Tariffs, Nearshoring, and Why "Made in USA" Is Harder Than It Sounds

Most conversations about nearshoring assume you're moving away from Chinese manufacturing. Kerim Kfuri, president and CEO of The Atlas Network, has a harder truth: a lot of "nearshoring" is just Chinese foreign direct investment building factories in Vietnam and Mexico. The geography changes. The supply chain dependencies don't necessarily change with it.

In this episode, recorded live on the expo floor at the Logistics World Summit in Mexico City, Kerim breaks down what 20 years of building end-to-end supply chains for small and mid-sized businesses has taught him — and what most operators still get wrong.

In this episode:

• How The Atlas Network manages the full supply chain lifecycle for SMBs, from product idea to inventory management, across a network of 2,000 vetted factories
• Why "nearshoring" in Vietnam and Mexico often means Chinese-owned factories with Chinese standardization — and why that matters for your tariff and sourcing strategy
• The US manufacturing reality: why technology (not policy) is the actual leveler, and why we can't snap our fingers and rebuild a workforce we stopped training decades ago
• Kerim's keynote framework from Logistics World: people, process, and innovation — and why "people" is the most undervalued of the three
• What Kerim (MIT degree in AI and Strategy) says you actually give up when you hand too much to AI: creativity, human factor, and the interpersonal relationships that drive real business
• The signal-versus-noise framework for entrepreneurs: how to identify the three things that must get done today and stop letting everything else win
• Why the most common thing Atlas Network hears from new clients is: "I wish we knew about you sooner"
• A bonus live interview with the founder of Logistics World Summit, who walked up mid-recording on the expo floor

Watch this episode on Youtube

Links & Resources:

• The Atlas Network
• Kerim's book and speaking website
• Blythe's Logistics World + Mexico City Recap

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Transcript

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 0:42

Hi. This is Blythe Milligan. I am here with Kareem Kafoury. He is the president and CEO of the Atlas network, a global end to end supply chain company. He's been running for nearly 20 years and founder of the global crosswalk, a SaaS platform built to manage logistics project life cycles. He's also the author of supply chain up and down, ups and downs, and host of supply and demand podcast, Kareem just came off well. He didn't just come off the main stage, but he is going to be hitting the main stage here at the logistics World Summit, which obviously you can see in the background. For the audio only audience, I'm sorry, but you really should go to the video version of the show, so you can see the action and see the expo floor, because this is one of the largest shows in the Americas, I think the second largest. And, yeah, 26,000 over 26,000 people. Apparently it's a line out the door for folks to get in here.

Kerim Kfuri: 1:30

So amazing. Amazing how many people are here. It's incredible. I'm shocked by it. I mean, I go to a lot of events. I'm sure you do too. I've never been an event that has 26,000 maybe a rock concert. Something like that. But no, it's an amazing time to be here, and what a great show. I mean, I really think that it epitomizes everything that's happening in global supply chain, and really booming in LATAM, LATAM, Caribbean, so on. And they've been running this for 20 years, from what I understand. So that's that's, in and of itself, a huge accomplishment. You know that they're doing something, right?

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:02

You know? Well, we were in the speaker meeting yesterday when all the speakers arrived, and they mentioned that the very first event all those years ago were four booths and 14 people. Oh, wow. And so now 650 exhibitors and over 26,000 people.

Kerim Kfuri: 2:17

Yeah, just incredible, absolutely. And you know, what's nice too, is, is that it's interesting how an industry unites people from all over the world, you know. So we have people that are from this region, but I've seen, you know, the Chinese are over here. You've got a lot of Americans and Europeans and so on. So it really kind of pulls it all together and really lets us understand how global this industry truly is when you come to a show

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:42

like this. So how did you first get into supply chain?

Kerim Kfuri: 2:45

Well, that's a little bit of a long story. I'll try to make it, you know, consolidated, if I can. But the long story short of it was, is that I was always an entrepreneur, and I through my pathway kind of went into a different path, where I was in the world of finance and specifically the regulatory side. So I was at the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Office of International Affairs, and then I was at NASD FINRA in the realm of, kind of Sarbanes Oxley and corporate governance. Now these things have nothing to do with supply chain, except for the fact that I was always entrepreneurial. I was always a global citizen. I grew up speaking four or five languages traveling. And was always about learning about how things were made, and the interesting parts on how, essentially an idea becomes a reality, and enter into the, you know, mid 2000s where I essentially looked at it, and I said, You know what, all of these experiences in my mind around entrepreneurship and development and global citizenship and the regulatory side needs to have a place, but in a different industry? And at this time, I went to China on a family trip, and saw some friends and family that was there, and went to some factories. And I was just amazed with how these ideas become a reality, and at the time, Alibaba was developing and growing, but many people were disillusioned, not with Alibaba, and I do a lot of work with Alibaba, but more so with the experience of a lack of visibility and transparency when it came to global sourcing, manufacturing so forth. And it clicked for me at that moment. I said, that's a business to create an opportunity where you can provide end to end solutions for customers that are fully transparent, visible, reliable, and build a mechanism where you pick the right suppliers, have eyes and ears on the ground and have third party attestation, which is what we've done at the Atlas network since day one, and this would allow businesses to thrive and let people sleep better at night. And so that was the beginnings of the Atlas network, and even the name and the logo of Atlas holding those burdens on our shoulders so that businesses, especially small to mid sized ones, could grow and thrive. And so that's the background as to how it started. And now, 20 plus years later, being in the trenches, losing a lot of hair along the way, having a lot of interesting experiences. You know, we have a very large office overseas, in Asia, and we have a big office in Manhattan, in New York, where we do a lot of our work, and we provide end to end global supply chain solutions. We have 2000 factories that are part of our network, and we work in commodities, textiles, innovations. There's nothing really we haven't been a part of through the years. And yeah, that's where it brings us to today.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 5:33

And so when you mention all of these businesses that are part of the. List, network. Is it a mix of, you know, enterprise to small to medium? How does, what does that

Kerim Kfuri: 5:42

mix look like? I think, I think it really looks like majority small to medium, because that's really where the value add is. Those businesses don't have the bandwidth capabilities to be able to, even if they find a supplier, manage the supplier, look at the quality control, develop all the logistical sides of it, and really the importation and the customs clears, they just don't know what they don't know. So that has always been a really large target audience for us, however, large scale businesses that want to, let's say, introduce a new SKU or want to do something different and don't want to develop a whole infrastructure or team. That's also a very big opportunity for us. Outside of that, groups that really need some levels of consulting and understanding around things like tariffs or during the pandemic, how to best have the best path to market, or green corridors where sustainability is important. We're also very much a part of those conversations. So it really depends upon how they enter, but either way, our goal is always to provide a solutions based approach to an industry that unfortunately revolves around problems all the time. So you know, I can't really pinpoint directly to say we only do this, we only do that. But definitely I think that small to mid size business area is a huge opportunity, because the value is there.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 7:06

And so what does that look like? Is it, you know, consulting? Is it helping with back office? What does, I guess, sort of those services look like?

Kerim Kfuri: 7:14

Well, I can take you, I'm going to take you through the full life cycle, okay, and then each group kind of could plug in in their relevant place. So it could begin as early as an idea, an idea on a napkin, where they an entrepreneur, an inventor, a business says we want to make this thing, and we don't know how and where to go. And we would take that, we would basically do a supplier selection process to find the best suppliers to facilitate that idea, we would then work hand in hand with the engineers or designers to essentially make it something more tangible, prototyping, 3d modeling, then moving from there to the manufacturing process, the quality control process and oversight of that manufacturing, the logistical side of it, the packaging, how it's going to transport, where and what is it going to a client, a fulfillment center. Where is it going? The customs clearance process, the delivery and then working hand in hand with them through either their software or back end platforms. On the inventory management side, the demand planning and forecasting side, to know when they have to reorder and put it back through the mechanism again. So it's really a to z now again. Some clients may come in and say, we just have a problem with our suppliers. Some clients may come in and say, we just have a problem with our logistical side, or we don't know where we should be looking at alternative supply chains or otherwise. So you can see that of the various chains in the link, someone could kind of plug in or not plug in, depending upon their specific circumstances. But we have done it all through the years. Some things make more sense, some things make less sense, but that's kind of the model. I kind of want to

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 8:58

double tap into that, because I, you know, I was telling my husband, who's here with me at the conference, and he's acting as our, our producer. So if the footage looks really good, you can compliment him, yes, because we've seen what my footage does when it's just me recording a little a little BTS there. So I have always wanted to start a jewelry line with these different custom ideas that I have in mind, and what would that process look like?

Kerim Kfuri: 9:22

I mean, you know, it's interesting. We've done jewelry, so I can kind of talk to that, and we've done watches and other kinds of accessories through the years. I mean, essentially it works with sitting with a person like yourself and saying, What's your vision? Where do you want to go with this? Do you have four companies that are like your inspiration? How do we derive from what's already existing out there and tweak it, modify it, or completely break the mold and do something entirely different, and from there, determine again, who would be the best suppliers to facilitate that idea? And then you go through a process of, again, designing, drawing, developing, working through it, oftentimes more so with the engineers and designers of the suppliers, because they know their machinery best. They know their outcomes best. They've been working with it for years and years. They're ISO certified. Have all the credentials work in the international markets that you want to work within. So you're finding that recipe for success, and the first step is finding the right supplier and the mechanisms to support that supplier and their background and history and vetting them. Once you do that, once you go to that place, it's then a matter of going forward with the prototyping, going. Forward with the manufacturing what kind of oversight do they have, what kind of quality control processes they have? Is it enough? Do you need to support it with additional processes, such as our own teams, third party attestation audit groups, to make sure that that idea is really going to turn out the way that those prototypes or designs were meant to, intended to be? And then all along the way you need to do the testing, you have to take those products and functionally test them. So maybe it's a matter of trying them out. It's a matter of putting them in polls or groups to see if people have a desire or an interest for these things. Before you really go kind of full, you know, full steam ahead and produce a bunch of product that nobody really wants, needs or otherwise. And that could be, that could be a matter of pricing, that could be a matter of presentation, it could be a matter of feel, touch, look, all of these things to then ultimately get to a place where you're manufacturing something that you love and the market wants at a price point that makes sense. And then as you go through this mechanism again, you ultimately get to a manufacturing, delivery, warehousing, fulfillment process. How are you selling these things online, through resellers like Amazon, like, what's the what's the go to market, really? So when you look at that whole process, you can see that a certain part of it is very operational mechanical, but a large part of it is also very strategic, and that's where I think we also give a lot of value to a person like yourself or a customer that comes in the door and doesn't really know exactly what they want to do, because, believe it or not, a lot of these entrepreneurs or small businesses don't come from the industry, so they already are going to make some expensive mistakes because they don't know what they don't know. Do we know it all, not all the time, but at least we're working with the right suppliers and groups and partners and so forth to make sure that the chances of having issues are lessened.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 12:38

One of the important aspects, no, it actually the wheels are turning in two different directions right now, is, like, my jewelry line, okay, we're going to put a pin in that, and we're going to do that maybe in a couple of years. But for this conversation, I would, because there's a lot of conversation around, you know, supplier diversity, and are you going to be near shoring Are you going to have multiple suppliers that it sounds like it starts to get expensive, to have multiple suppliers and multiple checks and balances, and maybe not even just expensive, but also time. And how do you manage or consult the

Kerim Kfuri: 13:14

businesses through that? That's the beauty of the value that we bring to these customers. We give them back their time. Because imagine if they had to do what you just said. Look at five different suppliers to be able to produce this one widget. Manage them all, work through it. How does a small to mid sized company, let's say less than 50 employees, do all of that and at the same time, still market and present and sell in a, probably a competitive market, they can, and that's where we become helpful, because their choices are to, let's say, Save 50 cents and cause themselves $5 in headaches, or maybe even completely destroy their business because they don't know what they're doing, whereas in our mechanism, we provide a very nice value added service, where we're their team, we're an extension of their organization, we're their productions operations management and supply chain team, and at a value that makes a lot of sense. So I think that that's really good. As far as our decision making on, as you said, things like mirror shoring and these kinds of decisions, we have always been industry and geographically agnostic for us, wherever the best outcome is on the planet is where we're going to be. And that doesn't necessarily mean costs. That means the best value, speed, capabilities, accountability, those things too, because anything and everything goes wrong in supply chain. So you want to have partners that when not if it happens, they're ready for you. You're ready for them. And that's really, really important too. So we spend a lot of time to make sure that we vet our supplier network so that when we do bring in a project, it's something that is going to be tangible and resilient. And when those problems happen at any moment's notice, controllable or uncontrollable, that we're there.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 15:57

And so there's a lot of talk about, especially in the States, and with my audience being mostly US based for now with there's a lot of talk about bringing manufacturing back, and what does that look like, and what kind of manufacturing we're going to bring back? Is that, does that tie into, first of all, give us the landscape? Is that even possible?

Kerim Kfuri: 16:18

I think the problem when it comes to that in general, that a lot of people aren't talking about is not if, but more who, meaning we have graduated from being a manufacturing nation along. Long time ago. We don't train people, or the vast majority of people that we would need in the United States to be factory workers, and we have it for a very long time. What closes that gap? Technology, Innovation, automation, so forth. Because in the end of the day, if you're making a widget on this side of the planet by a machine. We're making a widget on that side of the planet by a machine, and we've closed that gap of, let's say, the skills or the labor force, the resources that may or may not be there because you don't have that background or pedigree in that level of manufacturing, because we haven't done it in decades, then technology could be the leveler to do such a thing. And I do believe that there will be certain industries where we will do more of that with the advent of additional levels of technology, however, to become a manufacturing nation or a superpower in the way that other nations have done. I don't think that that's our pathway. I think that it is great to always have a balance in trade. I think that anywhere where we can be able to bring more business stateside is great, and that should be looked at and carefully examined, but at the same time, at what cost for the global economy? This is where it also becomes kind of interesting, because you don't want to say, All right, what we're doing here is we're just bringing all this business to the US, but we're only going to be able to facilitate 20% of the output that we need, because then the cost of all the goods is going to skyrocket and nobody's going to be able to pay for these goods anymore. Businesses won't be able to thrive. People will lose their jobs, and so on so forth, all in the name of an ideology. So that's where the balancing act between ideas and reality and global economy and manufacturing versus domestic manufacturing needs to be played through. So it's not so easy to just kind of snap your fingers and say, All right, we're just going to make it all here. It just it. There will be a major backlash to that that I think in the end of the day could ultimately hurt the American economy more so than help but doing it in spurts, in industries and as technology tends to level this playing field, I think, is the best course forward. Well, I

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 18:43

think you make fantastic points there, especially on the US manufacturing side. Everybody knows that China is the manufacturing king of the world. Are there any other countries that are, you know, pulling I think Vietnam is one. Are there any other countries that are maybe coming upstarts for manufacturing?

Kerim Kfuri: 19:00

I would tell you that. I think that purely from a resources standpoint and a manpower standpoint, Africa and India, for sure, they have resources. They have capital. As a matter of fact, the GDP of India has been surpassing China for the past couple of years. So they've been doing very well in that way. But where you have some disconnects that need to kind of come up is the standardization. So China, as we know 20 years ago, was not as standardized in their processes and protocols as they are today. That was a place in the world where you went to for lower cost productions. You knew that there was going to be a defect rate that was going to be somewhat higher, and you accounted for that, you accommodated for that additional levels of defects. But that has changed now. China has adopted those international standards. They have had many of the large scale multinationals from Europe and other places in the world that have relocated to there and built their factories there, and with that came elevated levels of standardization and protocols that don't exactly exist in some of these other potential manufacturing nations in the world. As much that makes sense and even why Vietnam becomes a possibility is because of the fact of Chinese factories in Vietnam that have adopted those levels of standardization and brought them over and are now taking advantage of the Vietnamese capabilities and workforce. But it's on the background of Chinese manufacturing that's also happened in Mexico that, as I was

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 20:33

about to say, I think that a lot of that is happening

Kerim Kfuri: 20:35

here too and the United States.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 20:37

Oh, interesting.

Kerim Kfuri: 20:38

So this is one thing that we find very interesting, that when we're talking about near shoring, it's not really a it's not really a non Chinese solution. Near shoring could just be a closer Chinese solution, because they have large scale foreign direct investment, they build factories in other parts of the world. They bring the technical know how and capabilities and standardizations, and they're doing it in a way that's supporting these new economies and local economies. So a lot of people don't think about that and don't realize that, but it is part of the equation.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 21:10

And so as we kind of come to your talk that's going on here at logistics world, can you kind of give us because by the time that this airs, the conference will be over so but spill the beans. Tell us what you got going on for your presentation.

Kerim Kfuri: 21:23

Sure. I mean my presentation, and generally, when I'm talking about global supply chain, my goal is about bringing simple truths. It's about bringing a bit of a philosophical ideology, because God knows, we have enough technicalities in this space, right? It doesn't matter what you are, whether you're logistics or forwarding or technology, whatever, and you can get lost in the weeds as far as sometimes, what really is at the crux of the matter of global supply chain. And so I've broken this down into three main areas, which are people, process and innovation, and in all of these areas, I'm talking about this in a way that hopefully the attendees will take back some sound knowledge and truths around how they want to work in their own organizations, their own internal staffs and people, and externally as well, because global supply chain and logistics is a team effort. Nobody does it all, you know, except for the Atlas network. That's not true. We try. We're partners too. We don't own boats, we don't own our customs brokerage houses and all those things. These are all parts of the links, relationships, the relationship. So I'm going to be speaking about people, process and innovation, the people part is going to be the vast majority of the conversation, because I believe it's one of the most undervalued part of our process, especially these days, when we're thinking AI and technology, and we're like, oh, we're just going to replace everybody. You can't. It's a matter of looking at the perspective around people, culture, leadership, the dynamics, these are the things I'm going to be talking about, and elements of these things and how that should transition through into organizations and their people. Then I'm going to talk about processes, where I'm going to talk about the importance of having a process, whether it's a risk assessment process or quality control process and ordering process, a logistical process, how you're basically going through your elements of your systems in a way that is systematic, because how do you know if you're winning or losing, breaking or succeeding if you don't have something that's a standard to measure against? So the process is the next part, and then the last one is about innovation. Yes, of course, we talk about the buzz words AI and so on so forth. But it's more about it being a state of mind that in our business and our life, we get into a status quo mechanism, and the only way to really grow and innovate and develop is to break something, even when it's not broken, or to have the creative mindset, or to be a problem solver, to have your own KPIs internally so that you're trying to improve your workflow, daily, weekly, monthly, by a certain percentage, so you're developing these are all the things that I think are Extremely, extremely important when it comes to, you know, the conversation and the chat that we're going to be doing, that makes sense.

Unknown: 24:18

Hello, hello everybody. And it's really a pleasure to be here with these figures and logistics,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 24:27

of course. Thank you so much for having us too, and hospitality has been fantastic.

Kerim Kfuri: 24:33

I've already had five drinks and 10 things to eat. That's it. That's it. What a beautiful event. And honestly, Roman and the whole team put on this great event. I don't know how they manage 26,000 people and almost 1000 vendors, but we're honored to be here. So you

Unknown: 24:49

know, thank you very much. It's an opponent for us. You're here, so thank you. Thank you very much. Enjoy the event. Enjoy your podcast. Thank you Sorry for my interruption. Really, really somebody. It's for you. I'm really glad to really get to be here. And thank you very much to all the people that come from the brand and stay here and enjoy the event. Thank you very much. How do

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 25:09

you feel about the first event being, what four booths and, you know, 14 people is what we heard to now this year. It being, you know, the over 26,000 and over 650 what does that look like when you look around this room,

Unknown: 25:22

it's amazing. It's unbelievable that we start just with four booth and 300 people in one scenario. And 20 years after that, we are the main event of the of logistics in Mexico and Latin America, with more over than 600 of exhibitors, 25,000 of visitors. And I have a really, really great team with a lot of vision that helped me and helped the brand to stay or to be where the brand is. So for me, it's amazing. It's unbelievable. This, for us, was a dream. When we start that, we said, Okay, our dream is to have all the central city banner mix, a full house of Central City banner, Mex and 2026, that's dreams comes true. So we are really, really excited. I have to thank to my team that made this real. And one wonderful team we're going to say is,

Kerim Kfuri: 26:25

I think the other thing that's really important to mention is, is that they start planning. Next year. Literally, today. Today, the show is like, open today, but the board over here says 2027 they're already looking at next year, and that's what it takes, right? You have to think about it. Literally, this show opens and the next show is

Unknown: 26:45

on the mind. We start, we start planning the next year one month ago, because one month ago, we started inviting our prospects, our clients, our soul and non stop till next year, and you have to over and over the years. So we are really, really happy to be here and to be an important part of the logistics in Mexico and Latin America, and to be part, important part, between government, between private equity and between academic or Yes, academic figures. So we are, as I told you yesterday, we try to be the bridge of building bridges between government, academic and private equity, just to say, or to be the bridge that makes logistics happens in Mexico and Latin America, bringing you speakers, innovations, new technologies, new suppliers. So thank you very much. You to say here, and thank you my team to make our dreams comes true. Well, thank

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 27:57

you so much for the hospitality. Because, again, this has been it my first international conference, and so the amount of just friendly people and all of the companies to learn about the certifications that you're offering to which I think is also an industry first. So it is. It's incredible. Congratulations. Thank you very much.

Unknown: 28:13

Thank you very much. I'm very happy you to stay here, enjoy the event and have a nice day.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 28:19

Thank you so much. Thank you. That was great. It's like a two for one interview here. That actually works out great. Thank you so much. That was great. Good dynamics, right? Okay, for the audio all the audience, we just had the CEO of logistics world kind of stumble on us just to shake our hands. He had no idea that we were recording a podcast. So again, two for one conversation that we get here. And that's the kind of action that happens whenever you're recording on the expo, right?

Kerim Kfuri: 28:50

Exactly. And you know the truth of it is, is that that's also what makes for a great conference. You have to have good management, good leadership. And you know, they're a family run business. They've been doing it for two decades, and they know how to put on a great event. And that's what Roman was saying to me yesterday. He said, our goal is experience first. We want to make sure that people come here, and when they're here, they are gaining that experience. They are enjoying the food, the drink, the camaraderie. He had said that some of these companies will come here, and they will bring, you know, 200 of their people, oh, wow, because of the fact that they use it almost as like their office, their office away from home or away from their main office. And when you have that level of kind of comfort and dynamics, that generates opportunity, that generates business because you're not just sitting around behind a desk, sort of, you know, doing what you want to do. And I'll tell you another thing when I was walking the floor, one thing that I found amazing at this conference is try to take a business card here and not have six people want to talk to you, yes, which at other conferences you find people, you know, they take a business card and they're just kind of like, yeah, keep walking. Yeah. They don't really talk. They don't want to engage. But here, it's like, Oh, you got a car. Let's have a drink together. Let's, like, sit down and talk well, tell me about yourself, your family. But it's like, okay, what kind of conference is this? And that's a nice thing, because they have dynamics here.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 30:13

And that's, I mean, the relationships. We kind of hinted at that part of the conversation earlier. And it just, it's incredible to see the people here building those relationships, no matter you know, where you're from, what kind of, you know, products you're selling, what role in the supply chain that you serve. And you know, as as as we kind of rounded out your conversation, you know, with your panel, and or not your panel, but your keynote speak that you're giving. I want to get into the podcast side of things, because you've also been podcasting for quite a long time. I think you were saying you're all you're nearly at 100 episodes. Tell us about the show.

Kerim Kfuri: 30:47

Sure. So we have a show. It's called supply and demand show. It's with myself being the supply chain, you know, person, professional, and my host, which, or my co host, which is Richard Crawford, and Richard is a Scotsman, so he's already, you know, a funny, dynamic kind of guy, personality, and he is the host and executive producer of a show on Amazon called Leave No Trace, where he travels throughout the world during their third season, and he's looking at places for eco tourism and and basically sustainability and so forth. So you'll find him in the Seychelles or in the Congo or in Antarctica and these different places in the world, talking about these things. So he's very dynamic and a global citizen. So we've been friends a long time, and I said, let's do this show together. You represent the layman who doesn't know really much about supply chain. I'm the supply chain professional. We have a global conversation. Bring on CEOs and different practitioners that come from different spaces in supply chain, whether it's Antarctica, how supply chain makes people live in a barren place, or that we did one recently about coffee, and what does it take to actually get that cup of coffee in your hand every day, right from the farming and the beans and the roasting and the cups and the you know, all these things the supply chain end to end, because if we can make the supply chain more relatable to people, then they will understand it and they can navigate it better. And that's the that's the thing, the pandemic and all these scenarios made supply chain a common word in the vernacular, but the education around why it matters. Still wasn't there. So in many ways, it was kind of like the plumbing or the electrical behind your walls. You know you need it. Everyone knows they need a refrigerator until it's broken. And you know how it works, right? Very true. And so this is the, this is where we try to bridge that gap in many ways, with the show, supply and demand. Show, it's fun. We enjoy it, and we have a good time doing it.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 32:53

I love it. So for you know, maybe your potential audience or potential clients, if they wanted to get started with working with you, what can they do? Obviously, reach out. But what does that process look like?

Kerim Kfuri: 33:05

Sure. So basically, there's two ways to kind of come to us. Our website is the Atlas network.com and we have a place which is the Atlas network.com forward slash Connect. People can come in there. They can put in requests, what kind of projects they're working on, what they may need or have help with. And we can assist them and help them in those ways. At the same time, on my personal thought leadership side of things, where I take stages and do public speaking and my book and things like that. It's Kareem kafoury.com but people can also be able to connect, to ask about problems with projects or consulting needs and so on, which is through Kareem kafoury.com forward slash Connect. These are ways to kind of just kind of throw over, you know, a project or something that you're really battling with, and have us come back in a very timely fashion to help, whether it's again building supply chains or giving consulting help or really trying to help businesses or individuals or entrepreneurs navigate challenges that they may have.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 34:07

Now last couple questions here, but you obviously have a lot of things going on. So how do you manage it all? Oh, boy, I'm curious, because I have a couple companies myself, and I just feel like I'm a crazy person for doing all of this.

Kerim Kfuri: 34:21

We are, you are, I am, and I'm proud to admit it, I think that there's something that is to be said for, you know, being in many different places at one time and having your your hands in different things. How do I manage it? I mean, I really manage it from a standpoint of what's most important. So for me, it's my family. I'm going to always take a dinner at home over traveling somewhere to do whatever. I'm going to always put my people first in my companies that we work with and through, because those relationships are the lifeblood of our success. So always put those things right there too, and then outside of that, it's really around sort of disaster mitigation. And I hate to say that, but it's true. I mean,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 35:11

that's logistics and supply chain.

Kerim Kfuri: 35:13

We put on our fireman's jacket every day, and we go out and we say, how are we going to do the best that we can do today and try to come out of it unscathed, or as as little unscathed as we can? I think there's also something very important to be talked about with entrepreneurs like us and business people, which is this idea of signal to noise ratio. I don't know if you're familiar with what I'm talking about, but for listeners out here, it's about this concept that in our life, in our in our day, we have a certain amount of things that we have to get done. This, these three tasks must get done, no matter what. That's the signal. Everything else is the noise. So that's

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 35:55

every day you're looking at what

Kerim Kfuri: 35:57

that got to look at that, and you got to say, what is it that we must get done today? These three things make a difference. It's either allowing us to make a certain amount of revenue that we need to do, or deal with a certain challenge, issue that's timely, or whatever those things may be, or opportunity. There are certain things that are signal. There are certain things that are noise. Where entrepreneurs are more and less successful is when they let the noise surpass the signal, where you get so caught up in all of the what ifs, or it may be, or the analysis paralysis, and you lose the. Decision Making capability, and when that balance falls out of balance, and it's about the noise, not the signal, is where you stop being successful.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 36:41

How are you adopting, are you adopting AI at all, or large language models into, you know, some of your workflows? We are

Kerim Kfuri: 36:47

playing with it. We're looking at it. But the truth be told is, and I actually have a degree in AI and strategy from MIT. Oh, wow. Which I got to just figure out how much I really do need AI. I said, Hey, let me learn about this. Yeah, and let me learn about it at MIT, one of the best places in the world to do so. And what I have figured out or learned is that it only really works if humans and computers work hand in hand, and it only really works if there's an adoption to the technology. We can talk about technology all day long, but if people don't adopt the technology, then in the end of the day, it's just an expensive new toy that nobody plays with, that nobody uses. And that's what I think is really critical around AI, which is understanding what it is that it can do for you, how much you want to delegate to it, and at what risk. There are always risks when you start delegating information, what challenges and what is your desired outcome in the end to come about from this? And what do you give up? You know, that's the other thing we talk about, about everything we're going to gain. But what do you actually give up? And what you give up is creativity. You give up the human factor element. You give up some levels of the interpersonal relationships because you've decided to default on it, doing those things for you out of laziness or out of just trying to get on the bandwagon. Right? We need to talk about what we're losing, not just what we're gaining through AI. And that's kind of where my perspective is on it. So do I touch it? Do I use it? Yes, but have I kind of given it all up to AI?

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 38:21

No, yeah, I feel the same way. There are some parts of my role where I feel like it was I adopted AI a little too much, and I got especially when creating content, you know, you're trying to use it to speed up so you can make more content. But at the same time, especially in the in last year, I was like, No, I need to content. Does it sound like you? Well, I was getting bored, and that's where I and that's I was taking away the most important aspects, what makes my editorial content stick out. And that's where I was like, this is a mistake. We need to pull it back a little.

Kerim Kfuri: 38:55

If it doesn't work for you, then it probably doesn't work for us exactly. And you have to be the biggest judge of your own criteria and your capabilities, I mean, and your your your output, your work output. So I agree with you on that, yeah.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 39:07

And I think you know, last, last question here, we covered a lot in this company. We even had another interview join us, which is fantastic. So last question here, anything that you feel is important to mention that we haven't

Kerim Kfuri: 39:19

already talked about just the fact that if you're in this world of supply chain and logistics, don't think that you have to do it all yourself. There are services, there are people, there are companies and professionals that can help you to avoid making very expensive mistakes that can disrupt your company. And I say that because one of the biggest compliments slash insults that we get as a company is that people say, I wish we would have known about you sooner, because we wouldn't have done this and that, and this and that, the other and all it really takes is a little bit of some research and development, but it could make the difference between your company being more successful or, you know, having major challenges. So delegation in this complicated industry is important. It's very important.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 40:07

I struggle with it. We all struggle with

Kerim Kfuri: 40:09

it because we're entrepreneurs. You want to roll up our sleeves. We want to do it all, and then you get then you get to a place where you say, Wow, I really am out of my out of my depths here, or I don't know what to do next. And you don't want to

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 40:19

get to those places Exactly. That's what I would say. Well, that I appreciate all of the Insight Karim. This is a fantastic conversation. Absolutely. Yes, it was. Thank you so much for having me. And we'll put all the links in the show notes of where we can find, where you can work with Breen, find this book and all that good stuff. So again, thank you so much. Appreciate it. You got to get to this conference? Yeah, exactly. We got an expo floor to visit. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of everything is logistics, where we talk all things supply chain for the thinkers in freight. If you like this episode, there's plenty more where that came from. Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you never miss a conversation. The show is also available in video format over on YouTube, just by searching everything as logistics. And if you're working in freight logistics or supply chain marketing, check out my company, digital dispatch. We help you build smarter websites and marketing systems that actually drive results, not just vanity metrics. Additionally, if you're trying to find the right freight tech tools or partners without getting buried in buzzwords, head on over to cargorex.io where we're building the largest database of logistics services and solutions, all the links you need are in the show notes. I'll catch you in the Next episode in go Jags you you.