About Steven Weber

Liaison was founded in June 2014 after Steven had a poor personal experience with the integration industry. He had previously worked for 25 years as a General Surgeon. 

In 2013 he decided to go to part-time status and only operate 1 day a week in an under-served rural community in central Illinois. Steven is actively involved in a nonprofit organization that trains African Surgeons. He’s served as a surgical consultant to Macedonia, Kenya, Niger and Bangladesh. He’s always pushed the envelope with technology even while in medicine. 

Steven was an early adopter with robotic surgery and endovascular repair of arterial diseases. His youngest son is also a member of the team at Liaison, running their Aspen location.

Interview Recap

Here are some of the topics Ron had the opportunity to discuss with Steven:

• How 3D photography can be used to document prewires and generate marketing material that is valuable to both clients and builders
• Liaison Crestron Patented Control Video
• LumaStream low voltage lighting experience
• Scaling an integration business

SEE ALSO: Home Automation Podcast Episode #54: A Custom Integration Industry Q&A With JJ Canon

Transcript:

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Ron:  Hey there, everybody, Ron Callis with another episode of Automation Unplugged. This is show number 55. I am sorry I'm not coming to you live, but either my internet or maybe Facebook were not cooperating. I gave it a good four or five attempts and we've decided to revert just to go straight to video and then we're going to upload it right away. So you are definitely not watching this live so you are watching this on replay. Thanks so much. It does help if you do like and comment on this post, we are going to have this up on our Facebook page and of course our website. And so let me go ahead and just jump into a couple of housekeeping matters. One is if you have not gone over to Instagram to One Firefly LLC and liked us please do that. That way you can see a steady stream of content. We're going to have all sorts of fun images and messages posted to Instagram can keep up to date with One Firefly. If you go there and let's go ahead and jump immediately into our guest. Mr Steve Weber of Liaison actually just announced in the last couple of days as an award winner of the new Crestron 2018 awards. So congratulations Steve.

Steve: Thanks Ron. We feel very privileged to have gotten that award.

Ron:  I am very happy for you guys that you had that public acknowledgement and of course we'll have to get that content up on your website and out there in all the all the right places so that the world can see that. Now if you could tell our audience, Steve, a little bit about yourself and then maybe transition that into a little bit about Liaison and kind of what you guys, about that business. It's a newer business and you have you know, in my opinion, a rather fascinating background of skills and life experiences that you're bringing to this industry. So can you tell our audience a little bit about yourself?

Steve: Well, I appreciate that Ron, and thanks for the opportunity for me to be here with you. It's quite an honor. You've had a lot of prestigious guests and I'm not sure I really match up to the prestige that they have, but I'll do my best to at least share something that's interesting and so forth.

Ron:  You deserve to be here, Steve, as much as any of those guests, don't cut yourself short.

Steve: Well thank you. But yeah, I mean I come from outside the industry and it's kind of an interesting way out how I got here. We started Liaison about four and a half years ago after I, quote semiretired from my previous profession, which I still dabble in on a weekly basis. But I practiced general surgery for almost 30 years and just decided that I was to a point in life where I was going to do something else and have a second career. I better do it otherwise I'm going to get too old. And so made that leap, didn't know exactly what I was going to be doing at that time. But took a year off doing some mission work, helping with some groups to train surgeons over in Africa, which I'm still involved with that group and and I still practice surgery one day a week. So I go to a small community hospital about 40 miles from my primary home and they didn't have a general surgeon there and so I'm able to help them out, provide a need that they didn't have, still keep my license active, do enough surgery, that part that I enjoy, but not so much that you know, I'm back into the 24/7 of surgery, which is quite draining.

Ron:  Now I'm reading here on some of the notes you sent over in advance of us getting together and I'm just fascinated by the nonprofit work that you did. In fact, I'm going back to when you and I first met back in 2014 or '15. And I remember we had a meeting set up and you couldn't meet because you were in the middle of somewhere, you know, remote with no cell service. You know, for an extended period of time, and I'm seeing here, Macedonia, Kenya, Nigeria, Bangladesh. So when you're often all of those places what are you doing? Are you teaching surgeons how to have surgery or?

Steve: Yeah, so there's a number of things that I participate in and I'm not doing it quite as much as I used to. Obviously this job has consumed a lot of my life. And it's hard.

Ron:  The integration industry will do that.

Steve: So, you know, growing a company and have to be, you know, around for that. But I'm part of a nonprofit called PACS Pan African Academy of Christian Surgeons and it's our mission to train surgeons, African surgeons we found is that when we were bringing him to the United States to be trained, they would stay every, they would stay in the US but they wouldn't go back and stay.

Ron:  So you have some guests over there, peaking over your left shoulder.

Steve: Yeah. I've got some grandchildren visiting this week. And so I'm around home today to do this call and to help out with them. So yeah, you got snuck in.

Ron:  Yeah. He snuck in and we got a little shot of him over your shoulder saying, Hey, what's grandpa doing?

Steve: Yeah. So yeah, so PACS is an organization that I've been a part of for about 10 years and it's a great organization and yeah, we're training African physicians to be surgeons on the level of US surgeons, so they are very well trained five-year program and I'm just glad to be a part of that. So yeah, I will go overseas and be a part of those training. But we have full time faculty at each one of those hospitals training. We just sometimes need somebody to come in when they go on vacation or they've got conferences to go to. So we backfill for those who..

Ron:  You know I'm gonna make a leap here and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to say maybe as a doctor you enjoyed, you maybe at some point hired an integrator and wanted to enjoy some music around your home or some of the services of an integrator. And that's how maybe you got exposed to the space?

Steve: I did. So about eight years ago, almost nine years ago, I built a house out in Colorado and I hired an integrator out of Denver and they fell far short of what they could do and it wasn't a really complex system, but it just seemed like every time I was out there and everybody that's listening to this knows this story is, I had a programmer at our dinner table every time I was out there because he couldn't get..

Ron:  They became automatically whether you liked it or not, a part of your life and your family situation out there, it sounds like.

Steve: Exactly. So I learned a lot about the industry through that. I'd always been very tech minded. Even in medicine. I had done a lot of technology. I was the first surgeon to do robotic surgery in central Illinois and develop that program here and then what we call endovascular procedures weren't being done here in in central Illinois. And so I brought both of those to the hospital.

Ron:  Tell me about robotic surgery. What, that sounds awesome. What is that?

Steve: Well, it allows you to sit at a council and use basically devices like gaming devices. Your hands give you 360 degree movement and very intricate movement inside body parts. So it really is pretty fascinating and it's come a long way in the last 15 years. But yeah, it's a way to fine tune your own personal movements and to be able to get into smaller places to do things that we can do open wise. But it's much quicker recovery if you can do it with a smaller incision.

Ron:  Smaller incision, less damage, less recovery required. Right?

Steve: Right. Yeah.

Ron:  So how did you make the leap from having witnessed hiring someone and they fell short of your goals or your, your ex, your family's expectations on the project to saying, I can do that better?

Steve: Yeah. So I had learned a lot about the integration industry and needed to move on and actually found a company. It was a Crestron system, so it's you know, typical story for Crestron that there's integrators that aren't able to quite meet the demand. And I went back to Crestron themselves and said, look, I need to have somebody who complete this program, got several names, interviewed them. And actually the company that we actually ended up taking on and partnering with came in, took, you know, within three days, not three consecutive days, but basically three days of work. They were able to complete what the other company couldn't do in four years. It wasn't really a complicated system.

Ron:  Wow.

Steve: There was some lighting, there was some audio and there was some video and HVAC and they just couldn't, you know, tie it in and really make it work. So once I did that and we looked at you know, the problems that were out there or the perceived problems I found a challenge and wanted to take it on. So that's what we did. So our goal was to create a company that's scalable, to take a smaller company of four or five individuals figure out that the processes, put the processes down and grow it. And so we've been able to, you know, we spent our first two years doing that and now we've got full team and office in Aspen, Denver, central Illinois. And we're building that team up in Chicago. We've been able to do projects all over the United States as far away as Boise, Idaho, all the way down to Naples, Florida and everything in between.

Ron:  I'm going to throw up on screen here just for our audience. I'm going to throw up your website just so they can. And what they're going to see here, Steve, is they see the UI on this touch panel. This actually looks like this maybe is an iPad, but you can you talk a little bit about that because one of the really unique characteristics of liaison is you, you have a patented or patent pending UI that you use on Crestron and it's particularly beautiful and unique.

Steve: Well thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah. And that's been a labor of love. But yeah, we actually have the patent now and it is based on Crestron's app. So we wanted to create something that was a bit more simple and user friendly cause that's the common thing we hear from people is all I want is simple control. So we kind of brainstormed the company that we took on had already started the work on it and it's floorplan based. And then there's other visual feedbacks that allow us to give a simpler control, less clicks to actually performing a task.

Ron:  Oh, that's, that's very cool. Do your customers ever respond and say they want this? Maybe because in the world of Crestron, if they're talking to dealer A, B and C A, B and C could all show that customer a different interface, right? I mean, you..

Steve: They can yep. And not everybody, you know, most end users don't really realize the importance and what that is. You know, especially if they've not done automation before. If they have, they've had maybe one or two places with automation, they'll understand it and they get it. But the majority of the new people that are coming on board haven't had automation and it's an education process helping them.

"I would argue maybe running a business in one market has its own sets of challenges running them in multiple markets. Could be maybe more challenges or maybe there are advantages to it."

Ron:  Now you founded the company in 2014 and you made a decision early on to be a multi location business. Can you tell my audience a little bit about kind of the framework of thinking there? You know, I guess I would argue maybe running a business in one market has its own sets of challenges running them in multiple markets. Could be, you know, maybe more challenges or maybe there's advantages to it.

Steve: No it is a big challenge. And that's why one of the reasons I went into it is you know, I wanted to find a business entity or adventure that was bit more of a challenge than just going and buying a restaurant or a hotel or doing something like that by you know, wanting to scale it so that it can be at multiple locations. That's something that's not been done within our industry. The commercial industry has done it. There are some residential ones that have done it and they've done a good job, but there have been a number that have failed big time trying to do that. So it's got its own unique problems or challenges, I should say. But you know, it's been done in every other industry. I mean, anywhere from dental offices to restaurants, to grocery stores, to hotels. Everywhere you go, they've been quote, franchised. They've been scaled to multiple locations. Why hasn't that happened with our industry? And again, there's some unique challenges to it. But it's going to happen. And so I wanted to be a part of that to try to get it to happen.

Ron:  That's interesting. I'm going to put on the screen your list that was just published and everyone sees this is the 2008. I'm reading it here. So the 2018, 2019 Global Home Technology Awards, the North American winners and Liaison Home Automation, look at that best shading application. So first of all, congratulations. That's very cool.

Steve: Appreciate it. Yup.

Ron:  It is a very prestigious list of companies there that I have had been named. It's printed cool. And I think I know most of them. And you know, tell us about that project. What was that project, what were some of the characteristics of that job that you think really stood out to Crestron to name you the winner?

Steve: There were some unique things or challenges with the shades on this project. It's a project that's out in Colorado, very modern home. But you know, it had windows with dividers in them. They didn't want, they needed to figure out a way to you know, cover the windows without being too obtrusive on the outside or put a big header on the top. So we ended up putting several of the shades across the the divider and coming down that way. There were some angled windows that we had challenges on and you know, and then of course hiding some of them in the ceiling by reassessing them. So there was a number of different ways we did this. We even did the the frosted glass where the crystals align with electricity.

Ron:  Wait, what was the application, where did you do that?

Steve: That was at the front door with the the sidelights around it. So they were clear sidelights but there's times of the day where they didn't want people walking up to the door to be able to see it, but yet they didn't want. And the windows were not large enough to really put shades on them. So that was a solution for them. We had outdoor shades. And so it was just the combination of all the different things, running them all on a Crestron system, being able to put them on our floorplan based gooey. I guess that's what caught their eye and they liked.

Ron:  Wow, that's cool. Now I know you're also big beyond just Crestron. You're all in with Crestron, Crestron automation, lighting, shading. But I, there's another company that you've been doing a lot of stuff with and I'm hearing their name more and more. In fact, I just saw the CEO give a presentation last week at the Azione conference and that was a LumaStream here out of Florida. Can you tell our audience maybe that doesn't know what, who LumaStream is and kind of their led technologies, kind of what has you so jazzed about that?

Steve: Yeah. I kind of stumbled across LumaStream about almost two years ago and start investigating it. What's unique about them is it's true low voltage. Most of the time you talk to somebody about low voltage, they immediately think of an led light. I said, Oh yeah, we do low voltage. We do led fixtures. What's different about this is that you're only delivering to the fixture the voltage that you need for that fixture. Most led lights, you're driving a train load of energy to that fixture and then you're having drivers or transformers or whatever the case may be to downregulate it. And then you only use maybe 9 volts, 18 volts, what do you do with all the rest of that electricity? Well, a lot of times it goes to heat. And so you're increasing your cooling

Ron:  Your energy costs both with electricity and then the necessity to cool or dissipate and remove that heat through your HVAC system.

Steve: Right? Right. So these fixtures only get delivered to them what they need. These fixtures are actually above 90% efficient of converting the energy into light, which is really pretty incredible. The other thing is these fixtures only require 18 to wire to deliver that sometimes 16 to depending on the distance and certain fixtures. We're using speaker wire to deliver the energy and control to that fixture. So not only do we power it, but we control those lights. And sometimes depending on the number of lights on a channel, we could be controlling one or two lights individually, not a whole room. Those typically with a dimmer module, we may be controlling a whole room together. This way we can control individual lights if necessary, if the application is appropriate for that. So the quality of the light is much superior to your, what we call the CRI or color rendering index is very high. And now they just introduced what they call tuneable lights. So they've got recess lights that are tuneable, meaning we can tune in the actual Kelvin temperature 2,700, 3000, 3,500 into the programming rather than by 30 or 3000 Lelvin light. And that's what you're stuck with. So it's really cool technology. We we did a project that was a combined, or it was a Crestron control system, but we combined high voltage and we used the DMU AIDS or the dimmer modules as well as the LumaStream and they're fully programmable and tied in, really worked out nice.

Ron:  No, that's very cool. And the shade project where you won the award, did that have the LumaStream in that home as well?

Steve: We started that project before we were really comfortable with selling and installing LumaStream. It took us a little while. It's fairly simple to do, but there are some learning points and of course we have a policy that we put in test everything that we do before we put it into a project. That way we know the gotchas before they get ya.

"I'm seeing a trend across the industry that, you know, many of the buying groups are now talking about led or tuneable lighting and this is very much a hot topic."

Ron:  Yeah, no, that sounds like a smart idea proven from probably many years of experience. So that is wise. Now I want to jump topics here. I've got one more question. I'm looking over here at my notes. I've got one more question about the lighting picture. Cause I know you're really big into lighting, big into led lighting, LumaStream's, one of your partners. And I'm seeing a trend across the industry that, you know, many of the buying groups are now talking about led or tuneable lighting and you know, so this is like a very much a hot topic. It's out there in the ether. You know, what is I'm going at big picture. What is the reason this topic is catching on now? I mean you're all in. You're pushing and promoting LumaStream and low voltage lighting and all the buying groups are doing it. Why is this happening now?

Steve: Yeah, though that's a great question I think it's because we really are the ones that do control. There are some electricians that do control, but for the most part, the electricians are scared by and have tried it and can't do the programming. Now there's some systems are easier and they're able to do it. But I think a lot of the manufacturers are realizing that there's a much bigger market out there for control and who better to do that is, you know, is..

Ron:  And because this is low voltage, this puts this squarely in the domain of the low voltage integrator.

Steve: It does. It does. And you know, all of us out there have had problems with particular fixtures being specified. And then they're not dimmable even though they say they're dimmable. And then we get the flickering and who do they turn to? But us, they look at us and go, why am I having problems with this light? They don't go to the electrician. They go to us. So what better way to avoid that or..

Ron:  Do you see much resistance from the consumer? I mean, do they care whether it's a high voltage fixture, a low voltage fixture? Do they know enough to take care about that decision? Generally?

Steve: You know we haven't been doing it long enough to really know that there's a track record. You know, the people that we do introduce LumaStream to really get excited about it when you explain the concept and what's behind it and they realize that, yeah, this is the future. Again, builders are a little, you know, builders aren't usually behind the times, most not all. There's some that are forward thinking, but a lot of them, you know, are just, you know, they're set in their ways. This is the way we'd done it. This is the way we're always going to do it. So it was a little bit harder sell with them at the end. They get it.

Ron:  We are 25 minutes into recording Steve and I know we had the technical difficulties. It's why we're recording straight to disc now versus streaming live. So if you're out there watching this on replay, sorry we weren't live but at least you weren't interrupted by you know, connection issues or digitization. Hopefully. But I have two more quick subjects I want to try to cover with you Steve if if time allows if have a few more minutes?

Steve: Absolutely. All right. I can get long winded on things.

Ron:  No, no, but it's good. I'm sure the audience is going to love it. By the way, if you're out there watching this on our Facebook page, even though we weren't live, please like this post a comment. If you have questions for Steve, Steve will be watching the feed and we'll make sure we get those to him. Quick thing well on the subject of Crestron, so I'm curious, what are you seeing out there in the marketplace as you and your sales team are meeting and interacting with the design community and consumers? Do you see recognition of the brand Crestron cause you are a Crestron integrator and I believe you lead with that control system. And or, I mean, do you, do they know the name Crestron, Control4, Savant, or is this really our language and they just know they want home entertainment or home automation?

Steve: Yeah, if they know the name Crestron, either they're a commercial and they've had a good experience with it, or they're a homeowner and they've had a bad experience with it. And in Crestron's defense, they make great product and we love it. And, you know, we know it's reliable. The unfortunate thing is there's a lot of consumers out there that were burned just like I was when I initially got into this. The integrator was not able to complete the project and do the programming. That's, you know, not really Crestron's fault. And it's, it's our industries our problem to overcome. I think, you know, and you and I have chatted about this, I think Crestron needs to do a little bit better job of marketing out there to the general public. They don't, they market to us, the integrator or they've got their marketing teams that go to the you know, the big corporations or the educations and so forth. But there's nothing out there to get out to the general population. I equate it to like Intel. Intel does not need to market to the general public, right? Their customer is get Dell to put it in, get HP to put it in. And so what do they do? It's Intel inside so that the general..

Ron:  So there's still is a consumer-facing branding piece. They do have the Intel inside commercials on TV and they have the Intel inside magazine ads. You know, that Joe consumer isn't necessarily gonna call Intel and, you know, buy something. But it does create that perception that it's an elite solution. It's an elite processor or a technology company.

"I don't as an integrator then have to sell it, all then I have to do is sell them on that. We can do the integration. We can give you the control of that. We're the liaison and that's why our name is Liaison between you and your hardware."

Steve: Yeah, I mean their commercials. Yeah. Their marketing, their commercials show that it's a quality product. Crestron I think could do the same thing. They could go out there and you know, do something similar so that we don't always have to justify that Crestron is a good product. If they're out there marketing at the Crestron, the consumer is going to see, Oh Crestron's good. Oh Crestron does all these universities, they do all these government buildings. They do you know, the Apple headquarters and the Microsoft headquarters. Wow. It's good stuff. I don't as an integrator then have to sell it, all then I have to do is sell them on that. We can do the integration. We can give you the control of that. We're the liaison and that's why our name is Liaison between you and your hardware. So I would like to see Crestron do that. I think that they would get a lot more mileage on it and I think most all integrators or the ones that I've talked to would appreciate that.

Ron:  Have you voiced that to Crestron? I mean, I'm not so confident they're going to start promoting to the consumer, but you know, never say never.

Steve: You know, I'll bring it up to anybody that I get exposure to at Crestron.

Ron:  Well a few people will watch this. Maybe somebody from Crestron will watch this and hear you and reach out.

Steve: And I'd be more than willing to chat to chat further with them or to be on a committee or a group or whatever to explore it with them. But I'm one of many integrators out there, but that's just my perception as a consumer of it and going through the experience as well as you know, an integrator supplier.

Ron:  All right. I want to try to touch on one more topic here. Certainly we can touch on more, but let me jump over here. I'm going to put on screen for everyone. I took a snapshot from your website and it says 3d showcase, I believe this is under your gallery section and you have been doing something that I see as pretty innovative and that you've been using Matterport cameras and shooting your projects and putting those interactive environments on your website. So I'd love you to maybe talk a little bit about that. How did you get the idea to do that and how has that been received by people checking you out?

Steve: Yeah, so, you know, part of job is to be the visionary of the company and to try to look at what's out there and what's coming. So I'm always trying to read about new technology, watching videos, magazines and stuff and seeing what's out there. But I just like when I came across LumaStream I came across Matterport, which is a 3d photography, and just started learning more about that and just started thinking about, okay, how can we use that? Part of that was we've been looking at virtual reality and wondering how is virtual reality going to be perceived or used within our industry. And we've got some ideas and we've got some vibe headsets and we take it out to the public and have them use it and get ideas and so forth. But Matterport was a little bit different, but I found that was through VR because you can actually photograph a house inside of a house, put a headset on and then walk through that house. And so as I thought about it, I'm going, Hmm, how could we use that as a company? Well, we all like to document our pre wires and we all go in and we either shoot a video or we're now with our phones, go and take shots. But not always do they have the right perception or the right depth of, of where things are and so forth with a Matterport. Now I know where all my wiring is. And so we go in at the end of a pre-wire do a Matterport. And we share that with the builder. It's added value to the builder because now he can see where all his other wiring is from his electricians to his mechanicals to whatever and have better documentation that he could ever give it. And the builders seem to like it, the homeowners like it. We've been using it for our marketing, so our pictures for our for our entry into the Crestron awards were all Matterports. I didn't have to go out and pay a professional photographer for this stuff. Now it's taking me some time to learn it and for us to get good at it, but it really is pretty simple. And so we use it in a lot of different levels.

Ron:  No, that's so cool. Do you shoot every project in pre-wire stage and finished phase or when it's finished?

Steve: No. You know, we've only been using it for about six months. So I wouldn't say we do every, and of course with us being in multiple places, we don't have a camera in every location, but you know, I travel between the locations and when I do, I bring the camera with me and we'll get the project done when I'm there. So we're still trying to figure that out. But you know, we share it with the architects, with the interior designers, with the builder, with the homeowner, and they all are just amazed by it. They go, wow, that is so cool.

Ron:  Got it. Question, you are a member of a buying group, correct?

Steve: We are Pro Source.

Ron:  Tell our audience, those that are listening, should they be a member of a buying group? And what do you see as the key takeaways or benefits to you and your business for being a member?

Steve: Yeah, I was a little bit skeptical at first because, you know, there's a cost to it, but it's more than paid off. It's cost since joining it. In a dollar amount by itself, but the value of you know, having the vendors that the buying group is a part of and we chose our group because most of the companies we were already using, it was a part of Pro Source. Not all of them there, there are some with other buying groups, but we can still sell those things, but the meetings are good. There's value there. It gives us more of a voice than just one integrator out there saying, Hey, we're having problems with this, what's going on? And I could name a bunch of companies and everybody would probably be out there would go, yep, we had those problems.

Ron:  Yeah. Right, right.

Steve: Us going as an individual again, it doesn't have the voice. You know, I've had some problems and I'll talk to the higher ups and Pro Source. I'll say, look, did you guys know, is anybody else having this problem you might want to watch for this?

Ron:  So Pro Source goes to that vendor that clearly has more muscle than any, any one person. So it gives you strength in numbers perhaps.

Steve: Absolutely. And you know, it, you know, we as an integrator, the most frustrating thing is when you have a recall on a particular product or recurring problem and it's our dime to change it out, right? Or to figure it out and to solve the problem. Sometimes that can cost us a lot of money. You know, I feel that we should get one, it's clearly a vendor's problem and their mistake, my grandson just came in..

Ron:  I know I saw the balloon being bounced over your head.

"When there's a problem and that is created by the vendor, they need to step up to the plate and they need to help out with those costs. And working with Pro Source and some of those issues, that's happened."

Steve: When there's a problem and that is created by the vendor. They need to step up to the plate and they need to help out with those costs. And working with Pro Source and some of those issues that's happened.

Ron:  That's been priceless. While Steve, it has been a pleasure having you on Automation Unplugged and I want to get you back to go enjoy your grandkids cause that is what life's all about, spending time with friends and family. But it's been a pleasure having you on the show.

Steve: Well, thank you Ron. I appreciate it. I appreciate what One Firefly does. You guys have been a great partner in a lot of different ways. You know, just talking marketing in general, bouncing ideas off of you and your team has been very helpful to come up with ways for us to grow our market and to get our word out there. So thank you for your partnership. You've got a great team and they're very helpful.

Ron:  Awesome. Well, thank you sir. I greatly appreciate that. So ladies and gentlemen, this is one of my direct to video episodes of Automation Unplugged. This has been episode number 55. We've had Steve Weber on from Liaison Home Automation. He's a multi location integrator and really just a pretty awesome person behind the helm there behind the wheel driving that ship. Somebody that's bringing a very unique perspective to our industry and helping us make it better. So I love to feature those, those individuals that are doing such creative work. So until next time, have a great day and a great week. And I will see you on the next episode. It'll be number 56. I don't have my show art of who that is. I want to say it's Joe Whitaker, but I don't know. Pay attention. Watch our page. We'll tell you who that is and we will see you soon. Thanks everybody.

Show Notes

Steven previously worked for 25 years as a General Surgeon. In 2013 he decided to go to part time status and only operate 1 day a week in an under-served rural community in central Illinois. Steven started Liaison in June, 2014 after having a poor personal experience with the integration industry. He had previously worked for 25 years as a General Surgeon. He’s always pushed the envelope with technology even while in medicine and was an early adopter with robotic surgery and endovascular repair of arterial diseases.

Ron Callis is the CEO of One Firefly, LLC, a digital marketing agency based out of South Florida and creator of Automation Unplugged. Founded in 2007, One Firefly has quickly became the leading marketing firm specializing in the integrated technology and security space. The One Firefly team work hard to create innovative solutions to help Integrators boost their online presence, such as the elite website solution, Mercury Pro.

Resources and Links from the Interview:

• Crestron Global Home Technology Awards 2018
• PAACS
• LumaStream

You can also learn more about Liason Home Automation at https://liaisonhomes.com/ Make sure to follow them on Facebook and Twitter.