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The Uncommon Leader Podcast
Are you ready to break free from mediocrity and lead an extraordinary life? Join us on The Uncommon Leadership Podcast as we explore the power of intentionality in personal and professional growth. Our podcast features insightful interviews with inspiring leaders from all walks of life, sharing their stories of overcoming challenges and achieving greatness.
Discover practical strategies to:
- Think positively and cultivate a growth mindset
- Live a healthy and balanced lifestyle
- Build your faith and find inner strength
- Read more and expand your knowledge
- Stay strong in the face of adversity
- Work hard with purpose and passion
- Network effectively to build meaningful relationships
- Worry less and focus on what matters
- Love always and make a positive impact
In each episode, we'll dive into relevant leadership topics, share inspiring stories, and provide actionable steps you can take to elevate your life. Whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting your journey, The Uncommon Leadership Podcast offers valuable insights and practical guidance to help you achieve your goals and live your best life.
The Uncommon Leader Podcast
Unlocking Leadership and Supply Chain Success with Kerim Kfuri
Unlock the secrets of successful supply chain management and leadership with our special guest, Kerim Kfuri. A global entrepreneur and author, Kerim takes us on an extraordinary journey through the industry, sharing how childhood lessons selling blueberries ignited an entrepreneurial spirit that guides his approach to leadership today. Tune in to discover how focusing on the path rather than the destination can transform both business practices and personal growth.
Kerim demystifies the intricate workings of supply chains using something as simple as a cup of coffee, revealing the complex web of farming, logistics, and economics behind it. Drawing from his book, "Supply Chain Ups and Downs," he discusses the unpredictable nature of the industry and the challenges of managing diverse relationships and variables. With anecdotes and insights, we explore how global economic and political factors play pivotal roles in shaping supply chains, offering listeners a fresh perspective on this vital industry.
Balancing a global career with personal life takes center stage in our conversation, as Kerim shares strategies for maintaining health and wellness amidst a demanding professional landscape. From setting boundaries to continuously learning and adapting to change, his insights provide a roadmap for effective leadership. Connect with Kerim and gain more from his experiences through his book and various platforms, and take the first step towards becoming an uncommon leader yourself.
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The journey is the real benefit, not always just the final outcome. And you know, I just get worried about the fact that if we're so outcome-driven all the time, as opposed to process-driven, that we may lose something along the way, even in scenarios where we make mistakes that end up being, you know, some of the greatest. You know miracles of our time. You know miracles of our time.
Speaker 2:Hey, uncommon Leaders, welcome back. This is the Uncommon Leader Podcast. I'm your host. John Gallagher Got a great guest for us today to listen into A little bit different conversation than we used to, but I know we can tie it back into leadership.
Speaker 2:Kareem Kafouri is going to talk to us about his book Supply Chain Ups and Downs and we're going to take the path of tying that to leadership and what that means frankly to us, both in our business as well as in our personal lives as well, and talk about some of the things that he's been through on his journey and passion for supply chain. But before we jump into that, let me do a little introduction so that you all know a little bit about him Global entrepreneur, who's the president and CEO of the Atlas Network, a global supply chain enterprise offering comprehensive end-to-end supply chain services. I'm going to let him talk about what that really means to us as we go forward. He's also the founder and host of the Supply and Demand Show, which is a YouTube podcast that is out there, and also the author of the bestselling book Supply Chain Demand Show, which is a YouTube podcast that is out there, and also the author of the bestselling book Supply Chain Ups and Downs that I mentioned at the very start here. So congratulations on that bestseller status. And what I'm really interested in as we go through is he's a self-proclaimed continuous learner, pursuing equilibrium in thought, culture, business practices and amongst people.
Speaker 2:So, kareem Khafouri, welcome to the Uncommon Leader Podcast. How are you doing today?
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, John. What a nice introduction. I really appreciate it and happy to be with you and to have a nice conversation.
Speaker 2:I think we're going to have a great conversation, but I am going to start you off, just like I start every first-time guest on the Uncommon Leader Podcast I'm going to ask you to tell me a story from your childhood that still impacts who you are as a person or as a leader, today.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, I mean, I would say that it really starts with blueberries, if you want to say, Okay, you know, when I was a kid we had a lot of blueberry bushes in the neighborhood and you know, I think one day I was walking around and I said, hey, you know, I think one day I was walking around and I said, hey, you know, I enjoy pulling these blueberries down off of the bush and enjoying them, and I wonder if a bunch of other people would like this as well. And so, you know, I started off by just kind of picking a bunch of them and, you know, giving them to neighbors and sort of friends, and everybody you know kind of love this. And then I said, you know what, why don't I just kind of do? What is the, you know, current version of a lemonade stand?
Speaker 1:And let's just make like a little thing on the side of the road here and just kind of sell blueberries to people that are, you know, coming on by and you know want to, you know have something. That was you know something good to eat and enjoy. And and that was the beginning of sort of my entrepreneurship journey. Really it was that, that understanding of you know there's, there's a product here and there's a demand and a supply and you know people would like to play into the fact that they're given some cute you know seven year old kid, some blueberries and some some finances for these and so forth. And you know that was that was kind of a beginning, because you know you start making signs and then you start having other friends in the neighborhood running around and trying to spread the word and this is marketing and this is advertising and you know you need a price that makes sense, that when someone comes along and wants to buy one blueberry you can't charge them one hundred dollars and price sensitivities. And you know it's just.
Speaker 1:That was the beginning, I think, really for me at a very early age, just understanding the basics of kind of like business and really just entrepreneurship, and that journey just continued on for me through so many different points in my life with different things that I did, and some of them were about interests and some hobbies and some were business, and then obviously ultimately to international business and supply chain and all the things that I do today. But you know, it all comes back to that. You know seven-year-old kid who you know had blueberries and wanted to sell them.
Speaker 2:Love that it starts in so many different ways like that, that entrepreneurship journey. No doubt about it. Some folks will have a paper route that they'll go through. Some will have a lawn mowing cutting service. You started with blueberries.
Speaker 2:We all have to start somewhere as we get on that journey. So I appreciate you sharing that, and I'm sure that you had to worry, even at seven years old, about the supply chain of blueberries yourself as well. So before we jump into your book because that's going to be exciting again and tying that to leadership let's put it down on the lower shelf for folks, for some of the listeners who really have an understanding of supply chain no doubt about it as leaders, but certainly not at the level you do with your decades of experience in that space. You tell a little story on Instagram about the coffee, the cup of coffee and the supply chain that exists there. So I love my cup of coffee. I have a newsletter called the Champion Champions Brew that comes out every Friday that you can sip a cup of coffee with. So tell me what supply chain is as it relates to maybe just a cup of coffee and some of the complexity there that exists. Why is it so?
Speaker 1:expensive, absolutely, I mean just like any agricultural product. I mean there are so many touch points that have to basically come about for you to end up having that cup of coffee that you're enjoying today. Right, you've got, obviously, the ability to have farming. You have to have good natural conditions, dry them to roast them, to then crush them to import them from other countries, which you know includes, you know, getting on vessels and crossing the ocean and paying tariffs and duties, as we know. Recently in the news today there was a whole conversation around. You know nations such as Mexico and otherwise that you know have some of these agricultural products where there could be a 25% tariff put onto these kinds of things.
Speaker 1:So you know aspects of just kind of global economics and political shifts that can impact that cup of coffee or really any products that we look to digest or take in from other parts of the world.
Speaker 1:And then in the end, you know when it gets here, it gets, you know, packed or repacked into packaging and then is marketed by a brand or a company, so that in the end, you know when it gets here, it gets, you know, packed or repacked into packaging and then is marketed by a brand or a company, so that in the end of the day it ends up on your store shelves.
Speaker 1:And then everybody needs a little part of the equation there, right, the supermarkets need their little part of the equation for having the shelf space and the distributors who got it to those supermarkets and then the consumer and there's a markup and so on and so forth. So really, when you think about that voyage to have that cup of coffee in front of you, you know it's quite intensive and probably involves hundreds or maybe even thousands of people to really kind of bring it to your doorstep. And you know from where it originally started some kind of an agricultural product on maybe a far part of the world, either from Africa or Hawaii or wherever you know. Coffee beans, you know, come from in different places Guatemala and so forth you know to end up being, you know, as simple as something that we wake up to and enjoy every single day. That had so many steps along the pathway to get there.
Speaker 2:We don't think about that. When we're looking at that cup of coffee in the morning that's coming through the coffee pot and just as I listen to it, then I'm simply amazed even that we can get one, for you know, unfortunately too expensive at a Starbucks or a Dunkin' for $3.49 for a cup of flavored water that comes out of a machine, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2:So there are some complexities and you wonder and that's just coffee? I mean the many millions of items that are handled through supply chain. And, frankly, it's good that an entrepreneur like you became passionate about that, because we need folks who are passionate and strong in many different areas and supply chain is one of them. So you've written this book Supply Chain Ups and Downs. After years, after decades of supply chain experience, why did you write this book now and who did you write it for?
Speaker 1:Well, I don't have a lot of hair on my head and the reason why that is is because I've been in the trenches for a few decades now dealing with sort of the ups and downs, if you want to call it, of this industry, and it is a very, very complex industry that revolves around sort of foreseeable obstacles, unforeseeable obstacles. You know, the most consistent factor of the supply chain is inconsistency. It literally is inconsistency. It literally is inconsistency, and there's so many elements that need to be consistently balanced between the relationships of the various links in the supply chain. Whether you're a consumer or you're a supplier, you're in the logistics space or customs, clearance, delivery, warehousing, fulfillment. I mean, there's so many aspects to this industry and the reason why I wrote it is because two things. One, during the pandemic, people didn't have things when they needed them and when prices were skyrocketing through the roof, nobody really understood why. And you can go around to any store right now, and when there isn't something on the shelf, somebody walks along and says supply chain. They may not even understand what they're even talking about or what that means, but it's become common vernacular and there's a huge information gap around what it is, why it's important and so forth.
Speaker 1:And so I thought it was really the right time to basically put together a comprehensive, a comprehensive, easy to read 150 page piece that could be digested by a couple of different groups. And so who are the kind of target audiences? As you mentioned One? Definitely students. They are the future and the future generations, and right now at most of the universities are supply chain majors and even degrees that are being offered in productions, operations, management and supply chain and global transport and logistics. So that's a group that needs to learn more and know more about it. Then it's consumers, people who just say, hey, this cup of coffee is really expensive, why, I don't understand supply chain, I don't know what this is all about, and they want to pick up some kind of an easy read or a good cake that's written in a relatable voice to really kind of get a comprehension on that. And that's another audience.
Speaker 1:And then I would basically put it to business people, people in business who they are either interacting with the concept of supply chain or someone within their leadership says hey, you need to know more about this industry or the supply chain space because it impacts us in A, b, c and D and they're looking for some kind of a backbone to really be able to foster knowledge and questions and understand and even connect to what they do.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, the last group is the supply chain industry itself, and the reason why I say that is because there are so many practitioners, whether you're on the technology side or on the transport side, or on the procurement side or the customs clearance side or different aspects of it, and the professionals in the supply chain industry for so many years have been very siloed because they just operate within their part of the chain and my experience has always been to be more holistic, the entire supply chain, because our main targets have been to help sort of small to midsize businesses who don't have the capabilities or resources to build supply chains, to manage supply chains. So we always had to be practitioners, holistic practitioners, and that's what gave me this holistic perspective and I think that that's valuable as well to, again, supply chain professionals who have only seen things through a very particular lens. So that's really the four kind of big three or four main targets for this book.
Speaker 2:I love the idea of having the student as a target inside this book.
Speaker 2:It's like the cheat code or the cliff notes for their degree in terms of being able to use a book like this and, like you said, you've got it condensed into 150 pages but decades of experience of wins and challenges inside of the supply chain and then you touched on this because I didn't go through the whole list being an end-to-end service organization, you're going basically raw material or minerals in the ground, so to speak, all the way to product on the shelf or on the tables, and that takes a significant amount of time and energy to learn and years to do that.
Speaker 2:Now you're consulting in that space of organization. So I come from a manufacturing background and as much as I wanted to know about supply chain was just to make sure that I put the order in the system and it showed up at my back dock ready to be manufactured. But as you do that consulting in the supply chain space now do you have a story that kind of really rings in you of a success that you've worked with a client and really helped them out to either minimize risk inside of that space or cut lead time that they were trying to do that you really like to talk about.
Speaker 1:Well, basically it's that every day, every day, because essentially we've always sold on the non-sexy stuff, and that, I think, is super important, because in this industry for a long time it was hey, how can I get things made in the far corners of the earth for just nothing, for a very low cost, and not really care too much otherwise? But the reality of it is is that when you really are looking to build supply chains, you're looking to have a proper requirements analysis upfront. You need to understand the client. What are their challenges? Efficiency, quality, timeliness, deliverables what is it that they are really facing the biggest challenge with? And then how are you going to basically create a new or a better way that's not disrupted, that's resilient, that can basically weather these uncontrollable ideas that we talked about, or challenges? I mean, you know, to pull out one is so hard to do. I mean, what I find very exciting, though just to say of general interest, is when we're able to connect the dots that businesses themselves can't see. They don't because they've just been so focused on how they put one foot in front of the other that they didn't realize that you know they're burning too fast or they're not really operating in the most efficient manner, and they just don't know what they don't know.
Speaker 1:So when you come and you are able to kind of show a new or a unique way or an opportunity, you know you really become a strategist. And that's really, I think, what we are, more than anything else. We're really strategists who look at opportunities and say, hey, you're coming to us talking about this thing, but the reality of it is is, your business has this and this and this and this challenges. Do you know that if we go this way and that way, that we could basically resolve all these challenges and do this thing you're talking about? And then then you just have a client for life, and not only a client, but really a partner for life, because these supply chains are the lifeblood of so many businesses and I and I just kind of give you one example we do a lot of the spirits and beverage industry. We have over 450 spirits and beverage clients.
Speaker 1:Well, one client comes to mind for me where the initial idea that they came to us with is they said look, you know, we're getting this glass bottles, we're getting them made in Mexico. It takes us months and months to get them and when we get them, they're not good quality and we're not happy and they're basically putting us out of business. The supply chain part is putting us out of business and could you help us come in, be more turnkey and grow our operations? Well, not only did we do that, not only did we reduce their costs and make them more efficient and increase their sales by five and 10 and 20 and 100 times over in very short periods of time. You know fully automated depalatizers and then rinsers that would invert these bottles on a production line and spray them and throw them down a heat tunnel and then fill them and cap them.
Speaker 1:They were doing a lot of this stuff by hand and so, again, you know scale and challenges with regards to how their business was operating. It started with an initial conversation around a particular product and a particular skew and a disruption they were facing and in the end now I can say that that company, you know, let's call it five or seven years from when we started, is probably a thousand times bigger than they were when we first came to them, with very little disruptions and very little challenges. And that was again because we were able to connect those dots that they themselves, you know, didn't even see or didn't even think about in the beginning stages. And that's how it happens with so many of these clients, that we start with a particular conversation and then it just kind of grows and morphs and we provide the value that they desperately need.
Speaker 2:Hey listeners, I want to take a quick moment to share something special with you. Many of the topics and discussions we have on this podcast are areas where I provide coaching and consulting services for individuals and organizations. If you've been inspired by our conversation and are seeking a catalyst for change in your own life or within your team, I invite you to visit coachjohngallaghercom forward slash free call to sign up for a free coaching call with me. It's an opportunity for us to connect, discuss your unique challenges and explore how coaching or consulting can benefit you and your team. Okay, let's get back to the show.
Speaker 2:Graeme, you just touched on it and folks, I hope you're listening to kind of go back through and not just take a supply chain lens with what he just talked about. Understanding and working with your customers or your clients, understanding the specific problem that they want to solve, before you go in there and try and sell them another 20 to 30 solutions. Help them solve one problem, provide value to them, gives you ultimately the trust and the respect that you need to get more opportunities within that client. And you use the word scale scaling inside of that. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:I mean too many times. We can go in in your space. You can go in and see 30 things wrong soon, but they didn't call you in for 30 things. They call you in to look at one problem for them, and the way you earn your way into the other 10, 20, 30 problems is to solve that one for them specifically, provide value to them and they'll continue to come to you. I love that story, kareem, as you go forward On the other side of that being a successful entrepreneur, being a successful global leader, there's a cost to that. We often talk about this as the holistic leader in the term of balance in your life. How do you balance the demands of a global career, such as global supply chain, with your personal needs with regards to your health and wellness and things like that?
Speaker 1:Well, if the machine's broken, you can't help anybody, right? And that's just the simple philosophy there, and you have to really have your priorities straight. So for me, you know I grew up in a in a very strong family network, and I want to have that for my family too. So you know I've got two kids and you know we have dinner with each other every single night, and that's the time that and I think that's a lost tradition in in the world today, due to technology and being pulled in a million different directions but we don't do that. Everyone sits down, no phones at the table this is the time where we're going to start talking about what your day was like and what my day was like and what you're dealing with and everything else, and that's important. So you know I always make the time for that, and then as well, you know, to help with the homework and all these other kinds of things, and then you have to have the ability to blow off steam. That's super important as well.
Speaker 1:You just in my business, I could work 24 hours a day and still never work enough. I'm working on the Asia side. When people are asleep here, they're awake and vice versa, and the work could never stop for me, unless you draw some very particular boundaries and you say, all right, I got to see my family, I got to basically spend some time keeping myself healthy, playing some sports or playing some music or enjoying things like that, and then, at the same time, being able to just, you know, find time to sleep. You got to have some sleep in there, too, which is super important. So you have to draw lines. You have to draw lines and as an entrepreneur, that's one of the hardest things to do, because you're driven, you're ambitious, you know that you're going home with the successes and failures of your own every single day. Right, it's not like you're punching in and punching out. I mean, you know you have to do that.
Speaker 1:Where do I sort of make the concessions? Well, I don't get a chance to, you know, sit down and watch Netflix. That often I don't get a chance to, sometimes during holiday season here, be able to fully relax because things are happening on the other part of the world and when things are happening on the other part of the world that aren't happening here, vice versa, too. So, there, that's the one thing that's the biggest challenge, I think, is that you're never fully disconnected as an entrepreneur, especially if you care and you have staff. You know I've got employees here and internationally and so on. They have families and there's an obligation. You have to have a level of an obligation to your team, because without them then you can't do a good job either. So it's a unique balancing act, for sure, but you have to have the key things in place that are important to you. For me, that's family, that's spending some time sleeping and relaxing and being able to also just enjoy life in general too, because in the end, what are you doing it for? Right, yeah?
Speaker 2:Those boundaries are so important. You know, ultimately the one of the first things I do when I'm coaching individuals is, say show me your calendar right and where you're putting your time. That's what's there when you put those big rocks in first. We've seen that video before in terms of family to your point, self-care and fun to be able to be there so that you don't burn out in a row.
Speaker 2:I mean, as you say that, in terms of that global and the multiple time zones, I can certainly understand how the clock would never be turned off for you when I have meetings with multiple time zones very much a challenge, one of the things that I know I used to have as a challenge in manufacturing before I got into. I know I used to have as a challenge in manufacturing before I got into entrepreneurship world as well as when I started to travel. I knew things were getting really tough if I spent 12 or 13 nights a month in a hotel bed somewhere else with my head. I mean I knew things started to go south and it forces you to really think about how things are going to make changes, and I did. I made a change into a career that you know because I put family first in that case, and it's something that I don't look back on as what I missed.
Speaker 1:You never look back and say I didn't work enough. You will look back and say I didn't spend that time with that person or in that situation, for sure.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You just do not want that regret. I want to go one of your philosophies in leadership. I heard this and I think you know folks. I'm going to put a link to Kareem's Instagram account. I think he's a great follow on Instagram. But you had a philosophy in leadership that you talked about and it may be in your book as well. I'm not sure if I saw, but the last mile in supply chain is the first concern. Tell me a little bit about that and, frankly, relate that to leadership as well. For me, Sure.
Speaker 1:So when we are dealing with the supply chain, we're looking at so many facets and aspects of that. Right, you're talking about prototyping and development and manufacturing and oversight and quality control and getting it on a vessel and then customs clearance and delivery and so forth. But the reality of it is, and what so many people don't really pay as much attention to, is the delivery side. Many people don't really pay as much attention to is the delivery side and the fact that the last mile, that last part where those goods get picked up from that port and delivered to that client's door, if that doesn't happen, everything else that happened beforehand didn't even matter, didn't matter how well you did it or anything else. Didn't matter if you were on time with the factory and it made the vessel and it did all these other things. None of it matters unless the fact that it actually delivered to the doorstep of the client around the time they needed it and wanted it and that it was right to be your first concern. And so many, so many situations in business I've seen where that last part gets botched up and everything that happened before, that was well done, is just completely discounted.
Speaker 1:So how do you relate that to leadership. Well, I think the way you relate that to leadership is by basically looking at what are your goals and objectives, because, technically speaking, the goals and objectives, the goal, is that last mile. It is that delivery to that client site, whatever that goal may be for you and then backtracking into making sure that you're on a correct pathway to line yourself up so that you can achieve that last mile or achieve that goal or objective that you're focusing in on for your leadership, uh, for your leadership planning. So that's how I would link that together that sometimes we have to look at where we want to end up to then be able to determine how we're going to get there, and that's that's kind of some of this, this idea here.
Speaker 2:No, I like it and touching it that way because if we don't finish right, it's got to be one of those. You got to bring it across the finish line. If you don't finish well, the entire process you know ultimately may not be given the due that it's worth. You mentioned all those things all the way up to that last point and to not finish it strong as a leader, whether you're dealing with people or you're dealing with customers, or you're doing something at home or you're going through a fitness program, whatever that is.
Speaker 2:That last mile is the big concern, running a marathon, however you want to look at it. So I love the correlation there, but I like that quote. The last mile is the first concern to make sure it doesn't. It just doesn't matter. Just like delivering a meal at a restaurant. It just doesn't matter. Just like delivering a meal at a restaurant. It just doesn't matter. Kareem, thanks for sharing that and I appreciate that correlation. Self-proclaimed in your bio, a continuous learner, but your industry is constantly going through upheaval Technology changing delivery methods, changing drones, ai, whatever. You want to end up going through that. How do you give me a discipline or two that you use to stay current in your industry, so you can be providing the best value to your clients.
Speaker 1:Well, first and foremost, you have to pay attention to what's happening around you, that's for sure. You can't be an ostrich, you can't kind of have your head dug in the sand and not paying attention to what's going on around in the world, because how are you going to be able to be responsive and reactive if what you are presenting or trying to solve for is technically irrelevant? So you need to basically be always looking around your current events as well as getting a perspective for the future. And then, outside of that, I think what it really comes down to is questioning things and having a level of curiosity about the world around you. So I'll give you a perfect example.
Speaker 1:When you mentioned AI and so forth, you know I've written about this. I write for some different tier one publications and I wrote about this in USA Today, where I wrote about, you know, the pitfalls and the dangers of AI. You know so many people are heralding this, as you know, the greatest thing ever and it's amazing and it's going to solve all of our problems and so forth. But I always look at it in terms of what are we going to lose? What do we lose by this? You know, when we're relying solely on chat GPT to write this, because, instead of taking an hour, it takes five seconds to do it. Where is the Shakespeare is going to be? Where is the creative writing going to be? And the struggle to find that right word to fit that particular instance, because that's what needed to be done.
Speaker 1:And the journey. The journey is the real benefit, not always just the final outcome. And you know, I just get worried about the fact that if we're so outcome driven all the time, as opposed to process driven, that we may lose something along the way, even in scenarios where we make mistakes that end up being, you know, some of the greatest. You know, miracles of our time, you know we think about, like the discovery of penicillin. Right, that was an accident, you know, but in the end, what benefits did that bring to humanity and to the world of health? So, and so many things like that too. So, you know, I think that idea of being a continuous learner comes with, you know, paying attention to what's around you, thinking about the future, thinking, questioning what is happening around you in that future, and then coming up with your own independent thoughts on how you're going to basically develop and grow and morph from there. That's being a learner and then being an engaged person. I think.
Speaker 2:Being a learner Absolutely Very important. Being learners reading absolutely very important. Being a learner is reading books as well. Leaders are readers. Your book Supply Chain Ups and Downs. I want to ask you about a book test. Somebody reads your book. They usually mention the different folks who would be reading it and they sit on a shelf, just like the shelf behind me. A lot of books get read and just get put up on a shelf and not paid any attention to. But somebody reads your book and a year later they see your book up on the shelf. What do you want them to think and what do you want them to do when they see your book?
Speaker 1:I would love them to look at it and say, wow, I learned a lot from that. That was a small book, but, wow, I learned a lot. And the other thing is I want them to think about some of the concepts that I promoted in the book. So, outside of just kind of talking about my time in the trenches and my thoughts and ideas, I actually promote a economic theory, which is supply chain socioeconomics, that I talk about in this book that no one really has talked about, and this discusses the idea that equilibrium is achieved through not achieving equilibrium and that, basically, that there are divergent interests and non-alignment of goals of the different players in the supply chain.
Speaker 1:Take, for example, suppliers and manufacturers and how manufacturers want to just kind of get things out quick and the customer wants to have it done perfectly, and there's quality standard differences, there's pricing differences, right, one group wants to maximize profits and increase costs. The other side wants to reduce their costs and increase their profits. There's a push and a pull and this creates economic momentum between these different links within the supply chain. So this is this concept of supply chain socioeconomics that I introduced and I also talk about, you know, some really interesting sort of diagrams that I created. I created something called the PPI pyramid, which is the production sorry, procurement production inventory pyramid, and it's basically a holistic way to look at the way the supply chain works, with supply and demand being inversely correlated and taking a journey along this PPI pyramid with the micro steps that are involved.
Speaker 1:So I tried to create some very nice visuals and very easily understandable ideas to really put it in the minds of people so that when they come back or they see that book and say oh yeah, I remember that that book had that really cool chart in there that explained a lot, or that economic theory was really kind of cool, or, you know, these ideas that Kareem mentions about sustainability or about nearshoring or about AI, which I do talk about in the last three chapters of the book, are relevant today as they relevant today as they were a year ago when I read it. So my hope is that it stays and that it has relevance for a long time to come.
Speaker 2:Good Kareem. The opportunity for folks to find your book, of course it's on Amazon. Is there anywhere else that you would send them for the book and or to follow you and stay in touch with you?
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. Supplychainupsanddownscom is the website for the book itself. It has a lot of nice information and so on, and that's where you can get the book. As far as I'm concerned I mean I'm on all the different social media platforms. My main website for my personal philosophy and leadership is kareemkaforicom. Linkedin is always really great. We use Facebook, instagram, x, all of the different platforms, as I said and then for any kind of you know supply chain related solutions that a business may have or questions that they have about the supply chain industry, my main company is theatlasnetworkcom. So those are some different links and some places where people can find me or kind of see what we're up to these days.
Speaker 2:Excellent. I can put those links in the show notes as well. I would encourage you to listeners to go out and follow Kareem on social media. Kareem Kafour, you've shared with us some fantastic wisdom over the years, some fun stories that go along with that and how it can impact the leaders of the Uncommon Leader podcast. I appreciate you investing the time today to do that. I'm going to finish you off and give you the last word Again, the same way I finish all my guests. I'm going to give you a billboard and you put anywhere you want to and you're global guy, it doesn't matter to me where you put it. Make it digital, whatever you want to do, led, it doesn't matter but you're going to put a message on that billboard. What's the message you're going to put on that billboard for folks to see and why do you put that message on there?
Speaker 1:the message would be global citizenship, and the reason why I will put that on there is because I think that we've never been in a time in our society, like we are today, where the world has been as small as it is, due to technology. Fortunately, I think that that is not completely the case. I think that, whether it's different interests or beliefs or politics, it continue to separate us on this planet in a time where we need to be coming together more and more. And I've seen the beauty of global citizenship at work because I work hand in hand with people from all over the world all the time. I can see the benefits and the beauty of cultural exchange and opportunities, and some of you know everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time. It doesn't matter where you are in the world. So I would say it's global citizenship and that would be the message that I would put on any billboard anywhere on the planet.
Speaker 2:Excellent Kareem. Once again, thank you for being such a great guest on the Uncommon Leader Podcast. I wish you the best in the future.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, John. It was really great and appreciate the thoughtful interview.
Speaker 2:And that wraps up another episode of the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. If you found value in this episode, I encourage you to share it with your friends, colleagues or anyone else who could benefit from the insights and inspiration we've shared. Also, if you have a moment, I'd greatly appreciate if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback not only helps us to improve, but it also helps others discover the podcast and join our growing community of uncommon leaders. Until next time, go and grow champions.
