This week's episode of Automation Unplugged we’re bringing you our guest Chris Palmer, Managing Partner at AV Design Consultants.

About Chris Palmer:

Chris joined AV Design Consultants back in 2011 and has been instrumental in growing AV Design from $1.25 million in revenue and eight employees to an estimated $5 million in revenue and a team of 21 in 2024. With nearly two decades of experience in the industry and a degree in computer engineering, Chris brings deep expertise in network system engineering and control systems—along with a hands-on management style that keeps him active in the field.

In the webinar, we’ll cover:

• How the custom integration market is evolving in Northwest Arkansas amid rapid growth and new customer demands.
• The rise of lifestyle solutions like lighting control and motorized shades and the decline of centralized video distribution.
• Strategies for breaking through growth plateaus, including the power of peer networks and buying groups.

SEE ALSO: Show #282: Strategic Business Planning: Unlocking Growth in 2025

Transcript

Ron:

Hello. Hello there. Ron Callis with One Firefly and with another episode of Automation Unplugged. And as you can tell from our holiday lighting, this is our special Christmas edition. We're recording the show a little bit before Christmas, but I know we're dropping it, I think within a week or two of, the holidays there. So I had to tune this, turn the special lights on. Just for all of you. And today, I've got a long time, actually friend, industry friend, expert, great customer and a great operator. And I'm happy to bring him to all of you for this episode of Automation Unplugged. So this is going to be Chris Palmer. He is managing partner of AV Design Consultants out of Springdale, Arkansas. So let's go ahead and bring in Chris. Chris. Hello, sir.

Chris:

Hey man, how are you?

Ron:

Merry Christmas.

Chris:

Merry Christmas.

Ron:

I know it's early to say Merry Christmas, but when everybody's going to be watching this, it's going to be, or listening, it's going to be Christmas time.

Chris:

Oh yeah. You know, people still already have all the decorations out and their houses decorated, so I don't think we're jumping at too much.

Ron:

It is. Yeah, I'll just say that we, my wife and I were in Home Depot in late September and they already were bringing out the Christmas trees.

Chris:

Yep.

Ron:

I think they hadn't even done Halloween. They hadn't even done Thanksgiving. They were already bringing out the trees.

Chris:

No, it's tough.

Ron:

It's it's crazy. All right. So for those that don't know you, Chris, and they don't know AV Design, what is your role at AV Design and tell us a little bit about the business.

Chris:

Yeah. So, so I'm managing partner along with my partner, Paul Crawford, and he's the founder of AV Design Consultants, CEO. AV Design has been around for about 16, 17 years. It will be 17 years in February. I believe, I've been here 13 this month, so I've been there, been here the good majority of the time. I've got to come in from a technician level and work my way up. So, I mean, I kind of started at the bottom and now I'm able to be, you know, an integral part of day to day here. So my career kind of started, I mean, as a kid. My father was an electrician, so I've been in the construction side of things my whole life, helping him on weekends, holidays, summers. And so, when I went to college, I asked him if he wanted me to carry on the family business. He was never bigger than, you know, a two, three man shop.

Ron:

What was the type of business, Chris?

Chris:

Electrician. So I was, I was fixing to go to school and I was asking him, you know, do you want me to go electrical engineering, University of Arkansas or anything like that? And he was like, no, I think you just need to find your own way. You can come back to this if you need to. So I enrolled in computer engineering at the end because that was, you know, the height of everything, right? Graduated high school in 99. So everybody was in, I mean, to computer engineering, computer programming, jumped in. Loved multiple aspects of it, right? But at the same time, I wasn't, I wasn't built to be the guy that's just sitting in a cubicle pounding away code and is happy with that aspect of it. I liked the hardware side of it. And then I had a college roommate that worked at Circuit City. So he was always bringing home speakers and stuff like that. You know, interconnects big giant Sony Trinitron CRT TVs, you know, and we were playing with them and I was getting to see that. I was also getting to see the exposure of the low voltage industry in our market. So I'm in Walmart country, right? That was the boom of Walmart growth. They were bringing in vendors, into this community from all over the country. The rule was if you sold the Walmart, you had to have a local presence. So, I mean, everybody that sold the Walmart had to move here. We're getting a lot of transplants. And, you know, people were coming in this tiny market from all over the country, Chicago, New York, California, Arizona. I mean, everywhere, right?

Ron:

I mean, any product that was sold in Walmart had to have a physical presence?

Chris:

Yep. 100 percent still that way to this day. So it was a boom for our, for our market. I mean, tremendous boom.

Ron:

Wow.

Chris:

Yeah. So obviously construction just went through the roof. But people are coming in and asking for more high end finishes, technology in their house that they were used to elsewhere where they were coming from. And, and it was still sort of a burgeoning aspect of where we lived. So I got to watch a couple of big players locally. Digital Entertainment Systems is one of them, you know, Kevin Lambidonis and them, got to watch them in these homes pulling all this wire cause I was helping dad out with the electrical side of it. And then sort of just, It sort of clicked that I was really interested in that as a segue and having the college roommate that was always playing with the electronics. So when I graduated college with a degree in computer engineering, I tried to go intern at a local company. I got through three stages of that interview in the last interview process, you know, sitting at the big boardroom table. They were like, okay, if you don't get this job, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'm going to segue off my dad's company and start a low voltage company. I did that cause I didn't get the job. So I did that, did that for three and a half years. And then that hit right around, you know, the market collapse housing crisis of '08. So I then merged with another small competitor, you know, a frenemy in the industry. We worked together for another three, three and a half years. And then we were absorbed with Paul and AV Design. So that's kind of how I made my way here.

Ron:

The merge... Was it a merger? Was it an acquisition?

Chris:

It was an acquisition. I mean, at the, at the end of the day, it was an acquisition. So he bought the assets and the people that came over. When we came over to AV Design, we were five deep and I'm the only one still here. Unfortunately, for, for that aspect of things, but it was good. It was good, growing and learning and doing all of that. And, you know, Paul's been a tremendous mentor for me in those 13 years. So took me under his wing and taught me everything that he knows he's been in this industry for, three decades or more from the, from the Tulsa, Oklahoma market. So yeah. And then now we like to think of ourselves as a market leader, for high and residential locally. We still dabble in commercial, but we're predominantly residential.

Ron:

With that background in computer engineering. Did you initially do the system programming?

Chris:

Oh, I've done everything. Pulling the wire, termination, programming. I mean, to this day, I still do probably more infield work beyond just design and sales. I mean, I'll do high level programming for Lutron or Savant. And I mean, I've got great, we've got great technicians that they can take that ball and run with it, but I'm still involved in those every once in a while. Probably more than I'd like to be, but it's hard for me to also let go of it because, because you've done everything. So you know how it's supposed to be done. And you know, I think most people in this industry are OCD. And a little bit of control freaks. And so again, that's probably...

Ron:

I have a couple of clients named Control Freaks.

Chris:

It's a good name. So, yeah, I mean, that's, that's kind of the history of me and the company. So.

Ron:

That's super interesting. Help us understand the type of projects that AV Design does today. Like what's a typical job? Like what's a small job? What's a normal job? What's a big job?

Chris:

So that's, I mean, that's part of our, our evolution, right? I mean, our, our general average job ticket. Size has gone up quite a bit. I mean, we do a lot of small jobs, right? We're in a market of just now, in Northwest Arkansas, I mean, we call it the Northwest Arkansas metropolitan area. It's not like what you're used to with DFW and things like that, right? But we're just a market of surpassing 500,000 people.

Ron:

That's amazing.

Chris:

In that same avenue, we've got 32 people moving here a day. We're supposed to hit a million by, I think, 2034, 2037, somewhere like that is what they're predicting.

Ron:

Wow.

Chris:

So we're going to double in size in that period of time.

Ron:

I hear opportunity when I hear...

Chris:

I feel like there's a lot of opportunity. And that's what we're trying to, to make sure we set up and prop ourselves up for, but I would say our average job size is mid level residential. Our sweet spot's probably 25, 30, 000. Right? But last year we finished our first million dollar project. So we do everything in between, you know, when I'm meeting with a customer, I'm talking about the fact that we can do the ultra high end or I mean, it's not relevant anymore. But when I was younger, I would just, I would use this pitch that, you know, we'll hook up your grandmother's VCR. I mean, you're not seeing that anymore, but that we do a lot. We did a lot of small jobs, right? So, when you're looking at it from a business perspective, that's why you see. When we collaborate with integrators elsewhere in the country, you know, and you're finding out what their top line revenue is, they may be doing it with a third of what our staff is, right? Because they're doing much higher average price jobs, whereas we do a lot of small jobs, medium jobs, and big jobs are becoming more of a regular occurrence as well. But, you know, we're sitting at, you know, 23, 24 employees. And hopefully going to cross the 5 million threshold this year. So we've got a good average per employee, but again, it's smaller because we do so many of those small jobs that require more resources because of the market.

Ron:

This, our conversation today, Chris is post the election. There's now a new president elect. I'm curious, at a big picture, high level, what was the marketplace like for you in Northwest Arkansas in 24? This year. And what are you, what are you forecasting kind of for 2025?

Chris:

So, I mean, we were up 10%, I think we're clocking to be about 10 percent up this year. We didn't see a flat line or a pullback, even though I know a lot of colleagues have voiced that's what they have seen. And again, I will sit there and put that out there as a result of the fact that you know, so many people are moving into this market every day. There's no shortage of houses. You know, builders are selling houses as soon as they can put them on the ground. That can be good and bad. I mean, it's a steady flow of business for us. It's also, I mean, they're not, a lot of them aren't like trying to diverse, you know, differentiate themselves. You know, they're not doing, we're kind of having to pull them into the higher level technologies that everyone, all, all those buzzwords right now with lighting and fixtures and you know, lighting control, the lifestyle products.

Ron:

So you're not seeing so much demand for that, but you're able to promote it to them and, and get some of them to move with that?

Chris:

Yeah, we're seeing more demand, right? But again, I feel like in other areas, I sort of assume that there's, there are builders that latch onto those concepts and those technologies in order to differentiate and be that high level builder, right? We have, we have plenty of great builders around here, so don't get me wrong, but it's just, again, they're churning products quickly as they can. So some, some are implementing that type of technology because they're being asked for it. Some are finally starting to drink the Kool Aid because they do want to differentiate themselves and be looked at in a different light than just, you know, every other builder in the market. But it's been sort of a slow burn, right? It's been a very gradual uphill climb that is now becoming more commonplace. We're seeing way more lifestyle products in our budgets with the lighting control and shades, rather than giant automation systems. Though, and distributed video and systems like that. I mean, we still do them, but they're shrinking, right? And that's a, that's a function of, of the technology. It's a function of, you know, customers that we've had previously get, you know, burned by the technology, you know, the transitioning from component video to HDMI burned a lot of people with those initial...

Ron:

You're talking about the, the centralized distribution of video. You're seeing less of those systems. Are you also seeing less whole home control and more, you know, app based control solutions?

Chris:

Yeah, we really are. I mean, you know, we've got the control Companies beating down our door going what's going on with the numbers? All of that and...

Ron:

What's your answer?

Chris:

Uh oh.

Ron:

Don't worry. None of them are gonna watch or listen.

Chris:

I mean mostly Control4, Savant, and we're now getting into Crestron. From a control perspective, those are our go to's. We're trying to minimize that, you know, you don't want to, you don't want to have a bunch of vendors and try to spread that business out to everybody versus focusing on a single vendor. But in the, you know, the 17 years of our existence as AV Design, we have had to, you know, diversify, right? Not put all your eggs in one control basket. We've gone through learning and learning curves and hardships with Control4, with Savant. And we weren't even allowed to get Crestron in our market for the longest time. So that's a newer, newer one for us. And when Home came out, that seemed to be a viable solution that we could talk about. And we're excited about it.

Ron:

So they do have upgrades and new versions of Home at Crestron. Have you started to deploy that or at the early stages?

Chris:

No, I, well, a little bit of both. We had some learning curves with them and product and pricing and availability, obviously in COVID. Cause I, that's kind of when we started that conversation.

Ron:

COVID was rough, I think for Crestron and a lot of the folks out there.

Chris:

Crestron and Lutron were the worst. I mean, for us, by far 52 weekly times or more, you know, that's, that's crazy.

Ron:

Hard to run a business that way, especially when you were used to, you know, just in time.

Chris:

Yeah, we were doing just in time. I mean, I think most people try to run a business like that lean and not not be sitting on a lot of inventory. So, we were definitely a victim of that. I think something that we'll get into later in the conversation that that collaboration with other integrators and other markets. You know, being able to lean on people to get product outside, you know, directly from the manufacturer, somebody has got something sitting in the warehouse and they were more than happy to help out. I mean, that, that absolutely saved us during COVID. No doubt about it. Having some of those lifelines to be able to leverage and rely on were huge for us. Not getting really burned on multiple projects.

Ron:

So just to wrap this topic, what. This year, you mentioned you're about 10 percent up. What, what are you forecasting into 25? And, and I mean, how are you and Paul feeling about it?

Chris:

We've got a good pipeline right now. I mean, I think that we got, a good book of business already in the queue and it doesn't show any signs of slowing. So we're we're optimistic for sure. You know, he and I have had internal conversations and part of our discussion today is about scale, right. And, process implementation. And I think I could honest, honest to God, Ron, I could care less if we grew this year, we're flat, just to focus on some of those things so that we can make that next bump up without it being so painful. So.

Ron:

Let's talk about that. And that, and that's the idea around, you know, any business. I can talk about my business in the same way, but we'll talk about your business. There's, there seems to be this imaginary glass ceilings that we hit these plateaus and, you know, often these plateaus feel insurmountable. And then at some point you gain counsel in your life or you, you learn some things and you break through it and then you realize there's the next plateau. What, how has that played out for you, for you guys?

Chris:

I think it, pre-COVID it was, it's kind of crazy, right? Most people look at COVID as being completely terrible and a train wreck. For us, that was, that was some of our biggest growth. So, but pre-COVID we were stuck on one of those glass ceilings. We were right, you know, call it 2.75 million, you know, 15, 16 employees. And we had three years in a row that almost looked like carbon copies of the same PnL. You know, profitable, good, good jobs. But we couldn't get past that 2.75 level. And then it felt like COVID happened. We saw the growth where we got over that $3 million threshold. And then we boom, next year, we went straight up to four and that we saw tremendous growth. I mean, it was, you know, 30, 30 to 40 percent one year, year over year. And that was so painful. Right? And so I feel like we're kind of, I don't, we haven't plateaued, hit another plateau. But dealing with that, that kind of growth over the last three years, call it, I feel, I can feel that we're on the verge or it's just, it's hard, it's hard. We're feeling those pain points of missing internal processes, filling that middle management and being able to delegate job and business responsibilities to where it's not all on the principal's heads, right? So I think that's one of our biggest challenges that we're seeing. And I think we're finally at a point where we're Super proactive about it. But like I said, even if that meant that we had to flatten out or even pull back, for me it's well worth it to just get it right. Get those processes built so then we can get off to the races again. I don't know. We're not gonna... We may not have that luxury from a perspective of not having the revenue continue to go up.

Ron:

Certainly sounds like there's going to be increasing demand.

Chris:

See, that's exactly right. You know, and I...

Ron:

You are allowed to say no,

Chris:

You're right.

Ron:

It's very hard to say no.

Chris:

Yeah. Yeah. I suck at that. I suck at saying no. So, I mean, as, as a hunter and being in sales, I mean, I'm just not quite wired that way. Right? You always want to, you always want to close the deal, and meet new people, and have new exciting projects come to you, or have an opportunity to be involved in them. And, you know, that's not ceasing here, in the near future from what we can see.

Ron:

Chris, what were some of the solutions you put in place that led to you breaking out of 275? Like, so what, what, is there anything specific that you guys did or that you figured out that you think ultimately added up to you being able to break into the $3-5 million range?

Chris:

Oh, I mean, I think our security division had grown significantly. We started a security division before I even came on. So probably 14, 15 years ago as a stop gap, you know. Again, we were, we were an automation company and we were integrating with local, with the local companies and it just. Most, I mean, we had good interactions, but there were times also where it became a, you know, a pointing match of blame if a project didn't go off without a hitch. And Paul decided that, okay, he's had enough of this. We're just gonna, we'll start an internal division. And we were, I mean, we, we labeled it as boutique security, right? We were not going, we weren't door knocking. We were not going after the big players like ADT and Brinks or any of that. We didn't, you know, we were, we weren't. We were allowing customers to buy the equipment. We weren't trying to, to monetize, you know, long term contracts and roll their equipment into their monthly. I mean, we were, we weren't doing it like any other security company really, right?

Ron:

What was the goal then? I'm curious. Cause you've mentioned a few of the things that would be the, the normal things you're trying to achieve such as like long term contracts.

Chris:

It was service, right? That's what differentiated us with so many customers. That's what's grown us in that aspect is our service on a security side of things. We've got a lot of customers that have gone with the big boys and just felt like they were, you know, a number or whatever else. And it was all about the get in, get out, hit them with the RMR. And, we just sort of grew that organically, took care of customers. It was an easy transition. So if we're getting into a home and we're talking to somebody about an audio system or, or any of the technology that we were currently doing, it was easy. Easy, it felt like, to get on the transition security because they had bad experiences. And they, whatever experience they had with us, even on a structured wiring perspective or an audio video perspective, they were like, Oh, you guys do that too. Well, we'll absolutely give you that business.

Ron:

So it became additive recurring revenue, almost like give me recurring revenue because you were being trusted because of your quality control or AV work.

Chris:

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it just became rolled right into the design. So again, we're, we're selling the hardware for margin. We're not giving it away. And, people, I mean, of course, there are customers that said no, but most of them, you know, oh, you know, had open arms of like, yes, please take, take over this. Cause I'm, I'm tired of it not working or it'd be broken or, Hey, I set it off and nobody called me, all of that stuff. So it became sort of an additive to our day in and day out business, but it's grown significantly and become a big part of our business. So I would say that was sort of, step number one. Another thing was, you know, diving headfirst into software, you know, management software. We've been an iPoint customer for quite some time. I think finally, when we got that sorted out from a design, sales, project management, billing aspect. I think that cleans things up quite a bit on on our end and allowed us to get some more of that natural growth and churn more business. And then upselling, you know, just changing the direction of how we sold the customer solutions that we provided. Sort of where that sweet spot was. And I think where it's, which has taken off more, you know, in the last couple of years, for sure, with that statement of control shrinking is the lifestyle products. The lighting control, the motorized window treatments, things that people touch day in and day out multiple times a day. I feel like they get such a different value prop from it. Okay, I'll paint a picture. You have a customer. I've had customers that I've built multiple homes with, right? When I first got into the industry, they may have been a bigger automation customer, nice dedicated media room, whatever that might be. And when they build again, especially if they had some of that HDMI distributed video pain, anything like that, right? Once a customer gets a little bit of pain, they go to that next project and they're like, you know, the media room was great, but what we spent on it, we used it six times a year. The value prop isn't there for us, right? We're going to shrink that back. We don't need that. We can have focus those dollars in more of a multi purpose room, but it's usually going to shrink that budget down, right? Customers that are exposed to lighting control and motorized window treatments. They don't ever pull back on that budget in the next project. They're maintaining or they're growing. And then we've got these customers that have never experienced any of that. So if we can paint the picture of experience and what their life is going to be like, how it's going to truly help it? You know, they're much more apt to spend those dollars in those buckets. And we've seen that take off. And of course, if you're getting into that here, your average job cost is going to continually go up.

Ron:

So would it be fair to say, and I'm making an assumption so you could say, Ron, no, you got it wrong. So you're, you're seeing a transition in your project sales. You know, in some cases, with a little bit less control or, or you already mentioned video distribution, so I'll just name that as a category, but you've replaced that with what you're calling lifestyle solutions where you're able to make the sale, there's more demand, there's margin. So is it, is it really that you are witnessing your business evolve?

Chris:

Completely.

Ron:

It's not that you're making less money or you're making less sales. It's just different. It's a, you know, today's different than five years ago, different than 10 years ago of what a project looks like?

Chris:

Well, yeah, everybody knows that we don't have the days of having, you know, centralized video distribution hardly ever anymore. We used to have, you know, a handful of cable boxes, a DVD player, a DVD server, an Apple TV or whatever it was, you know, you had five, six, 7, 8, you know, devices that you were distributing throughout the home. You can get all of that functionality for the most part on demand with streaming, you know? Whether you have a dedicated Apple TV or Roku or whatever it might be and we're back feeding audio. I mean people still want high end audio, right? So distributed audio is not going anywhere, right? But that, that was a big, big nut on, in terms of budget when you had those high end distributed video systems. So that's almost completely eroded. I mean, we, we know the control has changed, right? I mean...

Ron:

And that's only because the consumer has changed, right?

Chris:

Yeah. What they want, what they need. And so those dollars are just getting shifted, but the feedback that I get from customers, I mean, doing this almost 18 years, you were around for this when we sat there and we were putting in high definition sets, right? When people could finally afford them and they didn't cost what a car did at your local big box store. The first time you hooked up a high definition TV in someone's house, they went from basic to HD cable and just their face lights up and the joy that they had, you know? I absolutely, you know, love that. I thrived with it. And then you go through a period of time where you're selling really cool ass, high budget systems, but they break. Or a customer has a perception that something's always down, no matter what you're doing from a design perspective. This was before we had IP power management and some of the other tools that we have. So you're rolling trucks to reboot a damn cable box and the customer thinks it's the control system not working, but it's a source level issue. All of that has changed that perception of what they want, what they feel like they need, and then just the evolution of technology changing. So this on demand media streaming has made it so easy that people don't need all that, those other big black boxes anymore. So we're trying to find ways to keep, you know, our job numbers up, and we're doing that with those lifestyle projects. And people are getting that glow again, especially if they've never had lighting control or shades. I mean, you put that in their home, they press one button, it sets the whole house, the shades are going up and down. They get good light. I mean, we can talk about that with, with the push on fixtures. And it's just game changer for them. And they light up again in that same way that they did for me when I was the trunk slammer and trying to, you know, hang HDTVs.

Ron:

So I want to pivot here, Chris, you guys have been members of a buying group for a long time.

Chris:

More than a decade.

Ron:

Yeah, more than a decade. Longer than most. It's funny, you were. You mentioned, just before we started recording, you mentioned that you guys have been, you were members of HES before they became ProSource.

Chris:

Right.

Ron:

And, it's funny, back when Andy was running HES, he came into my office, I want to say like in 2008, to say, Hey, Ron, you know, do you want to join HES? Sadly, I ignored him. I didn't even know who Andy was or what HES is. I was playing pickleball with Andy this weekend. So we were having some laughs about that. What are buying groups? What you're in ProSource, talk to the audience, just a little bit about what those groups have been for you guys and how it's been maybe part of your process. Cause it's even gone deeper from ProSource or groups into actually then subgroups and cohorts that, you know, you have a peer group that you guys really help each other.

Chris:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I am a giant proponent of the buying groups, right? You get to a certain level. I mean, I think we, I think any business over a million dollars should be looking at a buying group. But getting into HES and then it becoming ProSource was pivotal for us to go from that, what we call, you know, that our mom and pop stage, even though we still have some of that in our blood. To where we are now, right? The one thing that even further made that a value prop for us was the peer groups, right? I mean, the buying groups on their own, if you're doing the right thing they pay for themselves. You're going to make more money on it, more margin if you're smart about it and just look at it, right? But then finding people within those buying groups that become friends, peers, cohorts, you start sharing best practices, you're sharing business tactics, you're not directly competing with them. So it just opens up those lines of communication. And that has been single handedly the biggest benefit to our business, I can say, hands down. We met Paul Starkey and Steve Firszt, who went on to do Bravas and then now VITAL and all of that via HES. They helped us get our accounting and our thought process in order. We were one of the original Bravas members. We bailed out before they sold and, you know, you can look in hindsight, all you weren't on that? We weren't on the good side of that one, but, so many props to those guys. But yeah, it's just those peer groups are what, you know, keep us fresh, keep us thinking about what we're doing, right, what we're doing wrong, and then we're leveraging and leaning on them for these issues that, you know, what I call issues that we have in growth and scale and things like that, because a lot of those guys have already been through it. You know, we were sort of the small fish in that group of integrators, we've kind of grown up more and been in the middle now, and there's other small fish that have kind of come in. And then the big guys have always just taken us under their wing and helped us. And it's not just business related anymore. I mean, now we're taking family vacations together. So those relationships have blossomed and grown to a level beyond just work. And I cannot put enough emphasis on the value of being able to fall into something like that. It's tough I mean i've had conversations with people that have gone the buying group directive or direction and, you know, they didn't have somebody to take them under their wing and they couldn't find that group. And, you know, maybe they weren't putting enough effort into looking at the programs to where they were leveraging it to make more margin and they just bailed out, you know? They didn't find the value in it. That really sucks because I mean, I can't, like I said, it's been life changing for us. So, you're going to see me be a giant proponent of somebody finding a buying group and then hopefully finding a group of peers within that group that they can help grow with.

Ron:

I'm hearing you talk about a lot of the benefit is the people and the relationships, Chris. But just for someone that's tuned in, that isn't familiar with kind of some of the fundamentals of a group and how some of the financial benefits work. Do you mind just kind of describing that at a high level?

Chris:

Yeah, it's just aligning with the manufacturers in the group, right? They kind of give you a blueprint to say, or they'll look and do an audit of, okay these are the vendors that you're doing the business with most right now. If you join the buying group you get these additional benefits whether they're VIR incentives, whatever they might be. And for what you pay in dues it's a no brainer. As long as you're leveraging the programs to where you're making money on top of that, you're not losing money. You're not, it's not even at this point in time for us, we don't even necessarily look at it as a spend. Because we're making so much more money as a result of those programs. But again, you kind of have to have... They're great. We're, again, we're ProSource members. They'll sort of give you that blueprint. But if you don't, it makes it so much more relatable to have somebody that's doing the same thing as you. That thing sort of gives you the insight that the buying group may not be doing, you know, whoever your rep is, although they want to try. I mean, they're dealing with a ton of customers, right? So, it's not that they can focus on just you and hold your hand necessarily. And so those peer groups, that's when it gets truly leveraged when they're like talking about how they're, how they're taking a, you know, a program to the next level, and their business, and what their best practices may be, as a result of that, and turning that into money and making their lives easier. That's where it really, really takes off. You know, if you listen to that and take that to heart, that's when it changes everything.

Ron:

Well, for anyone that's tuned in that's not in a group, what's the process you would recommend they go through to evaluate which is the right group and, and who to join? And then what would you expect or, or recommend they put into it to make the most out of it, once they decide to go down a certain path?

Chris:

Sure. I mean, we were in a situation where that kind of came after us. I don't, I can't even, I mean, Paul would be better about this story than I am, but I know that they kind of, you know, came after us. And I don't know whether that was a result of going to one of the CEPro 100 conferences. I mean, I think we were doing that kind of stuff at the same time, which is now total tech summit and I can't...

Ron:

Maybe you sat through one of the boardrooms for one of the groups.

Chris:

Yeah, there was something. They kind of came after us, looked at the financials and it just made sense. I think it was, again, another situation where a friend of ours was with them, or a couple friends of ours were already with them, so that that helps bridge that gap, right? If you don't have that in, then I would just say, you know, there's, there's ways to reach out. You kind of have to go through an application process. They're going to vet you. They don't take just everybody. Not everyone is a fit. Like I said, some people just don't think about it on a granular level where they're going to, to let, you know, they may have to change how they're doing business to get the most value out of that buying group. So it's not always a perfect fit. You know, some people may be, ProSource, Azione. I mean, there's, there's all kinds of them now, Oasys, all of those, and HTSA, and they're all different, right? They're all different. They all kind of focus on different things. I'm not going to lie. We like the social aspects of ProSource just as much as the business aspect. So for us, it was a perfect fit. It was a no brainer. We flourished in that capacity and can't, you know, even process looking at it in a different way. Other groups tend to be more or less maybe socially focused and they're focusing on education or whatever else. I mean, it's depends on what personality that owner has, right, and that business is based off of, and you just kind of have to figure out which lane you're going to pick. But I don't think you're going to hear most people that have ever found something, signed up for it, and committed to it, saying that they had a bad experience from a buying group perspective.

Ron:

Oh, I love it. Tell us about the shoe collection. For those that are listening. I'm looking at Chris and over his right shoulder and behind him are, I don't know, 50 shoes. I don't know. Bunch of shoes.

Chris:

No, it's not quite that. It's not that many. But the story is that, you know, my parents would never buy me Jordan's as a kid. I don't know what their hangup was. I mean, they were expensive. So that was hang up number one.

Ron:

It could have been the cost.

Chris:

Yeah, no.

Ron:

My parents they would have laughed at me for sure.

Chris:

Yeah, they didn't think that they were necessarily probably, you know, built for longevity. I mean there were so many things right? So I got to a point in time where, as an adult, I bought a couple pairs of the ones that I felt like I had missed out on. They wound up going into storage, out of sight, out of mind, and then I kind of uncovered them in the last three years when my wife and I finished a remodel project on a farm. We had to move that stuff out of storage building, I found them.

Ron:

Kicked the shoes out of the house didn't they?

Chris:

She didn't, she didn't because again at that point in time It was only you know, two three pairs, but it incited my problem now, which is expanding the shoe collection, right?

Ron:

And these are collectors, for those that are not aware. Now I don't know about your collection, but these things can add up in value, right?

Chris:

For sure, for sure. And I don't claim to be a sneaker head, but, I just like what I like. Right. But it started sort of a process, a domino effect, if you will. And, there was no way I was keeping them at the house to listen to her gripe about them taking up space and or the money I was spending on them.

Ron:

What's your favorite pair? Like the favorite pair, the pair that has the most sentimental value, meaning to you, like they really touch your heart, like this pair is it?

Chris:

Yeah, it was just the original fives here. You know the...

Ron:

Can you grab it or is it locked up?

Chris:

I have to access them from the back.

Ron:

So don't worry about it.

Chris:

I can't but yeah, that was the first pair that I really fell in love with and couldn't have and wanted so bad. And then just went, it kind of went on from there. Now, most of mine are all the OG ones. I don't have anything past the Tens. The modern ones, I'm not necessarily a big fan of. So it's usually Ones, Three, Fours, Five, Sixes.

Ron:

Now you're, I'm not familiar. I'm not a sneaker head. Is that referring to the year it was made?

Chris:

It was the, well, the version. Yeah. So these are the style of the Ones over here. I've got a couple of pairs of Threes down here in the corner.

Ron:

Oh, interesting. So, so Jordans are known by style number.

Chris:

Yeah. Yeah. The year that basically hit, you know, that first year he came out with them were the Ones and then they go up from there. I mean, I don't even know what we're on now, you know, 40s, 30s, 30s. We're in the thirties, I think so. But I like the old school styles. I have a couple pairs of the new gen. I don't even have them in the cases, but it's really, I like the old school stuff.

Ron:

Now, do they only stay on display or do you wear them?

Chris:

I wore a couple that are in the displays, once or twice. These are my display ones. I have separate ones that I do wear, they stay at the house. You know, they're within a handful of pairs and I sort of rotate them out, but for the most part, these are on display.

Ron:

All right. Random question. Then we're going to jump to AI. We have a president elect. Trump is going to be the president in 2025. And what impact, positive or negative, do you think that that has, if any, on your customers or your builders, architects, designers, i. e. the business life for you guys in 25 and beyond, does that make any impact?

Chris:

I'd like to think it does. I mean, you know, again, this is more of a Christmas episode, but we're filming kind of right after the election. I mean, you look at the markets and how they've responded. And I think that kind of gives you your answer. I think people were waiting for the uncertainty to pass. Again, whether they're happy or sad about it. I mean, the markets are, are pricing in what looks to be a positive direction and I don't see that changing. Again, I feel like we're kind of insulated because of the things that we've talked about before here. So, it's not been such a worry for us, but I can see it being a positive for other areas across the country that might have kind of had a pullback or some stagnation to ramping it back up again. I mean, that's what we're looking at. That's what we're planning on and hoping for. And, I mean, that's all we can do, but that's what we're planning for at this point in time.

Ron:

Got it. No, that's great. Just, I'm asking everybody that I talk to. I talked to somebody recently and they were talking about a theory around, because of Trump's theoretical, his administration's theoretical friendliness to business, and taxes, specifically corporate tax rates and high net worth individuals' tax rates, theoretically, that might make an impact on those consumers being more willing to move forward with projects versus if the other administration had gone in.

Chris:

Sure. I would agree with that statement.

Ron:

It seems like a reasonable, I guess assumption, right?

Chris:

Yeah, I think so for sure. Yeah. Oh, that's all we can hope for right? I mean...

Ron:

Well, exactly. Well, it's done now. So...

Chris:

Yeah, there's no going back.

Ron:

I'm not gonna get into my thoughts or opinions, I'm definitely not treading into that dangerous territory

Chris:

Me either. I appreciate that

Ron:

Yeah, no, we're not going there. Don't worry. But you, you were telling me again before we went live, you were telling me a neat use case where you were using some AI in your life. For those uninformed, and if their head has been in the sand for the last couple of years, that is artificial intelligence. What, what was that application, Chris?

Chris:

So our application is we use Firefly's AI, right, for our web calls, video calls, et cetera. We leveraged that just to basically do, you know, summaries and shout outs of what action items are, right. It brings it all together, summarizes it nice and clean, shoots you a report. Sean Hanson's tied us onto to that platform. And then you brought up PLAUD, which is something that another group of mine with the ProSource V11 group, several integrators in there swear by. And so I think using those two tools, they're very similar. One's like, you know, onsite real world application, one side's more of the digital side of things with regards to video calls and et cetera, but it's so cool. I mean, we're AI rookies compared to some of the people that are leveraging ChatGPT and things like that. Helping write emails or social blogs or whatever it might be. There's so many tools out there. And so I feel like we're sort of pulling up the rear with regards to being on the cutting edge of that, but we're still implementing it. And then you and I were discussing, you know, what, how, how that changes your business. From the fact that we use, you know, One Firefly for a beautiful website and we use it for online advertising and the programs that we have going. I mean, you've got to have thought about some of that as well.

Ron:

Oh, I think AI is one of the biggest shifts that's going to happen to planet earth. You know, bigger than the industrial revolution, maybe. I think that it's still a bit under the surface. Although some, you know, nerds like me that maybe consume information about it every day and are reading or watching. Like, I, I feel like I'm a little more tapped in. You know, not only because I'm consuming the information and listening to the thought leaders and experts, but you know, I'm running a person, I've got 80 people on staff here at One Firefly. There are applications of AI that not only could certainly be designed into the way we offer products and services to our clients, but also for just as a business, like how can our sales team use AI? How can our project management team use AI? How can our, I mean, I'll just give you an example. My CFO is a regularly operating within a, we use a teams ChatGPT account here. So that's for those worried about IP, or intellectual property, or privacy information, that's a locked sandbox that we can load information into that environment and be confident it's not going to enter the broader data set or training set for ChatGPT. But he'll, he'll, for example, I'll just describe maybe a couple of operational use cases. He'll use it for financial analysis. Like, so if you think about large language models and just using it as a tool in your business, for $20 a month, which is what a paid ChatGPT account costs, you have a PhD level financial analyst right there beside you. You're not paying them six figures. You're paying 20 a month, right? They're as good as the questions or queries that you're able to give them. But the insights that they're able to give you back in fractions of time are nothing short, what feels like a miracle every time you do it, because it's just amazing, awesome, powerful technology. Kendall, the head of our sales and marketing team, she uses it for sales data analysis. She does cohort analysis, sensitivity analysis around, you know, analyzing. If you think about, we have lots of clients, lots of cohorts. They bought different groupings of products at different time periods. They're managed by different salespeople. They have different account managers. There's layer upon layer upon layer of complexity that a normal human, just looking at that may not connect the dots to patterns. But if you load that information into the AI, you're able to draw fascinating conclusions that are, you know, what a good analyst could do for you. But let's face it. My business doesn't have an analyst on staff. But now I do, I have ChatGPT.

Chris:

That's awesome.

Ron:

You know, I get to say and and and and, and so we, we as a business at OneFirefly have been taking this very seriously. We formed an AI council at the beginning of this year, 2024. Which are department heads from across our organization that, you know, we workshop inside of a, again, a closed sandbox without breaking product and process that's happening. That's, you know, we've got, we're a business that's running, serving lots of clients, doing lots of things, and it can be very disruptive to a business if you just go to those teams and say, Hey, try this, try that, try this, try that.

Chris:

Well, there's no, there's no set of instructions either, right? It's a little bit of the wild, wild west and you just sort of like experiment like with your queries and again, what you're feeding into it. And, you know, I think that's probably the biggest hurdle for some people getting into it is just not even knowing where to start. Like, how do I, how do I leverage the value of what I have at my fingertips? Getting something back that is tangible, that I understand and then how to implement and use. So I think that's probably the scariest thing is just not for some people not knowing where to start. I mean, when Sean showed me Firefly's AI and he's like, okay, cool. Here's the, here's the call I had on Thursday. Here's everything that's been set there and dictated from me and my client's interactions. I've got bullet points that are action items and it's all nice and clean right here. And it just spit it out to me by being turned on to the video call. I mean, we were all sitting around the table and it was sort of like, holy crap. That's amazing.

Ron:

You saw a light bulb go off over your head.

Chris:

Something that small, but I mean, the things that you're referring to and just, and even beyond that, I mean, sky's the limit and there's really not any, I don't know, part of it is like people worried about it. There's not really any guardrails, right? I mean, you're, you're already taking that to account with what you're, you're talking about, but it's...

Ron:

I mean, here's what I believe is true. And this, this statement I'm gonna make is going to be a little bit scary and a little bit awesome. It will be in the very near future. And I'll say in the coming year or years, so tell me one or two years, max three years that this technology is going to, you know, just flat out replace certain people with certain jobs, right? Or just replace their jobs because you know, any sort of monotonous routine, repeatable role that does not require tremendous critical thinking is going to get replaced with AI or agents. And so that's scary. Sure. Right. And what's awesome is all of those humans will find other jobs and be able to do other things that produce for society. And so if you think about a country, think about the United States and think about the GDP that we produce as a country, we produce, it's directly tied to the quantity of people in the workforce. It's one to one scale. What we now just do with this technology is we scale our workforce. I don't want to say infinitely, cause that's an impossible number to comprehend, but we scale our workforce dramatically. Meaning a lot of people that were doing jobs are going to get replaced with AI, but all of those jobs and the productivity is still going to be produced. And those humans are now going to be able to go do other jobs that also produce. So I believe in a world of abundance. And I think that it means that for countries that are able to do this well, and I think United States is very well positioned to excel and lead the world, I think we're going to be in a place to significantly grow GDP. I think it's going to help with us solving a lot of our national debt issues between that and inflation. We should be able to conquer what at the moment feels like an unbeatable debt burden in this country and globally. And I think that the companies, now I'm getting into you, Chris, you and Paul, and anyone listening, like company leaders have to lean in. Like they can't lean back. They can't wait for it to happen. They can't wait for that next young generation of whippersnappers to come into their business and tell them how to get it done. Right. Because those kids, I don't trust that they're going to immediately know how to get it done. I think that we know our businesses intimately. And we know, that if technology were brought in to any of those people's lives, how we potentially could make that output from that human better, the augmentation of the human human plus AI, I think produces, in many cases, better product, better output, more, you know, and you could insert the word efficiency. We don't at One Firefly lead with efficiency as the top of the list. Okay. Because I'm not looking to replace my team with robots. I have no interest in that. I'm extremely interested in delivering a better product for my customer. Extremely interested in doing better SEO and using tools to help me do that. And fill in all the lines of service that an agency like ours produces for our clients. Right. So there's tremendous, rapid prototyping happening throughout our org. We're actually about to bring in a director level of AI into the business. This is happening imminently. Just because we're, you know, we're leaning into this, like we're already very serious. I'm out there, as you know, leading trainings in our industry or leading keynotes on the subject. And even I feel like we're, we're not even scratching the surface of where this is growing, where this is going to go. I do think companies like yours, and I'll just say the people in our industry, are somewhat insulated.

Chris:

You think?

Ron:

Because if, if you need to go into a customer's home and meet them and shake their hand and do an install, an AI humanoid robot is not going to immediately replace you.

Chris:

No, no. I was, I'm smiling because, and laughing a little bit internally, because again, I'm telling you the struggles that we have with regards to scale and managing people. And I 100 percent agree with you, you know, the in-field need for what we do. But I also kind of smile and sit there and think, okay, do we have an opportunity very soon to where, you know, a customer texts are our place of business' phone number, it's answered by, you know, an AI. Taking their question, their query, their issue, being able to pull up what our scheduling software is doing, knowing where they are. You know where they live, where our next availability is, you know, what level of service they're going to need from a technical perspective, and can like maybe take that all out of internal admin where I'm dealing with people, scheduling managers, all of that stuff. It takes away some of the personal aspects of it, right. Which we're very, very service centric. You know, believe in those relationships, take them seriously, and put value on those above almost anything else. But it's just, you know, deciding, okay, if the technology gets to that certain level, where do you leverage it? And then where might it have a negative impact?

Ron:

Well, I think that's why it takes an extremely thoughtful approach from any business leader to think about the human experience. Think about it, you know, from an empathetic standpoint about what is that customer experience. And the last thing I want to do at One Firefly, or any business leader would want to do, is to dehumanize the experience. I mean, it's, for example, today, I mean, many people would call me in the dark ages, but if you call One Firefly, a human answers.

Chris:

Yeah. Same.

Ron:

Many businesses you get a call answering service.

Chris:

We tried that. It was bad. It was, the feedback that we got was profoundly negative.

Ron:

Exactly. But this show is dropping in December and people might want to pay attention to One Firefly in Q1 next year. Cause there might be some new technologies and solutions that might do some of the things that you just described and, and, you know, I'll just say we've been busy bees over here at One Firefly trying to solve problems for our industry. Innovation is in our nature, not to make this a commercial, but it is very much about, you know, the world's changing and evolving. And we, as business operators, owe it to our teams and the families tied to the members of our team, and our own family, and our communities, to continue to thrive. And this technology is here, whether we like it or not, whether we want it to be or not non negotiable. It just is. So now what do you do about it?

Chris:

Yeah. It's a nice little Easter egg for the, for the holiday season.

Ron:

It is. And, and you and I did not chat about that in advance. I was like, I, I almost, right. You've been dropping over here at One Firefly. What are you doing?

Chris:

Nope. Nope. I, it's funny, I mean, it's a little bit of a side tangent. My wife works in development and franchising for a QSR, quick serve restaurant. And so you're starting to see that in the drive through taking orders and things like that. And the same thing that was telling we were talking about with the phone tree or whatever you might've had for an answering service. It's not been profoundly positive on the opening side of it. People are like, I don't want to give my order to an effin robot. And, they're having to pivot and pull it back a little bit. I think polish it, make it more to where the differentiation of picking up that it's AI versus a person. They know that that line is going to get closer and closer and closer and then maybe, you know, they'll be able to deploy that. But learning on the fly and adjusting, and being flexible is something that we're going to have to stumble through this on too.

Ron:

Yeah, it's well, it's an exciting new frontier and, I think the future is bright. Chris, it's been awesome having you on the show. I've known you, I've watched you guys running a successful operation for many years.

Chris:

You've been a part of that.

Ron:

And I've enjoyed grabbing the occasional beer at the occasional industry event, every now and again. And, for those that are tuned in that want to get in touch with you directly or learn more about AV design, where can we send them?

Chris:

So, you've done our website, www.avdci.Com. You can email us at info at avdci.com, or give us a shout 479 365 2201.

Ron:

Awesome, Chris. It has been a pleasure having you on Automation Unplugged, my friend.

Chris:

I appreciate the opportunity. Be well, happy holidays.

Ron:

Happy holidays, everybody.

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:

• Chris Palmer LinkedIn profile
• AV Design Consultants' LinkedIn profile
• AV Design Consultants' About webpage