Atlas Network CEO Kerim Kfuri Interview Transcript
Clint Betts
For those who are unfamiliar, tell us what Atlas Network's mission is, what you do, and how you became the CEO of this company.
Kerim Kfuri
Sure. The Atlas Network is a global supply chain solutions company that's been around for more than 20 years. The goal is to really make mass production to help small, medium, and large-sized businesses go through the A to Z of the entire supply chain process, make them disruption-proof, look for opportunities in the global economy, and help them de-risk. We have a network of almost 2000 suppliers and offices domestically and abroad in order to help facilitate this mission. But truly, it's to help businesses avoid expensive mistakes, especially in the realm of supply chain, which is very important today.
Clint Betts
Right. How did you get into this?
Kerim Kfuri
Yeah, so basically, it was sort of a combination of experiences. Like most entrepreneurs, it's never really a straight path. I think really what brought it all home for me was I had done some consulting at Accenture. I was at some large-scale regulatory places like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of International Affairs, NASD, and FINRA. And I've always been an entrepreneur and well-traveled and liked cultures and so forth. And when I was on a trip to Asia, I saw sort of global manufacturing at its best, and I said, "Wow, this is an amazing opportunity that I wonder how many businesses really take advantage of but take advantage of with a lot of risks." If there's problems or otherwise, there's no recourse.
And we all heard these nightmare stories of, "I bought this thing, I bought it from overseas, and it came, and it was bad, or it was just a bad experience." Websites like Alibaba, of which now I'm an ambassador of Alibaba, and we're the first US-based verified supplier of Alibaba, but then 20 years ago, were a great technology platform but had a lot of bad actors on it that would pose as factories or as suppliers, but they were really middlemen and trading companies, so forth. So when things went wrong, or the train went off the tracks, they were kind of like, "Ah, it's not our factory. Even though we said we were the factory, we're not really the factory." And it was this kind of black box, lack of visibility and transparency thing.
And so through all of these ideas and these experiences that I had, I said, "There's a business here," to try to create a business that focuses on best practices and processes and doesn't sell on price and shortened timelines, but really on quality and dependency and resilience, and that's what really matters. These are the keywords that everybody cares about now in the world of supply chains. It wasn't then. So we, for the last two decades, have taken that sort of mentality, and it's served us well.
Clint Betts
Yeah, that's incredible. So, what have you learned about leadership through all these various positions? What you just talked about was how you lead when things go wrong. "\[inaudible 00:03:08\] Hey, I'm not the manufacturer." What do you actually do? So, what have you learned about leadership through your experiences?
Kerim Kfuri
I had a question earlier today on another show where they said, "If there was one college class that you could take, what would it be?" And I said it was how to manage chaos. The reality is that in our personal lives and in our business lives, we're always going to have these curveballs, and in the world of supply chain, I wrote a book about it called Supply Chain Ups and Downs, literally, because it's a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, how do you manage that way when anything and everything can go wrong, the controllable things and then the uncontrollable things. A pandemic, political environment, wars, mother nature, a million different things that you could think through, how do you manage it?
And the way that you do that and the way that you have to lead in those scenarios is to have a cool head. You have to basically just go into an understanding that you're going to work towards the best outcome. Two, realize that there's always an opportunity and there's always a solution. You just have to think through it and work your way through it. Third, you have to always have alternatives. And you can't just have this mentality of if it ain't broke, why fix it or don't rock the boat, especially in this industry. You consistently need to be looking for ways to be either more efficient or ways to be disruption-proof. And finally, you're either disrupting, or you're being disrupted. It's one or the other in this space as well. So it's a mixture of all of those different philosophies and being nimble and agile and being adapting that really kind of pulls you through a tumultuous environment, whether it's in life or in business.
Clint Betts
How are you leading through all this tariff stuff? And we're talking on a day where it seems like the China thing may, at least, there's a 90-day pause, and we'll see what happens, but I mean, this has been a wild time for supply chains and tariffs and trade and everything. How have you thought about this?
Kerim Kfuri
Well, not only have I thought about it, but I've had to speak a lot about it. I'm consistently being asked to be on large-scale television networks and writing about it. And I just came from a conference in Cleveland, which is the third-largest US-based manufacturing city, where I was a keynote talking about this. And I really discussed five ways to manage tariffs. And what it was is it was either absorption of the tariffs, who's going to absorb it, you are, the factory is, a mixture of the consumer, you and the supplier. Who does the absorption? That's one. Deferral of the tariffs. Can you push them off, or can you delay shipping or bring them into US bonded warehouses and then ship them out as you need them? That's another thing. Working through your terms and conditions to basically string along your cash flow so you manage the tariffs and then kind of work through payment terms to help you out in that way.
Pricing mechanisms. Are you underpricing your goods right now? Maybe there are hidden benefits and values you haven't been talking about, and can you bring those up? And then, finally, the last one is alternative supply chains. But those were five main areas and topics that I was digging into each one of those to really be able to present some potential opportunities and solutions.
Clint Betts
How are you thinking about AI? I'm sure a lot of people are asking you about that as well.
Kerim Kfuri
AI, in my mind, there's two sides of it. One, use it as a tool, not a crutch. That's the first one. But the second thing is, can AI transition from being a tool to being a teacher? And so it's this double-edged sword that I think that we play with when it comes to this technology where on one side you want to overuse it and then you become overly dependent and then you forego. What are you losing in that process? You may be losing creativity; you may be losing the ability to make those mistakes that end up being breakthroughs. But at the same time, you need to sort of let AI be a monster out of the cage so that it can maybe be able to show us all the things or accelerate our life cycles and knowledge base in ways that human beings would take decades to do.
So I find it to be a very sort of tug of war around my feelings on AI because on one side, we're losing a lot, and on the other side, we could be gaining an infinite amount. So this is where I think that there's going to need to be some levels of regulation and temperance around it. I think it needs to be IP-specific. I think it needs to be geographic because you can't have single rule sets for what goes in Africa, maybe doesn't go in the United States, doesn't go in the Middle East, doesn't go in Europe. Specifically, even in the United States, we have 50 states, and every state has its own different mentalities, regulations, and rules. So how can you just apply singular rule sets across all of AI, especially when things of culture, religion, rules, and laws come into play? These are things that I think are not being as well carefully thought out. And if you don't, it'll be very, very dangerous.
Clint Betts
What are you thinking about the energy implications of AI and how much energy is going to be needed and that being a new frontier once again? Every state I'm in, the State of Utah, we're announcing energy initiatives. It seems like every day that President Trump is on a national level. I mean, how are you thinking about it from an energy perspective?
Kerim Kfuri
Energy in terms of actual resources energy or in terms of what kind of energy?
Clint Betts
To power AI, we need a lot more nuclear power, solar power, and all of these various initiatives in order to make this happen. You saw Altman, Larry Ellison, and a few other people announce that they were investing 500 billion in energy. It just seems like energy is going to become the big thing you need in order to power these AI chips and everything that AI is doing. In the State of Utah, they're saying just a couple of these data centers are all of the power that Utah currently has right now.
Kerim Kfuri
Yeah, I mean, I think that it's a very good question, and I think the answer to it is that we need to work on more effective alternative energy sources because, as consumers, we're only going to use more and more energy, whether it's in the supply chain, logistics or AI, as you're bringing it up. But we only have one planet, and it's suffering. We have ozone issues; we have all kinds of climate change-related problems.
So if we're going to need that much more infrastructure and power, we really are going to need to figure out how to harness what we've got, which is geothermal, which is the wind, which is the sun, which is these clean energy sources, and even energy that's created in our own homes every single day that can then feed to a central mechanism that can then distribute out energy. They do that in the UK and in other places where these energy-efficient homes generate enough power for their own home, and then whatever is left over goes to the central grid, and then that's used to power other things. And then they're written a check. A check comes back to these people to say, "Hey, you powered enough for your house and an extra 20%. Here's a check." And I feel like that's where we need to really go in order to work towards more communal energy creation and, at the same time, alternative mechanisms.
Clint Betts
Going back to tariffs, just real quick, by the end of the year, what do you expect? Do you expect this much uncertainty? Do you think that we're going to have agreements in place with all these countries? How are you advising one, your own company, and other companies when you go out and speak?
Kerim Kfuri
Yeah, I mean, the point is that you have to assume the worst-case scenario. You have to plan for the worst-case scenario, and anything else that's better than that is going to be gravy. And that's the way I feel about it today because it's such an up-and-down mechanism where every single day, week, and hour, things are changing. And the way that we really safeguard against that is to plan for the worst-case scenario and hope for the best-case outcome. So those mechanisms I told you about, those five ways, absorption, deferral, terms and conditions, pricing and repricing, and then finally alternative supply chains, these are the ways that I think that people need to manage that, their businesses, and determine what's the best mechanism for them or a combination of all of them.
And if it's going to basically go back down to pre-tariff challenge or tariff conflict levels, that would be great. But if it doesn't, then you're prepared because the worst thing you can do is just not be prepared at all and just say, "Hey, it's going to work its way out. I'm sure it'll be fine." And then that's when you go out of business, and people lose their jobs, and you don't have products to sell. And if you do, they're at really high rates that no one can afford, and it becomes a real mess. And that's the challenge, too, that my goal is to really look to be a relatable voice in the realm of supply chain and to give practical, real-world knowledge and information and services if companies need it, to help them to bridge in difficult times and in positive times and take advantage of the global economy. And that's my main focus.
Clint Betts
What does a typical day look like for you?
Kerim Kfuri
Oh my gosh. A typical day that's a very difficult word for me to hear. I don't really have typical days. I have atypical days. How does an atypical day look for me? These days, I'm doing a lot of speaking, I'm doing a lot of podcasts, writing, and really just trying to get the word out there because it's a really complicated, difficult time, and I want to just be able to be as impactful as I can be. So that's what these days have been looking like when I'm not running our company and helping our clients and business and all the rest of this kind of stuff, which is a day and night job, too. Consistently burning the candle on both ends, trying to still have dinner with the family every single night and help with homework and do all that good stuff that you have to do too to just make sure that you're present in the lives of people that matter. And that's it. That's what's going on these days. Only that.
Clint Betts
That's a lot. That's a lot. What do you read, and what reading recommendations would you have for us?
Kerim Kfuri
What do I read? I like to read a lot of thought leadership-related books. I'm in partnership with Daymond John from Shark Tank. I like his books. I think they're great. Power of Broke and so forth and Rise and Grind. Those are good. I also tend to like a lot of online; I consume a lot of content online, honestly, through YouTube or through different trending topics that I'm interested in. That's the fastest way for me to kind of digest information more so than getting into the books, although I have a book or two. So I'm not really doing myself a service by saying that, but the reality of it is that that's how I consume information, more online than anything else.
Clint Betts
Yeah, I think that's true of all of us. What legacy do you want to leave behind?
Kerim Kfuri
I want people to say and think, "Kerim and The Atlas Network were great resources that educated, gave everybody square deals, and really looked out for people's interests, the interests of businesses, the interests of the economy, and for consumers," and that we were doing the right thing. We were really looking to do the right thing at all steps. And that's really how I try to live every day. That's how I can put my head on the pillow at night and live without any real regrets that I feel as though I'm doing what I should be doing. And I think that if you can have a moral compass in your personal and business life, then it's a fulfilling life.
Clint Betts
Finally, we end every interview with the same question, and that is at CEO.com; we believe the chances one gives are just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?
Kerim Kfuri
Who gave me a chance to get me where I am today? I had a friend of mine when I lived in the D.C. area who I was working in a corporate job. I basically started a young family and had to make that decision to really just leave the corporate world and become an entrepreneur full-time and do that. And he gave me that opportunity. He basically said, "I believe in you. I believe in what you're trying to do. So we're going to work on this project." We were working on some projects together, and he said, "You're going to get paid a salary. You're going to get paid this, that, the other, so that you can feel comfortable to really be able to leave the stable environment or dependencies that you've had in the past and feel good about betting on yourself."
It was with his ability and confidence that he put in me that I was able to kind of leave the corporate world and then move on from there. And it wasn't all skyrocket to the moon from the beginning. Definitely, several years of just kind of trials and tribulations, working through things, trying to get things right. But ultimately, when I look back on it, I definitely fondly remember that he gave me that opportunity, and that was an important part of me being a full-time entrepreneur.
Clint Betts
Kerim, thank you so much for coming on the show. It means a lot to have had you. Best of luck with everything. I'm sure we'll have you back as we go through this crazy year. But thank you so much; seriously, it means a lot to have you.
Kerim Kfuri
Yeah, it was an honor to be with you. And sorry it was a little short, but I think we got the meat and potatoes out, which is good.
Clint Betts
Thank you so much.
Edited for readability.