The Great Inventory Slowdown: What Distributors Must Do Next

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The Horn in wholesale distribution with Kevin Brown and Tom Burton. Sponsored each week by Lead Smart Technologies. Tom, Kevin and their guests review the news of the week and dive deep into the topics impacting manufacturers, wholesale distribution, independent sales agents and the global wholesale supply chain. Whether it's m and 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.

Welcome to the final spin of 2025.

Got to come up with something new for 2026.

Yeah, I'm thinking we need to revamp the music. We need to do a bunch of things.

You know what's interesting? I found some guys upworks whatever it was that would do our own music.

That's good. Yeah.

Yep. So we should maybe keep similar theme but do do our own and actually is working with John with the Act 3 agency that does our production and post production and editing work and so forth. And he's got some ideas for the recorded podcast and he's always got ideas. John's always got great ideas.

I know we need to have a chat with them. I, I have a. I have no shortage of ideas too.

So do you have a wallet to back those up?

No. That's your job. Make it happen.

No, no. Well, I'm the spender.

Yeah, that's true.

No questions about that. Seafood Towers. Right. As you and John Michael at a good friend and customer says. Yeah, Seafood Towers. Right. I wish. Wish I had one of those.

Cabin is what we should call them.

You know what? I'm going to go order one. I haven't, I haven't participated in a seafood tower in years. So.

Yeah.

For those of you who are wondering what we're rambling about, I've spent quite a bit of the fourth quarter traveling and Tom and I run Lead Smart Technologies together which we'll talk about in a minute. And I tend to be the guy on the road and the guy spending and you know, Tom is. I don't know, what would you call yourself Tom? Maybe you're not cheap. That's for you're not. Cheap is not the right word. Frugal.

I can call frugal.

Just frugal.

Practical. Practical.

Practical. No, I'm practical that far. I'm practically a spender. So. No, no. Anyways, I will have to. We'll. You know what, we'll. We'll need to do a seafood tower together one of these days just to. To go with that. But anyways, here we are. It's the 19th of December 2025 episode of the around the Horn and wholesale distribution podcast and live show number 171. Would you have ever thought.

Went by quick. Went by quick.

It just seems like we just got started, but yet there are still people that will show up and spend time with us. You know, that's just. Just great. And the show keeps growing and it's ratings and we've got a bunch of all kinds of promotional things we've got planned for next year as well, which will be exciting viewers.

Looks like your Food Towers. More podcast promotions.

What's that? Let's see. Food Towers, more podcasts.

That's right.

That's right. So we can see.

Good morning to Bob. I see Bob's here. Bob, you're gonna. We have your article in the newsletter. I don't know if you saw it, and we're looking forward to talking about that. About value.

Yeah. Yes. And you know what I'm really excited to mention when we talk about that as well is he talks right off the bat about AI.

Well, Bob's an AI guy. I mean, I would say Bob is an AI first guy. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. We should move on before your nose starts growing, Pinocchio, and. And move ahead. So let's get into the show. I'm Kevin Brown. This is my lifelong friend, business partner, accountant, and monitor of my spending, Tom Burton. And we get together every week and we talk about the news of the week, what's going on in supply chain, the economy, tariffs, mergers and acquisitions, sales, marketing, robotics, AI, cybersecurity, people and leadership. Lots of different topics. We do that because we publish a newsletter every week, and that is also called the around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing Newsletter goes out to around 10,000 people at the. If you'd like to receive that newsletter, we would love nothing more than to get that to you. You can get that by just letting us know@helloadsmartech.com and we'll get that right out to you. Hello. @LeadsTech.com we'll do that. You can also look up the podcast on LinkedIn. If you're active on LinkedIn, you can subscribe to it right there. You can look up the newsletter as well, and that will get that information out to you. It'll come to you by email and you click on it, it'll take you into LinkedIn. We also have a website for the podcast, which is ww aroundthehornpod.com and we would be happy to have you sign up for it there. You can also subscribe to The Apple Podcast or Spotify or other formats right from the website. And as we mentioned before, we do this show live. We're live this morning on LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook Live. But later in the day, John, that we mentioned earlier, our editor and producer will take all of this data and cobble it all together and put it out there into the the world of podcasts. I think we're in 30 plus different formats now and John gets that taken care of for us. So you can listen to us in lots of different places. But as I mentioned, if you're listening on the recorded version versus watching us live, you won't see that newsletter that we'll be talking about. So we'll be talking about articles that are referenced and if you're watching us live, you'll see those articles pop up on the screen as we talk about them. So again, if you'd like to get that newsletter, please let us know. We couldn't do the show if we weren't sponsored by the company that Tom and I work for, Lead Smart Technologies. Lead Smart has developed a product called ChannelCloud. And ChannelCloud is a AI enabled customer intelligence on CRM platform that brings data from across your organization. The silo data, as we like to call it, no more silos is the mantra for 2026. We bring that silo data into a single platform where we can make smart business decisions against that, help understand what customers are doing, what your teams are doing, what's happening in your overall business to make better decisions, serve your customers better, improve their experience and overall accelerate the growth of a company. So if your company is looking to digitally transform, contemplating trying to understand your customers and your team better and enabling your team to sell more and understand their customers better, please reach out to us. We'd love to assist you. That's how we get this show out there. And sponsored every week is by the good friends who spend money with us on our product. So we've got something else coming up that's kind of exciting to talk about. Tom, you want to lead off with that and tell us, tell us about what's going on after this last show of the year.

Well, this is the first show of 2026, January 9th. Right. Just.

So today's the last one until the.

9Th, and the 9th, and the 9TH is our kickoff event with Mike Marks, Ian Heller, Dirk Beverage and Paul Kennedy. A little bit of a different format. Right. We don't really go through the newsletter that day, but we look at the 2025. What were the predictions? What were the things that we expected, what happened, what didn't, and what we expect for 2026, which we all know 2026 will be the year that everybody gets their tariffs refunded.

Are you starting on that already?

I just figured I would throw out my first prediction.

Your first inaccurate comment of the day. I guess it's a second because I haven't bought a seafood tower in a long time. But this will be year three of doing this, which is pretty exciting. So we've had Mike, Dirk and Ian with us before and this year we decided to bring some adult supervision and we've asked Paul Kennedy to join us. So, Dirk, I'll just kind of go right to left on the screen here. Paul Kennedy is joining us. Paul's the president and CEO of dsg, formerly Dakota Supply Group. And I'm going to refine this because there's two DSGs going to be on this show. And so Paul runs a wonderful organization with a fantastic team of leaders there that are growing their organization. It just seems like every month I see an announcement about a new branch and new people and new growth initiatives. So they do great stuff. Paul's going to bring the perspective of what's really happening on the ground with distribution. Paul's president of nad, the national association of Electrical Distributors and on the LLC board, the main oversight board of affiliated Distributors, the. The wonderful buying group that we're partnered with as well.

We've got.

Dirk Beverage is going to join us. Dirk is famous for many, many things. Dirk is well known and we've had him on the show talking when he was doing his We Supply America tour, getting his motor home and driving around the company country talking to wholesale distributors, but more importantly their teams. He's doing some great work now from a leadership standpoint and helping people live a more fulfilled life versus just going to work every day. And you know, I took a little emphasis from, from Dirk this morning. When I woke up this morning, I was thinking about all the things that I get to do. And I did something that I need to do every day is I started thinking about the opportunity that I have in front of me as opposed to what I have to get done. And I have these little notes that I. These are kind of right up the alley of what Dirk's working on. I have this little note that I'm showing up. This little note says, I don't know if you can even see it. It says, I get to versus I have to. The other little note says I'm able to.

Okay, we now have A personal development section here.

That's right. That's right. Well, that's, that's the stuff that Dirk is working on now. If you don't follow Dirk Beverage on LinkedIn, you should. He's working on some really cool stuff about personal development and, and leading a more fulfilled, fulfilled life. So we're going to talk about that because he's got some really cool programs. He's a great keynote speaker. If you've never heard Dirk speak live, you should go watch some of his videos. Next is Ian Heller from the Distribution Strategy group the Other dsg. Ian's a former vice president of marketing at Granger and at White cup, or White Cap, I should say, and great, great leader in wholesale distribution for many years. And now he and Jonathan vine lead distribution strategy group where they post all kinds of phenomenal content. We share a lot of their content here as well. They do all kinds of events that are fantastic. Be with them in June in Chicago at their AI event. So really looking forward to Ian and Ian's perspective. Another phenomenal keynote speaker. If you've not heard Ian speak before, you missed out. And then we have the infamous famous. He goes back and forth between the two, Mike Marks. And Mike is just a legend in wholesale distribution. Amazing insights. We were bringing Paul Kennedy along to control Mike, keep Mike in line as the adult supervision. I saw Mike last week in Las Vegas at the Hardy event. Actually listened to a good chunk of his presentation. He was extremely well behaved. But as Mike says about this event, because this is year three, is that this is now an annual event. It's not a. Hey, we did it twice. Mike was saying we're doing this for the, for the foreseeable future and as long as we're all alive and kicking, this is. We're going to keep doing this. So Mike says, Mike says we're getting the band back together. So if you haven't joined us regularly before, this will be one not to miss. And we'll be putting some snippets up on LinkedIn and, and our social media pages about some snippets from last year's event.

So we're promoting this for the next couple weeks. And this is one, I think, to go to live. I remember last year, just the comments and chatter and questions and everything. It was. It's really. This is one to, to go to live for sure.

We're gonna do. I'm gonna go out on a limb here. Just. I'll say it publicly. And now it's recorded for posterity, I guess is what they say we're gonna do probably at least 2, if not 3x the number of guests next year. We've got other people that will be running that part of it for me. So sometimes we don't have a shortage of people willing to come. We have a shortage of me getting it organized to get them on. So we've got additional people joining our organization that are going to help take over for some of that moving, moving forward in January and get that off of my plate, which means it will get done more efficiently. So how many, how many webinars are we going to do next year, Tom?

I think between 12 and 15, maybe more. Okay, maybe more.

So that's a lot. We better get rolling.

I know, I know.

All right, you want to talk about the news? That's what we're here with, the news.

The news as of what's happening out there. Well, so let's start off Consumer Price Index. This is hilarious. So the Consumer Price index for November was released yesterday. A 2.7% annual rate year over year, annual rate lower than expected. But then you start reading between the lines and they said, well, we really didn't have all the data anyway, so we kind of had to guess, guess and make up some things. And there's already been a couple of, I think at least one, maybe two Fed governors that have come out and said, well, I don't think it's really that low because there was some technical data in here that isn't quite right. So what does that tell me? I think we're in for. I don't know when the next CPI report comes out. Probably mid part of January, I would assume. But I, I think we can just be expected for a nice big jump come January and, you know, some sort of revision or something. Something to this here. So.

Well, that's the craziness of it. All right. Is the revisions. Sorry, the, the craziness here is the revisions that we keep. Yeah.

And that happens more on the job report than it does here. But I just, it's like, I don't know, it's irritating to me because, you know, you read this at first, if you read the headline, you're like, okay, things are looking definitely in the right direction. This was 4/10 of a point less than what was quote, unquote expected. And then you kind of start peeling the onion and you find out maybe this data is not very good. So anyway, I think we're up for a nice big 3.1, 3% type of.

Well, 3.1 is what they were expecting. Right, yeah. So I was reading something the other day from this guy that I really, I was listening to something is really what it was that I really, really admire. And he was talking about the fact that maybe the fact that we're in 2025, a handful of days away from 2026, maybe the way we capture this data and the data that we look at, it's time for a revamp on that.

Yeah, well, I wouldn't hold your breath. I don't disagree. I mean, I don't disagree. I just don't see it happening.

So, no, it's, it's. I just think we're just stuck in this and I think I get, you know, I'm beating the dead horse I talk about all the time here is that I think it was, I, maybe it would be better that I had never learned about how we got to the inflation number that we're trying to track. You know that a mid level politician in New Zealand, of all places, where they have more sheep than people, no offense to my dear Kiwi friends and one of my favorite places in the world, but you know when you got a mid level politician walking down a corridor that gets asked for a reporter what the number inflation number should be and he says a number and the world adopts it and we're 40 years later still using that number when we have live data coming in every day that really tells us what's going on, you know. So, yeah, Bob's got a good comment here. Lies, damn lies. And statistics. Yeah, those lie too.

Yeah. So I, to me, I don't know to I really take this latest, you know, if you meet Immediately read the 2.7, you're thinking, oh, wow, okay.

It was great news.

Good news. Lower interest rates are coming. Right. Maybe they will cut again in January or in the first part of the year. Right. You start to, and then you start to go, oh, maybe not so much.

Yeah.

You know, also my first inclination is wow, then these tariffs, you know, the quote unquote inflation and price increases based on tariffs hasn't really occurred either. But again, we don't know so well.

And it's interesting, this article too talked about the stock market, kind of looked at it and just giggled and, and basically looked to the next Fed meeting. Yeah, you know, that's kind of the, the place where that one sits. So. All right, well, where do you want to jump to next?

Wherever you'd like. Let's. Well.

Go straight to tariffs.

Unless there's something you want to hit here. We can Definitely hit something.

No, I think that, you know, it's, it's. I think that article was interesting about. There's an article here from manufacturingdive.com and talks about manufacturers plan price hikes over reshoring to combat tariff effects. So I think we're going to just see a ton of stuff coming over the next and I think it will be interesting. In fact, it's probably something that would be interesting to talk about. You know who will have very strong opinions on reshoring and feedback on it when we do that show on the 9th is, is Mike. Mike Marks. Well, because Mike is on the board of a handful of companies and works of distributors but he works with a lot of manufacturers day in and day out, plus his work that he does with naw. And so forth. But I think we're going to hear a lot more. Probably my gut tells me by end of first quarter and into second and third quarter we're going to start hearing a lot more about reshoring because people are going to be, you know, they were starting on it earlier this year and now we're going to start seeing people that are having some impact and what they've accomplished with it and, or where they're at whether we'll start seeing I think a lot more announcements with that because you know, every day, specifically with China, every day, the things they unsettled related to tariffs is every day that you have an opportunity or should take that opportunity to be moving your manufacturing either back to the US or to another country. And so I think we'll talk here a lot more not just about reshoring but near shoring as well. Should be a boom in Mexico going on with that.

But isn't that what this article is saying is that there's less of a movement to reshoring or near shoring and basically, you know, they're rising, they're given.

They'Re raising the prices. Exactly right.

Raise price.

Yep. No, but there's, there are tons and tons of companies that are working on it. This is just saying this is what's going on right now.

Yep.

So I think, but you know, I've been, I've been reading quite a bit actually on LinkedIn a lot about companies that are open about reopening factories in Mexico that they've had and so forth. And you know, for the US Mexico is the easiest and, and truly other parts of Latin America. There's so much more going on now in Panama and, and Colombia and other countries as well with that. But yeah, this is, this Article in particular is talking about price increases and pass alongs with that. And that's going to be another good part of that show is when we do that show is we'll be you know, talking to, looking forward really to what you know, Paul's experience is and what he's seeing with other NAD distributors and so forth. And then Mike's experience being on the board of a handful of companies about what they're doing. But it says among manufacturing leaders surveyed and it didn't, I don't think it mentioned how large the survey was on this one. 32% said they plan to pass on all of their tariff related cost increases in sales prices. 42% intended to employ a combination of price hikes and absorbing costs into their margins. Only 6% said the tariffs won't impact their prices. Which you know what if I, if I had a vendor that said they weren't, they weren't needing to raise their prices, I'd be wondering what they've been doing to me all along.

Yeah, right.

Because if you don't have to raise your prices through all of this you have been had crazy high prices, especially if you manufacture in Asia.

Unless you figured out other ways to increase your organic growth and profitability.

So I don't know how you do that as a manufacturer with raw materials. Right, that's, that's a great conversation. We'll talk more of that later today about organic growth within a distributor. But you know, you, if your manufacturing costs are what they are, right. Yes, you can find new distribution but I think it's a little bit tougher on the manufacturer side. But you know it says contrast reshoring production to avoid the tariffs is 36% of those said that they're actively looking to shift production domestically. I think that's something for us to keep an eye on and see what happens with that because I think that number is just going to continue to go up. It's a big undertaking and you need to be a large organization to do that because if you're a, I don't know what the number would be. Let's just say if you're a, I don't know, random number sub 100 million dollar a year company. Right. It's a, it's a major financial undertaking to go do that unless you're partnering with other people. So I think there would be a great business to be the, the intermediary consultant that's bringing manufacturers together to partner on reshoring.

Yeah. Kind of like the, what are the ghost kitchens. Right. Where they just consolidate a whole bunch of restaurants together into a thing. You could have the same thing for manufacturing in a, in, in a centralized location.

Wow, that was insightful.

Oh, okay. Well, maybe we should just end off here.

Yeah, let's close out. I don't know. I don't know that you'll come up with anything better than that today.

Not likely.

No, I mean, that's a perfect analogy, right? I mean, the whole ghost kitchen idea of, you know, with, with the doordash and Uber Eats and all of the. By the way, you know what, I used Uber Eats the other day for the first time. We, we were both got stuck on calls and we're supposed to be in a meeting with one of our software developers and we, it was two o' clock and neither of us had lunch. You know what those two sandwiches cost?

Probably $40, $56.

Two. I think it was, I think it's 50 bucks. I'm sorry, 50 bucks. So two regular sized Jersey Mike subs and two bags of chips and we had sodas at the office was 50 bucks.

And how much of that was a delivery?

Look, I just, I saw the charge pop up on my American Express card later in the day. I need to go look at it. But I was just like, that was a good sandwich. I don't know, I just inhaled it in the meeting we were in. But no, it just, it's, it's crazy. But anyways, with the rise of delivery services, now you have these companies that are opening restaurants without even opening a restaurant because they use these, you know, what would you call them? Community kitchens. Yeah, those kitchens. But that's a community kitchen, right? And, and there's more and more of those coming. And the founder of Uber, Travis Kelnick, is that, I think his name, he's developing a whole thing where it's ghost kitchens with, with robots or machines cooking all of the food and there's nobody there other than probably somebody watching over the machinery. And then you can either go pick up your food out of a locker basically, or it can get delivered.

Well, that's what the ex. Uber founder or the Uber founder. Okay. Yeah.

Travis Helmlich. Yep. Travis Kelnick.

Yeah.

So keep up. You weren't listening to me.

Yeah, I was over here trying to.

Look at the next article.

That's right. Yeah, I, I, I think there is an opportunity, right, for some sort of community, sort of structured, especially when you start entering in robotics and other things. That would be an interesting way to change your manufacturing strategy or consolidate.

Yeah, consolidate. You know, now that you're going to use robotics and maybe some new AI tools and so forth and manufacturing process is maybe consolidated. I and I can think about a, a handful of our customers that are smaller manufacturers that you combine a few of them and take over some manufacturing space in Mexico or other parts of the US and, and so we don't have an. A lot going on. Tom, why don't we think about starting another company that advises people on that?

I like it. Ghost manufacturing.

Yeah. Tom and Kevin's Ghost Manufacturing Services.

Okay. That's right. It'll be a dot org. Because it certainly won't be profitable.

What are you talking about? It'll be profitable. We're going to make, to make a killing on it. So we've got a few other articles here about inventories rising and so forth, but I think you want to get to this article from CNBC about tariffs, don't you?

You know, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. We've definitely spent an abnormal amount of time on this over the last few weeks. But bottom line is, per this article, over $200 billion of tariffs have been collected this year based on the new tariff laws. This does not include anything on previous terrorist laws. These are all since the new. Which was what, April? So since April, $200 million have been.

Collected, which is a lot less than.

I'm sorry, with a B200 billion.

With a B200 billion. Yep.

Yeah. So all of those are. Were collected under quote unquote, the statute that is being debated in the Supreme Court right now as to whether or not it was legal or not. So if it were world illegal, in theory, as we've talked about, it is possible that these tariffs could be subject to return or refund because they were collected illegally. It's a lot of money starting to be real money.

What's your. Tell me again your game plan about how that money gets returned. How does that happen?

I don't know logistically how it happens.

There's gotta be a methodology behind it. Right.

That you, it's called just like you get your tax return, right. You give them a, a number or a checking account and they send you money.

What about the interest on that money?

Don't know. We'll find out. It's another. That's a good question actually. Again, we, we, we talked about the lawsuits and the different things that could be occurring and on this and I don't know and it'll be. I, I really do hope that the Supreme Court, if they do rule in the favor or against the tariffs? I would prefer that they just were very clear on what are the rules for the refunds and don't leave it vague and ambiguous.

Well that's assuming they're going to say anything about refunds.

That's right. Which if they don't, then it's ambiguous. Right.

Well because that is not what they've been asked.

Yes, but they still could provide that guidance. They have the right to do that.

Yep, yep, yep. The but what they've been asked to do is decide is that statute acceptable, an acceptable statute to use to impose the tariffs.

That's right.

And if. Yeah. So the, so the question then comes is right and, and regardless. Right. We've, we talked last week about Costco's lawsuit and and so forth that goes with that. But I think the reality of this is and I don't know if they could say this or not. Side note, I'm going to interrupt myself here. Great comment. Just came in. Says the more of those tariffs that are distributed or tariff dividends, the more difficult it will be to unwind them.

I would agree.

So what do you do?

I don't know. I haven't followed this tariff dividend. Have they actually distributed any quote unquote dividends? I don't believe so.

But is that part of what's behind the $2,000 for every American family?

I believe so, yes.

So you know, you start giving people money that comes from.

I haven't gotten my two thousand dollar check. Have you gotten a two thousand dollar check?

I bought a seafood tower.

That's right. It's K O. Came and went in a jersey. Mike Ubereat. That's it. That takes care of that.

Oh man. The. No, I have not. But I think it's a good point. Right. And I, I, I think that would be be great. It'll be interesting to watch. Right. So my, my guess, my question.

I'll look into that. We should look into that for next year as we start to get somewhere because I don't, I don't know enough about that and how, how far that's actually moved other than being discussed. Yeah.

Here I'll just, I just did my quick man, I'm I'm by the way, as a side note I'm starting to shift to back to we should talk about this in our AI segment. But you know I, I've got our show notes that we do and the articles reviewing them ahead of time that we talk about and so forth. But I tend to for the last probably year I use OpenAI's ChatGPT for my projects, for my helper agents, for projects that I share with you, that we're using AI for, for a lot, a lot of different things right within the business, but in my personal life as well, with a lot of personal agents that I've built. But for quick chats and quick questions, I've been using Perplexity really consistently for quite some time and but I am shifting away gradually from Perplexity and going back to going to Gemini and really happy with the results that I'm seeing with Gemini. But what's interesting about it is the how well it's working for Google. I mean Google is, everybody was saying Google was behind and ChatGPT's clobbering them and Claude is doing this and Claude is doing that. But guess what's happening for me now is I'm going back to typing questions into my browser, my Chrome browser, instead of Perplexity because I'm getting great Gemini answers. So I don't know if you're using Gemini, but the stuff that Google Labs is working on right now, if you kind of go search in Google Labs and go look at all the tools that they're developing and it's pretty astounding. Yeah, I know I'm way ahead of the section that we're not in right now, but I just thought I'd throw that in. So back to what we were talking about. I did my AI overview. It says the tariff dividend refers to a recent political proposal, primarily by President Donald Trump, to issue one time cash payments to Americans financed by revenue collected from federal tariffs on imported goods. The concept is a specific modern policy rather than a long standing economic term proposed amount of ineligibility. The suggested payment is a one time dividend of at least, at least $2,000 per person. It would be aimed at low and middle income individuals and families, excluding high income earners. So you're out, Tom. I'm in, but you're out. You have all the book revenue that you have. So though some specific income cutoffs have not been finalized, the funding mechanism, the core ideas, the revenue generated from newly imposed and expanded tariffs would be distributed directly to the U.S. citizens Treasury.

I would much prefer we would use it to pay down our big ass debt.

Well, good point. Right. So it says Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant suggested the dividend might not necessarily be a direct check, but could come in other forms such as tax cuts on tips, overtime or Social Security. So it says status and feasibility of the tariff dividend is a proposed idea that has not been implemented yet. Its realization faces several significant hurdles. Congressional approval the U.S. constitution grants Congress the power to levy taxes including tariffs and appropriate funds. Any such widespread spread payments could would require new legislation insufficient funding Supreme Court review the legality of some of the tariffs is currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court. Ruling against the administration could potentially require the refunding of billions of dollars to importers further complicated. Complicated the funding. So there you go.

Yeah. So nothing's happened and no, but I.

Tell you what, if you could put that and, and this is this President's no dummy. Right. Floating that out there, whether it's feasible or not is the idea that says you might get some money back from the government on this. And you know, Stephen Ramill said that it could potentially be divvied out similar to the PPP funds have to see. I just think that it's going to be. If people get money back it's going to be years and by that time they're going to be paying tariffs on whatever the new statute that's being used is. So we don't have a, we don't have a bet on the refunds though, do we? For 2026? The refunds meaning the tariffs being refunded. Tariffs collected being refunded.

You mean actually somebody getting money back.

Yeah, I mean you're so bullish on it and I just don't know when.

The ruling's going to come down. Right. If the ruling came down in the beginning of the year, that'd be one thing. If it doesn't happen till summer, that's something else. So.

Well, so that means. So I'm going to, I'm going to extrapolate from that. You think it's going to take six months or so to start getting payments out?

Oh, of course. Yeah. No, I'm not suggesting that. I think that's ruling is going to come down and then money is going to start flowing out the door.

I think it's a very bullish way to look at it. That's like six months.

Yeah, I think six months. I mean I think six months is probably realistic, you know, by that, by how whatever ends up happening.

Wonder what poly market says about it.

It doesn't. The problem is the poly market just, just got it till the. There's a 1% that this will happen before the end of the year. Well, there's a zero percent.

The. So yeah, especially on the 19th. The, the way that, you know, I'm kind of thinking about this is the. We had a lower Court rule that they were. That was not the, the correct. And, and it's, it's. I struggle with the idea of saying that it was illegal. I, I guess it's, it's, it was a misused statute. Illegal is weird to me. But I mean, it's, I guess it's semantics, but it's, hey, there's, we have all of these statutes related to how tariffs are imposed. So they use the wrong one. Does that make it illegal or a crime? Because illegal usually references a crime. Right?

Yeah. Or it's just illegal. Right. It was not legal and that was not a legal way to.

The legality of it is in question.

That's right.

Okay. So assuming that we're just going to put another one in place and if the Supreme Court comes back and says, does not have clarity on which, again, I don't know how they could come back and say because the question in the front of the Supreme Court is was this the correct statute or not to use, could it be used in this instance if they come back and say, no, you can't use this emergency power, so to speak, act for the tariffs. And that's all they say. Anybody getting a nickel back is going to go back to the Supreme Court.

What do you mean? I know it didn't.

Because you're going to sue for it. Right. And the lower court is going to say, yeah, you got to refund them. And the current administration is going to push the kick the can down the street and it's going to go back to the Supreme Court to say whether they have to give money back.

No, no, I don't, I don't think so. So remember, what the Supreme Court ruling is going to be is, was they are going to rule on the legality of how they collected the terror.

Correct.

So if they, if they say this was not in fact a legal channel or a legal vehicle to collect the tariffs, then two things happen. Or two things are, one is obviously they can't continue with that channel. And two, everything that they've done up to this point was not done under a legal framework. Okay, that's two. Those are two key points that come out of that. Now, what happens on the lawsuits, Right. The lawsuits are from the private industry suing the federal government or whoever else saying, I want, like Costco, wanting my fair share of the tariffs back, but those aren't going to go back to an appellate.

So who, who mandates, if the Supreme Court does not say they have to be refunded, who mandates that they're refunded?

Wherever those lawsuits that Costco and everybody else are doing.

Right.

Which will probably go through, but it's not going to go through the same court system that. That this has gone through. And I don't. Because it's just going to go into probably. So a lower court.

A lower court in Delaware or Massachusetts or California says, yep, they have to be refunded in Costco. You win. The administration goes, no, no, no, we're appealing this.

Okay.

Right. Then it goes to a. A state, A supreme court, or what they call it at the state level. Appellate court. Thank you. Goes to a. Maybe against a federal appellate court. Right. And they say, yep, that's it. And then it gets pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and it ends up back to the Supreme Court. That's the way the justice system works. Yeah.

I just don't see that. I don't. I understand.

Why wouldn't, why wouldn't it be. Because everything else that this administration done that they don't like ends up at the Supreme Court.

Yeah.

I mean, but I guess my. The reason I'm pushing back on you this, Tom, is that that is the justice system.

I understand that. But not every time you appeal something or somebody does, it ends up at the Supreme Court.

Sure. Seems to be with this administration. How many times has this administration been in.

I think it'll be whatever happens will be settled prior to getting to the Supreme Court, let's put it that way. That's my view on it.

My belief would be what comes back is that the administration says, we're going to give you some tax credits on a percentage of what you've paid, and here's the new taxes, and it's going to be a minuscule amount in comparison.

Okay. No, and even what they just said about the dividend. Right. The dividend could come in a lot of different forms other than just a check. Right. So, yeah. Could be the same way the refund could happen. There could be a settlement. Right. That occurs with the refund that comes in a lot of different, different packages and flavors with, with.

With $200 billion in the Treasury. And what's the deficit right now?

More than that?

Well, yeah, it's. But I mean, it's. Hang on a second. Alexa, what's the current US Deficit? 1.78 trillion. Okay, so that's 10%. Just, you know, a little over 10%.

Yeah.

Right. So of that is. That's meaningful. 10% of the U. S. Deficit is in the coffers right now.

That's why part of what they originally said is over a 10 year period with tariffs and other, you know, improvement in GDP and growth or whatever, we can kind of outgrow our way out of the deficit rather than having to radically cut spending or make of course, some spending cuts along the way. That was the original hypothesis.

So we've got 10% of the US deficit that's in the treasury right now. And from that standpoint, you're going to give that 10% back to somebody when you could be lowering the overall US deficit.

Actually, as I think about it, it probably will not manifest in a check. Right. It will probably manifest in other ways. But there will be something again that they, that somebody gets some benefit from this.

It's good to see, it's good to see you coming around. No, I just, I'm not coming around on this.

I'm not coming around. I'm just saying that money or benefit, let's just call it this way.

You have been banging your feet, you've been banging your fist for months that this is illegal. They're going to have to give the money back.

You know, I'm saying that the money is then subject to the being returned. No different than the dividend.

Anyway, you're coming around. It's good, it's good to see you when you.

I agree with Bob. What he's saying is that a lot of court cases recently have ended up and the Supreme Court made due to politics rather than constitutional legality.

Couldn't agree with Bob Moore on that. Could not agree with that statement being more correct. Guess what it starts with. Many cases are going to the Supreme Court. Right. This administration is not afraid to kick the can down the street and use every legal angle and so forth. And at the end of the day, what we have right now is. And this is where my struggle is. Look, if it said if, if the Supreme Court's response was, how would I put this better? Let me describe this differently. If there were no other methods or statutes that could be used for tariffs and all they were alluding to, or not alluding to, all they were adjudicating was tariffs or no tariffs, I would 100% be on the same page that says that money has to get returned. What I think the reality, reality is see this Mike, Mike just says common sense prevails. He's talking about me. You know, he's talking about me there.

Yeah, of course.

Yes. So the, and then the laugh out.

Loud next to it that, that really kind of nailed it.

I think he meant to write kb, not lol. Okay, but the But I, Tom, my point here is I agree with you that if all we were trying to decide is the legality, yes or no, of tariffs, all the money's got to go back. The reality of this is that says there are all of these other ways your Mr. Manufacturing, Acme Manufacturing, right. From the Roadrunner cartoons, right. Acme Manufacturing will be still paying those same levels of tariffs within a month or two or a few months of the Supreme Court's actions based upon these other statutes. So all we're saying is there we go. See, he was right there. But my, that's my point, Tom, is if I would agree these dollars are going to have to go back. The, at the end of the day is I don't see it just because they're going to be paying them again anyways and it's a slap on the hand that says administrate Trump administration, you picked the wrong statute. Shame on you. Use one of the other ones.

Correct. But the statue of which these first tariffs have been collected that generation, or whatever you want to call it, chapter of the tariffs have now ended. Right. And what they have said is they have been collected under illegal pretenses and there's whatever the number will be, 200 billion or 300 billion or whatever by the time the ruling comes down of money that was collected under illegal pretenses.

So why do you think they're delaying? Any idea why that's they're taking their time on this?

I don't, that I have no idea.

If it's such a slam dunk, they should just come, they mean. And it has, we're spending a lot of time on this. But the, the interesting thing with me on this is it, if it was so cut and dry, like everybody seems to think, why not just come out with a ruling?

Well, I, I've never said it's cut and dry. I'm not saying it's cut and dry. I, I mean, it should be it.

I mean, why is this. It's either you can do this or you can't, you know.

Well, the Supreme Court obviously doesn't think it's cut and dry and they need to do their, their homework.

So I think they need to work harder.

Yeah, they need to work harder. They're probably taking vacation now and they could be in there, you know, working on this.

Okay, so. All right, so let me just, before we leave here, just let's get this on the record. So you have backpedaled on the refunds. That's saying that there may be some compensation Provided to people who have paid these $200 billion. Is that where you're at now or are you still hard all the way along?

Right. If they get ruled illegal and there's 2 or $300 billion.

Let's use the word improper.

Improper, okay. Let's say they are. There's improper payments that were made. There will be fights to receive that dollars, whether through lawsuits or other means. And at some point there will be benefits paid or recovered. Let's use recovered is the better word.

Yeah, that's great.

Recovered from that. Whether that's in the form of a check or a tax break or a tariff break or a whatever or a gift card. I don't know.

All or all or a portion.

Right. But it's still a benefit.

No, all or a portion? Which, what's your thinking?

All or a portion of all?

Get all that 200 million that they're asking for back?

No, I don't think so. I don't. Obviously not all of it's going to happen. No, because you're going to account for.

All of it, Right? If you can account for some, why can't you account for all?

Well, because if I didn't keep good records as a manufacturer or whatever the case may be, then I don't have any way of doing that. But if.

I think you're making my point here, I think you're making my point here, it's not going to work. How do you decide what records you have to have?

I don't know. The government will say, just like you file a tax return, go to this site, fill in this thing, provide these records. Okay. We prove this to be, in fact, yes, you did pay those tariffs. Now you're eligible for whatever benefit comes.

From that with interest.

The Eidl loans and all the other crap that we went through, why, that, that didn't exist. Those logistics didn't exist. The PPP loan existed. Logistics didn't exist.

And it's an absolute train wreck of them trying to get the money back because they did it so quick.

Right, right. Look, I'm not saying it's going to be flawless and beautiful and elegant. I'm just saying it's going to happen.

Okay, so, all right. It's been recorded. You, you're, I, I, my, my understanding is what you've been saying previously is a little different than today, but now we've got the clarity on our last show of the year, so. Okay, should we talk about next? Let's move on to something exciting.

We were going to try and end A little earlier today and we're not even out of the first section.

So why do you do this? You just, you just go on and on and on and on about. I know, I know.

I just.

Like Mike says, we're haggling over nothing here. So that's so. Which just means him thinking we're not getting any money coming back, so. Oh, I can't. Bob. Bob just threw a comment in here that would. We could go on for 10 more minutes about that. He says the never underestimate the government's.

Ability to send out money.

Good point. But the other. That ties. Actually ties in what Bob was saying here. Right. Mike had said that earlier, Bob saying if tariffs are used to pay down the debt or are we supposed to raise the debt if tariffers are ruled illegal? Right. What are we supposed to do? Where does that money. Right, that money. That money gets paid out. What happens now?

Yeah, I don't know if any of the $200 billion, I don't know if it's sitting in a bank account somewhere or what's actually been done with it. It's not 100% clear.

Yep.

My guess is it probably is sitting in a special account, earning interest or doing whatever it's doing, but I don't know that it's actually been allocated or budgeted to anything. Which is another interesting question, which we're probably on.

It's probably all in crypto.

Could be, yeah.

All right, let's jump ahead. Where do you want to hit? You want to move out of our economic discussions?

Yes.

Yeah. In our manufacturing and distribution section, there is one last. The last article there, Tom. We just will kind of mention that there's a good article in Forbes that Forbes magazine at mdm, Modern Distribution Management. Mike Cockett, our good friend, the executive editor there, was with us on the show last week. They talk about some America's best companies and MDM lists. What distributors here in the US are on those lists. So if you get a chance to look at that and do that. By the way, I forgot to do my mid show reminder about our newsletter. If you're listening to us on our recorded podcast versus the live show that we're having this morning, our spirited conversation with Tom's pontification on tariffs being refunded. If you're not seeing the newsletter that we have in front of us, that is what we're supposed to be doing here is reviewing the articles that went out in the around the Horn and wholesale distribution manufacturing newsletter if you'd like to get that. And you don't just reach out to us directly@helloadsmartech.com or you can find us on LinkedIn or the around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution podcast, which is www.aroundthehornpod.com. so want to jump ahead into our e commerce and marketing segment, Tom?

Sure.

What did you like there? I'm being mean to you, probably. I'm waiting for somebody to say I'm being mean to you.

You're being mean to me.

Yeah.

Oh, I don't, I don't, I don't feel any less, any more meanness than.

Usual, any less love than I normally show you. In the last 50, whatever years we've been friends.

Yeah. I think we should skip this and move into technical technology, cybersecurity and AI. Unless there's one of these here that.

You want to the interesting article, I'll just mention it here. Our friend Mark Brohan who's been with us on the show. We got to get Mark scheduled again with Digital Commerce360 put an article together about Amazon Business prime is expanding with new benefits. And I just think it's, you know, if I'm in wholesale distribution and, or, and, or if I'm a manufacturer contemplating a presence in, in digital marketplaces, you know, this is, they're not slowing down on what their plans are.

Well, they're trying to get it more into small, medium sized business.

Yep.

Right.

Making it easier to order, faster to order credit.

Right.

You know, all the things that go with that. Making it easy.

I mean it kind of reminds me of what American Express did a few years ago where they really tried to make inroads into the small medium sized business and started offering discounts for all kinds of things. You know this case QuickBooks and Payroll Services and stuff like that, which is what Amazon's doing here. You know, I, I don't, I don't quite, I haven't quite connected the dots other than maybe that's the membership program. Right. So they make the money off the membership program. So it's a Business prime membership program. But I don't, I don't, I haven't quite connected the dots on how by giving me a discount in QuickBooks would cause me to necessarily buy more from Amazon versus my local distributor that I like to work with.

It says right here, right. Amazon Business moves to position the services as a broader operating platform for small businesses. That ties them better together. Says that small business owners wear a lot of hats. Accountant, HR manager. It leads sometimes all of that before lunch. It says. So they're just, just Trying to anchor themselves deeper and deeper into your business right at the end of the day and offer services and things that would keep you thinking about them and, and so forth. I wasn't aware of this, but they're talking about it. Says Amazon business launched in 2015. It's become a growing focus for their company. The unit generates 35 billion annualized gross sales and serves more than 8 million organizations. I didn't know this, that it operates in 11 countries that I wasn't aware of. So they're just saying they're continuing to expand their role and their relationships by going beyond purchasing, by adding tools aimed at simplifying back office operations for their business customers. So that's the idea is tie in closer, tie in tighter and get the, the renewals. It's either the ongoing return on the ongoing revenue from it and it's, you know, makes me kind of think about. And it's, I wonder if this is somewhere that they're going to be moving into next. Right. Is so many distributors. I think about, you know, Mike, our friend Mike Mortensen with arg. They do really unique things to service their customers by doing kitting of products. Right. Instead of you needing to buy this and this and this and putting it together yourself, we'll package it up together in a kit for you of like products from different manufacturers. Lots of companies are doing VMI or vendor manage inventories or vending machine services. I can completely see Amazon getting into the vending machine business. Right. They've got all those lockers that they do at your local circle k or 711 or whatever it might be. Them getting into the vending business I could absolutely see happening. And you know, that's, that's a really nice profit center for a lot of distributors that are doing that as well. Okay, take us away.

We are in AI technology and cybersecurity. I just touch on this first article. This seemed actually amazingly high. Cybersecurity forces small firms to raise prices. The vast majority per cybersecurity Dive magazine. The vast majority. 81% of US small businesses suffered a cybersecurity breach, a data breach or both in the past year. With more than half of the victims reporting financial losses between $250,000 and a million dollars. That seems like an absurdly high number. I've certainly not.

We've seen it two or three times on our show before that 80% number plus number.

Do you think that that's counting like the things that we get where these emails wanting to Pay, you know, $50,000 for your coaching services. Yeah.

Did you get any this week?

Yeah, not this week. I haven't gotten one this week, but.

Well, it says right. It says right here the answer and I. So I think it's far beyond that. What you just described, what Tom's referencing is Tom somehow as the chief operating officer of Lead Smart Technologies and our chief technology officer as well, Tom gets emails coming past him because the. The financial side of our business runs across his desk. And he gets emails almost every week from scammers, spammers and scammers with invoices that are coming from apparently looking like they're coming from my email address approving them.

Yeah, that's forwarded. It shows that it's forwarded from you and it says, please pay this bill. It's approved.

Yep. And you refuse to pay those because you don't see any results from my coaching. Right, right.

It was a big cat. We're going to talk about value in a few minutes about Bob's article. And yeah, there's no value received.

You're not paying. You're not paying for the benefits were not received by the organization. So you're not doing it. That's right. The article says. Right here, it says that the vast majority, 81% of small businesses suffered a cybersecurity breach. So that's. A breach is very different than getting an email data breach or a cybersecurity breach. A data breach or both. In the past year, with more than half of the victims reporting financial losses between 250,000 and a million dollars.

That seems awful high. Do you know anybody who's had a cybersecurity breach?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, it was interesting. We did a show, an event with affiliated distributors in July at their.

Call.

It the Functional Success Summit for IT HR and marketing and E commerce professionals. And I remember at that event talked to three or four different distributors just at that event that talked about it because there was it people that were coming through the booth as well. So it's not. Not uncommon. Obviously I think there's a difference between. And it's funny. To describe this very cryptically, but it's astounding to me. I have a really good personal friend who is a executive with one of the world's two largest aircraft manufacturers. That cryptic enough. He works in not just their IT infrastructure, but also in cybersecurity. They have entire teams of people that are dedicated to just blocking the Chinese because the Chinese are in their network. It's just where, where, where can they get to and so there's literally teams of people to just keep them blocked over here and having moved things away so they can't get past that.

Keeping them in the waiting room.

Yeah, hopefully I got my point across and was still cryptic enough with that. But, but so if you think about that, if they can get in there, they can get into to Joe's pipe and supply.

Sure.

Right. And, but to, you know this comment that was made earlier. Right. It's the people that are the weakest link and there's so much more and we've a number of articles about this. I'm sure we're going to continue and see so much more of this in the new year of people that it's less about being hacked and it's more about people click. Like a good example would be if you weren't smart enough to recognize that email and delete it. Right. If you clicked on the link in that there's a likelihood that somebody gets into our infrastructure, you know, so I think that's a big part of where that's all coming from. So anyways, be cautious, be safe. Excuse me. It's astounding to me more and more the, the every day the number of emails that I'll, I'll share with our customers or prospects, people that we're working with within Lead Smart, where, you know, you get a return email and you see the big yellow line that says this is from outside your organization. Be careful what you click on and so forth. And I don't think we actually do enough of that within our organization as it's growing. We gotta probably have a little powwow about that. So anyways, where do you want to go next? You want to talk about this AI order thing?

Yeah, we touched on this last week. There was an executive order, I believe it was signed a week ago last night, which is basically again, an executive order that is blocking states from coming up with their own AI regulations.

Like Colorado's done. Sorry, like Colorado has done.

Yes. And has. Is part of the edict or the, the plan for this is for the US to come up with a, a federal or national set of laws or regulations. Right. That can apply across the country. Now you talk about sort of a chaotic situation. There is a, a lot of, of course, people within the states and even a lot of, I think Republicans within certain states that are pounding their fists saying this isn't legal, that you're violating constitutional law. The administration is saying that this is because this could affect federal, you know, traffic and things that are occurring between states. That this is legitimate. We've talked about this. I, I don't know. I have not dug into all the ins and outs of this. But certainly having state level regulation is not good for business. It makes it impossible to, to do business. So I think the spirit of what this is supposed to be, I agree with. I don't understand all of the details of it to have an opinion on. You know, is it, is this going to be workable or is this going to actually end up making something other than just a, a bunch of, you know, people screaming at each other? I don't know.

So let me, let me throw this comparison out to you. You know, as I've spent a large part of my career in, in distribution and manufacturing was the majority of it was in the, in the safety equipment side of things and, and before I got into the industrial segment. But if you think about, excuse me, Tom. If you think about OSHA is a good example is with this, is that the federal government has federal osha. And from that standpoint you've got state Cal, where you and I live in California. And in California we have Cal, OSHA. So what I think was 1975, the Nixon administration is where OSHA originally started. And with OSHA starting there, the mandate is that there is a federal statute for workplace safety. If you as a state like California chooses to also have your own Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Right. Like we do here, you have to meet the minimum standards of the federal guidelines and then you can add to those or expand upon those if you would like. So then theory California's idea was, well, we don't think the federal government goes far enough in worker safety. So we're going to be, meet those minimum standards and then on top of that we're going to add these additional standards to it. So based upon that, what are your thoughts? Could something like that work here?

I don't, I understand what you're saying. Right. But safety equipment and physical safety type of policies are different than things that are, you know, AI and things that are on the, on the Internet and the cloud and all that stuff. Right. It's a very different situation. So whereas I can see there could be, hey, you know, this worker here in California may be subject to different regulations than a worker in Nevada.

Yeah.

Really work in the business world when everything is so, so national and so global. So. Yeah. And, and, and there's just, you know, it's, it's also one thing to the AI world is so, still so new and evolving. Right. It is hard to even know the laws or even the regulations that occurred at a national level, are they going to make sense or are they going to be relevant in six months? And you talk about something that's unenforceable, like how do you enforce something like this and deal with it. So look, I think, I do think we'd be much better served to have a set of national level regulations, maybe more guidelines, things along those lines. And then I just think it would make it much, much better for innovation and for, and as the technology matures. Right. We should be adjusting those and making adjustments to them as they go along. But the state level just seems completely unworkable, which is why this executive order was created.

So just looking at some. Another note, you know, and they, they use the term algorithmic discrimination. Are you drinking a Moscow Mule? Are you drinking.

It's a copper cup. Yeah, I guess it is.

It's five o' clock somewhere.

Yeah, that's right. I was so upset from all the crap that you were giving me that.

I've got, I've got turmeric cinnamon tea here and, and a bottle of water and you're starting early. Good for you, man.

Yeah, well, holiday period.

It's a hard, hard week, wasn't it? We need to do a happy hour one day. Maybe we'll delay our show and do it at lunchtime and have some cocktails. That'd be a lot of fun. The, the, the, the term was algorithmic discrimination. So I think that's the, the protecting of people that the AI isn't going to do negative things and impact people. Negative. It's. I just, I actually popped up a little, just a little quick little search and they talk about in Colorado is the reference to it is that regulating high risk AI systems that could have consequential decisions for hiring housing loans and health care. So they talk about, that's what they want to look at. Their focus on anti discrimination and doing impact assessments and documenting consumer disclosures and so forth. But if you think about that, and I guess this is what we'll need to learn more of with all of this as it comes together is I just kind of think about it with a. Whether you're using, you know, Meta's Llama or probably the more likely scenario here would be an impact to Google and ChatGPT.

Right.

Those are probably the most commercially used tools right now. Perplexity and a few others coming behind it. But that's basically saying I think what's going behind this is if you use those tools in your business to make decisions about impacting the residents of Colorado. We want to have some insight to how you go about doing it. And so now you have the risk that you say if you've got 52 states, there are 50 states I should say that want to do that. How do you do business in all of those states? And that's what the government, that's what the federal government is saying. No, no, no, no, no. Right. And the, the crypto and AIs are, David Sacks is saying is stop it because what you're doing and it's an interesting thing. And you know, we, we, you and I both listen regularly to the all in podcast that he's one of the, the original so called besties on that. And, and I think that's what he's saying. He's mentioned on this before. It's like, and he's a venture capitalist. You know, by, by professional say right now is why would I be investing in companies that have 50, potentially have 50 different states that they have to be regulated in? What does that do to stifle progression of technology? Sure.

No, it stifles innovation. That's what I said. Right. It's not. And I mean there are some states that wanted to regulate having models to have more DEI incorporated into the model. Right. So now if I'm building a model and I'm in, it's running in, I don't know, Washington, I may have to have different outputs and different things. If it's raining in California, right. Or Nevada or Alabama or whatever, I mean, it's just like, it's, it's absurd. So anyway, we'll see how that, But I do think was a smart thing to kind of try and get ahead of this maybe and at least set the stage that says we are going to push for this. But again, there's a lot of potential legal challenges again on this. We'll, we'll see where it plays out. Good.

Okay.

I don't think anybody will get a refund though.

What side?

I don't think anyone will get a refund on this one.

All right, let's dive into our sales and M and A segment. Evidently there's an article here about understanding what your customer values. Any thoughts on that one? Maybe one of our.

Yeah, didn't make any sense to me.

So I don't know why we published this guy's stuff. Yeah, so, so go ahead.

No, anyway, I thought it actually was an excellent article, Bob. From, from Bob here.

Well, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's Wave the flag here for Bob for a minute. Bob is the revenue maestro. He works, I'm looking at his LinkedIn post here, SMB and Mid Market top line revenue improvement. And I think where he focuses on his work in consulting and coaching in this arena is the top line revenue function with this is where he spends a lot. I know the podcast that you've been doing in the past on modern selling. Bob's pretty active with that one as well. So if you don't follow Bob on LinkedIn. BobBritton B R I T T O N There's our plug for the day. Check him out there. So now let's jump ahead and talk about this a little bit, Tom.

Yeah, so this is, I mean we're running into something similar even with our own customers. So one of the things he says here, right, is before a customer invests X dollars into something, they want to have definitive proof that they'll get Y out. Right? The historical, you know, return on investment sort of metric that's there, but. And then they want to, you know, understand more how value is defined.

Right.

We're seeing this, I think, even from our prospects and customers where they're maybe. And we're doing more, right. Test drives and things like that to demonstrate what we're talking about to the value of them. And I think it's actually a good thing because by doing that you end up understanding their business and what they're trying to accomplish in much, much better ways, which then adds to that value snowball, if you will.

Yep.

Along the way. So anyway, what his article is really focused on is what is the definition of value and how is it defined and, and how is it put together?

I think you did a nice job.

Are there any other key topic, key points you wanted to hit out of.

That, out of that particular article? I think you described it well. He's got a great image in here. And it's a husband and wife standing next to a car that they're looking at buying. And the wife says, I like how easy it is to get the kids in and out of the back. And the husband says, I like the performance specs on this car. It's the same car, different value. So a great analogy. There is kind of recap at the end with this talks about just some bullet points, right. Developing strong business acumen and become conversant in the language of finance. Know the difference between financial and subjective value. If you're selling into this C suite, lead with financial value that addresses subjective value later. Right. So we've Got different components, different buyers in that and understanding that becomes critical. So. And he kind of crosses over the line here, which I think is really interesting and I'm appreciative of is stretching the line between B2B and B2C. And I think where we talk about quite regularly here is that, that and I'll just jump out on a limb and I, I think we're in a gray area of what's the difference now. And I think that over the next few years where that gray line is just going to be. There is no line. There is be the consumer, whether you're buying retail or you're buying B2B is expecting the same type of experience.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Right. It's not like you're going to expect something different from your home life that you're going to expect in your business.

As we were talking about earlier. Right. It's. I think it's the Amazon effect. I think Amazon is what truly has driven this, this really this change and shift is. You know I've told stories many times before about some of my experience when I was still in the distribution world on this is that people just look at it and say hey you know what? Distributor A has this much of what I need in stock. Distributor B has the other part of it and I need to do all this work and I go to one place and I have a two day experience and sometimes the next morning. Right. I mean look at, I don't know about you, but my life's changed dramatically. Right. I, I broke my Apple Watch band yesterday and, and I have a few other ones but I, they're older and I wanted one that was going to arrive between 4 and 8am this morning. Right. I mean it's just, it's just what's real. It's like people are, you know, remember when we, when we were kids and our parents would get the Sears catalog and you would go through the catalog and then you would have to either mail something in with your order or boy, things got exciting when you could call and place your order. But then it was multiple days to process and it was going to ship from Chicago.

Yeah. It took a couple of weeks to get there at least fast.

Right? Yeah. And, and we're just, I mean I'm not suggesting it's good. I would actually say that my, my need it now want, my watch band today is not a need, it's a want. And I've been, I have had that behavior has been developed and, and probably manipulated by a company Right. But now my desire is to have that in all facets of my life. What do you mean the plumber can't be here when I. Right after I call or I can't.

Get 50 sandwiches delivered in 20 minutes.

You can do that actually.

Oh, you can? Yeah. That's good to know now.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

To wrap this up though, I think, you know, if you look at, even from the traditional software sales cycle, right, where you, the discovery and the demo and all that, what you're tending to do, right, is you're trying to do a discovery so you know how to sell your software or your technology. And we're going to, I think, change a little bit of this. If you change, if you just basically say, hey, let me show you and demonstrate value as fast as possible. Right. The speed of which you can, can demonstrate value.

Right.

Then opens up the door to really understanding much better what the company's problems are and how you're going to best do them. So I do, I do agree that the speed to value is, is super, super important.

It's not going to change, it's just gonna. Expectations are just going to continue to increase.

Yeah, right.

I think is really what a lot of that comes down to. So.

Good.

Well, just, you know, a couple things in our people and leadership segment today.

Before we dive into the profitability one.

Oh, I'm sorry, no, we can certainly do that.

We just, I don't know if we have time, but it's, you know, this is the one where I really wanted to touch on was this is my cockett, right?

It is correct, yes.

And this is an MDM article where. And we've hit on this before, right. About when you're thinking about growth, don't just think about top line revenue growth, think about profitable growth.

Yeah.

When we talk about organic growth, meaning how do you get more out of what you're already doing? Right. That is the most profitable growth that there is. Correct. Basically getting more to the bottom line than you would get from, you know, from what you're already doing and already doing with your customers and with your so forth. So I, I really agree with this. But you know, his point is, and we've talked about this, right? When you talk about growth, your distributor and you're gonna, you know, grow by just adding new branches and all of that, that may or may not be profitable growth. Right. At least not right away.

There's a, well, there's a strong cost base to it. Right.

There's a strong cost base to it. Whereas organic growth gives you the opportunity to really get growth that almost goes directly to the bottom line and to that profitability point. So anyway, I thought it was a really nicely laid out and brought up some really good points.

Good. Agreed. It was a good article. Mike did a nice job. So in our People in Leadership segment, there's just a couple things we won't go into them but there's good article there from HR Dive as well about corporate boards say they are prioritizing succession planning. And it just made me think as I looked at that, you know, kind of a reviewed over that article is thinking about, you know, so many of the customers that we work with that are family owned that have gone through either succession planning the next generation or becoming employee owned. And so kind of it's, it's a neat thing to see and watch how that happens. The other thing I wanted to hit in that from Smart Brief was talking about a new year reset, how to build a better January before it starts. And it actually ties in nicely to. We have an in our closing section we have call it a good, a good read and listen section where we put kind of general article sometimes are personal development other things. But that one is from Inc. Magazine and it says that neuroscience says you need a personal curriculum for 2026. And as they talk about personal curriculums it's what am I going to learn? Because sometimes we get so wrapped up in what I do every day in my life I stop learning about things outside of work. And so whether it's health and fitness or athletics or something spiritual or whatever it might be, it talks about that, that part of it. And then this further article in our People in Leadership segment about, you know, the new Year reset is really sitting down and spending time in December to really get anchored on who and what you are and what you want to do in the following year. So I thought those two, that's why I put them into the newsletter this week. I thought they, they came together nicely.

Nope. Good, good, good ideas. I'm becoming a curator Christmas and New Year to, to, you know, really, you know, that quiet time, right. To, to think some of these things through.

Every year I say I'm really going to take some downtime and take some personal time. And every year I said I'm going to, you know, come get out of the office on time the week before Christmas and the week between Christmas and New Year's and get out and take some walks and look around at the lights or the, you know, we live just a few miles from Dana Point harbor and get down and see the boat lights or whatever it might be. And here we are again. One more year that I'm, you know, 12 hour days.

So when you put that onto your 2 20, 2020.

I need to start doing my how to build a better January before it starts. So I think that covers us for today, Tom, with, with articles. We've got our Channel Leaders on the Move section and our industry scuttle. But, but get the newsletter. Get a look at those again. Newsletter you can get on. Oh, by the way, the last one was we have a second look segment where we've talked about previous articles. The final pennies that are being minted are being sold for millions. So auctions.

Well, they're a special there. They've got a special edition omega thing on there. Like a special thing on there.

So I think we should just, you know, maybe I'm going to while I'm still getting pennies for, for change that I should maybe save a handful of those for my grandkids, you know.

Yeah.

Little granddaughter Mercy May, who's almost seven months. Maybe I should save some pennies for her.

In fact, college. But you know, well, you know what?

Maybe I should get some pennies from this year in her birth year.

Okay. There's your 2026 plan or one of.

Your 2026 how to be a better Grandpa.

That's right.

I'm an oppa, not a grandpa, by the way. So. Good. All right, my friend, here we go. This is it. This is winding down the last.

Yeah. So thank you everybody for a good 2025. Everybody has a great holiday season. We're back on the 9th.

So let's throw that banner. Let's throw that banner up again if you can. And chat is in closing about the great guests that we have coming. And I'm certainly, I guess this is a time to be grateful as well. I'm, you know, grateful for the people that just all the great comments we had today and the people that stick with us and come with us. 171 times we've done this. But we've got this show coming up. By the way, I'm grateful today for Lily as well. Our one of our marketing people that threw this banner together for me at like quarter to nine this morning because I forgot about it to promote this show. So you'll see a lot of this if you're following Tom and I or the show on LinkedIn. And we've got this coming up. And so we're going to have Mike Marks, Ian Heller, Dirk Beveridge, and our good friend Paul Kennedy together to look at the 2025, the year that we had and then 2026 and what's ahead. So this will be 9:00am Pacific Time live here on LinkedIn live, YouTube live and Facebook live with those fine gentlemen on the 9th of January. So Tom, looking forward to that?

Looking forward to it. It'll be great.

Put your flak jacket on. It's going to move fast.

That's right.

Buckle up. Good. All right, everybody. Well, thanks for being with us again. I'm Kevin Brown, this is Tom Burton. We do this every week. Number 171 today, if you like what you hear. We would greatly appreciate if you would follow the show on whether you're on LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube with us live. Subscribe, hit that button for us. We would greatly appreciate it. If you're listening on Spotify, Apple, other podcast formats, not just subscribe, but please leave us a review. The more reviews that we have, the more this gets in front of other people and we can share this. I think today we had, you know, I only saw, I think three or four countries that we were going to be represented. Usually when we look at the statistics over the month, we're in six or eight different company countries. I should say that we get to show out to, but we certainly want to do more and more of that. And finally, in closing, thanks to the company that Tom and I work for, Lead Smart Technologies. If you're company is in wholesale distribution and manufacturing and you're looking to digitally transform and expand your organization, understand your customers better, your team better and your overall business, we would love to talk to you and share with you some about our solutions.

So Tom, we will show immediate value.

We will show them immediate value as Bob has described for us here. We'll wish everybody a wonderful holiday time and time away from work and hopefully you're safe and sound with all of that. And we will see you in the new year. And Tom, I'll see you in 36 minutes for our next call.

All right, sounds good. Have a good, good holiday, everyone.

Thanks.

We hope you enjoyed today's episode and our guests, each week we try our best to dig into the topics that are impacting your business. So please reach out to us and let us know how you think we can can make the show better or topics you'd like for us to tackle or talk about more often and even guests you'd like to see join us. We're looking forward to bringing you next week's session and hope that until then you stay safe, stay focused and do great things. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review to help others in wholesale distribution get access to the conversation. And finally, please check out our sponsor, Lead Smart Technologies and their manufacturing and wholesale distribution Industry CRM Customer intelligence and channel collaboration platform. That's Lead smart technologies@lead smart tech.com.