Benj sits down with his grandfather, Benco's second-generation owner and chief customer advocate, to find out how Larry grew Benco from $200K to $100M.

Larry recalls the price comparison that won him an argument and lost him a customer, and the day after the 1972 flood wiped out Benco's office and inventory, when his employees asked him what to do next.

He also explains his decision to hand off his own customers so the company could grow. Larry once outsold Benco's other three reps combined, but one salesman can only cover so much ground. He hired six salespeople to take over the route he'd been driving alone, and kept one territory so he'd still hear from dentists directly.

Larry grew Benco by reinvesting in it. If he made $30,000, he'd take home less than half of it.

"Everything in inventory, all the time," he says.

With that work ethic and reinvestment, Larry grew Benco to $100 million. When his son Chuck took over and said he'd run it differently, Larry agreed. Chuck and his brother Rick took Benco to about $1 billion.

Listen if you're building a sales team that doesn't depend on you for every decision, or preparing to hand the business to someone who'll change it.

About the guest

Larry Cohen is Benco Dental's chief customer advocate and second-generation owner. He started in the company's tooth department, moved into outside sales, and later ran Benco as president before passing it to his sons, Chuck and Rick. He's also the grandfather of Proton founder and CEO Benj Cohen.

In this episode

• How Larry closed a sale a competitor spent 20 minutes pitching
• The friend's advice that helped build Benco's sales team
• The lower price that cost him a customer for good
• Why he gave away his best territory, and the one he kept for years
• The 1972 flood, and the 1% loan that put Benco back in business
• "I'm the budget": what changed when his sons took over
• The buyer who lost the deal by closing a branch without asking

In the Mind of a Distributor is a podcast by Proton.ai.

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In this special episode, the tables are turned: Benj Cohen, founder and CEO of Proton.ai, is interviewed by VP of marketing Dasha Shakov about growing up in his family’s dental distribution business and how that experience led him to build an AI platform for distributors.

Benj explains why many are missing the larger opportunity with AI. The payoff comes when you redesign a complete workflow, give agents access to the right data, and keep a person in control of the result.

They discuss:

• The four profit levers every distributor can pull, and why its essential to unify them into a single platform
• Why AI projects should start with one small, measurable use case
• How agents changed Proton’s software-development process
• Why seasoned reps may become your strongest AI users
• What will stay the same in distribution over the next 10 years

The conversation ends on a more personal question: if making more money doesn’t create lasting satisfaction, what does?

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In this episode, Benj sits down with Kevin Weadick, CEO and President at TricorBraun, whose career runs through Grainger, Zoro, FleetPride, and more.

Kevin shares how he settled the oldest argument in distribution marketing: does any of it actually help the branches and the reps? At FleetPride he ran geo-paired market tests, shutting marketing off in one market and leaving it on in a matched one, then watched what happened to local sales. What he found gave the team the confidence to spend a lot more aggressively.

He also gets into why centralizing inventory and pricing has less to do with whether corporate can do it better and more to do with which branch manager you pick for your first pilot. If you're trying to figure out what your marketing is really doing for your sellers, where to do market tests, or how much autonomy to leave with your branches, this one's worth your time.

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