This week's home automation podcast features our host Ron Callis interviewing Kris Gamble. Recorded live on Wednesday, July 31st, 2019 at 12:30 p.m. EST.

About Kris Gamble

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

• Kris´ background in the industry
• Enough with the luxury focus of Smart Home
• UK shows the rest of the world how to win on social
• Start today or risk being invisible tomorrow! Social media for lazy installers.
• How to become the local tech hero

SEE ALSO: Home Automation Podcast Episode #82: A Custom Integration Industry Q&A With Robert Keeler

Transcript:

Ron:  Hello everybody. Ron Callis. This is round two the Internet and the Internet gremlins. Tried to hold us down and keep us from going live, but we're fighting back. Hope you are having a great afternoon or great evening wherever you are coming to us from. Maybe it's morning where you're at. It's currently almost one o'clock now here in Florida. And we are going to jump into it in just a moment here. We have a great guest. We have Kris who's a rock star out of the UK and a really a leader in the world of integration and actually being very socially active and promoting business development activities through social. That's going to be a lot of fun. I am going to go ahead and show a couple of images to let you know what I've been up to and we've been up to here at One Firefly. This is actually a picture of a couple of members of my team. We went out to Colorado Springs,I guess at this point a couple of weeks ago. And we were doing some offsite training. We are always working on sharpening the blade. Per the old Abraham Lincoln quote, if he had six hours to cut down a tree, he'd spend four hours sharpening his blade. Well, we practice that quite diligently here at One Firefly. We took three days and really did a lot, great bonding time and training with our account managers to really prepare them for success so they can continue to take great care of our customers. I think I got another image here. Let me see if I can share that one with you. I'll show you one other. We actually planned to go to Colorado Springs cause I have a larger concentration of our, our team in that state and in that region. We ended up getting a facility out at a place called Glen Eerie Castle, which was just absolutely spectacular. We're going to get more images posted up to Facebook and Instagram here sooner than later. So keep an eye out for that. But that was a lot of fun. Without further ado, let's go ahead and bring in our guest. Let's see if technology behaves and,brings it there. Here is the one and only Kris Gamble. Kris, how are you sir?

Kris: Hey Ron. Good to see you again. I've not caught up with you since CEDIA last year. So it's been a minute.

Ron:  It has been a minute, although I appreciate you've watched a few of these shows and you've been an active participant. And likewise, I love the show that you do with JJ. I like to catch those and interact with you guys as well.

Kris: Well, I thought I would appear in my natural habitat. Most people see me online sitting in my truck.

Ron:  Yeah. So tell us where exactly in the UK are you in? What time is it there?

Kris: Okay, so it's just coming out to 6:00 PM. I'm currently working today. I've just left a job site and got to my van. We're working in an area just outside London called Surrey, which is Southwest of London and we're working right now on a development of eight apartments that are all getting a minimum home tech wiring spec plus a few nice to haves, like some Lutron lighting, Nest thermostats and whole home wifi for each apartment.

Ron:  Oh, that sounds awesome. I want to dig into that. As I always do, let me actually jump over to Facebook and make sure we're actually streaming live and we actually have an audience there. So bear with me.

Kris: Okay.

Ron:  For any of you out there that are going live and you're going live from your office or your home, make sure you reboot your router before you actually decide to go live. Apparently that was the snafu and I had no upload speed. And is that the right way to say it, Kris? No upload bandwidth?

Kris: Yeah. I don't think you were able to push out all that content. There wasn't enough room in the pipe, I think.

Ron:  That's right. If you are out there watching this live feed, go ahead and give us a like, give us a share and tell us where you're coming from cause that's always fun to know where our audience is coming to us from. There it is Digital Delight. He says "We can see you. Hey guys!" Let me throw that up on the screen. There's JJ.

Kris: Cool. I know that guy.

Ron:  You know that guy. So Kris some of my audience may not know you. I know your audience. You guys are certainly I'm sure some of your followers are going to come and check this out either live or in replay. But can you tell our audience your background? How did you get into this industry and what is your background?

Kris: Yeah, so currently my day job is, I'm the technical director at Customised. We're a UK based smart home installation business. We operate primarily in East of England but also do a lot of work in and around London. London's like a magnet for the majority of people in our industry. It's where the glut of work is. So we cover that area. And East of England, Norridge, that's where our base is. But leading up to Customised, the more technical back story goes back to being in the military. I served in the Royal Air Force from age of 20 to 28. I traveled the world, worked as a telecommunications expert, specialized in fiber optic repairs which was quite hairy at times. You were the term was battled damage repair. So I spent a lot of time fixing things that had been blown up and getting communications back to the troops that were on the ground and the link back to headquarters. Typically back in the UK. You had traveled the world with that, but family started to become a big priority for me. Got married planning children. Kinda didn't feel safe to continue being in the military with the current threats. So I left the military, got a job with a private telecom firm, continued that telecommunication skillset. I was a project manager for them, but really started to get a niche to become my own boss and the entrepreneurial bug bit me. I wanted to do something a little bit different. And at the time, 2009, '10 smart homes started to become this constant, a phrase I kept coming up against when I was researching avenues for my own personal business. And from 2011 onwards, Customised have been a thing and it's kept me busy ever since. And yeah, it's like I said, it keeps me busy. It keeps me seven days a week, hundreds of hours per week, sometimes fun, loving it.

Ron:  Tell us a little bit about your business. You know, how many folks do you have? What's a typical project for your business? Cause I know you, I feel That your business model is probably a bit divergent or different or unique than what you know, many CEDIA integrators present themselves as.

Kris: Customised is a very small team. Five of us in total. I split with three technical, two in business management and administration and we've diversified over the years. We followed the traditional template for many, many years. We thought that there was one path and that was laid out by trade organizations on how to navigate the world of technology installation. Here was the playbook. And as much as you know, there was some successes. We also found a lot of frustration for us as the business owner. But primarily we found frustrations with the customers long drawn out projects, a juggling act sometimes with the numbers and making sure every day everything is coming in and out at the right times. As these projects got bigger, we found the headaches actually increased. And I take my hat off to the people that excel at that. And I'm not saying that we don't do that anymore. We still do large projects on request, but for the last two years we really flip the hat on its head and embraced shorter, sharper, sweeter installations with speed and ease, embracing more off the shelf products to deliver almost instant smart home results. And some of the phrases we've used for our services is smart home with speed, smart home with ease. We provide services that have become quite well known in our industry. A few people have kind of blueprinted it. We have the one hour wifi service, we have the half day home cinema, we have the one day smart home. These are things that are popular with our client base. They can click add to basket on Facebook and order the one hour wifi service and it's really improved our turnover of money. There's just this constant churn now, which we felt we needed as a business. We needed this regular income, you know, money when you're sleeping, people are placing orders overnight and the diary fills up quite quickly. So we're now at a state where we're doing dozens of installations per week in our position to sometimes do normally one or two installations per month on these larger projects.

Ron:  Interesting. So a typical project that you and your team are working on, is it fair to say you're generally in and out of that project within a a day or a few days?

Kris: Very often. Very, very often. If you isolate it down to some of the tasks we're doing and we have services that just focus on doorbells, thermostats, door locks, wifi, TV, audio, and we portion that app into delivering that service. And if more services are requested that is scheduled in or if the customer wants multiple services done, then we would schedule the full day of installation or two days of installation. But, to carry out six or seven tasks in that home or one task if that's all it was needed. So the variety that some of our technicians will face, they may have a typical day, might be three doorbells, one wifi or one audio installation. That's in their diary for the day and we'd look at the logistics of location, travel time, hours that are needed to perform a task. Is it one or two people and what not. That's the challenge we face now in more of a juggling act in this speed and the turnover of projects.

Ron:  I've got a bunch of questions for you around this. You've admitted that there's a group of like minded integrators there in the UK and I know here in the US I'm seeing more and more integrators that are focused on what I would challenge is this underserved market,. They're not a do it yourself customer, but they're a do it for me customer. They know they want these fun technologies, but they don't know how to actually design or install or make them work. And so they need a professional to do that. And what I'm hearing you say, and if I'm misstating anything then correct me. But I'm hearing you say that you've really built the business model catering to that customer. I mean, you'll do bigger stuff.

Kris: Listen, Ron, there's a misconception that if you go down this route, you're going down a budget route. It couldn't be further from the truth. We're still servicing the same upper middle class customer base. We're still working in the same streets. We're just delivering the results in a quicker time. We're actually dealing with customers who had previous frustrations and headaches with their previous smart home installations, their previous home technology endeavors. We're delivering now with best-in-class products.Anyone that follows will know we choose from a core five product range. Nest Ubiquity, Lutron, Logitech, Sonos, that's our fab five. And with those five, we're delivering excellent user experiences with smart homes. With installation times that are leaving them saying, "Wow! Here's the number of my friend and what else can you do for me?"

Ron:  Yeah, I don't want to go too far down this path for myself, but I'll tell you that I'm one of those customers. I, 10 years ago to a consumer. I'll say, you know, 10, I'm trying to think of this, what year? No, heck, I'm getting old. Like 15 years ago I built a house and I had a full blown home automation system in it without naming any names. I was beholden to the integrator when any the slightest little this or that needed to be changed or tweaked or modified. And beyond that, it was a small fortune. I was living way beyond my means. And so I should not have had that stuff. I was not at the price point of income or lifestyle, but I was in the industry and I thought it was the right thing to do. I didn't know there was another way and maybe at that time there wasn't another way. But today there is. I mean it! Today I have a Nest thermostat. I have a Sonos audio system. Clearly I need help with my network as we saw for 30 minutes there as we were trying to go live. But I think that this population of consumer for this type of business, I mean, it has to be just ginormous.

Kris: And, and again, repeating that, it's a distinction. We are targeting the exact same customer as you, that the traditional custom installer, I'm targeting this same man or woman. I'm targeting the same street. Okay? I might not be going through the elite property at the end of the street. You can have that. I'm happy for you to take number ten but I'm going after numbers nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one because I believe they've maybe had frustrations in the past and are really open to straight talking. Cut the bull. Give me the price. How long are you going to take to deliver the goods? They're nuts. You know, I'm so confident about the future of that because that's just culture now. That on demand, give it to me fast. Get out of my house. I need to go home with my life. You have to start moving towards that in some way.

Ron:  I'm going to give a shout out. We got a Thomas Wing. He says, greetings from Panama. High Tech Solutions online. Do you know, do you know Thomas Wing, Kris?

Kris: I don't, but I know we have a lot of followers from places like Dominican Republic, Panama, South America. Yeah, we've got global viewers of our social media. It's our social media that gathers the crowd.

Ron:  Yeah. I'm going to throw that up there and JJ just posted "global digital ramblers." Is that so what is a digital rambler? Are those the integrators that are likeminded?

Kris: Yeah, you could say that. But they're also the audience of the side hustle that I do with JJ and that the podcast and the Facebook show that that I do every week. It goes out tonight, 9:00 PM UK time, The Digital Ramble. And that's growing an audience of integrators and excitingly, homeowners. We see this trend of the homeowner needing again, that cut the bull. Give me the facts, tell me what's good and what's not about home technology.

Ron:  Yeah, that's fascinating. Now, I'm going to challenge that. There probably are integrators that would tell you and your peers, other businesses that would go on that same street and sell Mrs. Smith a system that might cost fifty thousand or a hundred thousand dollars. And I'm hearing you say that you'll go in to that same house, at that same price point and sell a system that maybe costs 10% or 5% of that.

Kris: I wouldn't say that the percentage is that low.

Ron:  I was thinking of the $3,000 or $5,000 price point. Would you go in and I'm going to make a number up. Into a $5 million house and and I'm speaking U S dollars cause I don't know how to speak British pounds. So pardon my ignorance there. But into a $5 million house and would the solution for that customer be, you know, a $5,000 or $3,000 solution? Whereas, maybe another company would sell something, a bandwidth,or a broad spectrum of solutions that might be fifty or a hundred thousand dollars gross retail? Help me understand. And, do you get any pushback from anyone in the community that maybe would say you're under-serving that customer?

Kris: We get a lot of pushback. I would call it feedback. We get a lot of criticism. Again, I'll call it feedback. But, I believe that I'm not going in there trying to deliver a whole smart home for three or five thousand pounds. What I'm going in with is I'm addressing some of the major needs for the client. So if the client's requiring a whole house wifi system that may be in and around the two to three thousand pounds price point. I'm not saying we're doing whole home wifi for for four or five, six hundred pounds. I'm saying that maybe we're using a product that is at a lower price point, but I believe it's capable. If it's a Ubiquity whole home wifi system, I put my company on the line and I believe in that brand from their routers to their switches to their access points, their user experience, the app that's both customer facing and pro facing. If we're looking at the music system I'm going to reach for Sonos and I'm going to pool on the Sonos amps, or I'm going to have active speakers in the room like a Play 5 or a beam or a play bar and that's going to deliver the multi-room music. It's not low budget, it's still thousands of pounds. But what I'm achieving with that, I'm really that I'm giving the client a good user experience, a positive experience with their technology every day that they use it. There's an element of self management with the products that we're putting in. Less reliance on the pro to support them with every little tweak, change, reprogram. False scenario. I'm using products that actually have excellent support that they don't have to use my support. You know, they can go and call Sonos. They can get support from the app that their thermostats and their cameras are presented on like Nest. They can dial straight Internet support. These are brands that have a huge library of support videos on YouTube or Vimeo. I'm just using five products that I believe my company are experts in and using those to deliver. If it goes outside of the capabilities of those systems, we're also very honest with customers and say, "I just don't think we're the right business for you. I think you need to go up the ladder." I think there is there is a tier of installers and if we are not premiere division, so be it. But I believe we're a very good mid table team that provide a consistent result for our customers. And we're not claiming to be fancy, we're not claiming to be the cheapest. We're just sitting in a sweet spot that I think has got a large customer base available to it.

Ron:  No, I agree. And in chatting with you offline, you have a fascinating, and for those listening, should be very exciting way, that you're actually developing business. Can you, you know, tell our audience here how it's not your only source of lead generation, but you're doing some things and you actually broaden it? You said in the UK we're doing things that are pretty innovative when you look around, let's say if you compare it to North America.

Kris: Yeah. We're using social media. Customised and myself personally have been huge proponents of using the tools that big these big giants are providing. As in, trying to use those tools to reach customers. We're using Facebook, we're using Instagram, we're using Twitter, we're using YouTube and podcasts and we're using all the free tools, big announcement. This stuff's free. We're using that to promote and advertise and share knowledge transfer knowledge to consumers and what the UK I feel is getting right. And there's a handful of us getting it right. And it's very simple. We're creating content for homeowners. We're not creating content for our friends. This is a big problem our industry has. We're creating content for our buddies so our buddies can comment and say, "What's that brand of rack. What speakers do you use? What gauge wire is that?" You know, I'm not in this to build a circle of friends in the industry. I'm in this game to build a circle of customers, a circle of clients. So my content is consumer facing and it's giving them information about what it is we're doing.Maybe providing price point, providing time taken. It's providing location of where we're working, which is an important one. Show them where you're working because you may appear in that location. And constantly put out this content. Not one post per week, one post per day. The target for me was always a hundred. I've never gotten there, but I'm trying to get 25, 30, 35, 40 pieces of content out there. Some of the content take seconds to produce. Some of the content takes an hour to produce. It could be a vlog, it could be a podcast, it could be that I tape a blog, but all that content goes somewhere. That content is just filling up the Internet with my name, my business name, the brands I'm using, the locations we're working in, the services we're providing. So we're constantly keeping our vessel fulll of of content. Constantly, seven days a week.

Ron:  Now you were mentioning to me that you actually are generating about one lead a day from Instagram.

Kris: Mimimum, Ron.

Ron:  Shocking. That's shocking for me. That's amazing.

Kris: And there's people wiping the floor with me in the UK. One in particular, Art of Smart UK. I've got to give a shout out to this guy, new kid on the block in a way, new business, but just the freshest business in the industry right now globally. A diversified business with electric cars.

Ron:  You said R-F Smart?

Kris: No, Art of Smart.

Ron:  Oh, I've been following him.

Kris: Of course. Yeah. If you don't know it, then you're you're living under a rock. This is a team that are going to go places. They make me look like an old age pensioner in the social game. But this is an example of the new talent in this industry that's growing hundreds of followers per week, per month. You know the rates you'd have to discuss with them and you should get Rich on the show. The owner, he's a go getter. He's a true hustler and he's, he's putting in twice as many hours as I do. He's younger, but they're attracting a jewel audience. They get a lot of trade following and a trial of trade interaction, which I'm less in armored about. But they're also getting a huge following up from consumers wanting that. And these are high-end focused businesses, but they're really attracting a lot of attention through content.

"I'm going to admit, as a marketing agency working with integrators typically and historically we've been challenged to see Twitter as a viable platform for an integrator. "

Ron:  Now I also see, and I'm going to share here your Twitter. So, look at this, you also have 5,000 followers on Twitter. And I'm going to admit, as a marketing agency working with integrators typically and historically we've been challenged to see Twitter as a viable platform for an integrator. Only because you know, is the average consumer out there sitting on Twitter and ultimately following you this, you know, local technology business? But you're very active and you have quite a following. Can you speak about that and your vision for Twitter?

"I have a soft spot for Twitter. In the early days of Customised, all our social media presence came from Twitter. It is actually where we devised the use of a hashtag that we created, or I created, #LiveInstall."

Kris: I have a soft spot for Twitter. In the early days of Customised, all our social media presence came from Twitter. It is actually where we devised the use of a hashtag that we created, or I created, #LiveInstall. That was the hashtag we tagged to all our installations.

Ron:  Before you had an Instagram story, we were doing a dozen or two dozen tweets per day on doing a live installation. So TV wall mount before, during, after progress pictures and lots of people in the industry used that over the years. Probably 2012 to 2015, thousands of businesses. Your side of the pond and in Europe use that hashtag as a calling card. I used to suggest to people if you want to see what's happening today in home technology, just go to #LiveInstall. It would show you what happened on this day, who was busy, who was active, who was doing what and what brands they were using, and where they were working. So it was a good way to gauge. I always felt it was a good way to see what was happening everyday in the industry. So Twitter, we grew an audience and a lot of that audiences historical to the early days of using it. But Twitter's changed. You have to adapt now to the way that that platform is wanting you to use it. It's more about engagement, participation, being part of conversations. Maybe not the starter of conversations. Be vocal within discussions that are happening on Twitter. Go there when things are trending and be part of things that are trending. If it's a sporting event, if it's a news event or a technology event.

Ron:  I've got a question for you here, Kris. I'm going to put it up on the screen. Alison says, "Kris, you make social media look so easy. Why do you think so many integrators have trouble utilizing it and how can they improve?"

"It's tough balancing. It's not easy. Yeah, it's really tough. But it's just like practice. Your phone has probably got hundreds and hundreds of photographs of installations you've done. And it's not about maybe producing the freshest content every week, but it's about getting that content that you've created, the installations you've completed or having progressed, getting that out there."

Kris: Listen, it's tough balancing. It's not easy. Yeah, it's really tough. But it's just like practice. Your phone has probably got hundreds and hundreds of photographs of installations you've done. And it's not about maybe producing the freshest content every week, but it's about getting that content that you've created, the installations you've completed or having progressed, getting that out there. And if you just schedule 15 minutes per day, I think you can get three to ten pieces of content out there. I'm also a big fan of recycling content. So if you've written, 200 words or a hundred words that you put on an Instagram post. That same 100 words and half a dozen hashtags lend themselves equally to a LinkedIn post, a Facebook post, maybe it makes up two or three tweets with two or three images. It could make a small blog on your website. It could be part of a series of blogs that you're putting on media. So using one piece of content, chopping it out, recycling it can really go a long way to getting you a dozen posts per day. And then you get the bug. Trust me, you will get the bug in the same way that you get the bug for anything else you're passionate about. Once you start getting engagement, you will get to find 15 minutes, then 30 minutes, then one hour per day. So it's just about staying on that bike and just keep pedaling.

Ron:  I have another question here. Kris. Heather says, "Great show. Did I miss the Facebook page name?" So I'm actually going to jump over to Facebook now. And, Heather, thank you for that, that question. And can you speak, I feel like I'm going down the line of social platforms, Kris, but I appreciate your, your point of view. Can you talk to us about how you view Facebook for your business and how you utilize it?

Kris: Again, a different tool. Yeah, it has to be handled differently. It's got its own quirks and it's got its own features. You know, there's an easy route is to just let Instagram paste everything to your Facebook page. But what I love about Facebook is there's some of the business features, the shop, the services. If you go on our not link and you look at shop and services, we've loaded up on the side there. All our Nest products, all our Logic, fully installed prices. People click on this, it hits us up on a direct message and that's where we're able to schedule installations. Everything is transparent. The prices, unless you're on the dark side of the moon, maybe the price might change. But if you're in our location and it's unlikely somebody from Scotland is going to ask us to come and do a Nest installation. They see our location, they know where we are. And just again, that's a huge amount of content that's sitting there in the digital world with my business name, the brand name, the price, the location. It's just that huge collection of content and services and products and keywords. And it takes time. It takes hours to put all those things up there, but it's done and it's there and it's not going to disappear.

Ron:  And I did just get a correction. I had said, Heather, I misread, Heath. My apologies. Did not mean to misstate your name. It was Heath, not Heather that asked that question. Heath says he's following you on Instagram and I'm going to put this other question here just to make sure I get it right. "We're ready to go. But we decided to add a new company to our product lineup. So we had to shift money to bring on the new dealer kit." Not quite sure I know what Heath is talking about there.

Kris: It shows that he's, that he looks like he's performing this pivot, he's shifting. He's changing to a different track. And that's encouraging to hear that people are starting to adapt and reposition for 2020 or 2021 which I'm a big fan of people looking ahead a year ahead, two years ahead. You know, we've got a big 2021 target, so I can't share everything about it. But, trust me, it includes a lot of eCommerce, includes a lot of content, both video, audio heavy, heavy consumer facing focus.

Ron:  Stephanie just posted. She said "You guys are killing it on social media!" So it looks like Stephanie's giving you an attaboy, good job for being active on social. Now, right around the corner here, Kris, we have CEDIA. Are you going to come over to this side of the pond and visit us again? Maybe help One Firefly put up our booth again?

Kris: Going to bring some tools this time cause I felt a little bit vulnerable. I didn't have my tool belt with me. But yeah, I'll give you a hand Ron for sure.

Ron:  No, no, no, I'm just saying for those that are watching. JJ and Kris on, I want to say Tuesday or Wednesday pre show somehow they got some badges and got onto the show floor and were moseying about. And it was perfectly in tune with John and we were struggling. We had this 16 foot tall structure that we had to raise and we were fairly thinly staffed and JJ and Kris jumped into action. And if you navigate to our Facebook page down to year ago, you'll see it. But they were very kind and spent an hour or more with us and helped us get that going. So I won't forget that Kris, that was great.

Kris: Oh, it was it was a pleasure and yes, I will be at the expo. It'll be my third year there. I'll be one of the few Brits that actually do make the journey. It's easy for us to just go to ISC in Amsterdam and soon to be Barcelona. That's an easy trip. But I feel that I can get even more resources and more information and more knowledge transfer by attending a 100% smart home show. Not a portion of the show, which is commercial and a portion that's residential like ISC. I'm going to the expo for the third year because it gives me 100% smart home. I'm open for the week to just soak up everything I can for that week. It's a huge business development week for me. But this year's a little bit different. I'm actually going as press because of The Digital Ramble. We're going to cover it in a way that it's never been covered before with the show. Watch this space, but we've got some amazing ideas for how we're going to document and capture CEDIA expo 2019 and we want you to be a part of it Ron and we'll be talking about that with you soon. But we're, myself and JJ, we've got an apartment which is 500 meters from the expo center. We're there from Monday to Saturday.

Ron:  You wouldnt' be setting that apartment up as a studio would you?

Kris: Could be, it could be a bit of a hangout for people. They can come and hang out and be interviewed, joining us for breakfast, joining us for a late night chat. So just watch this space. I'm going there for Customised as well. I'll portion a small amount of time to see the things that I need to tick off. But yeah, it's a big work trip this year with The Digital Ramble.

Ron:  Oh, well that sounds exciting. Well, I typically like to end our shows with this. You know, most of my customers are not customers. Most of my guests are in fact integrators or they've worked with integrators. And so I feel that you probably have experience and or ideas or recommendations for those that are listening that would appreciate guidance or words of wisdom. And so if you were speaking to integrators that are listening, is there any parting pieces of advice that you would mind sharing or you know, kind of giving them your 2 cents?

Kris: For me, it's always been about pushing myself beyond the comfort zone. That comfort zone could be in the creation of content. That comfort zone could be putting in the hours that you think you don't need to put in. But believe me, those extra hours after 6:00, 7:00, 8:00 PM, that's the difference between your business and maybe a competitor in the region. And the creation of content will give you that unique selling point over anybody else in your region. And don't be afraid to, to challenge the status quo. Don't be afraid to question the blueprints that others have set out for you. Make your own path. Don't be the sheep. Change direction if you feel it's the right thing for your business.

"In business there's just so many opportunities to quit because it's hard. And so when you put in the extra effort and you demonstrate that grit to ultimately pivot if you need to pivot and change if you need to change so that you can thrive."

Ron:  That is awesome advice. And you know, I've told many on this show and those that know me. You know, in business there's just so many opportunities to quit because it's hard. And so when you put in the extra effort and you demonstrate that grit to ultimately pivot, if you need to pivot and change if you need to change so that you can thrive. You know, those are the businesses that stick around. Those are the businesses that you see year after year. So that's that's great advice. Well, Kris, thank you, sir, for being a guest on Automation Unplugged and I am sorry that it took so long for us to get you on the show. But you know, there's scheduling and coordination. But now that I've had you on the show, I'll just, I'll tell you now, I definitely would love to have you back. So hopefully you'll be willing to do that in the future.

Kris: Yeah. And likewise, Ron. It's an open invitation to appear on The Digital Ramble this year at CEDIA expo. We'd love you to join the show and we'll certainly be visiting your booth.

Ron:  Awesome. Well I look forward to it when you can disclose more details. Please do tell, I'm all ears. Awesome. Kris, it was good to have you on, sir.

Kris: Thank you Ron. Take care.

Ron:  Alright guys. There you have it. And with all this talk of social media, I'd be remissed to not ask you to go over to Instagram and follow One Firefly. We are quite active. We post five days a week and we have all sorts of fun content up there and whenever we go out to events, we also post live. We are not quite as busy and active as Kris is. And Kris is a model in terms of utilizing the social platforms for the promotion of his business and really helping his audience. I think that's pretty awesome what he's doing and the other folks there in the UK are doing. So definitely keep an eye out for that. But please do follow us. And on that note, if you want to get more information about One Firefly, just visit us on our website or give us a call. And as always, it was a pleasure to spend some time with you and I will see you next time. Thanks everyone.

Show Notes

With a plethora of experience in utilizing social media as a small business owner through various platforms, Kris Gamble is an integrator with Customised from the UK making big moves in the smart home industry.

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:

• The Digital Ramble podcast with Kris and JJ
• Fab Five Products: Nest, Ubiquity, Lutron, Logitech, Sonos
• Utilizing #LiveInstall hashtag to gain traction on Twitter

You can also learned more about Customised at customised.uk.com. Make sure to follow them on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.