#372: Curtis LeMaster on the Training Gap and the Future of the Smart Home
In this week's episode of AU, guest Curtis LeMaster of Control Designer joins Ron to discuss why he believes overselling and overpromising is the industry's most damaging habit, and what it looks like from a technician's side of the business.
This week's episode of Automation Unplugged features Curtis LeMaster, owner of Control Designer, a custom integration firm based in Steamboat Springs, Colorado that handles control, networking, lighting, shades, and audio for high-end residential projects.
Curtis came into this industry in 2000 as a bookkeeper and worked his way into programming, eventually handling AMX systems for professional golfers, rock bands, and an Abu Dhabi prince's private theater. He started Control Designer in 2003, moved the business from Orlando to Colorado in 2015, and today runs a small, deliberately focused shop that takes on a few clients at time.
In this episode, Curtis and I discussed:
- Why he believes overselling and overpromising is the industry's most damaging habit, and what it looks like from a technician's side of the business
- His take on CEDIA Expo this year, including the training gap he keeps running into when he brings new hires to the show
- And Why customers have started asking for less control instead of more, and why he thinks that's the industry's own fault
Whether you're running a two-person shop or a team of fifty, Curtis brings the kind of perspective you only get from staying in the game long enough to see the cycles repeat. So settle in and enjoy my conversation with Curtis LeMaster. Let's get started!
Transcript
Ron:
Hello, hello there. Ron Callis with another episode of Automation Unplugged. Here in Florida, I'm coming to you from, I guess maybe I'm recording late summer, early fall. It's actually just starting to not be miserably hot here in Fort Lauderdale. And we are now on the other side of CEDIA. So CEDIA was a few weeks ago, and my guest and I are going to talk about CEDIA and what our observations were, what our takeaways were, among many other fun topics. So as always, today's show is brought to you by my day job over at One Firefly. So if you do need any help or assistance with your branding or marketing, visit us at onefirefly.com. And as always, I want to say a special thanks to the team at One Firefly that are working so diligently to help us put out Automation Unplugged. I'll name drop some of the people involved. Allison and Carlos and Rebecca, and I know there are others throughout our org that touch various aspects of the show as well. So thank you all, appreciate you. And it is our pleasure here at One Firefly to put out Automation Unplugged for all of you. I hope you continue to enjoy the show, and remember, always drop us a line, give us a call, shoot us a message regarding guests that you'd love to see on the show, as well as topics that you'd love to see us cover. And we are going to continue to work diligently on producing just great content for all of you. So with that said, I'm going to introduce today's guest, and that is the one and only Curtis LeMaster. I've known Curtis for more than 10 years. I've known him when he was in Florida and now that he's out in Colorado. We'll hear about that transition story, in fact, and how he went from one market to the other. Curtis's business is Control Designer, and you can find them at controldesigner.com. And let's go ahead and bring Curtis in. Let's see how he's doing, and let's get the conversation started.
Ron:
Curtis, how are you, sir?
Curtis:
I'm doing great, Ron. How you doing?
Ron:
I am good. Just so that everyone that is watching or listening knows, where are you coming to us from?
Curtis:
I'm coming from my bedroom.
Ron:
Okay.
Curtis:
In Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Champagne powder. Not much champagne powder out right now. A lot of rain, but beautiful as always.
Ron:
We're just coming out of summer. What is summer like in Steamboat Springs?
Curtis:
It's usually dry. This year it was too. Probably worst drought we've ever had. Worst snow we had. Come off of worst snow we've ever had.
Ron:
That's peculiar.
Curtis:
Our lakes and rivers are down to nothing. I've never seen that in all the almost 12 years I've been here. But we're getting quite a bit of rain right now, which we need, we pray for. And it's definitely bringing all the animals down. We're having all kinds of bear issues because of the drought. So it's definitely an odd year, but our summers are beautiful. The city does an amazing job of keeping us busy with all kinds of activities all the time. There's people always here. For a town that's only, like, 17,000 population, there's never just 17,000 people here.
Ron:
It's a good little town. When you say bears are coming down, like, what are these? Are these black bears? Are these grizzly bears? Are these polar bears? What type of bears are these coming down?
Curtis:
We have black and brown bears here. And it's three times. They've killed three more, three times more bears this year. There's been three times more bears been transported somewhere else because of problems, and it's just, it's really bad. I mean, it's like someone's dog. You can drive down the street and you'll just see them out and about and getting into trash and all that kind of problems that we're having because they're all coming down from the mountain.
Ron:
And why are they coming down? It's because there's no water up in the mountain?
Curtis:
Because of the drought, the normal stuff that they would normally... And this is what I've read. I'm not an expert. But what I've read is that because of the drought and the lack of rain and the lack of snow, the snow from the winter comes down and fills all the lakes and rivers and all that. It also is what flourishes the stuff that they normally eat.
Ron:
Okay.
Curtis:
And since it's been hot and dry, that stuff has not been growing in abundance, so therefore they're starving.
Ron:
Oh, no. That's definitely not good.
Curtis:
So they come down here and we get annoyed with them, and then next thing you know they're getting killed, so it's a really sad thing.
Ron:
That is sad. When does the snow normally start dropping in Steamboat?
Curtis:
We almost always have snow right around Halloween. That's, like, our first snow is usually around Halloween.
Ron:
And it'll start around...
Curtis:
It's starting to get colder now, which is nice at night, but not cold enough to get any kind of sleet. So, but we need the rain. We've had pretty much non-stop rain off and on for three days, which is nice because we need it.
Ron:
That's positive.
Curtis:
I mean, if you saw pictures of what we consider lakes or reservoirs where people boat normally, it's like down to nothing. I mean, you can see the bottom of the lake where it normally was.
Ron:
Wow. That's wild.
Curtis:
Yeah. It's a serious problem.
Ron:
Yeah. That's the whole climate change. But that's a different podcast.
Curtis:
Yeah. Yeah.
Ron:
Tell us about Control Designer, just for people that want to kind of understand your business. You've been doing this a long time, so maybe just kind of give us the breadth of how long you've been at this, in the integration game, and what's the business look like today, and what type of projects do you do?
Curtis:
I've been doing this over 25 years. And I came in as a programmer of AMX, and then did Crestron. And there probably isn't a system I haven't touched except for Josh. I hate to say that, because I love the guy from Josh. But I don't know why we haven't, but I've done everything else. URC. I can go way back. Landmark. But we evolved to Control4 through the hardships, like going through a recession, going through COVID, just down to a few employees. I'm 58 now, so I have a lot of knowledge, so I continue to do it, but I'm very picky now a little bit of what we take. I don't take on a lot of projects. We've got one huge project right now. It's probably the biggest project I've had in a while. And we've got some other customers that keep giving us business, and there's always service. Being in business 26 years, I mean, there's always service. That's the bubble of technology. It's going to change, needs to evolve. You can need a new access point. There's a new model out. It doesn't matter what it is, or that failed, or it's out of warranty now, and then of course it fails. Or anytime you're dealing with a software platform, you're always going to have those gremlins in the system.
Ron:
Well, it's one of the benefits of being at the game so long, is that you do have that customer base, and if you've maintained a great relationship with that customer, that's going to continue, I imagine, to fuel your business with work and workflow for forever if you do it right. Is that your point of view?
Curtis:
No, I agree. I've always become good friends with my customers. You can't always make everybody happy, and sometimes it does come down to the bottom dollar. But I'm always looking out for the best interest of the customer and the client and trying to provide what they want. And I think we discussed earlier, my biggest take back from this industry, I think there's a really bad problem of overselling and overpromising, especially by people that have no clue on how all this stuff comes together. It's mainly they're just salespeople. I'm a technician first, so you come to me with, "Curtis, I have this and this is my problem. I need somebody to solve it," and I'm the guy because I love that. I enjoy that. So the big project, it's nice having a big project again. I'm a little worried because there's a lot of things coming at me from all different directions, but I honestly feel there's no better person than me. Because I have the experience and I've done a lot of this stuff before. So it's new equipment, new difference, new software, new connections, all that kind of stuff. I couldn't imagine someone else doing it.
Ron:
Yeah. Well, you're...
Curtis:
I don't know if I've made it very far yet, but I've got a lot of experience, that's just it.
Ron:
You got a lot of purchased lessons. When we last long enough and we stay in this game, there's just a lot of experience, a lot of notches on the belt. So that's, I think, nothing to be ashamed of.
Curtis:
And that makes you more valuable, actually. I'm probably 100% at getting out, and that's a big deal, too. I know a lot of people in the industry that get in and finally say, "I'm done." And they just sort of walk away. Which is terrible for the industry, because I've had those people call me and say, "Hey, Curtis, now I'm stuck with this. How do I fix this?" They don't want to spend any more money. It's a bad situation. They're already not happy. You're coming into a loaded gun, you know what I mean? And some, I say yes if I feel that we could do it, and their expectations are obtainable based on my knowledge. And some of them, again, you have to walk away and say, "Hey, I don't know what to tell you."
Ron:
Just so that our audience has a perspective, where you're coming from, like, what's an average job? And when I mean that, I mean, like, dollar value of the job, maybe what's in the job, and what's a bigger job? Like, if you said you have a big job, you don't have to name that job specifically, but what's a bigger job? And I only say that because for some guys, they might normally do a $5,000 job, and the big job is a $10,000 or $20,000 job. And for other guys, their small job is a quarter million, and their big job is three to four million. And none of that's good or bad, it's just what is the normal for you, the type of work that you like to take on as a control designer?
Curtis:
All right. Let me set the record straight. I told you I'm 58, I only have two employees, so we're a little skewed compared to the company in our town that's sort of dominant. But he has multiple employees, multiple trucks. I would imagine his overhead's just crazy. He's got an office, everything like that.
Ron:
A name that will not be named.
Curtis:
Yeah, exactly. And he's a good guy. I like him. He's great. I guess I'm too nice. I'm too nice of a guy. Anyway, I would say, normally, service alone is a couple thousand. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. A normal service, if it's not go there and reboot the system and it works again, anything that needs equipment or an upgrade or something like it is a couple thousand. A big project, like the project we're doing, is over 500,000. I mean, that's a big project, and I've done quite a few of them. But I'm not doing a lot of them. I'm not doing like four or five or six. I would assume the guy in town here is doing multiples in order to support what he's doing, right? But one's enough for me. And honestly, my opinion, it's a steal because of the fact that I'm only focusing mainly on them, they're going to get the best output. I can't see how somebody... And here's the thing that I noticed when I started in the industry. There was a company when I first started that was dominant, too. I've seen so many dominant companies go under. But anyway, they were cookie cutting.
Ron:
Hm.
Curtis:
So they would take the programming, because I'd come behind it, it'd be the same programming on the next job as the next job as the next job. And then they would comment out what they're not using, and it was the craziest thing you ever saw. And it was so hard to decipher because you were like, "Holy cow, there's so much code in here, and what is actually running and what's not running, and how do I fix the problem?" But I don't see how you can cookie cut unless you can say, "We're going to use this AC unit. We're going to use this heat unit, and we're going to use these lighting, and we're going to use these shades." You know, if you can pick and choose, which you never get to.
Ron:
Yep.
Curtis:
I don't see how you could do it unless you had really, really good people. And I'm sorry, I haven't met many of them.
Ron:
People have preferences for different flavors of ice cream, and you sell a flavor of ice cream, and it's going to be very right for that type of customer. And then other customers have different flavors of ice cream that they desire, and sometimes they choose the wrong or the right flavor of ice cream, and then they say, "Yeah, I'm never going to try that flavor again."
Curtis:
I hear you. Yeah, but let me stop you there, because I hear you on that.
Ron:
Yeah.
Curtis:
But my opinion is most clients don't know, and they're really relying on a builder or an architect based on their relationships on who they use to do this.
Ron:
That's fair.
Curtis:
And I tell people, I love when people come to me, it's like a Samsung TV, right? Even as simple as that. "Curtis, why are you selling me this model? Why aren't you selling me that model?" And it's as simple as that. And I'm like, "Because I feel for the money and my experience, this model is where I would start." And unless I put these two models right on the wall together and you get to see both of them and go back and forth, would you ever know a difference? If there is a difference, you know what I mean?
Ron:
Mm-hmm.
Curtis:
And so that's just the way it is. It's almost like competitive bidding. Here in Steamboat there's not a lot of competitive bidding, which is crazy. When I came from Orlando, it had to be three or four quotes on anything over $100,000. Here, it's not that way. But I can tell you there's a negative to that too, because it's never apples for apples.
Ron:
Yeah.
Curtis:
And so when you're getting a quote here and saying, "I'm going to do this, do this, do this," unless somebody's going to take a spreadsheet and say, "Okay, these are the things they are using, and now we see exactly what they're getting." Now how do you choose? And that's just like government bidding. Who's going to pick that? You're going to pick the lowest person? Why would you want to pick the lowest person? This is a house you're going to live in for hopefully 10, 20 years, right? You don't want to pick some moron that's going to put some stuff in there. I had a job in Orlando. I'll tell you a horror story. So this monster house, right? I went to this house, the guy wants lighting. It was a retro job. I put together a quote. He turns the quote over to somebody else. The guy underbids me by 25,000, gets the job. He gets a deposit, orders some stuff, puts some stuff in, walks away. And so then the guy comes to me, he says, "Curtis, here's my dilemma. Can you help me?" And I said, "What was the quote?" He gave me the quote. And I go down the quote and I'm like, "He took out this, he took out this, he took out this, and all those things that he just took out, you can't do this system without those things." And not to mention he walked away, because he didn't know what he was doing. So it's hard when you're doing bidding.
Ron:
Well, everything you're saying is the dilemma, the customer's dilemma that they've had with our industry since our industry was born. Is it not? It's how does the customer know?
Curtis:
No, I agree. For 26 years, I've had clients that tell me their system never worked. Never worked. I hate that. I hate that because you know stuff works, but the whole thing never worked. And I don't know if that's us or them, or they don't know enough, or their expectations are too high, or it goes back to that thing that I'm telling you, that people oversell. "Oh, can you do that?" "Yes." "Can you make the audio do something and video do this, and blah, blah, blah?"
Ron:
"Oh, yeah, we can do that."
Curtis:
Sign the check. Sign the dotted line, right? Give me the deposit. I'll turn it over to a whole other guy. And that being me. So I do the sales, I do the programming. So it's completely different. I'm going to turn it over to another guy, and that guy's going to, like... You said what?
Ron:
You bring such an interesting perspective to the table because it's as if, you know, you as a self-proclaimed programmer, although you are also your business owner and you're the salesperson, but you identify as a programmer and more technical. I could see the version of this feedback happening inside of businesses all over the world in our industry where the technical team is looking at what promises or commitments or overstatements or overselling the sales department just did in order to secure that project, and now they've got to go figure out how in the world to make it happen, what that salesperson just committed to. And that lack of discipline in sales, that is probably very common in our industry, and the burden that is then placed on a project management team and a system design team, I would also call that probably one of the more common points of friction in our industry, and it's been that way for decades.
Curtis:
No, I agree. I'll share another interesting thing. So I worked for a company before I went on my own, and they came to me. I was working for an internet company, I got let go, and that's a whole other story because I got divorced and my boss was her brother. But anyway, my friend came to me, they had just landed a $750,000 job back in '98, '99. That's a massive job, okay? And they said, "We need a bookkeeper. We're way over our heads. We need a bookkeeper." They had a salesman, two tech guys, the owner. I came in as a bookkeeper. They realized I had a computer background because I took a bunch of computer classes in college. I always was sort of a computer nerd kind of guy. And they were like, "Would you be interested in programming? We've got to figure out how we're going to program this big job that we did." And that was right when Landmark got bought by AMX. And so I'd already been sent to Landmark training, and he was like, "We need to make a determination whether we're going to go Landmark or AMX NetLinx." And I'm glad we went NetLinx today because I know better. At that time, I didn't really know a lot. So I went to Advanced Landmark, which one of my good friends from that class was in CEDIA, and we always butt heads at CEDIA every time. We laugh about how we were in Advanced Landmark together. But anyway, and then I went to NetLinx training, and I had to make the determination. He's like, "Curtis, what are we going to do? Are we going to sell them Landmark, or are we going to sell them NetLinx?" I don't know. We're definitely selling them NetLinx. NetLinx was definitely the first processor networked system, way before Crestron, where you could do multiple processors and put them all on the network. And Landmark was not that way. Landmark was like the normal go-to, where you would network one processor and then you had all these auxiliary things talking to one processor, which you just think of the speed and everything that you have to do, right? Multiple rooms and everything, audio, huge house. I mean, this thing had a hallway that really was like the size of a football field, man. You could go down this whole hallway. On the very end was a theater, on the very end was the master bedroom. In between it, you had everything else, and here we're trying to control all of it. Lutron everything. So where was I getting? What I'm saying is after I left him, and this will be interesting for people that are listening, is he landed this project, and then we landed Creed. Our sales guy met...
Ron:
Creed, the band?
Curtis:
Scott Stapp. Yeah, Creed, the band. He met Stapp, and Stapp was sold. We did every member of the band. So we landed them, then we landed Lance Bass from NSYNC.
Ron:
This was when you were in Orlando?
Curtis:
Yeah, this is when I was with the first company.
Ron:
Okay.
Curtis:
And I was programming it all. And we met Creed, and man, it just took off from there. I mean, we got backstage passes, we were going to see them when they would practice, and we became friends and buddies with them.
Ron:
Wow.
Curtis:
And then my boss was trying to live that life, and went out and bought a Mercedes and all this kind of stuff, and money started going poor.
Ron:
Yeah, it usually doesn't go well.
Curtis:
Yeah. And so eventually I left. But one thing I thought, why I'm coming back to make a point, is when I was trying to make a go, and customers would call me and say, "Hey, he's not returned my phone call. I need some service." And I'd go out there, and being a business owner, being inquisitive, I would always ask some of his big clients, I would be like, "Not to bring them on, but just sort of, why... I mean, I sit here and hear you constantly complain about him. Why do you continue to sign jobs with him?" And one client gave me the most interesting comment. He's like, "I know he's screwing me, but at least I know where he's coming from. And I know how to fight it." And I was like, "That's a weird answer." You know what I mean? You're paying all this money for a guy that you feel like he's doing you wrong.
Ron:
I'm not sure that sounds like a great or sound management strategy.
Curtis:
I know. I didn't understand it either, but again, it was a tiptoe. I didn't have any ill will towards my old boss, and I was just coming out to do programming tweaks, so I wasn't trying to take work away. But eventually, like I said, I did programming for multiple years, and then it eventually got to where I was taking customers. It just happened. But I just couldn't believe that answer, and I got somewhat the same answer from other people, and that's why I sort of went back to the whole thing. I think a lot of the clients, it depends on, you have two different types of clients. You have clients that have multiple homes and they might have a system in another house, so they have experience. Or you have people that come into money and are finally buying their big house and have no clue, but they've seen their friends have it and they're like, "I like that. I like that." But they have no clue how to put it all together. And so there's a lot of influence is what I'm getting at.
Ron:
I want to ask you about something you and I did just recently, which is you and I just went to CEDIA.
Curtis:
Mm-hmm.
Ron:
Along with a few thousand of our industry friends. And it was in Denver, and that's close to you. Actually, I'm not great at geography. How close is Denver to Steamboat?
Curtis:
Three hours away.
Ron:
Three hours away, okay. So when you go to CEDIA, you go to Denver and you stay. You stay for a couple of days?
Curtis:
Yeah. I came down Monday and stayed through Saturday.
Ron:
So this is a really important, big question. I'm going to have to put an image on the screen for this. For our listeners, I'll describe what's on the screen here. For our people that are watching, they'll see it. But you and I are in this picture. You're in the center. I don't think I have a pointer in this picture, but you're right in the center of this picture.
Curtis:
Yes. I'm right in the center. I've got a pickleball paddle up against my stomach. There you go. And Jimmy. Big Jimmy. Big Jimmy's head's right above my head. I'm in a black hat.
Ron:
Jimmy from Origin, who's like, I don't know, 7'8". You can see his full head above your head.
Curtis:
He is a stud.
Ron:
Yeah, he's an amazing pickleballer. And I'm there on the front row. I'll let people just try to find me.
Curtis:
Yeah, it's a good group. Just to go over that a little bit, the person squatted below me in the Fila shirt is Michael Storch. We used to be competitors, but this is the way I am. I've always been friends with my competitors. So we're still good friends. We had kids together on the swim team together. Then you go four people over, there's the owner of Josh. So like I said, he's a great guy. It's a great group really, honestly, and I'm going to throw it out there. If you go to CEDIA, you better go play pickleball. We've got beginners to advanced and, honestly, my opinion, it was the best thing. And it was one of the main reasons I went to CEDIA.
Ron:
I'm a big fan. This is my second year doing the pickleball tournament. So for those of you that do go to CEDIA, again, what is it? CEDIA's in Las Vegas next year.
Curtis:
Vegas. And they're already talking about having it again. It's going to be a little pricey, so we're trying to figure out how that's going to work out. And again, I probably will go. I've been to multiple CEDIAs over 26 years, but I'll probably go again just for the pickleball, honestly.
Ron:
Yeah. The pickleball...
Curtis:
It's a good group. I like the people that I play with. I like John who runs it. And it's a lot of fun.
Ron:
Yeah, I agree. It was a blast. And I did intermediate last year and realized I had no business calling myself intermediate, and so I self-demoted myself to beginner this year, and I had a lot more fun. I was not the best. I was not the worst. I was able to do some fun rallies and run around, and it was a lot of fun.
Curtis:
I don't know if it's a guy thing or something. It becomes competitive pretty fast.
Ron:
It does. I can say at the beginner level it was like everyone was just really proud to get a rally going. Like, it was just all around celebrations, both sides of the court. Like, if we got that thing back and forth like five, six, seven times, it was just pure eruption of joy. Like, "Man, aren't we amazing?" Meanwhile, you guys are over there on advanced trying to kill each other.
Curtis:
I've met more people playing pickleball than anything I've ever done in my life.
Ron:
Wow.
Curtis:
And I know that sounds strange, and I go to church and everything like that. But I mean literally, my daughter, when we go out, she's like, if I run into somebody, she's like, "I know you met them from pickleball, didn't you?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I did." I've met so many people. Because you're playing with you and three people. I always play doubles, and if you're playing open play, you could play easily with 40 people in one session.
Ron:
Yeah. How often do you play?
Curtis:
I don't play as much as I was playing. I've been traveling a lot lately. But normally I play three times a week.
Ron:
Okay. I don't play as much. I do other activities. I run and lift. But I'll fit a pickleball game in every now and again. I'm not as serious as many. CEDIA, you mentioned pickleball to you was the highlight. So what was your takeaway on CEDIA? What was interesting? What were your observations?
Curtis:
We discussed before, I think my biggest disappointment is training, and the lack thereof of training. Almost all the training this year was based on stuff that has changed, things that are coming out. There wasn't a lot of training on... I've hired two new people this year and, like I told you, I always take my new employees to CEDIA so they can see, hopefully jump on the bandwagon like with me and see how amazing this industry is, and just see it all in a big show and maybe get some education. But I'm always looking for boot camps and I find out two years in a row, because I took my guys last year, because again, we're in Steamboat. Since it's Denver, it's the cheapest affordable way for us. I'm bringing my new guys out and there's no basic training. And I was very disappointed with that. I know I can train them, but it'd be nice for them to learn from other people so that they make up their mind on which is the best way to do certain things. And then as for CEDIA itself, it's definitely...
Ron:
CEDIA Expo.
Curtis:
Yeah. I quit a long time ago spending a lot of time on the floor. I just don't get much from it. I go for education, so I line my whole day up with Samsung, Sonos, Lutron, all that kind of stuff. I do make it on the floor, but I can tell you I never walk away with anything amazing, where I'm like, "Wow, I'm so glad I went on the floor and I saw that." You know what I mean? It is nice, there are things, like new stuff that comes out, it's nice to be able to see it, put your hands on it, put your eyes on it. You don't get to see how it all hooks up or all that kind of stuff.
Ron:
What about the relationship side? I know from many that's what they will talk about as one of the highlights, at least from the floor, is that you get to rub elbows with the executives of all the brands, and that access is hard to gain otherwise. Is that, from your perspective, is that valuable?
Curtis:
That's a hard one. I don't know, maybe if I was a bigger company. Maybe. I've never had that camaraderie. I've had sales reps that are decent and I've become friends with them. I mainly like seeing people in the industry that I just know. Like if I run into you, I'll sit and we'll talk, and we'll talk shop, and how's your life, and all that kind of stuff. But being a smaller company, I rep big manufacturers, right? I've been a Lutron dealer forever. My rep never talks to me, never calls me, unless there's a problem.
Ron:
I think they're going to after they hear this.
Curtis:
Yeah. So I hate to say that, I'm not here to throw anybody under the bus, but I'm being honest about it. Again, I'm probably not doing the sales that my competitor's doing, but I'm still in the industry.
Ron:
So is it cart or horse there? Is it you need to do bigger business and then they pay attention to you? Or if they paid attention to you, would you do more business?
Curtis:
Well, I will give them that. I don't think that would make a difference. You know what I mean? The way I am, again, I'm a technician. I'm not a salesperson. And that's my problem with CEDIA. Most of the people they bring to CEDIA are all salespeople. And I don't believe a lot of them. And then when I ask them, "I'm having a problem. I'd like to talk to a technician," they don't bring the technicians. And that's what I like about CEDIA, if I can get an answer, like, "We're having this problem from XYZ. What do you recommend?"
Ron:
Mm-hmm.
Curtis:
If I could pick somebody's brain about that without having to make a phone call and hope I get somebody that knows what they're doing today. And that's even big, big companies. And I understand it's hard, when you're selling that many products, to keep a really good service team.
Ron:
Yeah.
Curtis:
And most companies have five or six really good people, but they have like 12 people answering the phone, right? So that's my problem with it. You know what I mean? I walk Lutron by myself because nobody really sets an appointment with me. I walk Control4 by myself because nobody sets an appointment with me. But you know me, I stay busy too, so it could be me just not following up with them.
Ron:
That's interesting. Is there a show format in the industry, all options from your reps, from buying groups, from InfoComm, Lightapalooza, distributors? Is there any format of an industry event that you think does offer great education or is super valuable from your perspective?
Curtis:
Not that I'm aware of, no. And I've been to CES, CEDIA, InfoComm. I've been to all of them, and I haven't seen it.
Ron:
Is that an industry problem, or is that... I'm just hearing you, when you and I were talking just before I pressed record, you had talked about you grow your techs, you grow the people on your team. And that's great because they do things within your vision of how to execute work. And I've heard versions of that very successfully from many integrators of all shapes and sizes nationwide. And I'm wondering, though, if that also is the bottleneck for our industry, and why we're struggling perhaps to grow faster. Or, you know, so many small businesses are struggling to get good people, is because you have to grow your people, right? There's no great machine to send them into and have them come out fully trained and ready to go and be productive. What's your thought on that?
Curtis:
I think it starts from the head, right? You need somebody that really knows what they're doing. Somewhere headward. It doesn't have to be the head salesperson, but it has to be somewhere that has a clue on how to put this stuff together, how to orchestrate it, how to document it, all that kind of stuff. And then I definitely think employees are crucial.
Ron:
Employees are crucial. My point is how do you train them to do the work?
Curtis:
Train employees. No, you can't just have somebody that's going to just show up. You need somebody that knows what they're doing. I mean, we're in information technology, right? That's the industry we're in. People are coming to us thinking we're going to know what we're doing and how to do it.
Ron:
But where do we go to get them trained? So I'm agreeing with you, we need them to be trained. But gathering from you, there's not a great place.
Curtis:
The only avenue I have is on the job and through somebody training them in-house, meaning us. I mean, yes, I would love to have done the boot camp thing, like I said, but that would give them a nice entry and some thought process and some questioning, and maybe they come back and go, "Okay, well, they showed us this, they showed us this," or, "When would we use this? When would we use this?" Because our industry's always changing, right? It's constantly changing. We've got a new Cat 6 or a new Cat 7 or a Cat 6A, or now we've got this new crimper. We've got fiber, we've got Cleerline, we've got all these kinds of different ways to do fiber now. There's new network companies in the industry, all this kind of stuff. Not to mention lighting. You want to talk about CEDIA? That is the only thing on the show, people selling light fixtures. I mean, honestly, I understand we're evolving into that, and Lutron started all that, but there's not a lot of companies doing that except on the high end. We're not doing the light fixtures. I would love to do the light fixtures, but you're taking away from the electrician. And they usually get picked before we do, so that's difficult unless you have the electrician in-house, you know what I mean? So it's constantly changing, so how do you keep up with it? Especially if, say, this year we've done most of this, but now next year somebody wants us to do this. Just like when I watched your podcast about the landscape lighting.
Ron:
Yeah, the webinar with Patrick from Aspire.
Curtis:
Yeah. Could I do landscape lighting? I'm sure I can add it all and make it make sense. Do I want to do it? That's the question. Am I not already doing enough? You know what I mean? That I've got to pull off all this, and now I want to do that. And again, if I had a lot more guys and I was like, "Okay, I've got a landscape guy, and I've got an audio guy, and I've got a theater guy," and they excel in that, I've sent them to training on these things and I let them run with it.
Ron:
Well, Curtis, what has you most excited looking forward in the industry? You've been at the game for a long time, and you know your stuff. When you look forward and think about doing projects and doing work, what has you excited?
Curtis:
Well, my vision was, and I still haven't done this, is to design a smart house.
Ron:
Hmm.
Curtis:
From nuts to bolts. Not based on rooms and massive house and all that kind of stuff. If you've ever seen the movie Her, or some of the movies that have come out showing, and everybody knows that's where technology's going. House will talk to you, it'll be intelligent, it will do things for you before you even think about it. And I want to work on that. I want to work on the evolution of control in the house, and I have yet to get that opportunity. I don't know whether I'm going to have to do it myself.
Ron:
Why not do it in your own house?
Curtis:
Do it on my own house. Yeah, I thought about that. In my next house I thought about trying to do that.
Ron:
Now you have to pay yourself to do that, so you've got to negotiate there.
Curtis:
But you understand what I'm saying, evolve. Come out of the cookie cutter box that we do. I mean, if you look at houses and industries and how houses have been built, what is really important? Is it more important that your room is a 15 by 15 bedroom, or is it more important that they put a lot of time and effort into your interior design and all that kind of stuff, but is that really working for you?
Ron:
Mm-hmm. Is your house helping you? So what do you think that looks like? What's the future of... Is it technology? Is it AI? What has to change to go from the current state today in the world to this vision you have of that home of the future where the home knows you, interacts with you, thinks in advance, your home's two steps ahead of you?
Curtis:
Well, a lot of people are still scared of all that, right? They're all scared of anything making a decision for themselves. And so I think that will hold everything back. It's sort of like these Flock cameras, right? Some people are for them, some people are not for them. I'm afraid you're going to know too much information about me. Well, if I'm not doing anything wrong, what does it matter? But the whole thing is, are people going to let that... A lot of people don't like to do cameras inside their house. Why? Because they don't want...
Ron:
What's your prediction? What do you think? Will we land there?
Curtis:
I think it's inevitable.
Ron:
Okay.
Curtis:
It's inevitable with the phones, what phones can do today, and I think we'll eventually move away from phones. I think it'll be something else. That's why I thought the Her thing was a pretty interesting concept of it all.
Ron:
Mm-hmm.
Curtis:
It was tied to somewhat of a phone, but it wasn't really a phone, and it was an earpiece that worked all the time, and you had somebody talking to you and asking you questions, learning about your life and helping you. It's almost like your intelligent assistant.
Ron:
Yeah.
Curtis:
You know what I mean? We all need assistants. You have Allison. I told you I need one. I don't have one, but I'd love to have one. And I just think it's inevitable as people start...
Ron:
How far out do you think that is? Is it a year? Is it five years? Is it 10 years? 50 years? 100 years? You're the control guy.
Curtis:
I mean, I'm 58.
Ron:
You're the control designer, Curtis.
Curtis:
I know. I'd love somebody to come to me and say, "Hey Curtis, this is a great idea. Let's do it." But the whole thing is, you would have to go back to, like I said, cookie cutters. You'd have to do that, and if you ever got control of that and you said, "Okay, we're going to use this. We're going to use this. Now what are we going to do for this? We're going to use this. We've come up with this. This will work. How is the system going to know where you are and all that kind of stuff? We've come up with this." So that's the thought process. Think of that. Think of the whole system and how the system evolves, and then think of the house. So how long? I'm 58. I would love to see it before I go meet my maker. But the whole thing is, I keep thinking it's going to evolve faster. Look how long it's taken to get a self-driving car. I mean, they've been working on it how long now, and they can't seem to perfect it. So I don't know. When you ask me, I think it's a combination of AI, everything. Everything we've learned. But there's going to have to be a lot of doors open, meaning people are going to have to allow it.
Ron:
I think there's a lot of paranoia. Curtis, you started in this industry as a programmer, and you've evolved from programming into entrepreneurship and running your business now for a number of decades, but with it from a programming foundation. What does a new programmer entering the industry in 2026, what does their career look like? What's their career trajectory look like?
Curtis:
I don't think it's the same as when I entered. I mean, when we were doing AMX and Crestron, at one point it was true code.
Ron:
Like writing line code, yeah.
Curtis:
It's not true code today. It's all basically drag and drop, connect the dots. So it evolved. There's still an industry for it, because there's a lot of people afraid of laptops. There's electricians that sell Lutron but don't program it because they don't want to be responsible for it and they don't want to learn about it. So there's always a need for programming.
Ron:
Mm-hmm.
Curtis:
But it's almost not like programming anymore. It's specific, like you would go and learn Lutron Designer. You would go and learn the Control4 software platform, or you go and learn Josh's, or you go and learn Savant's. Just throwing names out there. They have their own software platform. It's no different than, I've used Stardraw to do drawings and stuff like that, and you've got to learn how that software works and what you can do and what you can't do. So I definitely think there's a need for it. For dealers out there that are not using somebody that's trained in some of the software, I think they're really missing out, because a lot of the software is doing more and more things, and they're opening the door. I mean, Lutron software is just crazy what it can do now compared to the old days. It can do engraving in-house. It can show you all the devices. It can almost give you a quote. It can do drawings and all that kind of stuff, and that's evolved based on what people have needed, right? So yeah, I think if you want to come into the industry strong, programming is definitely the way to come because you're always going to be needed.
Ron:
What do you think the state of the industry is when you look ahead? Like, what is it right now, and when you look ahead, is it better or worse or the same?
Curtis:
You know, when I first came into the industry, it was all about control. And the price of control was crazy then. I mean, you couldn't get into a control system for under $100,000. And it was just because the price of everything. The prices have come way down. Options have come down, and we've gone through a lot. I think we went through everybody had to have control to, my opinion today, most people want it simplified. "Curtis, I want it simple. I don't want to be stuck behind somebody and service calls for the rest of my life, and just a money pit. How can we make it simple?" So it sort of changed, and that's my concern about the evolution of control when we're talking about the evolution of control. As I was telling you, we really need more control, but it needs to be smart control. Efficient, fluent control, not overbearing control. You know what I mean? And so if we're going to more simplified, people are cutting the cords and not using cable boxes so they can just watch apps on their TV, and then it all comes down to the network. So when you're talking about control, control used to be the number one thing that you would get in the industry with. Somebody'd go, "I need control, and you're a control guy, and I need you." And now it's like, "I don't need control." And it's like we've gone back.
Ron:
Is that good or bad, or is that just the customer maturing? What is that?
Curtis:
My opinion is that the customer sees control as a pain, and that's our fault. That's the industry's fault. Because look at the phone. Look at your iPhone, right? It's gotten more sophisticated every year, and people are not going, "Wait, wait. It's way too complicated for me." No. They put a lot of thought into how it all works.
Ron:
They drop $2,000 every year to get the latest model because of some feature.
Curtis:
Yeah. They spend a lot of time teaching people how to use it and how best to use it and how to change it and how to make it work for you, and that's what we're not doing in control. And then the other thing, too, with control is, this day and age with firmware updating itself, if there's a firmware bug that we don't even know about, next thing we're getting calls, right? And I've seen it. I've seen it with software. I can go to a house and make a simple change, walk out, stuff doesn't work. And it's very frustrating even as me, as an integrator, because you want the client to be happy. You want to walk away with them being happy so they keep calling you and say, "Hey Curtis, I want that new widget, I want this. I'm super happy. You've got to use Curtis," all that, right? As a smaller company, that's the best marketing tool we could ever have. So that they come to the website because, "Ooh, I heard about Curtis." So I hope that answers your question.
Ron:
Yeah. Right now, we're more than halfway through '26. We're now, what, 60, 70% of the way through the year. What's your opinion of the state of, I'll call it economy and projects? Are you seeing small, medium, and large projects in abundance in your market? Are you seeing more of one type of project or another project? Like, what are you seeing? And I ask a version of this question, by the way, to everybody that comes on the show.
Curtis:
Mm-hmm.
Ron:
Because everybody then is able to give what they're seeing right now in their market, and so it helps me and the audience kind of understand the state of the economy.
Curtis:
I definitely think the business is up, at least here. You know what I mean? Buildings going everywhere. I'm not 100% sure whether they're using an AV company or not, or a control company, whatever you want to put a tag on us. But since we're moving back into that simplification that I told you about, now it sort of opens the door. That electrician thinks they can do it, right?
Ron:
Mm.
Curtis:
And which is interesting, because that was our big CEDIA thing and everything. We started, like, electricians were taking our work and we were trying to show our worth. And now it's sort of evolving back to simplification and I'm just going to hang a TV, put a sound bar on, and boom, that room is done. So it becomes so simple even a homeowner could do it. Now I'm not saying a homeowner could pick it. The place I'm renting right now, there's two sound bars here that are just garbage. And they're sound bars. They don't connect. They don't stay connected. They sound terrible. Do you see what I'm saying? I'm here to say there's a lot more thought to it all.
Ron:
Mm-hmm.
Curtis:
But some of these, especially here in Steamboat and the builders, everybody's trying to make as much as they can off the project. I've always seen we're the first people to cut. It usually goes architect if there is one, builder if there is another one, interior designer if there's one, electrician, and then we're way down on the totem pole.
Ron:
Are you seeing that trend? You said you're busy right now in Steamboat. Has it been that way for months or quarters, or is this like a newer trend where it seems more active? Business is better right now than it's been in the recent past?
Curtis:
Well, building is way up. Okay? So therefore we're going to... You know, even if we're only getting that fraction, say we're getting 40% of the homes, right? Of the new construction. If building goes up, our business is going to go up.
Ron:
Hmm.
Curtis:
I'm not here to say that it's changed from 40 to 60 this year.
Ron:
Mm-hmm.
Curtis:
That more and more people are calling us. But this industry in Colorado is completely different than Florida. I mean, Florida, I did a project with 35 TVs and the TV had to be in every room. Here you do two or three TVs. That's it. Even in big houses. Most people are outdoors. They bought for the view. They want to be outside riding bikes, enjoying the summer, fishing, skiing, whatever it be. So a lot of our business here is mainly networks, lighting, shades, audio. Those are things that are definitely on the up here. Whereas in Florida, like I said, it was completely different. They have the AC, everybody's usually inside all the time, and they're trying to make every room a media room.
Ron:
We'll close out here. I'm mindful of time. I know, because I've known you for so long, I know you've done some wild and wacky jobs all over Planet Earth. Would you be game to close us out with maybe a fun story, a fun install you've done somewhere in the world? And tell us about that project.
Curtis:
Yeah. Well, I've done projects everywhere, and being a programmer and when I was a freelance programmer, I would get calls from all over the place. But definitely the one that's the craziest was I got an opportunity to go to Abu Dhabi. And there was a guy in Orlando that I knew well that had his company, and he had family there. And they offered him this theater. Okay? And this is all I got told, it was a theater. And I'm like, "Okay, I can do a theater." And he comes to me, he goes, "I'll pay for your flight, I'll pay for your hotel, and I'll give you $3,000." I'm like, "Sold," right? I go to Abu Dhabi for free and go out there and program for four days. I mean, you don't even have to ask me again, right? But anyway, unbeknownst to me till later, he was like, in order to get the project, he had to sign on to do a lot of stuff that AV companies don't do: plumbing, overseeing...
Ron:
What?
Curtis:
Painting, plaster, all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, "Okay." But anyway, so let me tell you the story. So we get on a flight. Abu Dhabi from Orlando, it was like a long flight. So we fly into London, fly from London to Dubai, and land in Dubai. Craziest place I've ever been to in my life. Here you are flying in, it's nothing but desert, and you fly into this like oasis. And basically these big buildings and amazing stuff, right? Get on a freeway where everybody goes like 120 miles an hour. And you go down to Abu Dhabi, which Abu Dhabi's supposedly where the elders live. And Dubai's like their Disney World. We go down there, get in a place, they're playing their religious music every day at certain times, and that's different, right? And then we get in a car and we go over to the site, and I didn't know anything about it other than what I was supposed to do. So you come to this first gate, and there's security guards that have uniforms, but no weapons, and they search you, search your car, and you go in the door, and then this gets you into another corridor of stuff that's guarded by this one gate, and then you get to the next gate. The next gate, they've got like semi-automatic weapons. They're like army guys, right? They check you again, and then you go through that, and in there he's got a bowling alley. Like a bowling alley. Not a lane. Like your bowling place down the street. There's a whole building with just bowling lanes, and he's got this crazy pool. We pull up to this thing, it's a theater. It's like a movie theater. It's not a theater, it's a movie theater. It's massive, right? And we show up, and all the employees that are doing like the construction part of it are sleeping on the ground, and they all wake up and start working on this building. And we go in, and it's a movie theater. Now, keep in mind this was back before the war, right? So this was in the '90s, late '90s. We couldn't fly over Iran. We had to fly around Iran and Iraq and all that kind of stuff. And so we go in there and there's just like 50 rows of motorized seats. Okay? Now, today that's normal, right? You can go to a movie theater and all of them have reclining seats, motorized seats. Back in '98, to have a theater with that many motorized seats was crazy, right? Because those things used to cost like $10,000 a seat. And all they did was lean back. They were like La-Z-Boys. They didn't do much like the ones do today. Anyway, so we go in there. He's got this big movie projector that somebody gave him that can do film, and then he's got a huge, big old projector. I don't even know who made it now, but it was massive. It looked like the trunk of a car, right? And he was going to do DirecTV to it. So all I had to do was program DirecTV to it, make it work, so he could control it from an AMX touchscreen down by where he was going to sit. So I'm working on that. And then they had this bar. You could come into a bar, somebody would serve you drinks, and they had a TV that was showing the movie there too, so that when they came out to get drinks, they wouldn't miss anything. Really honestly, if you think of control, it's super easy. So we're there. We're working on it, da, da, da. And then these guys come in. We've been there pretty much most of the day. These guys come in, which I found out was his security team, right? We never saw the prince. These guys come in, security team, they look like Run-DMC. These guys had Adidas outfits on, gold chains hanging, everything like that. They were like Run-DMC. I swear it was like three or four of them. And instead of phones, they had walkie-talkies. They come in, they're like, "Everybody, everybody must leave. Everybody must leave." I'm like, "What? You've got to leave?" And he's like, "Everybody must leave." That's all he said to us, so we had to leave. And everybody left. Even the ones that were sleeping the morning of. Everybody had to get out. We found out the next day that the prince was supposedly supposed to come into town that night, and he didn't. He sent somebody else. So, but anyway, we show up the next day. And we found out, or I walk in there, remember all these seats, right? There had to be like 100 seats at $10,000 a seat. Somebody had pushed them all up to the front, and there were guys in there with jackhammers jackhammering the steps because he wasn't happy about the slope of the steps. They didn't cover the chairs. They didn't do anything. There's chairs shoved up against the screen, and then basically a guy going, "Eh, check it." And we're talking just money, just ridiculous. It's just like they don't care, right? You'd never get away with that in the States. If we didn't cover and wrap those chairs...
Ron:
You'd be fired from that job in a heartbeat.
Curtis:
Yeah. If we didn't cover and wrap those chairs and take them out and all that kind of stuff, then we would've been fired. Anyway, so we go there, and I'll tell you another funny thing too. So this shows you how old this is. We needed supplies, and that was going to be the problem. We needed some kind of ends or crimps or something. I don't remember what it was. So we're looking it up, and the way it is in Abu Dhabi is the government gives them money because of the oil, right? And they're required to keep a job. Now, they can own a job. They don't necessarily technically have to work, and then they're also required to shut down during the middle of the day because of the heat. And most of the companies that sell... Like, if you sell tires, they're all next to each other, because they don't care if they sell or don't sell. All they have to do is have a business. So you'll go to the section, and it'll be like tire, tire, tire companies, and you can pick one. Anyway, so we found a mall. There was a RadioShack. That shows you how old this is, right? And we were like, "Okay, we're going to go to RadioShack. We'll go at lunch." And to us it was hot, but it wasn't that hot. It was hot. I wouldn't want to be outside the whole time. So they shut down at a certain time, and they open up at a certain time. Unbeknownst to us, until we found out later, is it doesn't matter if you're RadioShack or if you're McDonald's, sometimes they don't show up. Because they go home and don't come back. So we're sitting there outside of RadioShack at 2:00 or something, whatever it's supposed to open, right? The guy comes strolling in around 3:00. Somebody comes in, lets us in, we get our parts. It was a whole other world, is what I'm getting at. You're just like, "Wow, this is a crazy world here."
Ron:
Definitely foreign.
Curtis:
Now, to end it off, let me end it off. So the guy comes to me, the guy who's my friend, right? That had the project. He's like, "Curtis, I'm a little concerned. There's a high amount due at the end, and I want to make sure I get paid." And I'm like, "Okay, what can you do?" I'm like, "Oh, shoot. I got an answer for you. I'll do a pop-up screen on the touchscreen, and we'll put a date on it, and it'll come up and it'll say, 'If you see this message, you need to contact us about payment.' Real simple. It'll come up, doesn't matter what they do. They can unplug the system, all that kind of stuff, that pop-up will come back up and not let them do anything. Okay?" So I come home, no thought of it because I got paid, right? And I get this call from him and he's like, "Curtis, it popped up." I'm like, "Yeah." "And they called." And I'm like, "Yeah. What do you want me to do?" And he's like, "How do we turn it off?" I'm like, "I've got a code, and you enter the code. There's a little keypad that pops up, and you enter the code. It goes away. It'll never happen again. It's real simple. It was a real simple program I added to the system." He's like, "What should I do?" And I'm like, "Man, that's on you, man. I'd get paid. That's what I would do." He gives them the code. Never got paid.
Ron:
Why would he have given them the code?
Curtis:
I don't know. I wasn't part of the conversation.
Ron:
Wow. Well, there's your lesson, people. I always like to leave these shows with a lesson or takeaway. And that lesson is get paid. Get paid.
Curtis:
Get paid. If you do the work... I would say this, there's a caveat to that. If you do the work, and do the work right, and provide what you're supposed to provide, get paid.
Ron:
Get paid. Amen. Curtis, people that want to follow you online and get in touch with you, where can we send them?
Curtis:
You can go to our website, controldesigner.com, or you can reach me at
Ron:
You can curse here. We're allowed to shoot the shit.
Curtis:
Even if you want to shoot the shit or just... I really like the challenge of our industry, so if you want to talk about anything, like if you have a project and you're concerned about it, I would love to hear about it.
Ron:
Awesome. And you want to put your number out there?
Curtis:
Yeah. Our number is 407-492-9350. That's my mobile. Leave a message or a text. I'm a big text guy. If I don't know who you are, it'll probably go straight to voicemail, as I get a lot of unsolicited stuff. But I will get back to you.
Ron:
Curtis, it's always a blast to catch up with you. Thank you, my friend. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for joining me on Automation Unplugged.
Curtis:
Thanks for having me, Ron. I really appreciate it.
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.
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