator plays. Right. So we're not just talking about blogs. We're talking about product, content creation, any sort of content, video, whatever. And of course, I paused and just was quiet because I don't know that full answer. Right. But she, being a global AI expert, talked a little, you know, pretty much said, hey, there is a requirement for any sort of content to be effective in this world. There is a human element that is required. Right. Because the content that AI is spitting out is going to be, by its very nature, more generic. Right. It's, she said, smoothing out what's out there in the world and bringing kind of a consolidated kind of content on that topic. Right. If you want to make it effective and more personal, you still have to bring in your own expertise, you still have to bring in your own customer stories. And so, which is kind of how I've been feeling about it. But it's really great for a global AI expert to kind of reassure the.

PhD from Carnegie Mellon, make you feel a little better.

It made me feel a little bit better, but I feel like that's broadly applicable. Right. Because people are all like, is AI going to take our jobs? It's like, no, you just have to rethink about, rethink about the applications for your work. Yeah.

And she wrote all this stuff down, literally with a pencil on a napkin. I have it somewhere. Right. And because I missed a little part of that conversation, I asked to repeat something and she was already writing some stuff down. So, you know, I, and the reason I brought that up is because, you know, you were kind of dancing around the edges of the human part of it. And I wanted to bring that real because, look, it's your, you know, right. As a media company and a writer and an editor and helping companies with content development and so forth, I think this is going to enable and enhance what you're doing versus eradicate what you're doing. And she really reinforced that. Yes.

Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up, Kevin.

Yeah. And I have a quick take on this and then we'll move ahead. Lindsey, I used to own a digital marketing agency, so I'm very familiar with the drill and the business. And I completely agree that the need for what an agency can do is not going to go away in terms of content. But I think the expectations of what is being done from the agency and possibly the quantity, the multi. Different channels of content, the ability to use content on multimodal, you know, video and all of those things. But I think that there's going to be a, A, I think the agencies that are going to set themselves apart are the ones are going to be able to go deeper and have much more domain expertise in the area that they're in. You're no longer going to be able to get away with a generic sort of horizontal agency, I believe, because the industry knowledge is going to be so important, which obviously you're focused in this, in this industry. But it just, it's just the, and I, I think to summarize My take on listening to all of what I heard and we're looking forward to learn more about what happened at the show is, you know, it's like the no, people are not going to go away. But it's the same point of the JP Morgan CEO saying we're going to have 32 hour three day work weeks or whatever.

Right.

It's just going to be what we're doing is different.

It's only if you're an auto worker.

Yeah. And if you're autoworker or a blog writer or an agency or a manufacturer or whatever the case may be. And it's I believe even education, college education, all the things that we've historically done are radically going to have to shift to be able to prepare workers to come out, to be able to do the things that are going to need to be done those three days a week. But anyway, my two cents on thank you on the agency part of it. Not to worry about.

I want to, I want to hit, I want to hit a couple of key takeaways though.

Yes.

So from some of the comments that Zach and Zach was head of go to market at open AI or chat GPT was early on with them as a company. And the his comment. Right. Most profound period in human history similar to the time of fire, the Internet and the aqueduct to get water. Right. And comment was that we're much further along than we realize. This is Tom. I didn't have a chance to tell you this. He says if you see it today coming out as a tool and something that can be used, it's likely been around for a year. Being used in other areas makes me think about gps. Right. GPS was this amazing thing but it had been used in the maritime world and by pilots and was developed for the military. So most profound time we've ever seen. What's going on Right. In in the computer technology or chip world we have Moore's law about compounding effects. He said it's defying Moore's law of the magnitude of how fast things are happening. He said the future will unfold much faster than the past. He said. And Lindsay commented on this earlier. I commented on my presentation Zach comment on a number of other did about AI is just going to become part of our life and it's going to happen faster than the Internet did. It's going to become ubiquitous for us. You talked about every industrial revolution ever has had an increase in jobs of 50% but the takeaway on that was this is going to require different types of jobs. Right. And different types of thinking for people. So skill sets are going to need to adjust. Here's the big thing that I think we should talk about briefly today. We talk about all of the fear that comes with this and bad actors we hear about and so forth. He said, we've just gone through 10 plus years of misinformation and bad actors with the Internet and we're all very cynical already and we're going to take that. Lindsay, did you catch that?

I did. I love.

We're going to take that cynicism to AI as well. But his point was that the good. He said the good actors will win because there's a lot more money for the good actors than there is for Nigerian princes. And he said, and you just don't see that many Nigerian prince emails anymore. Right. Because we've evolved past those things. So talked about energy and the energy that's going to be. Take. Need to come from, from the computing power that's needed. Right. He said we're going to have to get to a place where we're, you know, it's not just solar, it's going to be nuclear or. And he talked about fusion and that AI will take care of solving the fusion problem. That could help us with generating the power needed for all of this. I could go on. Last two things. People have different views on this. My dad's a cancer survivor and, well, still, still battling it. He's had four different types. He had a doctor tell him a number of years ago, probably close to 10 years ago, that we were about 10 years away from solving cancer. Obviously we haven't found that yet. Zach's comment was within 10 years, Alzheimer and cancer will be behind us because AI computing power again, going back to defying Moore's Law. Right. It's just going to move so much faster. So anyways, and then the last piece was luxuries will become staples. So he talked about all of the people in the world that don't have access to the type of health care that we have and things like that. Right. These were kind of my takeaways was that we will have AI tools and doctors on Zoom that can do better than a doctor could do in a, in an office right now and everyone will have access to. Last thing that he said was the biggest gift from AI is going to be time. We're going to get back some time. Woman sitting next to me said, yeah, but my boss will find more for me to do.

As I said, well, yes, humans, it'll.

We'll have to choose right so good. Anyways, let's move ahead. I know you were ready to go on that earlier, Tom. We'll, we'll, we'll charge ahead on a few of these. You want to just kind of hit briefly, Tom, why don't you hit a couple of the stats out of that B2B buyers doing their homework on regarding E commerce. Do you have any thoughts on that?

No. I mean, I, I think it ties in. Right. We talk a lot about buyers doing their own homework and their own due diligence and doing their own research and wanting to do that on their own. Certainly with AI, as we just talked about, that's going to become easier and easier and more comprehensive even every single day. But basically what the article is saying is, is once, and I think there's some nuance to this, but once somebody has done their homework and they've made the decision, then they actually make purchases and they sometimes make a lot of them or they start to have loyalty to a certain company or a certain brand. Yep. I think that we have a real opportunity here as well to build brand loyalty, company loyalty to a level that we've never done before and continue to build that loyalty again. I think unfortunately, or fortunately, there are going to be winners and losers on this. And there will be losers. There will be losers. But I think if you take the winning mentality and your point of the people that were at the show, the early adopters and the people that are looking ahead, there's just so many opportunities to have that big competitive advantage. And that's what basically what I took away from this is. And nothing new. Right. Buyers are doing their homework. We know that buyers want to, I mean, we all want to do our own homework. We don't want to talk to a salesperson if we don't need to. We want to be able to make our own decisions. We. But once we do that, the loyalty and the frequency and the retention can go up and higher on that. So, Lindsay, what's your, what's your take?

I definitely would take on this one because, you know, our work here. Yeah, there's a lot of opportunity here, I feel like, for distributors and manufacturers. But one of the things that stuck out for me in this article in the data was that manufacturers websites are still one of the first places that buyers go to get the information they need to make purchasing decisions. That's not necessarily bad, but it is very specific to a product or product line and distributors fall at the bottom of that list. And distribution strategy group, who has done research in this Too has found similar trends, that buyers tend to go to the manufacturer's website first. And that's great for the manufacturer, but I do feel like distributors are probably missing a really big opportunity here. And there are both AI tools and less AI specific tools like building out resource libraries, creating a website that makes it a lot easier for these buyers to do that research in one place, really focused on the markets that they know best. I just feel like distributors are missing out on a huge opportunity here. And this data kind of once again confirms that, you know, distributors are falling behind when it comes to providing that go to spot. And I just wonder if that's going to continue to widen the gap a little bit more.

Hey, Lindsey, do you think that the reason that people go to manufacture websites first is SEO more related? They're searching for a brand or something and those tend to show up. Or do you think that they consciously go look for a manufacturer's website because they think it's more reputable or has more, just more relevant data than would have on a distributor?

You're going to love my answer. I think it's both. I. I think if someone's looking to compare two products from 3M, 3M's website's gonna show up. Right? Right, Whatever. In insight on sandpaper or whatever. But I also think that if you're researching a product or trying to figure out which product from 3M that you wanna purchase, you're just buying, you're just gonna go to their website. Right? I think it's both. I do know that. And I mean, we've all seen the stats. B2B buyers do tend to start on search, especially when they're in the early stages of the purchasing decision. So I do think SEO does have a really big. Does play a really big part in it. And while yes, it's going to be hard to compete with 3M on a product page on a specific thing someone is researching, distributors still have a massive opportunity to edge forward in that game by creating content that's like X product versus byproduct or here's how you can use this product and this market for this specific application. And I think so I don't think distribute. I think distributors can still play the SEO game when it comes to that kind of content.

Well, and as search becomes more conversational and less transactional, which is what it is right now, again, the rules can change considerably about how we go about the process. But I do think, and obviously, even if you're a distributor and you're carrying certain brands and so forth. And there's certainly ways to, to spotlight that and then provide that value add. Right. Add some of the value. Add that a distributor may be able to provide that a manufacturer may not, depending upon what it is.

Well, there's an interesting piece that goes with that and I've got a quick question for Lindsey and then I want to add to that because I think I know the answer. If end users historically go to a manufacturer's website first, where do they go second?

Well, that's a great question. They don't always go to the distributor. They might. Amazon distributor. Yeah. Or to their. Or they'll call up their local.

I think it's Amazon and I think we're gonna, you know, talking to Brian Beck and some other people like that that are, you know. And Brian, by the way, Tom, Brian and I were messaging the other day. Brian's going to come back before the end of the year with us for another. We want to talk a little bit about the FTC Amazon lawsuit, but with him. But I believe it's Amazon and I think we're going to be seeing that research that's coming because we spend our lives. And this, I would suggest that this particular article, again, this is from E Commerce360 and this survey that they did, right. It says that 50% of B2B buyers make a digital purchase or good or service for their organization every day. And I believe, and call me out if you believe it's different. I believe that habit came from what they do at home and it's transferred to the workplace. And now with Amazon supply, Right. Or what was Amazon business picking away day in and day out, right. And then you've got the Grangers of the world with some great E commerce solutions and so forth is. And the reason I'm where I'm leading to with all of this is the opportunity that it really happens for distributors to take advantage of marketplaces, not just Amazon, but other marketplaces. Because if you think about it, if everybody. And this is. You really triggered this for me, Lindsay, with your comment about going to manufacturers first singular product offering. Right now, if I'm a distributor, I. Let's just say I'm a distributor and I carry four brands in this category. I'm a micro marketplace, but I get the sale regardless of what they choose. So if I can get those eyeballs that would normally go to a manufacturer to come to me first.

Absolutely.

You know. Yep. That's the key. So I think there's an opportunity with that.

I think. Yeah. And I think most Distributors are not taking advantage.

Yeah, but the opportunity is there and it's you know what? And we're going to have AI tools that are going to come that are going to make this faster and easier and more cost effective to do the optimizely or the different e commerce providers and so forth that are going to bring these tools and make it easier for companies to do this type of stuff. I think there is a huge opportunity there so we need to move ahead just because of time. We won't talk about this article, but there's a good article here about from Supply Chain Quarterly about some thoughts about onshoring. We talk regularly about on shoring and reshoring about some things you need to think about. My quick takeaway was they talked about scenario planning when looking at Asian manufacturing and what could happen politically. Perfect opportunity. Back to AI for digital twins. Right. Let's run case scenarios using AI of what could happen. So good stuff there. We have every week we have a segment if you're listening on the podcast. We're reviewing the newsletter we send out every week and that's called around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution. If you'd like to get a copy of that simple email address is helloadsmartech.com and we'll get you that newsletter that we talk about here on the podcast. Modern Distribution Management. No, Lindsay, you've done work with them a lot in the past. They do their M and A roundup every, every quarter and things are slowing in the M and A world right now. But I think that's typical of us coming into the year end cycle. I think the fourth quarter will be a little bit slower even as well. But you know, we had the high earlier this year. In January there were 50 deals done. So I think it would be great for us to look at what January looks like compared to last year. I think it's going to be a high talking to the PE guys this earlier this week, I think we're going to see more of that.

Hey, quick, quick question on that, on the PE thing. When and when you were talking to PE and they were there, were they looking from the viewpoint that they recognize that they're they need to be thinking about transforming their portfolio companies or were they there thinking about how do I use AI to squeeze more profits out of what we're already doing or. Or a combination of the.

All of the above? Absolutely. It was. It was. What do I need to know? What do my port codes need to know? Absolutely. The case and in general awareness too.

You know, were they Were they concerned? Were they nervous? Were they, you know, thinking disruption as it relates to their model or I don't know, they have money, so money.

Talks or I think it was, you know, these were folks that, that already have investments in wholesale distribution already and are lean or, you know, heavily leaning in that arena. And I think it was really getting their arms around it. Some of the folks that were there involved in it or former Granger people. And there was, there was a, a component of this event that was like a Granger reunion because there's so many former Granger executives and RP that, you know, a regular contributor here and our guest coming up soon was going to come before he got sick. There's another former Granger senior executive that was coming that got sick and, and Ian that was hosting the events, a former Granger executive. He had been VP of marketing. So this was, there was a little bit of a Granger homecoming. And I used to be a vendor to Granger and know a bunch of these guys from year ago, years ago. But that there was a PE component that was some former Granger folks as well. But Tom, your comment is d all of the above. They, they want to know what the opportunities are here. So we skipped past though I, I'm sorry I did that to us. We skipped past the Tech Talk article there about Google, the combined generative AI chatbot with virtual assistant. So that is also in our Goodreads section that we have every week that talks about this happening as well. We've been going with AI tools that we've been using, whether it's Bard or that you choose or ChatGPT or any of the other tools that are out there. We type everything in. Now what this article is combining voice text in both of those article in Goodread and Tech Talk is that voice, text and images, Right. So now imagine you're in a place where you could, whether it's you're, you're talking to your Google assistant and obviously Amazon is going to be doing this very quickly. Siri will be able to do this, I'm sure, very quickly as well because whatever virtual assistant that you choose and use, the idea behind this is I just say to Siri or the I can't say it to the word of the one that's on the desk next to me to respond. But this is Tom, you've talked about this a lot in the past, right? This is and Zach Cass talked about this at the session on Wednesday was you'll be able to tell your virtual assistant by voice book Me a ticket to get me. Get me scheduled with Joe Smith at XYZ Manufacturing next Tuesday. Ideally while I'm in Milwaukee and based around his times, book me a flight on this airline, getting there between two hours before and two hours after our meeting. Right. And have my car ready and my Hilton reservation in place and it's just done. Right.

Sounds great.

Well, and I think these two articles, they dovetail, right? They dovetail. But basically the TechTalk one is the takeaway that you might want to, as you read through it is multi step, multi action. E commerce actions are happening are coming. I've talked about the word of an agent, but that's a techie term for agents are things that actually accomplish something in some sort of sequence. So the world of agents is coming much faster. You combine that with voice and you know, more traditional conversational type things and you can start to see that there's a lot. And again, this all comes back to everything we've just talked about today. You start looking at all the ways and the use cases that that can be applied in a wholesale distributor or manufacturer or whatever. It starts to become pretty mind boggling, mind boggling pretty quickly. So anyway, we might revisit a couple of these later on because there's some really good depth on these that I think would be worth. Worth sharing.

Yeah. Can I add one thing, guys? This OpenAI AI article is a great article, but there was kind of this throwaway ending to the article. It wasn't a throwaway to me anyways. And there was a professor that they quoted kind of. Kind of. That spoke to my inner skepticism about everything.

Okay.

Which probably makes me a really good editor. The chagrin of anybody's content I touch. But he said don't mistake the fluency of chat GPT for expertise. You still need human expertise in evaluation. And I just liked that balance. In terms of the output or what you're getting from AI, what you're getting from these tools. Make sure to do some critical thinking. Check the accuracy, check your work, make sure. Because I know it doesn't always spit out accurate content or accurate results. So I just wanted to throw that in to the excitement a little bit. People are using their brains when they're reviewing what, what they see come out of these tools.

Yeah. Oh look, there's fans of Lindsay here that just popping in with comments. It's awesome. Loved your LinkedIn post about heart missing. So again we have people listening that can't see today. So the rose between the two thorns here today is Lindsay Young from Three Aspens Media. So if you don't follow her on LinkedIn, connect with her. She's by far a thought leader in the industry that we work with. So make sure to kind of connect with her. And even your quick post about the event earlier this week was good, but what you just, you just triggered then we don't have 10 more minutes today we triggered another 10 minute discussion. Sorry, my brain. That because you were taught, you were commenting about misinformation. Right. And there's a big issue with that right now. And it's not just misinformation, it's hallucination. Hallucinations that are coming out of AI.

Right.

So Tom, this is, this is to you because I wouldn't if Lindsay knew, I'd be astounded and I don't know is. And I, and I wish so much I had thought about this of talking with Lynn Chase or, or Brooks or, or Zach at the event was when is, is there a time and how far out is it that hallucination, hallucinations will stop out of, out of responses from AI?

I don't know that they're ever going to stop. But the responsibility, I mean, yes, there's going to be certainly more and more capabilities in the models themselves, but really where the value is going to come is how we as the users of IT use our prompts and directives. Okay, so the depth of what we can do with prompts and directives, I mean a funny one I hear if, if you, if you ask Chat GPT to write an article for you, like especially a marketing article, they love to use hype words like game changing and monstrous. And it gets, it's like, it's like, it's like a hype guy, right? It's like it's by default. That's what you get if you go in and you tell the prompt, don't use game changing, don't use hype things. Be, you know, you can even use say, don't be cheesy. I mean you can do all kinds of things, simple examples. But even going deeper into how you direct it and how you prompt it, that's how you're going to not only minimize hallucinations but also improve the quality of what's coming out the other end. So I think the responsibility is more. It's a joint responsibility. Yes. The technology and the models are getting better. They will get better. There's a whole bunch of things I've been working on over the last week with these data that about how we will use data earlier in this process. Right. Even the data that we use to feed the models to be able to do things, to be able to provide a much more higher integrity output, I guess you could say. But I also do believe it's balanced with the prompts and the directives that we provide it at the same time, which is why the jobs that we're going to be doing as a company is a lot going to be revolving around how we use the prompts and the directives and the guidance that we do give it to actually move things forward.

No, I think, I think that's, that's really cool. So as we wrap up, a couple of things. So, Lindsay, it was the, and I can't remember who was talking about this, the event we were at this week, but they were talking about asking Chat GPT to rewrite the. The Constitution. Was it with a tone from Dr. Seuss.

Oh, declaration of Independence.

Declaration of Independence, yeah.

Yeah.

So I thought that was kind of funny of the things. But that goes back to the prompting prompts that you're talking about, Tom. So I think Mike Mortensen's with us from the ARG Group in Alaska, and Mike and I were chatting yesterday with some of his team about this and, and about the recapping the event before we all flew home. And Tom, over Tom's shoulder, if you're watching us live, is a book that Tom wrote called the Revenue Zone. And I was telling Mike I'm going to fess up to this because Mike might comment about this here is that I was. I think I have an original PDF copy of the book and I was thinking about if I could load that in to Chat GPT and ask it to rewrite it from a standpoint of Dr. Seuss and see what your book sounds like. If Dr. Seuss wrote it, I thought that'd be pretty cool.

I'm sure it would kick it up a whole nother notch. So many more copies yourself. It's being relaunched in January, so I think maybe we should do. Do that. But it's part of the relaunch is very, very good.

It was my idea. I want royalty.

I'll make sure you get the royalty.

Right. That probably means I get a beer. All right, so we need to wrap up a couple of things here. One, great comments from some new folks joining us today. Frank Peel, thanks for being with us. Brendan Breen, CEO of Industrial Supply association, with us today. Probably a lot more folks from ISA that joined us, which they usually do if you're not a member or don't Engage with the Industrial Supply Association. You should do so if you're even remotely involved in wholesale distribution and manufacturing related to the industrial segment. Their big fall event is coming up in Orlando, I think a week after next. But check out isapartners.com Aline Martinez from Mexico is with us today. Great to have her here. And Allison Murray, Mason, Graham, all the new commenters. Duncan, thanks for being with us and what a great show. Lindsay, one favorite. Ask you before we go.

Yes.

Will you come back?

I would love to.

Okay.

This was fun. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, that you know what, and Tom and I enjoy doing this. We said when we got started today is episode 61. Is that right, Tom? Yeah, there it is right in front of me. 61. Astounding to me. Right here we are. Most B2B podcasts don't make it past 10 is some of the statistics we've seen. Most weeks were six to seven or eight countries. Download the podcast. It's because of guests like you, Lindsay, and the feedback that we get from people here that this is growing. So a couple of things for those of you listening to us today. If you like what you heard, click the like button on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube Live. Leave a review if you want to know about this. Every week, connect with me or Tom on LinkedIn. But most importantly on whatever platform you're on, make sure you're following us. So if you follow Lead Smart technologies on on LinkedIn as an example, where our main format for being live is, you'll get notified about this every week. Don't need to come but you'll know and so that would be great. And then of course, if you could, if you're listening on the podcast Spotify Odyssey Apple podcast, which is 80% of listeners are on Apple, leave us a review. Greatly appreciate it because that just gets this content in front of more people. So there's my little sales pitch for the day. Lindsay, we'll see you on Monday in Denver. Tom, I will see you tomorrow in Denver, won't I? Tomorrow evening?

Yes.

I got home last night at about 10:30 and leaving tomorrow morning for Denver. But everybody that was with us today, thank you. Lindsay. Thank you. Have a wonderful weekend. Do good things, be kind and enjoy.

See ya.

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