Tech Platform Strategy, AI Adoption and CRM that Actually Works

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to this edition of our MDM Amplify podcast, which is all about elevating voices and solutions that serve distributors. I'm Mike Hockett, MDM's executive editor. As the founder and CEO of Lead Smart Technologies, Kevin Brown transitioned his career from business development roles at a handful of industrial manufacturers, rep agencies and B2B portals to the advisory and investment before forming LeadSmart as a provider of a suite of AI enabled CRM, customer intelligence and partner collaboration tailored for distributors and manufacturers. He and LeadSmart have also found great success on the topical discussion front with their weekly around the Horn livestream now past 170 episodes on economic and industry trends conversation. I've had the privilege of being a guest panelist on that live stream a handful of times now, so I'm happy to return the favor. Thank you. Kevin joins me in this episode as we share our takeaways from NAW's late January executive Summit, how Kevin's career background helped shape LeadSmart's approach to modern CRM and what distributors and manufacturers are asking for today. On that front, we also touch on the state of AI in the industrial supply channel today and why data quality, platform thinking and cybersecurity matter more than ever. Enjoy. Kevin. Welcome to the MDM Amplified podcast.

Speaker B: Thanks so much Mike. I appreciate the opportunity to be with you. It's been a long time coming and uh, I'm happy to be here today.

Speaker A: It's been great to be a guest on your around the Horn weekly livestream multiple times and we'll get into that a little bit later here. And I've certainly been overdue to return the favor and have you on the MDM podcast. So I always like to kick things off with an introduction to our guest. So Kevin, please, please give the folks a bio of sorts into who you and Lead Smart Technologies are.

Speaker B: Sure happy to do that Mike. I'm uh, again, Kevin Brown. I'm the CEO and co founder of Lead Smart Technologies. We are a purpose built uh, technology product that's been built solely for wholesale distributors and manufacturers. We work, and I'm sure we'll get into this more later, but we work to bring silo data from across an organization into a unified platform where wholesale distributors and manufacturers, again who solely who we work with, uh, can get deeper insight into their business, their teams, their customers and grow effectively versus just having more software. So I bring my whole career in wholesale distribution into the business and love, love what we do and who we're serving and what we're doing.

Speaker A: Well, we're Going to get into how you got to where you are today with lead smart and your career background. But before we do that, you and I spent the last, I think it was the last five days of January in Washington D.C. for the National association of Wholesaler Distributors, NAW's annual executive summ. And that event, it went heavy on the theme of Legacy. Given that 2026 marks NAW's 80th year of service and America's 250th year as a country. And I mean, you saw it happen. Our NAW team had to make a ton of agenda pivots in wake of a major snowstorm that hit the day before. The event. Kicked off a lot of scramble drill things that happened. But all in all, I thought the program ended up delivering an excellent range of content perspectives and certainly networking in our nation's. So let's just start off with a few quick thoughts on what were your biggest takeaways from that summit.

Speaker B: Well, I tell you, um, I know it was a struggle for you to get in from Wisconsin and me coming from California. I had to leave on first flight out Saturday morning and I think I was one of the last flights getting out of Chicago to try and get to D.C. and it was just cold when I arrived and there was no snow on the ground till Sunday morning. But anyways, we got there and um, you know, as I thought about it, I was really sad for the people that couldn't make it in. Um, but on the other side of it, those that did it provided an even more intimate, um, environment and conversations. And you know, sometimes we're at large, large events like this and you know, the both of us, we both go to a lot of events is we sometimes feel, um, you know, fireside chats do not feel like fireside chats. We had a couple of those with, uh, uh, Secretary of Transportation and former President Bush that I just felt like I was part of the discussion. So upside of us for those that made it in, it was much more intimate. Yeah. And by the way, hats off to the entire, you know, your counterparts at UH NAW and Eric Copland and his team, what a, what a heroic effort that they did in overcoming. And you know, nobody was surprised at what was going on and the challenges. But I got to tell you, even like at the main registration desk and the hub of the universe for NAW there, the team that was there just, I mean, from Frederick to Eric to you and to the gals that were manning the desk, everybody just kept a smile on and super professional So I was very enthused about it. Some great networking. Um, always enjoy my conversations with you when we get to these events as well. But a great event. It was my first time by the way as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, great to have you there. Uh, just really good discussions with a lot of big names uh, in the industry. Uh, whether CEOs of distributors, a lot of our sponsors. There are just great partners of NAW and the industry as a whole. And you mentioned the session with President George W. Bush. He had a one on one with Eric Koplan on stage and man that was, it just felt like one of those warm conversations with someone, you know, at a dive bar. It was a fun conversation between the two of them. Uh, George Bush is a funny guy. Like uh, he joked about how he's 79 years old and knowing that going in, my biggest thing was like how sharp is George Bush still? Uh, and I hadn't seen him, you know, in public since watching him on tv, uh, growing up and stuff. So it was just, it was a great conversation. He brought a lot of perspective about 9, 11, some of it I'm sure some people knew. But a lot of those details were stuff about that day that just, you know, the public never heard about unless they maybe read George Bush's books. But that was just an especially powerful uh, conversation there.

Speaker B: So I couldn't agree with you more. Something you just said that's a little painful is you mentioned watching George W. Bush growing up and I was very far into my, my grown up phase when uh, when he was president. But uh, it is, it, it was a little bit special to me too is I uh, kind of want to call out to my uh, dear friend and co founder of uh, my company, um, that LeadSmart Technologies, Tom Burton. Tom and I have been friends and it's kind of funny. We don't think twice about it, but people seem to like it a lot. Um, we've been friends since kindergarten and that was a long time ago. But Tom and I have been in touch all along. We uh, elementary school, middle school and high school together. And then he was quite a bit smarter than I was so he went off to uh, study computer science and I went to junior college for two years to study business before transferring. But um, Tom was actually in New York on September 11, 2001. Not just in New York, but staying at the World Trade Center Marriott. So I was pretty in tune with that day. I woke up that morning with a little. In the old days we used to have our assistants at the office, give Us. Ah, a little, uh, while you were out, piece of paper that was, uh, here's who to call back and who called into the office for you? And I had one that morning when I woke up on my coffee table with my day planner that we also used to have these big pieces of leather with paper in them that planned out our days. And, um, it said, call Tom Burton, World Trade Center, Marriott room, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just thought my friend was dead. So, uh, it was astounding. So when President Bush, um, went into the discussion about. We all got to see the pictures of him during that time sitting with a little girl in the school in Florida. But, you know, what was really going through his head and what they did with him, I didn't know that they took him to. Was it Shreveport, I think they said

Speaker A: first, and then Omaha, Nebraska.

Speaker B: Omaha, yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. I had no idea.

Speaker B: No idea. And then, you know, his big statements about, you know, we're going to get these guys when he was at the Rebel in New York, you know, the next day, and, you know, the story behind what went on with that by being able to listen to the people there and hear what they needed to hear. Because that big statement that he's famous for was not, as he said, what he went there planning to say. So it's really. I was enthused about it. Two kind of takeaways for me with that is, you know, I can't imagine being president, uh, with the data that's coming at you and the decisions that need to be made, and whether you like the one we have now or not, or whether you like George W. Bush or not. I think he's irrelevant. It's a tough, tough spot to be in, but he brought some humanity to it. You know, he talked about, what did he say when Putin used to be an okay guy, when, uh, having him at his ranch and those discussions. And there was just a lot of powerful things that came from that. But what was interesting is, you know, I think there was a lot of people that made fun of, uh, President Bush during his, his time in office because of his demeanor and, you know, sometimes his voice, maybe if he had his haircut, his ears might have looked a little bigger or whatever that is.

Speaker A: Uh, he had his laugh that I'm not going to try to imitate, but that got a lot of play on Saturday Night Live and everything.

Speaker B: Yes. So I he there, and that's what I was wanting. I was going to mention the Saturday Night life thing you brought up, because listening to him and I was, I don't know, 30ft from him, probably. Um, he was just. Just a good dude having a great conversation with Eric. You know, he poked at Eric a few times, and they had a little fun together. But it was interesting. He would get this laugh or this giggle kind of going, and you're like, oh, here it is again. And then it's like gem would just come flying out of his mouth. It was like something really specific about, you know, linking different facts, uh, facets of international politics to what was happening in three different parts of the world when he had to make a decision. It's pretty cool. So I was very appreciative of that.

Speaker A: And then besides, uh, the former president, uh, there was a great CEO panel there on stage with the leaders from ors, nasco, Valen Johnstone Supply, and Graybar. Uh, we closed out the event with NAW's chief government relations officer, Brian Wild, who always just is a great onstage presence for letting you know the regulatory landscape, uh, and how it's impacting wholesale distribution. Some of these key things that people should be keeping an eye on over the next two to three months. And, uh, that's tough for him to do because the pace of change has never been faster. So, uh, him and the government relations team here at NAW just do a fantastic job. Brian's the one that, uh, does just a nice job of putting it in layman's terms, as much as these executives

Speaker B: need it, maybe you can help me get him on my show. He keeps saying yes, and then I can't. Can't get a date. But you know what's great about one? Brian's just a super guy. Uh, right. Fun to be around. I guess what I love about my conversations with him, and I've had hallway conversations with him when meeting at NAW and lots of events is, um, he's just. He's just so real. But then, you know, the. The other side of that is he's super in tune. Right? He's on Capitol Hill multiple days a week. And, uh. But we were together last spring in. Was it April 2nd, Liberation Day, right? And we were listening to Brian talk with our. Our mutual good friend Brendan Breen from ISA about, uh, what was coming later in the day. And sure enough, we all get back to our rooms, you know, an hour after that session, and there's the president. And Brian was pretty close to what we got to see with what he was describing. I think it surprised everybody that every country in the world, we're gonna have tariffs, but if you put all Those pieces together. It's understandable why that happened.

Speaker A: Yeah. Shifting gears here to around the Horn, which is your weekly livestream conversation here. Hopefully some of this podcast listeners tuned in on February 6th to catch when I was able to join you. Gu. And while I lightly touched on your background and you gave just a description in your intro to this episode, let's uh, dive into there because you have such an interesting career timeline that has spanned business development at industrial products manufacturers before transitioning into the more boutique advisory and then software provider side of things. And we don't need to spend a ton of time discussing the past, but can you walk me through your different career stops before LeadSmart and then share maybe how that perspective has helped you in your current role in the team there at LeadSmart?

Speaker B: Well, thanks for that. All that you just described is just a guy that's been around for a long time doing his best. So uh, I started my career working for a, um, and I'm proud of this because I think in the world of technology, specifically technology that serves wholesale distribution and manufacturing, I've not been able to find anybody else and in an executive role that's ever loaded up a car with samples on a Monday morning and come back on Thursday with a quota to me carrying a territory. And uh, I worked a, uh, couple years out of college for a big safety, uh, equipment distributor. I was in a national role with them. Uh, after three years there, left, started a manufacturer's rep agency, uh, mostly in the industrial safety market, but a little bit of industrial supply as well. Covering. I live in Southern California, born and raised here and uh, most of our territories were California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii. So I ran a successful rep agency for 10 years. Um, moved out of the regional kind of role by uh, selling my agency in 2003 and invested in a manufacturing company that's in the same space. That moved me kind of into now a, um, national and even an international role of getting that company's products in with the Grangers and the fastenals and the MSCs and so forth of the world and really um, expanding out the product offering and now getting to see truly the manufacturing side of that. Because for so earlier part of my career, specifically as a manufacturer's rep, right, I was in. My company was an arm of the manufacturer, but it could get adversarial sometimes. Well now I got to go learn the other side of the business by now running an international network of manufacturers, reps and distributors, uh, that I had set up in that setting. So uh, after being there for eight or nine years in the day to day. I still have an interest in the company but I um, left and got involved in some advisory work and some of it was accidental, some of it was interim executive work but with a number of both international and uh, North American uh, manufacturers and distributors. But through all of my career Mike, I've always been, I want to say cutting edge but that's probably not safe for real to say. I've always been ahead of the curve of my peers in distribution or manufacturing on bringing technology. Right. My sales guys in my rep agency were plugging their laptops into hotel wall outlets to get a dial up modem to sync their CRM in 1997, 1998. Right. So we've always tried to be on the front end of that and really what I learned through the advisory work I was doing and so forth and I was involved with a uh, project too. My co founder of Elite Smart, Tom Burton was involved with as well. And we just kind of saw a window that said look, there's just so many what we call kind of point products out there and there's even fewer of them. Then we started our company about eight years ago, really came to market six years ago and uh, it was time for really somebody that had a background and experience and had lived the life that our customers lead to uh, be able to bring some technology. So we partnered up. Tom's got 30 plus years as a computer scientist and has started multiple software companies. And then I have my background. So that's what we do today.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's great stuff. And I just think that gives you such a well rounded background perspective to know what distributors and manufacturers, what their challenges are and what they need. Uh, instead of just telling them what they need, you've kind of lived and seen a lot of this. So on that front, LeadSmart's core offering is its channel cloud. I'll call it a CRM platform that's as you said, purpose built for distributors and manufacturers.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: And backing up this conversation on CRM, I mean you mentioned how you had it in place in the 90s, but it's really been around since the mid-80s when it was kind of just a glorified Rolodex back then. And the term CRM really started to emerge in the 90s when companies started focusing on salesforce automation, data warehousing and early analytics tools. Then in the 2000s we saw it start to morph towards cloud based CRM. Uh, kind of in the aughts and in the 2000s I'll call it, uh, alongside cloud ERP. And then as more and more automation tools got infused, eventually we get to today where it's now all about mobile app integration. And then certainly this age of AI powered CRM over these last three to four years. And AI certainly hasn't completely changed the game from what automation tools had done, but it has certainly accelerated and opened up new applications that CRM can offer. So Kevin, as you watch this progression unfold over the last six to eight years with LeadSmart, I'm curious to get your thoughts on the state of AI in CRM today and what the opportunities it presents are and then maybe some of the challenges.

Speaker B: Sure. I think that's a great timeline and description of where we've come. You know, in the reality, I think Mike is, is and I spend every day, all day talking to wholesale distributors and manufacturers both and going to a lot of events like, like we'll talk about, I think probably more later. But um, you know, at the end of the day right now, as I look at our company, probably 65 or 70% of our companies, uh, of our customers never had a CRM in their business, which is astounding. And that goes from anywhere from $20 million a year distributors to half a billion or a billion plus dollar distributors that are in that place, those that have, have probably had marginal at best success. Um, and to many it's just really a, it's a three letter word that becomes a four letter word because most people have used it as a. Well, we'll buy one of these and we'll ask our people to put a couple of call notes in. But, but that's traditional historic CRM. Um, at Lead Smart, our channel cloud product is uh, we work with both ends of the channel, manufacturers and distributors. Um, our channel cloud product is really tied to more of an overall solution for data integration with a component of it that's CRM. And people that you've talked to, Many, many, one in particular that you've talked to many, many times. Our good friend Mike Marks. Right, Mike. I've heard him countless times stand on stage and say that a good CRM implementation is 80% of the data in the CRM should be from the company to the salesperson. Well, uh, we have a philosophy and a belief that that's a lot more than just bringing some CSV files in from an ERP or maybe getting an API connection from an erp. Philosophically, um, um, customers have a lot more than a transactional journey. We believe there's a minimum of four journeys that a customer has, they have certainly a transactional journey with a distributor. They have typically, uh, a marketing journey, right? What emails are they responding to? What events are they coming to, what uh, promotions are they responding to? People don't think about that data source as an input to what their customer's behavior is. We have an E commerce journey, right? We meet very few distributors these days who either aren't deeply involved in E commerce, dipping their toes in or planning for it at least. Now we have that online journey. What are they doing? Are they transacting with us? Are they looking at things? Do we have abandoned shopping cart, whatever it might be, another journey? And then we have what we refer to as the interpersonal journey. And that, Mike, really is that CRM component, right? And it's not necessarily, hey Mike, you made four outbound calls today and two in person meetings and you typed a couple notes. That's almost secondary. But when we take that information that the contractor that's uh, sending a truck driver to an electrical distributor's branch to pick up an order and he's at the counter and he shares with the counter guy some information about a job they just won, right? And that person can pick up his phone and voice record a message into the CRM. Now we have smart CRM that is taking that interpersonal data, combining with all of those other journeys, plus the unstructured data, the structured data that that company might have in a data lake or somewhere. We bring all that together in a unified platform and now we make real decisions and we apply AI across that to help get likelihood of people buying new categories. What categories should we be selling them, where are our opportunities, what quotes are open that are closing this week? Now we bring all of those things together to help drive revenue. And the one thing that very few people talk about is when we're doing that correctly and bring all those journeys together, the customer has a far better experience, uh, and tends to buy more. And when they buy more, salespeople are more happy. They're much more likely to use the technology. So CRM has come a long way. We're the only ones that do what I'm describing right now. There's quite a few other people in the marketplace that use the phrase CRM M and have applied some basic AI tools to it. And we're growing with what we're doing with AI day in and day out. The last piece that I'll add to that Mike, which is so important to what we're trying to bring to the market, is Historically, distributors have been, I'll say, saddled with off the shelf software.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It's some of the big names, a Microsoft Dynamics, a Sugar, uh, CRM, if you want to talk CRM, Salesforce, uh, as an example. But we're living in a world that if you really start looking closely and paying attention to what's going on in the world of technology, the biggest buzzword right now out there is platforms. And platforms is what helps organizations drive growth across their business and use AI to its maximum benefit. So we are actually partnered with Salesforce. We're one of about 400 companies globally that Salesforce allows. We're called what's referred to as a global strategic OEM partner. So at Leadsmart, we're Salesforce's partner in wholesale distribution and manufacturing with an industry specific solution. So our customers do business solely with us, not with Salesforce, but they get their data platform, they get their AI agents that uh, you've seen, they're promoting so forth. But you do all of that with us. So for a distributor or a manufacturer partnered with us, they get all the beauty that they read and hear about about the value of Salesforce, but an industry pattern or um, built solution solely for what their needs are. So they get the best of both worlds.

Speaker A: Yeah, man, it's ah, a, it's a whole different world out there than, I mean, if you can just call it eight years ago. It doesn't sound like that long, but the amount that is fundamentally changed as you just covered is uh, pretty substantial there.

Speaker B: And it's changing fast. Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah. And you can only imagine what the next five years are going to look like. So as you're having these discussions, you and the team at all of Lead Smart, talking with distributors, manufacturers on all sides of the industrial supply channel, what are you hearing from them in terms of the biggest problems they're trying to solve in let's call it the CRM world or just uh, down that path. And then how receptive are they to AI tools on that front? Because we know that as every company is its own case study, no two are exactly alike, even if the demographics are fairly the same. Uh, how receptive are you seeing your customers be overall to AI adoption? Are they eager for it? Are they scared of it? Somewhere in between, uh, wherever you want to go with that.

Speaker B: Do we have two more hours? Um, uh, I'll try and cut to the chase. They think people drop into probably, if I had to define this, probably three buckets, um, maybe four. So I'll start with a four fourth Is the first one is, you know, head in the sand. You know, my grandfather started the business. We're X millions of dollars a year, hundreds of millions of dollars a year. We're growing 10% year over year. We've got what we need. You see that. But pretty rarely now, um, then you've got more and more people who are in a position that says wow, I can't stop hearing about this. Uh, my peers in my buying group or the trade association, uh, right. Read the MDM newsletter, I read the Round the Horn newsletter. I see it. That's there. I've got to pay attention to this. And then there's that, that another component of that one that says and my board is asking me what are we doing about AI? Uh, we have a wonderful customer in the H vac space that we closely partnered with and um, family owned company but they have a board and the board is poking at them about what are you doing? We've been able to help them go back with tangible results that have driven, you know, well over double digit, 20 plus percent growth with huge adoption of the technology in their business in that setting. So you have the people that are kind of moving into it like in that setting. Um, you have then another group of people I think that have bought a few, I'll call them point products. Maybe uh, this helps me with rebates or it helps me with returns or something like that. But those aren't platforms. Those are what we like to refer to as point products that solve a specific problem. Right. And they're feeding, can feed data back to the broader organization if they get connected into a platform. We see people that are, you know, biting off a few of those at a time and maybe getting some results. And um, but those are the people that are going to a lot of the events and coming to the webinars and, and dipping their toes in. And then you've got organizations who I think Chuck Delf said at Valen, they've got just within hr, they have four or five different AI tools. I think we're so, so early into this though right now Mike, is that the people that are talking about huge results that are probably not solely tied to just AI. Um, where we're going to be soon is astounding. We're getting better, everybody's getting better at it at every day. Um, so I, does that answer your question?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it doesn't have to be specific to CRM that we've seen such a blending of the ways that AI is being infused in the CRM into ERP, into just general salesforce automation. And it does make me wonder about this broader AI push into let's call it B2B in general. And uh, uh, the sense of caution that maybe executives should either retain as they're seeing all these adoption stories and more case studies come out about it and like you said, the pressure to get involved from if it's their board just uh, their maybe it's their equity backer about uh, telling them that we need to do something with AI. How can these companies navigate that pressure of feeling the need to jump in with AI while avoiding spending money on a technology they don't fully understand? So where, how can they get to that happy medium?

Speaker B: Fantastic question. Um, here's what I think the most important thing people can do and we see a broad mix of how companies have done this. Um, the majority of what we see is exactly what you described is that people that have bought a couple of one off point products, maybe they're getting some results from that. And I'm not trying to disparage any of those point products out there because they all have a place. Right. Um, but what we see consistently is and even talking with some of the companies that develop some of these pricing tools or purchasing tools or rebate management, whatever it might be, anybody Mike that is wanting to use as an example ERP data in particular related to an AI tool, there is a um, factor that goes with that of the integrity and the cleanliness of the data you start with, right? Garbage in, garbage out idea. So I think there's two components is companies need to first in my opinion, and we're seeing that people that are doing this with great success is they have an organizational roadmap versus in. The challenge where I see this all the time is that people say, well we leave our divisions or our branches autonomous to go do some things. Well that is a huge security nightmare potential. Right? And just think about with your use of ChatGPT or Claude or whatever those AI tools are. You know, imagine if you just let everybody go get a uh, company sponsored um, paid uh, version of ChatGPT with no guardrails, no specific uh, requirements of how you use these things, what data could be out there that's available or helping train these models. So first thing is a roadmap and a plan. What do we want to accomplish right? In anything, if we want to reach a goal right, we have to identify what that is and then work backwards with what are our points that we want to hit along the way or our checkpoints with that. So I think that becomes critical for people to look at is what do we want to accomplish and then have an understanding of what the data that they have is, how it should be used and they're finding the right partner. And we do two things. Um, when we start working with a new company, we work with them um, on understanding really what they have for data, what they need to do from a data hygiene standpoint to get ready to go. And then before we start an implementation with any customer, we identify with them two to four success criteria. What do we want to achieve? Because there's lots of different ways we can use AI and other technology. But what do we want to achieve in the organization? Do we want to close 20% more quotes than we closed last year? Do we want to grow by x millions of dollars through selling more of what our customers aren't buying? We call it white space. What do we want to achieve? But getting that understanding of a roadmap of where do we want to get to Right then what are our data issues and what do we need to do to achieve having the right data cleanliness for data input? Right becomes the second step. Then that's the time to start buying products. Uh, because we have an understanding of where we want to get to when we buy a one off product that doesn't mean that we're not going to get some results. But are we going buying a CRM that maybe has some product recommendation features or something like that? That's a one off good solution that will help a group within our company buying another tool whether it's HR or uh, warehouse management. When we have an overall plan for the future and what we want to achieve, all of the products fit better at that point.

Speaker A: And uh, I think we heard it uh, at our shipt conferences before and I tend to hear this more out of larger distributors, distributor organizations, but you almost hear executives talk about they want their, they want to kind of dictate a culture of having carte blanche to a certain extent when it comes to technology investment. And that to me that sounds good but it also sounds scary because to your point if they're, if suddenly everyone in their company is adding a uh, business chatgpt license, yeah, they're going to have more tools at their disposal but that's also going to open up a wealth of more just exposure points for your company. So I like the idea of you know, making technology investment decisions more democratic but at the same time it's, it sounds risky. So it, I think it takes some m Very careful navigation there, Mike.

Speaker B: The successful companies, or let me say this, the most successful companies, they have, uh, teams. I was going to say committees, but that's probably a bad word or a bad connotation sometimes because you can stall forever. But they have, you know, multidiscipline teams of people that represent different parts of their organization to help build that plan. Then that is the group that can help sales, purchasing, whoever it is, identify what products that they need, uh, in that setting. So I think it's important. So having somewhat, um, democratic side of it, I guess would be the case. It says, what are we going to use is important. The one thing before we move on, Mike, that I wanted to add, that I should have mentioned before is, you know, one of the things that it just astounds me in this day and age, and you've listened to our show and you've been on our. I think you are you and maybe one or two other people are our most, uh, regular guests. Uh, you even have the shirt, uh, from being with us on the show. Right. Uh, but, um, we talk about security a lot, uh, cybersecurity on our podcast. And it's something that I will tell you, very few of our customers and or prospects even want to even ever mention. It's something we bring up all the time. And it's something that, you know, one of the biggest challenges right now, if you're paying attention to the cybersecurity world at all, is the idea of hackers. As we think about some guy in a dark basement somewhere with a hoodie on and dark glasses trying to code his way into your organization. That's not what they're doing anymore. Right. They're getting Mike to click on a link that he thinks is the right link to get him into NAW's teams, uh, access or whatever it might be. And you're putting your credentials in somewhere because you got tricked. And security right now matters more than ever, especially as we go into this AI world. So I think, you know, if I were to give another takeaway for the day for both manufacturers and wholesale distributors to really look at, and typically distributors have a whole lot more people on their teams. You know, unless you're, uh, you know, a 3M M or, you know, somebody like that. For the most part, distributors have much bigger teams than most of their vendors. Um, be thinking about that security layer. And when you start looking at, you know, the Silicon Valley is minting, ah, new technologies to bring to wholesale distribution. Ask the questions about security. How are you helping me protect My data, because it's really important that the platform that you're on the back end of what you're using and the security component is pretty important.

Speaker A: And typically distributors don't have the staff that have, that are security experts. They have to rely on the partners they're buying these technologies from. So that goes hand in hand with vetting the partners that your software vendors that you're buying from is knowing what's the level of security here and what are the protocols involved. Because that's probably the last thing these companies are thinking about as they're going out investing in AI tools is the security part of it, because it's the least fun part of it. But uh, it has to be there at the top.

Speaker B: I would suggest a distributor before he writes a check to a technology company, ask them for their certifications and attestations. You know, and in our case we have 28 of them internationally. Right. Um, and have had them for many, many years. But um, it's easy to bypass some of the important ones. And if you're going to connect in your data source into a third party, understanding how secure that data is is important.

Speaker A: Well, let's get into what you and leadsmart have been up to as of late. And I think it makes sense to start with around the Horn that we mentioned a few times here. And I know that, that the live stream weekly that you do is not technically part of the products that Lead Smart offers, but it has certainly been a great channel to offer insights and perspectives on news and trends impacting distribution and manufacturing. So for those not in the know, do you want to describe around the Horn in a nutshell and uh, then certainly how our listeners can join in on it?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I appreciate that. Um, I'll give you that just that straight scoop, Mike, because that's just the reality of it is, uh, this will sound a little bit, um, sappy, I guess, but you know, having been 35 plus years in distribution and manufacturing, what we're doing at Lead Smart and how we're trying to help companies means a little bit more to me than if I was just an investor in the company or new to the market. Um, you know, I have, I see people at events that I travel to that I've known for 30 years. Right. And have great friendships and I want to see these businesses succeed. So we've taken a little more focus, interest I kind of look at when we go to events like you know, shift or, or NAW events or any of the other industry events@trade Isa, you know, we're partnered with affiliated distributors and Net alliance and some of the great buying groups out there. We have, I don't know, five to six or seven, I think, events a year with affiliated distributors that we attend. Um, we do more than just set up a table, you know, we're in listening to the conversation. I speak at a lot of the events as well. And you and I have been on a panel together before and hope to do even more of those. So we have a little bit more of a vested interest, I think, in the market. Part of it's tied to my background and my passion to see the industry I've spent my career in succeed. But in all frankness, about, uh, I guess three and a half years or 177 weeks ago, something like that. Today was show number 177. Um, I just was talking to Tom, my co founder, and I said, you know, we have this, this huge list of people that we partnered with on things. And most technology companies are just sending out email campaigns and putting out ads about buy my stuff, Buy my stuff. And I told Tom, I said, I've been so involved in this industry for so long, um, just look at most of our customers as peers and friends. And uh, I said, I get all these newsletters every week. I read NAMs, I read MDMs, I read NAWs and 20 others that I get. I said, what if we did our own newsletter? And Tom was, and we have a large audience that we were already marketing to and I just didn't want to be constantly feeding them information about buy my software. Right. And Tom was smart enough to say, there's my compliment for the month for Tom. But Tom was uh, smart enough to say, um, you know, LinkedIn just launched this new thing called LinkedIn Live. He says, why don't we publish the newsletter for the first time? And so we get it all formatted in the marketing automation product and got it sent out from our big lists that are inside of our own software. And uh, wow, open rates were through the roof and uh, like 60 plus percent I think the first time it went out. Crazy, right in an email campaign. And um, all of a sudden we went live on LinkedIn. I pushed the little thing out that my audience said, I'm live. And people were there and they were commenting. Well, that was like I said, that's actually probably closer to 185 weeks ago because there's times we haven't had the show and um, we always say if uh, no one's in the hospital, on an airplane or on a planned vacation. But I've done the show from Vacation, uh, as well. So we get together every week, we review the newsletter. It's not the traditional podcast where it's just an interview. We do it live on Friday mornings at 9 o' clock Pacific on LinkedIn live, YouTube live and Facebook live. Our big two audiences are really our growing audiences on YouTube. Um, it's a live recording. We have guests like you and all kinds of. We've had Eric Coplin, we've had Dan Schubert from NAW on, uh, we've had all kinds of thought leaders. We were mentioning Mike Marks earlier. We do a thing every year at the beginning of the year where we look back on the year prior and we make some prognostications about the year to come. That's always with, uh, Dirk Beveridge, Mike Marks, uh, Ian Heller, and this year, uh, Paul Kennedy from dsg, uh, joined us as well. And a DSG Supply. So that was a fantastic group. As I said, you've been on a number of times. We try and get industry thought leaders to join us. But the difference in the format again is that we talk about what's in the newsletter. So we cover everything from the economy and supply chain to, uh, AI and robotics and technology. We talked this morning at length about a big acquisition that happened this week. And so it's just a very different format. It's a growing format every week. Ah. So it's available on Apple Podcasts, um, Spotify, Odyssey, Amazon, wherever you might get your podcasts at. But then the live show is available as well in the mornings on Fridays.

Speaker A: And I love that you guys are, you're happy to share your opinions on there. And between you and Tom, sometimes your opinions differ. Like you'll flat out tell each other that you disagree with each other on this topic. And I think it's a level of banter that I think is, uh, productive. Uh, and it's not like one of you is just bashing the other one on anything. It's, it's, you know, you're giving your rational opinions on an economic trend, uh, something that's impacting the industry. And it's just good conversation, I think, for this channel to pick up on.

Speaker B: Well, I appreciate that. And that is exactly what we kind of focus on. It's just, it's just conversation with a group of people. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah. Nothing real formal about it. It's just good stuff.

Speaker B: I was just going to add to that, that, uh, to go with that is that, you know, our guests tend to be A little more open in our format and our platform that we do as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's just a nice format. Well, then, turning to Channel Cloud, which I think we've mentioned a couple times here, and you've mentioned kind of what it is and what you've done with it, but it does have a few different, uh, iterations depending on who is using it and what they're using it for. So if you can just take us through what Channel Cloud is and what an audience of distributors should know about it.

Speaker B: Well, as I mentioned before, Mike, and I'll reiterate this because it's important, right? Distributors, and even more so than manufacturers, distributors in their ERP system and in other parts of their organization have, you know, tens of thousands of documents, millions and millions of lines of invoices that they've brought in, um, data from across their business, and we call it siloed data. Um, you know, I did the last week, played the little game that everybody's playing right now, letting ChatGPT or your favorite, uh, your favorite, uh, AI tool or language model, kind of look at your background and make a caricature of you. I had it do for me. Not just a little caricature, but I had it tell me what it knows about me. And it basically called me the Silo Data Crusader. And so, um, I travel around the country and on the phone around the world on a consistent basis with the idea and the mindset that our company has that when a distributor in particular and a manufacturer as well can bring together all of the data sources that they have from across their business, that's when they get insights into their company. Otherwise, we just continued with AI driven silos. So at Lead Smart, we have two main products. We have, uh, Channel Cloud for manufacturers, which has some different features about how they might work with and manage leads and so forth with their distributors. We have also developed a portal that allows manufacturers and distributors to, uh, share data across our portal. Anything from sales data to leads, to opportunities that they're working on, to joint plannings that they're doing. They can do that with our partner portal. And then we have our flagship Channel Cloud product for distributors, which is solely developed for the needs of a distributor. Distributors are typically tracking some different things. Um, and we bring all of that data together. We have a tool as an example, Mike, that, uh, our team has just enhanced with some even deeper AI. It's called Revenue Expander. And Revenue Expander looks across the business and looks for what we call white space, or we have a great customer In Canada, that refers to it as trapped potential. Right. The vast majority of distributor salespeople sell what they know well versus what the customer should be buying. That brings in millions of dollars to top line. When we can uncover that and how we do that differently is we have, uh, an AI driven tool called Genius Feed. And Genius Feed is what we use to look across all that formerly siloed data and say, hey, here's the things that are happening now historically, uh, when a distributor or manufacturer wants to get that kind of data, they have to go log in somewhere. And that's the biggest struggle with especially a field salesperson. Right? But what we do instead is right here on a smartphone, just like you would get your alerts from ESPN or Schwab or whoever it might be. Um, we send smart alerts to a salesperson, um, an operations person, whoever is using the system that has specific needs. We send push notifications that would say, hey, Mike Hockett, on Tuesday of next week, you have this quote that's closing for a quarter million dollars. You need to reach out to this customer. One click on that smart alert, it brings you into the platform. You can go schedule your call. It can auto schedule tasks, do things like that. It can come back to you with risks and say, hey, Mike, you know what? This customer stopped buying this category of products last month, but they're looking at this other category in your e commerce system. You need to get with him. Or, hey, they stopped buying altogether three weeks ago and their AR balance is up real high. Right? So we start uncovering these things by using technology that maybe Judy and accounting might do if be able to figure out that risk if she put the time in. Right? Or maybe a salesman might be able to say, well, I know that quote's closing, but 99% of the distributors that we talk to, at best, they track their quotes through an occasional printout of, of a spreadsheet from their erp. So we're trying to bring all of that together in one place and continuing to build these tools. We have some amazing quote management tools, uh, lead management tools, and then product recommendation tools.

Speaker A: That's awesome. Well, coming down the stretch here, you, you mentioned that, you know, you and I are both out at a lot of industry events. We do a lot of networking out there. We take in a lot of content sessions. We're browsing the expos here. And you yourself have the lead smart booth that you're doing a lot with. Uh, you mentioned now you and I are both going to be at ISA 26 this April in Cleveland that I'm really looking forward to. Besides that, uh, any other events in store for you this year? Whether it's the rest of the year or just the next few months?

Speaker B: I'm really glad that I'm doing our talk today from home as opposed to my office. I'm really glad my wife's not here and hope she doesn't listen in because there's a lot of them. So we'll be at, uh, all the Hardy events. We're planning to get more involved with NAED this year. Uh, a few of the other associations. We're very supportive of our, uh, friendship and our partnership with the folks at Hardy in the H vac space. We do a lot in that space. Um, and then with our partnership with affiliated distributors, they've got, I think, five or six events that we're scheduled at starting, uh, well, in fact, I'll be late to ISA because I'll be at an ad event speaking m on a panel. I don't know if it's a panel or if I'm giving a talk, but I have about five or six talks that I give for trade associations and buying groups as well that are not related to our technology, but related to, uh, industry topics and technology. So, yeah, um, a lot of them certainly plan on being at shift. Uh, I will absolutely be next year in January at NAW, because I was really bummed to not get to go to the Library of Congress, where we had a dinner scheduled. Right. Had to be canceled because the building was closed because of the storm. So I'm looking forward to that. Uh, if I'm going to put a tuxedo on, I want something pretty cool. But we're just continuing at Lead Smart. Our team is growing consistently and, um, we're doing more and more events. We can't be everywhere. I would like to have people at every trade associate, every buying group. We're moving that direction. But, uh, I probably have no less than 12, 14 events. I'll be at minimum this year. Hopefully I see you at most of them.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it'll be a busy year again. Uh, and yeah, definitely be great to have you at, uh, non weather impacted naw summer. Well, Kevin, this has been great. Like I mentioned, it was long overdue, but I'm glad we were able to have you on this mdm, um, Amplified podcast and talk shop here. So as we sign off, any final thoughts, parting words for the audience?

Speaker B: You know, I think I could say a million different things. I think the first thing I want to do is thank you. One for your friendship and your support of what we're doing, uh, and your involvement with our podcast, because we're trying to do good things for the industry as well. Um, but, you know, I probably three, four times a year make a video while I'm in an airport or in a hotel, encouraging people to be involved with their trade associations and buying groups. And with MDM now part of naw, just join, get involved. Go network with your peers. You know, I talk to, I say the word competitors just because I think in the technology world, we're all competing. It doesn't matter if we have complementary solutions or with even some of our. I was having dinner with one of our technology partners, uh, the other night from Oblico, uh, Pierre, that I think you probably know, and we were having dinner in Washington, D.C. and we were talking about it. You know, we. Unfortunately, even though we have a wonderful partnership, we compete for Mindshare. But, you know, even when you get in a building with people that you're competing with and sharing ideas, you're just making the industry better for all of us. So I just encourage people to be involved with. With. Naw, with your vertical group as well, because it just feeds all of us better and you're gonna learn more and get a better business out of it. We try and be there to bring technology solutions that can help people grow their businesses as well.

Speaker A: That's an excellent message to leave off on. Well, with that, Kevin, thanks once again for joining the MDM Amplify podcast.

Speaker B: Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it. Thanks.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the MDM Amplify Podcast. Like what you just heard. You can find our complete library of episodes@mdm.com podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.