This week's episode of Automation Unplugged features our host Ron Callis interviewing Jason Knott. Recorded live on Friday, June 23th, 2023, at 12:45 pm EST.

About Jason Knott

Jason has been involved in the low-voltage smart home market since 1990. He was the editor of Security Sales & Integration for ten years and has spent the last 23 years as the editor of CE Pro. He recently joined D-Tools as the Data Solutions Architect & Evangelist.

Interview Recap

• Jason's 23-year experience as editor of CE Pro magazine
• The role of recurring revenue in our industry
• Some of the actionable insights possible thanks to DTools Business Intelligence capabilities

SEE ALSO: Home Automation Podcast Episode #245 An Industry Q&A with Shawnon Parkinson

Transcript

Ron:

Welcome to the automation unplugged podcast. The podcast for technology professionals featuring leading industry personalities. I'm your host, Ron Callis. Today's show features guest Jason Knott. Data solutions architect and evangelist at detours. Jason has been involved in the low voltage smart home market since 1990. He was the editor of security sales and integration for ten years, and has spent the last 23 years as the editor of CE pro. He recently joined detours as the data solutions architect and evangelist. We live stream today's interview on social media on Friday, June 23rd, at 12:45 p.m. Eastern Time. During our time together, we discussed Jason's 23 years of experience as editor of CE Pro magazine. The role of recurring revenue in the AV and automation industry. And some of the actionable insights possible thanks to deed tools, and business intelligence capabilities. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do as well. Let's tune into this interview with Jason Knott. Jason, how are you, sir?

Jason:

I'm great, Ron. Thanks for having me. You know, I thought you were gonna say it was an odd day and an odd time because you had such an odd guest on. So I think I fit that bill, right?

Ron:

I almost went there. I was like, do I go with the odd path or special? I was like, oh, we'll just call it special.

Jason:

I guess that makes us the odd couple, right?

Ron:

We are the odd couple. You know, you, it's interesting. You joined the CEO. I want to look back at your whole career. But if we look at the CE pro side of things, I read, I think it, well, you know what? I have your last edition. This is the June 2023 edition of CE Pro. I actually just had this arrive here today. At my house, and in the publication is your lovely mug. And your final editorial as editor-in-chief of CE pro, and there it is. It says, looking back at 23 years at CE Pro,I've actually been in the industry for 23 years. So you moved on from the security industry into the CI space at the same time that I joined the CI space. Does that mean it was around 2000? Ish?

Jason:

Yes, exactly. Yeah. So it was just to kind of give everybody the timeline. So came out of journalism school and immediately started working for trade publications in various niche industries. And in 1990, I landed at what was a magazine called alarm installer and dealer that went by the acronym aids.

Ron:

Oh my God.

Jason:

Yeah. It was all this was a good idea. It was pre-aid . So it was an immediate change . So I, myself, along with the publisher, in 1990,changed the name of the magazine to security sales, which subsequently became security sales and Integration, and I covered the alarm industry from 1990 all the way through 2000. And during that time, got to know a lot of various people. And if everybody remembers, puts on their memory banks, they can remember the telecommunications act of 1996 that enabled the regional bell companies Pacific Bell and 9X and etcetera to then be unburdened as restricted just telecom companies within their regions and everybody in the security industry thought that they were going to just jump into the security business and security integrators were going to go out of business. So what happened is following that in 1996, you started seeing a lot of integrators start to move to home entertainment and home automation, smart home, which was what we now call it. So we were starting to write about that and see this migration of a chunk of the industry moving on the residential side, security integrators into home automation, and that was kind of how I followed that trend to CE pro in 2000. And if everybody remembers the owner of CE pro, Ken Moyes used to be the president of various distribution, which was the number two security distribution company behind ADI, and he had launched what was called HA pro magazine actually in the late 90s, and then hired on Julie Jacobson, who was worked for him at Arias. And I knew them in the security space very, very well. And they had been bugging me for years to come over to CE Pro. Please come over. The stars aligned. I'm an LA kid. So it was not an easy thing to move to the east coast and complain about the weather every day, but it's what happened. And moved out here to Massachusetts, which is where I live now. And became the editor of CE Pro in 2000. And all the way until 2023. So that's kind of the long and short of it.

Ron:

Where are you comingtoday to us from? Are you at home? Are you at a home office?

Jason: 06:10

I am. So we actually shut the CE pro actually shut down. Its offices and Framingham in December of 2022. So I migrated to.

Ron:

Did you usealways go to the office?

Jason:

Yes. I was in the office. Even though COVID, which I got to say was awesome to be the only person in the office. Myself and the IT guy. Oh, I was so productive.

Jason:

It was incredible. So, but yeah, we shut down the office and I migrated to a home office about7 months ago now. And this is not my home office. I'm actually in my wife's office right now, so it looks a little disheveled, but we wanted to have the best connection and this has got a better connection. And I'm a little town. I'm in a little town called Sturbridge, Massachusetts, by the way. So about 60 miles west of Boston and about 15 miles or 12 miles west of Worcester for people who might know the New England area.

Ron:

So, Jason, you are newly unemployed. How does that? Now that said, that's a bit of a nuance statement because you're actually eminently going to be starting a new role with detours. How does that feel? You haven't been unemployed in a few decades.

Jason:

No. Well, it's funny. I look back and the last day that I had off prior to this gap between CE pro and D tools was August 14th of 2021. So Ineeded the day off. Let's just put it that way. And it's been great. So I actually gave two months' notice at CE pro and early April is when we made the announcement, Arlen Schweiger is the new editor-in-chief of CE pro. He's been there for 17 years. He's going to be doing an awesome job. And so I gave a two months notice. And you were mentioning not being my last editorial. Everybody, don't be shocked because there are going to be articles in the July issue and the August issue that I have written. So you've got to work so far in advance in print. So you might think, gee, when is this guy ever going to go away? But there are going to be articles for the next few months also in CE pro that I've written. What sort of emotions were going through your mind when you were writing this piece? This last goodbye piece to the, in this capacity, this job, there's a lot of consumers of everything you write.

Jason:

What was going through your head when you wrote a couple of things? One is, how am I going to fit all this? What I want to say on one page, which is hard to do, because there was so much that I wanted to say. And the other thing is this industry is so communal. So everybody is the entrepreneurial spirit of the custom electronics industry is incredible. And it's whatattracted me to working in this industry and all the friends that I've developed over the years. I'm not going away. I'm still going to know them. I'm still going to be at all the shows, but I'm just not going to be in your mailbox every month. You know, saying something that you should point in my finger at you saying something you should do.

Ron:

You need to get into RMR. Come on, people.

Jason:

Yeah, it's funny. I've had somebody tell me this and I've said this many times is one of the things that shocked me, quite frankly, when I came over from the security space a couple of things, but one of them is recurring monthly revenue and the lack thereof that was in the custom electronics industry. And everybody knows the security industry is a recurring revenue business model. And a very successful one. And when I came over to the custom electronics industry, everybody was nobody was doing recurring revenue. Very few people and I think a lot of the security integrators that I mentioned earlier who are migrating over were probably surprised by that also. But at the same time, there were lessons learned that the security market had gotten to if everybody remembers in the late 90s, you could get a free alarm system. You know, they were giving them away in exchange for the recurring revenue contracts, the monthly monitoring fees. And so I think the security industry guys who came over learned, look, there is value in the equipment and the gear and the labor of what I'm putting in. You don't see free systems anymore. You do see low-cost ones still, but you don't see free ones anymore. And I think conversely, the custom electronics industry has absolutely learned the value of recurring monthly revenue. And I beat it like a dead horse in CE pro talking about service revenue, not necessarily just alarm monitoring revenue, but service revenue. Now there are so many different ways, video storage fees, service, and maintenance agreements. Obviously, alarm agreements. There are different ways that integrators can make money, even some guys who are making money with monthly Sonos radio recommendation fees for their customers. So you can get very, very creative in this, but it's one of the most rewarding things I've had is I have integrators consistently come up to me and say, I never did any recurring revenue and you talked about it, and I did it, and I can't believe I hadn't done it, and thank you for talking about it so much because it's really brought value to my business. And obviously, revenue to my business. But one guy joked to me and said, you wrote about RMR so much that when you die, your epitaph on your gravestone is going to say, not RIP, but RMR. That's so true.

Ron:

You had an impact on me, Jason. I don't think I've ever told you that. But I'll do it here live because why not? My business when I started it in O 7, we were doing projects. It was all project engineering based. We would do we would do proposals, detours, proposals, and detours, project drawings, for integrators, and it was all a flat fee based on the type of engineering product we'd be delivering. We were paid a fee. So, you know, you have a great month and you're at the beginning of the new month. You're back at zero. And then you got to go, you know, tucking the sales standpoint of that business. It's called the firefly design group. And you were preaching even then. And I say that with love and affection. You were preaching in the publications about the role of our marks. You had a strong background in security. And I started to listen, and I added very early on in my business, a recurring element where we were helping integrators with their social media. We started helping them with their email. This is when I was an engineering company. And we started to do these recurring things, and then fast forward.

Ron:

Here at one firefly, we ended up in 2015, closing down the engineering business and the programming business because those were project-focused businesses in deference to or in preference to the recurring marketing business. And today, my business is greater than 70% recurring. And there's no doubt about my ability to invest in R&D to continue to innovate. We have some exciting new things. We'll be launchingthis year. And in the ability to provide a better place for our team to work. Better benefits for our team. And all the benefits, you know, personal and professional to RMR, the business we are that I am here at when Firefly today, you were the voice talking about the power and benefit of recurring revenue. And I lived on the other side of it and it was hard. And we're here on the other side. It's not that it's not hard. It's just less hard. It's less hard when you have that, you know, those fees coming in at the beginning of the month. And you can already start to design out your production and what do you need to do? Who's going to be working on it? Because you know that that work is ongoing. Those commitments are ongoing. There was no one else, frankly. In my ear telling me to do that, but it was you. And you were talking to the integrator, but what you didn't know is I was also listening.

Jason:

Well, it's funny because one of the other elements you kind of really hit two of the really central themes from the security industry that surprised me. One of the other elements that surprised me when I came over in 2000 was the lack of marketing that takes place in the custom electronics industry because it is a referral-based business, but I think people recognize you still have to market to get referrals, but in the security space, you know, years ago, and I think it just celebrated its 28th anniversary at ISC west, I created what was called the Sammy awards, the sales and marketing awards at security sales. And we recognized the best in the security space of community involvement. Website design truck decals and design brochures, and videos. It's migrated to add videos and things like that. But then you come over to the custom electronics site and nobody was doing marketing. So there was not just a void on the RMR site, but there was an extreme void on the marketing side. And we've done research that the typical residentially focused security installation firm spends 6% of their expenditures on marketing. And I would bet there's hardly any if there is one even, maybe a retailer of some sort in the custom electronics space who spends any percentage more than 1% of their money on marketing, which is a mistake. And the other thing I want to say is, I have to thank you, Ron, because we were at a CD of management conference years ago, and we were sitting in one of the lunch tables. I think it was. And we were talking about the lack of business courses at CDX expo. And how we could get more business oriented courses, not the technical courses, but the business oriented courses and I said to you at the time, I said, boy, I'd love to be on that committee, and I remember you said you would, and you got it from your chair, and you came back like literally three minutes later and said, you're on the committee.And I was on that committee for ten years, helping bring together Sessions, business oriented Sessions. And I know a few years ago, CD actually tracked and said that the attendance at CDX expo for the business courses for the first time was higher than it was for the technical courses, which is a testament to how the industry has matured and what you've done. So I have you to thank for that. I was on that committee for ten years and I loved it.

Ron: 17:42

You can thank me or hate me for that, but no, our industry is getting better thanks to you and the writers and the content put in your publication CE pro. Because so much about business, so much about being a good integrator is being a good business person. And learning those fundamentals, and I think a lot of that best learning comes from each other from other businesses that have been successful, there's a lot of lessons purchased along the way in running a business or running an enterprise and ultimately the business education through CD. By the way, I want to say that was 2010. Does that sound about right? Maybe when I was I remember very vividly you and I hanging out and having that conversation. I went and got Peter ship who was at the time out of Orlando. He was at the time. I think the chair of the city of business committee, and then he passed the baton to me, and that I was the chair of the committee for a few years. And what we needed was a voice to help get the message out to the industry at large that business acumen running a good you know. I could go A to Z of the fundamentals of running a business if the integrators could get better at that than ultimately the industry wins, the manufacturers win, the customers win. The entrepreneurs win running these businesses, the employees that work for them when we need them to actually know the money in the bank, whether it's actually their money or liabilities. We need them to actually be thinking about the success and prosperitywithin their company. The culture of how are they taking care of their people? Because if they do a better job of that, then ultimately the company is going to be more successful in the customer is going to be happier. And we need them to focus on process development. How do you bring someone in and prepare them for success in that business? If you don't have anything written down, Jason Sam's doing a lot of that work now with his new consultancy. And man, I passed the baton to you and you ran with it, and then you wrote about it, and then you talked about it. And there's no doubt our industry is much stronger because of that.

Jason:

So it solves the big, big, elephant in the room, which is the labor issue. You know, all those things that you just mentioned, if you do all those things, you run a better company, a more profitable company, a company that people want to stay at and want to go work at and that resolves this lack of labor that everybody is facing, no matter who you are in the industry, I want to say it resolves. It improves it because I think even if you're doing all those things, you're probably still looking for good labor. But it helps a lot. So what you're doing that to help them.

Ron:

I appreciate that. And you know I do agree our industry at large as bottlenecked, I'll giveyou know, this is June 2023. So I'll give it kind of like my very quick synopsis of I think the state of our industry, at least in the United States and Canada.I know we have listeners around the world, but in the North America, I think that this is a current economy. Right now, in the integration space of the haves and the have nots, good integrators are busier than they can stand, and in fact, in many cases, can't do more work in their bottleneck as people. And because a lot of that middle market is gone right now because of the economy and inflation and interest rates and stress, God help you if you actually turn on TV, it's quite dramatic. You know, you think the whole world's going to burn down. So I choose personally not to watch the news. But so that middle market is gone? And so there are certainly some integrators that are out there that are hurting and I think the people part of the solve for those really good businesses, there needs to be more focus and attention on helping our industry recruit more technicians into the space. Helping these individual businesses better understand how to hire. Maybe not just from their local market, but nationally. And then when the market turns, and any down market isn't down forever, it pivots, and it'll be an up market. And then you're going to have that whole middle market come back. And then there's really going to be a sucking sound as it relates to a need for people. Are you do you have an opinion that that's the current state of things, or do you see it differently?

Jason:

Yeah, no. And you know we were talking about market conditions and we just went through the recurring revenue void. We went through the marketing void that you filled. And it's really kind of what's driven me to take this detail's job because there is a lack of data in this industry that has been there forever. And if people notice over the last several years, they've been doing these regular deep dives in CE pro that give status analysis of various markets, whether it be lighting, whether it be the outdoor space, whether it be we just did one on multi-dwelling unit market. So we're taking kind of bits and pieces and doing looks at these pieces of the market. And to try and tell integrators what's going on out there, exactly as you described. Between the haves and the have nots, I talked a lot of integrators who, as you said, you know, they're surpassing their revenues from the previous year in the first half of the year. And then others who realize that things are slowing down.And they can see it in their forecasts. They can see it in thenumber of proposals, number of quotes, you know, there's easy ways to see that. And if you become a much more analytical integrator, looking at your business, not just the sales side, but every aspect of the business, it's going to improve their bottom line. And I think those are going to be the guys who thrive, as you say, that come out of this in a strong position versus the ones who are I don't know why the phone's not ringing. Gee, what's on my website? Do I have something about lighting on my website? Maybe I don't.

Ron:

Have I looked at my website, I was in a meeting earlier today, and the guilty shall not be named. He hadn't looked at his own website in three years. He did not even know what was on his website. And that's funny, except it's not funny, and it's quite common. And, you know, I guess, I won't even step on the soap box of marketing, but I think that the winners today, the businesses that are really excelling, I was talking to a business in the Midwest, and he'll do about $6 million in revenue. And he said he actually, if he had the people, he couldn't do 10 million this year because there's enough demand there. He just can't get the work done. He doesn't have a way to put it through the machine that is his business. And I think if you look at those successful businesses, if we can find a way to get solve this people, part of the equation, I think that is ultimately what helps our industry continue to move forward. But when you look at your current or your new role at detours, expound on that. I mean, I know there's a lot of curiosity for me and those that are listening. How does data help the industry? How to specifically? How does data help the integrator? How does data help the manufacturer and what is this data that you're talking about? What is this new information that's going to improve things? And clearly, it was inspirational enough for you to decide to make a move. So tell us about that as well if you don't mind.

Jason:

Yeah. So people may or may not know that for years, detours had systems system integrator, which was its on-premise software solution for integration companies and about three years ago, they launched detours cloud. So this is a cloud-based version of the software business management software that integrators did in 700 to fork out a significant amount of money and have it on-premise . It was a monthly going back to our recurring monthly revenue conversation. It was a recurring monthly revenue software, software as a service, that they offer. And very, very rapidly, I'll say, details that now has over a thousand integrators on detours cloud. So the beauty of that is that now details has the ability to analyze the data and look at it in aggregate and look at profitability numbers. Look at labor burden, labor hours. Look at freight costs. Look at what is the profitability on crestron versus control for installations. For example, what is it a profitability or the revenue of retrofit versus new construction projects? What types of systems integrated versus multi app control solutions are producing more revenue, more profit? These are the sorts of things that integrators need to be looking at for themselves within their own company, but also be able to look at their data compared to what we'll call industry averages. Why is that not as details will be able to say, this is not as profitable as other integrators in your region might be producing for the same dealer?

Ron:

Potentially in their D tools environment, they would see it within their proposal or it would be visible in that way.

Jason:

And adjust or not adjust based upon what they want to do. So it's providing them with data insights into their business. And so one ofmy plans is that I'm going to be doing regular reports that I will be able to show the industry some of these, whether slice and dice, just like at CE pro, slicing and dicing some of these potential market opportunities, these labor issues, as I said, let's say the whole thing on the whole thing on job costs analysis, things like that, and presenting them to the industry based upon the real data from D tools cloud in aggregate. So you might say, well, gee, weren't you kind of doing that at CEO with those deep dives? So those were all survey based. I was doing surveys out to the readership of CE pro, and asking them, for example, hey, you know, what was your labor of your profit margin on that last motor I shade installation you did? They don't have that number at hand when they're answering the survey. So the questions are being asked in ranges and then creating medians from the ranges. I'm not saying it's inaccurate, but this date detours data is going to be much more accurate because it's going to be based upon real data.

Ron:

And that just proposals, right? But you'll know within the software, is it I haven't used details cloud. Correct me if I'm wrong. But within the software, the business owner would note a proposal as one or lost. Is that true? Like you would know if it's actually been closed meeting the client paid sign to contract?

Jason:

Yeah, because obviously then a process is to the sales to the ordering of the equipment. So if you can actually see if it all go even a step farther back than that run, it actually has the ability to see the quoting before pre-proposal quoting the proposal itself and then the actual closed proposal that is ordered. So this is where we get into what is this benefit from a manufacturer standpoint. So if I'm a manufacturer, the software actually would be able to show if their solution, their in wall speaker, for example, is being changed out between the quote and the proposal on a consistent basis. And determine why that's happening, it could be happening on a regional basis. It could be happeningonly with larger dealers who are only our dealers who are focused on new construction versus retrofit. Doing the real analysis is to find out why their solution is being quoted, but then not ending up in the initial, it could be cost you know. It could be the customer said, I don't want to do that. Or it could be the customer said, eh, I don't want to do in wall speaker in ceiling speakers at all. Let's take those completely out. So, but real deep analysis for a manufacturer. And this, I go back to a lot of the manufacturers in this industry who need to, again, we look at what happened with the supply chain situation that was going out there. And all the manufacturersgot caught with their pants down because they assumed that the market was dead. And was going to just stop and they subsequently informed their factories to stop on various production. They stopped buying microchips and all those sorts of things that they needed to be doing. But if they had insight to seeing what was being quoted, which is even in advance of the proposal stage, they would know what's coming down the pike and have much more accurate forecasting for their to be able to provide their factories information they need, all the way down to the skew level. Let's just say, oh my gosh, look at all the 100 watt amplifiers that are being quoted and proposed versus the 50 watts. We need to ramp up our 100 watt amplifiers versus our 50 watt production. So it can be very, very narrowly slice and diced based upon the various categories that manufacturers are in. And then geographically divided. So let's just say, all these what's going on in the North Pacific Northwest as to why this product is doing well, and it's not doing well in Florida, for example. And then they can maybe internally look at their own sales situation or whatever they might be. Or again, push marketing incentives to that market that area that needs a little more of a push to help close the deal. So I'm sorry I interrupted there. Go ahead.

Ron:

No, no. I was just a couple, I mean, lots of questions. It sounds incredibly exciting. So I'm imagining a future where you probably have data analysts working under you that are crunching and slicing and dicing this data. I mean, is that like a future state where you have a division within detours that is this data division, feeding the dealers and manufacturers, some free data, and then there's probably a paid model if they want the good stuff?

Jason:

Yeah. So if I'm a manufacturer and I want to see my particular product versus the market in general, you know, there's going to be, again, a recurring revenue plate this, whether they see it on a monthly basis, a quarterly basis, annual basis, whatever frequency they want to be. If they want to see a static reports that I would be writing based upon this, or if they want to have access to a dashboard where they can go in and actually maybe crunch some of the data on their own, I did learn something I've learned very quickly, Ron, you mentioned the term data analysis, analysts, I should say, is it's a very vague term. One company determines as a data analyst isn't one another company is, in general, what you just said is true. That there will be data analysts who are doing this development. But I think I don't want to get I'm just kind of like a system integrator, you know, what some one person defines as that versus another. I've already had conversations with people who are like, well, what is a really a data analyst? And it's kind of an ambiguous term.

Ron: 34:46

So they're probably somewhere out there as like a college degree in data analyzing. And then there's like the person that did not get that college degree, but is crunching the numbers for some internally defined SOP. Yeah. So considering our industry generally is at its infancy with all of this, I think you guys will get away with calling whoever does this data analyst. And I don't know that anyone would object to that. I would imagine.

Jason:

And so again, just kind of expanding on that. I'm a manufacturer. Again, not only be able to break down this market size, but also look at direct versus distribution, all the data versus what's being sold if I'm a manufacturer who sells direct, but also sells through distribution. I can see the delta variances there. I can see particular categories, not just the categories of my product, but the general category. So if, like I said, 7 inch touch panels, the market is growing by 12 or 15%, but I'm a manufacturer and my 7 inch touch panels are only going by 3% market share or market quarter over quarter or month over month. What am I doing wrong? I'm actually losing market share. How can I how can I look at that? So even to the detail of, I think, manufacturers will be interested in the capacity of labor. In a particular market at the dealer level. So for example, if I'm if I can look at the dealer base in Miami and see that a lot of those integrators are working overtime already because that's the tools, cloud tracks, the labor, the labor is in there. So they can see that there's a lot of dealers in Miami who are working overtime, but then there are a lot of dealers who are not working overtime or there are less hours being paid in Boston. Then guess what? There's capacity. There's growth capacity growth for market growth in Boston versus possibly in Miami because the dealers are tapped out in Miami. So that could mean, let me focus some energy in this New England market to see because we know that there are technicians who are not having to work overtime up there. So think about how detailed and analytical you can possibly get with this data and really, really boost your bottom line. So when I found out with details was doing, and again, the conversation, I think I shared this with you on a separate call, was we were having a conversation about me writing stuff based on details cloud for CE pro. And when I found out all the data they were doing, I got just so excited by it. I'm like, this is really just like you and I talked about the marketing void, just like there are more void, this data void that exists being filled, and that's why I'm so excited and why I made the move.

Ron:

When do you officially I know you're in this hiatus between the old job and the new job? When are you actually, are you in that saddle of the new job?

Jason:

July 5th. So I'm trying to get my golf game as good as I possibly can, knowing it's going to fall off a cliff, but I will say I have to brag. I shot a 78 the other day.

Ron:

Oh my gosh.

Jason:

Which was like super exciting. So I'm I think I've played 6 or 7 rounds of golf, which I hadn't played in a long time. So that's exciting.

Ron:

6 or 7. Are you traveling the country and doing that? Are you doing it in your backyard?

Jason:

Just around here. There's a lot of nice courses around here. And I'm doing home projects. I repainted the ceiling and the dining room and put up some crown molding. I put up some siding that had split off on the side of the house. My house is.

Ron:

Knocking out the honey do list.

Jason:

Exactly. You know, my daughter said to me the other day, she goes, dad, you should be out of work more often. In all these projects though. Okay. For years, I should have been doing it.

Ron:

I want to jump around a couple of different topics here, Jason. I actually want to jump back to the magazine business and media and content creation and just kind of get your take your live take on this AI revolution that's happening right now you know. I know there's now talk maybe there'll be some type of conference at CVO, maybe pre-CD . I know that's a maybe. It's not guaranteed. And we are taking an initiative at one firefly to be talking about this. We think it's important for businesses to know that change is happening out there and how should they accommodate that, if at all, in their business activities, what's your opinion of what AI means for the media, the business, the business you've been in for 30 years?

Jason:

Well, I can say the one thing that I'm proud of is Emerald is fully committed to people. So we have had several internal discussions regarding the ability to write at CE pro Emerald as the owner of C pro for people who don't know. Also the owner of CD expo. They bought CEO in 2018 for people who don't know that history. But they're fully committed to having people write the content and they have not done anything in any of their publications. Certainly not CE pro that is going to be AI generated content. However, I know that they're experimenting with it on the marketing side. A deep dive, then we, of course, put it up for download, free downloads on Facebook, and those sorts of things. So they were experimenting with some chat GPT for the marketing copy. I should say that they do for the push outs, but the actual content itself, we hadn't gotten there yet. But I joked to somebody the other day that if when I find out if they hired an editor named Chet B Peters, then I would know that my days were going to be numbered, but you know it is interesting because one of the things we had a whole, they had a legal expert talk to everybody in the company about it, which was interesting that they believe they're going to be able to identify AI generated content. And that leads to who owns that? Is that plagiarism? If you are taking content that is generated by an AI and using it versus generated by you as a human, that they're going to have algorithms that identified. In fact, my daughters have told me that in school that they have classmates, they are not doing it. The classmates who are using AI to generate their homework and the teachers already have a mechanism in place to identify it.

Ron:

My son was in the 8th grade this year. He's now he'll be in the 9th grade next year. And he mentioned, I won't name the class or the subject, but he had a class with a student that was known to be an underperforming student. And there was an essay at the essay was written and the student had to read the essay, all the students in the class had to read the essay in front of the class. And he went up and read this essay in front of the class. And Max, my son, went suddenly and immediately, and apparently overnight, he became Shakespeare. And he was reading something that was clearly not written by him. And he was trying the teacher in that case actually gave the student enough. It was clearly obviously not written by the student. It was so divergent from any other content that student had ever written. But I can't see, I can't see a future where students at school or college level or professionals aren't using this more and more and more and more. When you look out into the future and I guess I'll give you another angle to this, which is the aspect around video and imagery, right? Generative AI. That's now mid-journey . You're able to give it a prompt and it literally creates a photorealistic image. And there's a whole copyright set of questions around that. Well, the images that it derived from. Is there any copyright infringement there? It's a lot of legal question marks. But just when you look forward, where do you see at a high super high level, it's hard to know the exact answer because we're so new, but where does this play into the life of the integrator? The person that's paying attention to this podcast, where might it affect them if you were to predict, do you grab your magic 8 ball and we're trying to predict the future? And or where would you direct them that they should pay attention, at least from your knowledge and awareness of AI?

Jason:

Yeah, I mean, obviously, I think they should stick with trusted sources, you know, who they trust. CE pro being one of them, you know, one firefly being one of them. I think also it's going to put a greater emphasis on peer-to-peer communication at conferences at group Zoom calls. The CDF tech summits, the total tech summit, CDA expo, Infocom, all these areas where they can have face-to-face communication with their peers because that's obviously 100% true, believability, solid gold information. So I think you'll probably see more development of peer-to-peer type networks that we're seeing in things like the guild and the buying groups that are having these energy.

Ron:

Travis Leo's group yeah.

Jason:

Yeah, I think that those are going to become even more important because you are going to know that those are 100% genuine sources. And again, I go back to my conversation regarding CEO, I can tell you that Emerald was fully committed to having these be human-written , not AI-generated content for CE pro. So I believe that will continue for many years.

Ron:

Yeah. At one Firefly, I have a large team of writers, I believe in the human element. I do believe that there's a component of AI to assist in research. The idea of brainstorming and frameworks and I'll chat about GPT and other tools out there. I think there are some really neat creative ways to produce a better-written product because of the research capabilities that these AIs do bring to the table. I don't know, do you have an opinion there or have you explored or tested it out even in your outside of CE pro and kind of your day to today life using it?

Jason:

Yeah.

Ron:

I had one comment this weekend. I Father's Day. I was with my mom and dad in Virginia. I showed them chat DBT. And I had that I had it write a poem to my dad for Father's Day, and I gave it all these prompt inputs. My mom and dad were blown away. They thought it was like the coolest thing they had ever seen in their life. And you know I prompted it in like 60 seconds. And it drafted this masterpiece of a ten stands a poem that my mom printed out and put on the refrigerator.

Jason:

Wow, you did become Shakespeare.

Ron:

What I said it wasn't me. I said, here's a robot, but there's a robot in the Shakespearean poem.

Jason:

Well, it'll be interesting because I know I spoke with an integrator who told a funny story of how he was, I think it was the local Kiwanis club or something like that. And he was the past outgoing president. And so he had to give a speech to the group, and he's not good at this, is not a skill, doesn't like to get up in front of audiences in general. And so he asked chat GPT to write him a speech as the outgoing president of Kiwanis and whatever, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he wrote, he said it was unbelievably eloquent and passionate and inspired the entire group. And then at the end, he said, sincerely, chat GPT. He told everybody. He had not written it, but he goes, it made me now comfortable to do something like that. And I never would have, just to even start, where do I start writing a farewell speech or something like that? Yeah. So I could see it being used if integrators are maybe nervous or fearful to speak to a home builders association or an architects group or an ASID group you know to have it assist them in coming up with the right verbiage to speak eloquently to that group. I think that's a great application. So I have messed around with it. And it was impressive.

Ron:

I was working on an application with my son for something to do outside of school. And he had to write an essay and I fully fundamentally oppose letting somebody else or something else write an essay. But I was working with them on this project. And I said, why don't we ask chat GBT? To give you a recommended outline or structure because it was like an odd question and he's young enough that he hasn't had to do college essays and things like that yet. And so and I'm not a practice, so I didn't know the structure. I said, let's ask Chad DBT. What should the structure of this thing be? And it gave this wonderful eloquent write 50 words about this and do 70 words about this. And structure it like this. And it then sat over here as an outline for him. And then he went and wrote all of his words and his ideas. But it was like he had a tutor beside him. And it wasa free tutor. It was really interesting you know. I think all of these need applications when we start thinking out of the box.

Jason:

Yeah, and you know from a website development from your standpoint, it's really something to look at. I think maybe as a learning tool, so let's just say you want to write a section for an integrator's website that compares crestron lining control versus lutron lighting control and you ask chat GPT to include it to be optimized for Google SEO. And then you probably have to tell them what words. And then look at that and use that as a basis for developing obviously each company that you work with is different. You're going to have those personal elements that chat GPT is never going to know about you know somebody who's committed family company or you know you can't possibly name every permutation that needs to be in that marketing copy. But at the very, you know, we use at CE pro, we used a tool called Yoast. I don't know if integrators are familiar with that for your WordPress site. Would it be embedded into WordPress that we then would optimize the particular Google SEO terms that we wanted to target in an article? Uses it for every article. Every product post, everything has got has been run through this Yoast. Now, in many cases, it's impossible to get the you know that Yost is going to send you down a track that isn't necessarily going to be right for the reader. So, but I would bet 90% of the cases we make sure we optimize that copy, human-written copy based upon that Yost input. So it's beneficial.

Ron:

If you look forward into the, you know, using your vast experience and understanding of market cycles, you've been through many different economic cycles. And you know our industry, maybe as good or better than anyone out there, what do you see for the rest of this year, 2023? And what do you see even into next year? It's an election year. Unfortunately, because I hate the drama, the politics that come with that, at least in the current state of politics in the United States, they're pretty nasty. So that aside, what do you see for the integrators and the industry at large, any anything that seems obvious to you? And I just, your opinion?

Jason:

Well, I mean, I could see, you know, I want to put a caveat that I haven't fully immersed myself in the tools cloud yet. So I need to learn this software. And that's going to be one of my first tasks, obviously, is learning for the same capability that the integrators are using it right now. So, but just in general, that software immediately has the ability to give forecasts of what's being, again, quoted, put in proposals, and then what's being ordered to give a status of market conditions. We saw it in the CE pro 100 that we recently completed, which was, I believe, the May issue of CE pro if anybody saw these are the largest integrators you know. I don't want to say the most successful, but they have really got things nailed down for the most part in their companies. And I believe it was 3% growth. So last is what they had. So that's demonstrably lower than what has been coming out of this.

Ron:

2021 22.

Jason:

Incredible, yeah. So, and again, the long short answer is Ron, I can't predict because I don't know. But I can look at what I've seen over the first 6 months of the year and seeing that there's definitely a slowdown. But 3% growth is still growth. Look at it that way. It's not negative. I can remember the one thing I love about this industry is how optimistic everybody is. And I'll never forget we did the CEO state of the industry study. In 2009, when the housing bubble burst and going, it already happened in 2008 and in 2009 was going to be where the you know what hit the fan here and guys were still predicting growth. And then when the year when the data came out, the typical integration company lost 50% of their gross revenue in the year 2009, year over year. They shrunk by half. So that's the one thing I love about these guys is they are so optimistic. The entrepreneurial spirit of this industry is amazing. I'll go way back years ago before I started writing for security sales. I wrote for a magazine called metro magazine. It's a magazine for transit entities. You know, like Bart in San Francisco or whatever Miami, no entrepreneurial element to it all. It was all about regulations. And you know serving light rail versus heavy rail versus subway versus busing versus.

Ron:

Not the most exciting subject matter.

Jason:

And every issue was crickets and tumbleweeds of the reaction that I got. Nothing. And this industry, it's amazing. Every single issue, everything I write, I get reaction from people, people are devoted to see pro, I give myself a pat on the back for that, and hopefully connecting with a lot of people, but also recognizing that a lot of that is just driven by the pure entrepreneurial spirit that you're helping these small businesses succeed.

Ron:

Yeah, I think part of it is the industry. It's technology, and it's ever-evolving , and you've got to stay up on it if you want to have a chance. And I think the other side of it, and this is an assumption, I don't know this, but it feels right. There's just a lot of, for me, I've found a lot of joy in working with small businesses. You know, just that small, that entrepreneurial spirit you know, when I went to college and studied engineering and my whole apprenticeship and internships were an aerospace engineering, you could not have paid me any amount of money to have me predict that I'd land in the custom integration industry. I didn't even know what it was. And then I went to work for Lutron, and then they put me here because I was the engineer. So you're going to work with the CI people, but what I immediately fell in love with was the entrepreneurial spirit of all these business owners. And the idea that they're out there trying to make it for themselves, make it for their teams, make it for their families, they're out there trying to take care of their customers and they're trying to figure it out. And it's hard. But yet they just continue to push through. I mean, I think that's the American spirit. I say that I don't know that it's the this might be controversial. I don't know that it's the American spirit or it's the entrepreneurial spirit. But I mean, because I have great entrepreneurs I work with all over the world. And that DNA is just infectious. You just want to spend time with them. They're optimists, they're hard workers. They believe in themselves. And they're saying, why not me? Why can't I be successful? So it's a bit of I'm fully in agreement with you.

Jason:

Add on to that, that they're doing installations. This is one of the big differences between my tenures and the security space and the 23 years of CE pro is security integrators, in essence, are installing it's a necessary evil. Nobody wakes up in the morning at their home and says, oh, honey, I can't wait for us to get a really great security system for the house. No, but they do say I want a great sound system. I want a great video system. I want lighting control. All these thingsenhance their lives, so they're not only doing what you just described, but they're also doing itfor customers who really want their services. Oh, amen.

Ron:

Amen. Jason, it's been awesome having you join me here on show 246 of automation unplugged. I've enjoyed working with you and getting to know you and being your friend for so many years. And I remember when I saw your news that you were making a change, I was like, wait, this must be a reprint. There's no way. Jason's a senior editor of CE Pro. And I immediately called you. I was like, what is this news? But I know that everyone listening and watching and myself certainly included is rooting for your success in your new role. And we couldn't be more I couldn't be more proud to know you and call you a friend. And I'm excited about what you and D tools are going to do for the industry. With this new initiative, it's definitely innovative and it's definitely needed and I'm confident that you guys will make a difference for anyone that wants to get in touch with you. How would you have them do that?

Jason:

So my D tools, email is Jason K at D tools dot com and that's D hyphen tools dot com. You can obviously follow me on Twitter at Jason W Knott. And LinkedIn, Jason Knott, Jason W Knott. And you know one of my hopes and thank you for your commentary there is that I hope my new role at D tools that I'm going to become just the value as a valuable resource of information for integrators on helping run their businesses and manufacturers too on helping run their businesses as I was at CE pro. So that's what I think going to make this transition pretty easy for me. And universally almost everybody I've spoken with not almost everybody I've spoken with has said, wow, this is a great opportunity and a great move transition. So I'm excited about it. Thank you for having me, Ron. I appreciate it.

Ron:

Now, it's my pleasure, my friend. And it's Friday. So it's almost the weekend. I have a wonderful weekend. And you will be at CVX, correct? You'll be working the show at the details booth?

Jason:

Yeah, absolutely. Yep, absolutely. I'll be there. And then, you know, one of the, one of the goals that I'm going to try to do is, again, I mentioned these regular reports to the industry kind of giving some of this summary data and, you know, going to be working with CE pro on getting that information out via that via the publication. So you're still going to see me and CE Pro, but it'll just be coming from Jason Knott at the D tools. Awesome.

Ron:

All right, thanks, buddy. Have a good rest of your day, okay?

Jason:

Thank you, everybody.

Ron:

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of automation unplugged. For a full transcript of this show and all previous shows, head over to our website at one firefly dot com forward slash AU. There you'll find links to all transcripts, show notes, Facebook Live recordings, and resources mentioned during the show. If you enjoyed this episode and like to hear more, follow us on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Please follow us on social media. We are at One Firefly LLC on all platforms. Don't forget to tune in next week for another episode of automation unplugged as we dive deeper into technology trends and the fascinating people that make up the custom integration industry. Bye for now.

SHOW NOTES:

Jason has been involved in the low-voltage smart home market since 1990. He was the editor of Security Sales & Integration for ten years and has spent the last 23 years as the editor of CE Pro. He recently joined D-Tools as the Data Solutions Architect & Evangelist.

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:

• D-Tools Webpage
• Jason Knott LinkedIn
• CE Pro News about Jason joining D-Tools