This week's episode of Automation Unplugged features our host Ron Callis interviewing David Kitchener. Recorded live on Wednesday, August 30th, 2023, at 12:30 pm EST.

About David Kitchener

David has 40 years of experience in the publishing and exhibitors’ industry. In 2009, he founded

All things media Ltd and introduced the Essential Install magazine which has grown to become the leading magazine in the CI field in the UK.

David also launched the EI Live! exhibition and the Smart Building awards. Ei Live! Is now the only dedicated AV and Home automation show now in the UK.

Presently, their activities span across three interconnected market sectors: Custom Install, Electrical Contracting, and Data Centre media. Their comprehensive publishing approach includes a print magazine, dedicated websites with daily news updates, weekly newsletters, and digital versions of their print publications.

Interview Recap

• The state of the custom integration industry in the UK
• Comparing and contrasting the northamerican and the UK markets
• One Firefly’s participation in the upcoming Ei Live! Show

SEE ALSO: Home Automation Podcast Episode #248 An Industry Q&A with Ian Williams

Transcript

Ron:

Hello, hello, Ron Callis here with another episode of Automation Unplugged coming to you today on, what is today, Wednesday, August 30th, 2023. It is just a few minutes after 12:30 PM. And coming to you for show 249. We're almost at the big two five oh, and with a lot of activities coming up here in the coming days, it looks like show 250 is actually now going to get pushed into September. But we're here for show 249, which is just as good as show 250 because we have an awesome guest today. But I did want to remind all of you that are watching this live, or you're watching this on replay, or listening, to come out to CEDIA next week if you’re going to be in Denver. Make sure to stop by the One Firefly booth. And if you’re here, and you know my guest, David, then the next week we’re actually going to be at EI Live in the UK. Personally, it’s my first time visiting the UK, so I’m super excited about that. Again, we’re going to be talking all about that show, EI Live. But next week, I’m going to be flying out on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday of the show, there's going to be the AI Symposium, which is going to be a small boutique gathering of industry thought leaders, and we're going to be brainstorming all things AI and what it means for our industry, both on the vendor and the dealer side of the equation. And then we've got just an action packed show Thursday and Friday. There is a 90 minute training session called Manufacturer Product Training. And we, One Firefly, got some wonderful content ready to share, we're going to be talking about our SMART Approach to marketing. CE Pro Magazine had published a story back in July that we had drafted about marketing your business in tough economic times. And so we'll be going over that. We'll also be going over website recommendations on how to look at your current website, audit your site, and ultimately look at ways to improve it. And then we also, very exciting, we're going to be launching a new service, and we're going to be doing that live at CEDIA next week. And you all will have to stay tuned because I know we're going to be touching a nerve with this new service offering. And I will be there, and bringing an awesome team. I think we've got 12 or so One Firefly, 10 or 12 One Firefly team members, that'll be out there in Denver and definitely make a point to stop by and say hello. I'm actually going to ask my team to drop into the show notes our booth number at CEDIA, and then also we'll drop our stand number at EI Live so that you guys know where you can find us. At the UK show, at EI Live, and actually I'll ask David, my guest here, in just a moment. I want to say it's London, but I know it's outside of London, so he's going to tell me the exact location. I just, I know the address, I know where I'm told I need to show up, so I don't know if it's proper to call that London or not, probably not. But it's near London, and at that show it's going to be Josh Strzempko, he's an account executive veteran here at One Firefly and myself, and he and I will be hanging out at that event. We've got some training going on there in the Technical Theater, and super excited to meet all our friends across the pond, and it's going to be a lot of fun. But for today's show, show 249, as a reminder, we have David Kitchener, and in fact, we have the man himself. He is the founder, the man, the myth, and the legend behind the EI Live show and much, much more. And we're actually going to have fun talking about all of that full spectrum of media that David is operating and running there in Europe. So let me go ahead and bring David in, and we'll get the conversation started. David, how are you, sir?

David:

I'm good, thank you. And thank you for having me on.

Ron:

Oh, it's my pleasure. You are no stranger to podcasts. You run your own family of podcasts, no?

David:

We do. We do. We run them when we do. But I have to say the Ron Callis podcasts are legendary.

Ron:

Oh, my goodness. They're infamous, if not famous. David, where are you coming to us from? Just to help our audience. We have a global audience either watching live and or on the audio podcast. So what part of the world are you in right now?

David:

We're based in a place called Kent, which is southeast UK, southeast England. It's 35-40 minutes from London, so we're quite close. I'm always in London on business. You mentioned where the show EI Live is, and that's about 40 minutes outside London in a place called Farnborough, and that's Farnborough Hampshire, but it's about 35, 40 minutes outside London at a new, brand new exhibition center.

Ron:

Oh, I appreciate that. So is it, I'm a dumb American, so it's not appropriate to call this, that the show's in London, that would not be accurate, is that correct?

David:

No, it's outside London. As some of your colleagues would say, you can fit the UK into Texas, but hey, you know.

Ron:

There are some people that would say that. Well, I can tell you, I'm super excited. We here at One Firefly, last year, maybe last spring, 2022, we engaged a consulting firm out of London. They're called Emerse. They're a sales consulting firm. I've had them on this show. They're really lovely people, great advisors, and we're still working with them today here at One Firefly. But one of the consultants that we work with, I know that he's told me he's going to be picking me up on Sunday before the show, and what he's called...Ron, we're doing a pub crawl, so I don't know exactly what that means and where that is, but it sounds interesting.

David:

You make sure you get to the exhibition, okay.

Ron:

All right, I commit. I will make sure that I get there.

David:

Sorry, Ron, is that a sales agency that works for you in the UK?

Ron:

It is not. Emerse is a sales consultancy. And so they help businesses. They're not related to the CI channel in any way. They work with people across all different spectrums. People listening to the show - if they wanted to work on their sales process, develop sales playbooks, look at designing compensation for sales team or designing accountabilities or sales structures, it's kind of full service. It's a consulting business and, they've helped us, you know, we've been engaged with them now for about a year and a half as we're trying to kind of up our game and deliver better care and support for the industry that we love. So you know, it follows the principle of who, not how, like we only know what we know and we don't know what we don't know. So sometimes we need to bring people into our lives to help us learn and look at problems in different ways. And so that's what we did. We engaged them and they're, you know, providing counsel and expertise. And we're one of, you know, I think they have 80 or 90 businesses under their umbrella right now that they work with.

David:

Right, okay.

Ron:

Yeah. I'll make an introduction. They're great people over there.

David:

Impressive.

Ron:

Yeah. They'd be happy to. David, we're going to talk about your media empire there in the UK and Europe. And there's lots for us to dig into, including the EI Live show. And I appreciate you sent me some pictures from the event. So I'm going to share, we're going to share some of that. Before we go there, let's help the audience just understand you and you're game. And let's kind of go back and tell us about your career and bring us into the present.

David:

Sure. Well, as you can see, I look 25. I'm just a little older.

Ron:

I didn't think you were a day over 30.

David:

That's why you're a legend. But I've been in publishing for a long time. And in around 2006, I decided to step away from the big corporate publishing empires that I was working for. I actually worked on magazines over the years, covering everything from defense to bikes, cars, computers, you name it, electricity, you name it, I was publishing magazines for it. But in 2006, I stepped out of that to set up my own company. That was a forerunner to this company, but it was a contract publishing company. The problem with contract publishing, as most people will know, is that you don't own your products. You publish magazines on behalf of other people. So we were publishing a range of publications for federations, associations, and did very well at it. But, like I say, the problem with contract publishing is your contracts can be terminated at any time because you don't own the products. So I sold that company and decided to look around, see what else was in publishing. This is leading me up to my foray, my journey into the custom install business. So, it was around 2007, 2008. I met a guy that I've known for a number of years, and he said to me, what are you doing? I said, nothing at the moment. He said, well, come and run my company. It needs stabilizing. We need to expand the company. It's something you can do. So I said yes, so we struck a deal, and I moved into that company. Part of my remit was to expand the company and stabilize the company. So I stabilized the company, made sure the revenues were there, and I had their money to spend. So we looked to expand...

Ron:

That's always the best money to spend, right? Is someone else's money?

David:

Oh, 100%. Yeah. Now it's my money, which is always a problem.

Ron:

Yeah, it is always a problem. I feel you.

David:

But he gave me a budget, so I went out and I looked at loads of magazines for us to buy. I found two magazines that we eventually bought, and that was Custom Installer, called at the time, and a magazine called Inside Hi-Fi and Home Cinema. Custom installer then, and I'm going back to 2008 probably, Custom Installer was ahead of its time. Because the install market was growing, it was a burgeoning market, but it was growing. Unfortunately, the Inside Hi-Fi and Home Cinema magazine was more for the AV dealers, the Hi-Fi, the enthusiasts, the Hi-Fi guys, the shops in the high street.

Ron:

Right.

David:

At that point, they were dropping like flies. They were closing like there's no tomorrow. So, we decided to close Inside Hi-Fi and Home Cinema and continue with Custom Installer. Coming back to my agreement with that particular company, part of my, part of my remit was, well, stabilizing the company, but I should have had - and I say should have had - part of my agreement was that I was going to be a part-ownership owner of that company. Now you've heard this story many, many times before, and I'm sure at the 45th time of asking, that ownership never materialized. So I decided to part company with that company. At that point, there were a mixture of titles in those days serving the Hi-Fi and the AV install market sectors, probably about six of them on the UK market. So I exited that company, and armed with a no non-compete clause in my contract, I set up Essential Install Magazine. So that's how the company was founded. That concentrated on the custom install market, the residential AV and home automation market. Purely residential. I've not been involved in the commercial. Well, I've kind of dabbled in the commercial market. So, we launched Essential Install and it had a meteoric rise. Everybody loved it. I have to say we killed a few of the other magazines off because I can bang on, which I won't, I can bang on about proper publishing. There are certain ways to publish magazines and there are certain ways that you don't publish magazines. The ones that you don't, don't last long. I've been taught by the best companies in the UK and in the world, working for the larger corporates, so we launched Essential Install. We knew what we were doing, and we killed a few of them off, and it became, literally quite quickly, a market-leading type. So, when a company, or when one owns or has a leading publication. In the first instance, there are two ways to go, two ways you can go, and that's exhibitions and awards. So, we were no different. We launched an exhibition. We launched a set of awards called the Essential Install Trade Awards. They are now called the Smart Building Awards, which hopefully I'm going to see you at in two weeks' time.

Ron:

I appreciate the invitation. I'm going to be there.

David:

It's a great event. You'll love it. I mean, the love in the room, you will appreciate. We have 300 of the great and the good in the AV industry. But nevertheless, so, exhibitions and awards. At that point, and I alluded to this early on when we spoke, CEDIA had, I think it was called the Home Technology Show then. It was the national show in the UK, run by CEDIA UK, but of course owned by CEDIA as a whole. I exhibited there. To my mind in those days, and I talk to CEDIA about this now, we talk about this openly, at the time it was a little bit touchy, but they're good friends of ours now. But their show was….it was getting smaller year on year. I exhibited at it, but it did come across to me as being very southern bias. So I launched a one-day exhibition in the north of England, in Manchester. That was quite successful, everyone said to me - why don’t you launch this as a national show?

Ron:

What was it called when it was a one-day event?

David:

Well, because we had the magazine called Essential Install, we simply called the show Essential Install Live.

Ron:

Got it.

David:

And again, it was concentrating and dedicating itself to the residential smart home industry, custom install industry. And it was a success on a one-day show. Lots of the exhibitors said you need to launch this as a national exhibition. I didn't at the time because, not that I'm concerned about competing with anybody really, but the industry was very small. If we launched our show as a national show, we would be competing against a senior show. Given the size of the industry then, it would have been, we'd have been probably beating each other up on rates. It would have been confusing to a small industry, so I didn't want to go that route. But we kept half an eye on the CEDIA show, and eventually, bless them, they decided to close it. So, as I said to you, it probably took us all of ten minutes to make the decision to bring the business model from the north of England down south and create a national show. So that's what we set about doing. The reason why we wanted to do it very quickly was for two reasons. One was to, frankly, close the door on CEDIA. I didn't want them to come back. And also, to close the door on any other large company who had many, many more dollars than we had to come in and make a killing. So, we launched the show, and we've not looked back. It's now the leading exhibition in the country, when, in fact, it's the only dedicated AV and smart home automation show in the UK. And along the way, we bought another company which gave us ownership of a magazine called ECN, Electrical Contracting News, and we also took as part of that deal, Data Center News. The reason for taking on board and wanting to buy the company that published Electrical Contracting News, or ECN as it's called, was that both the industries go hand in hand. You know, I encourage electricians and electrical contractors to come to my show every year. That's a way, by default, we're going to grow our industry. And our industry hasn't grown much. In the UK, I can't speak for the US, but in the UK, it hasn't grown much in 10 years. It should have grown a lot, lot more. But, so I've always encouraged electricians to come into the CI market. They want to come into it because it's a very sexy market, obviously. The electrician, the electrical contractor can add another string to their bow, they can add another string to their financial bow. If they go into a house and they wire a house on, they hardwire a house, obviously, well then, stay on, hang some flat screens or put in a multi-room system, you know, the sort of thing, so...we encourage electricians to come into our market. Now, there is an appetite in that area to come in. We get a lot of electricians with us every year. So, where we are now, we, as a company, and the overall company is called All Things Media Limited, we operate in three market sectors. We operate, obviously, in the CI market, the custom install market. We operate in the electrical contracting market with ECN, and we operate in the data center market in DCNN, which is data center and network news. And it has been said many times that a lot of the data center installers are keen to come into the CI market as well. Because again, with all due respect to data center installers, they fit black boxes in rooms. Come into the CI industry, and of course it's much more sexy with the kit that you're working with.

Ron:

The rooms have windows.

David:

Absolutely. So that's a kind of potted history. As I said to you along the way, I noticed you interviewed Jason Knott a little while ago.

Ron:

I did.

David:

Love Jason. Brilliant guy. Love him to bits. I worked with him when he was with EH Publishing, before they sold CEPro and Commercial Integrator to Emerald. And I worked with him with EH Publishing because they owned 50% of my company. The owner, Ken Moyes, who I know Jason referred to when he was on, Ken kind of stalked me around the world and said, look, we want to buy you, and I said, well, we don't really want to be bought. I've always looked at my company as a legacy for my kids, and I've got three of them. So, that's always been my view, but then Ken said to me, well, how can we work together, and I said, well, look, buy into the company. They subsequently bought 50% of the company, so we ran with, being partners of EH Publishing for four or five years, I think. I knew Ken was looking to sell for various reasons at one point. I didn't want my 50% of my company being sold to another huge conglomerate. So I struck a deal with Ken, whereby we bought all the shares back, and we now have gained 100% wealth. This probably was some four years ago now.

Ron:

So clearly for the audience, though, that's Emerald, and when Emerald bought EH Publishing, you were able to buy your business back from Ken before that Emerald transaction.

David:

That's correct. And so we bought 100% shares back and, you know, it's now 100% owned by my family. So, that's kind of, that's a potted history, Ron, does that give you where I am?

Ron:

No, that's amazing. You made a statement, I'm curious what your observation is. You made the statement that the CI business has been relatively flat in the UK for 10 years, and I'm curious if you mean by revenue throughput or by number of businesses calling themselves integrators? What is that definition, and why do you think that is?

David:

Well, in that question, there were three or four conversations, but the main one that I meant is creating awareness to the outside world. In those days, as you know, the guys and gals fitting all this kit were called custom installers. What does custom installer mean? It's actually meaningless. If you're a kitchen fitter, I know what you do. If you are an electrician, I know what you do. The general public and the general awareness for the CI industry, custom installers, they did not know what it was about. Now, the only way to create the awareness in a lot of industries, and certainly in the UK, and I've worked in larger companies and I've been this route, but the only way to create the awareness to the end user, to the consumer, who ultimately will employ a custom integrator to go in and fit the kit, you need deep pockets. Nobody in this country has deep enough pockets to reach the consumer. And there lies the problem. So no one's really reached out to the consumers. So the only way the UK industry has been growing is slowly and organically, with custom integrators selling their wares, knocking on people's doors, you know, hey, I can fit you a home cinema. Oh, really? And that's the only way it grew. It's still the same now. No one's got deep pockets. No one's got deep pockets to go out and create awareness for the end user. But the industry has grown, in spite of that, not to the point that we all want it to have grown in the UK, but it's grown to a certain extent. Now, a lot of integrators and installers probably don't necessarily want to hear this, but they will benefit from it. So if we, as I consider us and my company and me to be a catalyst for the industry, we're there to help grow the industry, much like CEDIA, but obviously they're an association, they're there to grow the industry. But even CEDIA didn't have deep enough pockets to go out to the consumer. So, that's why I've encouraged and identified, it wasn't me identified, I've just climbed on the bandwagon of electricians and electrical contractors coming into our market. Now, in the UK, this is probably a little-known fact. Custom installers, it's big, it's big-ish business. The industry in the UK, by CEDIA figures, the last survey they put together was worth about $1.2 billion. Now that probably pales into insignificance to what your market's worth in the U.S. But nevertheless, it's a big-ish market. If you take the electrical contracting market, which we're also in with our publications and so on, that figures in the public domain, that market is worth $20.5 billion.

Ron:

A little bit bigger.

David:

Yeah. So it shows you the difference between the two market sizes. So, you can see, you can see my conclusion, and many, many other people's conclusion, that if we bring more electricians in, and electrical contractors into the CI market, by default, it should grow the market. Again, coming back to, I haven't got millions of pounds, dollars to go out and promote this market to the end user out there. What's very, what's in vogue at the moment in the UK is home cinemas. Getting a home cinema is growing and growing and growing and that's actually doing a great job for us as an industry. People are converting the old room that they want to put a home cinema in, they're converting their garages, their car garages into home cinemas. So that's becoming big, big, big business. But, of course, ironically enough, what gave this industry, our industry, the custom install industry, a bit of a boost was, of course, the COVID pandemic.

Ron:

Yes, I was about to ask, one of my follow-ups, is what was the COVID effect over there?

David:

No one could go out. We were locked down for, I don't know how long it was.

Ron:

What seemed like forever?

David:

What seemed like forever, but of course people were going out and expanding their own house, so they were looking to put speakers in, audio, looking to put in home cinemas, because no one could go out, so it gave the industry, in my view, a boost. And then you say, then you asked a question, well, how do they go into people's houses? We weren't meant to do that. Well, they did. You know, the homeowners moved out for a few days, the integrators moved in for a few days, the integrators moved out, the homeowners moved in. And then, of course, they had their home cinema, or what else they had. And our revenue, our revenues generally across the board were probably down, probably down 50% during the pandemic. But we could sustain that, that was okay. After the pandemic, when Boris, I'm not going to talk too much about him, but Boris Johnson, you all know that, uh...

Ron:

He was your PM.

David:

Yes. Yeah, he was a buffoon, actually, but anyway...

Ron:

I'm going to refrain from any political commentary, but I'll let you say whatever you want.

David:

I'm not going to say any more, but when Boris said, pandemic is finishing, you can all come out to play now, my business actually went off the scale. Thank heavens it went off the scale, and so it was good during pandemic for the integrators, and it was good for the publishers and people like me, exhibitions. I put on the first exhibition. I had to postpone EI Live, the exhibition we want to talk about. I had to postpone EI Live for three times.

Ron:

Wow.

David:

But I'm fortunate and I'm forever grateful to the industry that we serve in the UK that stuck with me. And I kept every single exhibitor up to complete speed with what we were doing. They were part of the decision-making process of us postponing it and postponing it and postponing it. To be frank, I had all their money. They paid for it. No one asked for refunds. They simply said to me, look, David, we love the show. It's been around that long. We need that show. You tell us when it's gonna be, when we can come out of pandemic, when we can come to the show. So the industry basically stuck with me, for which I will be forever grateful. So when we were allowed to put the show on, we put the show on and it went ballistic. Because everybody wanted to get out, not talk to a computer screen. Everybody, everybody wanted to get out, shake hands and look people in the eye.

Ron:

Yeah. Well, let's jump into that. I'm going to attempt to share my screen. We'll see if technology behaves here. I'm going to add to my screen. Okay, now for the listeners, what I'm putting on the screen here are a couple of pictures that David sent to me in advance. And David, I'm going to click through these pictures and maybe just tell me what we're seeing, keeping in mind some are watching and some are listening.

David:

This is what we call our Smart Building Awards. So not only do we publish, you know, we're exhibition organizers and magazine publishers. We also hold awards evenings. This particular set of awards, as I said, as I alluded to earlier on, started life as the Essential Install Trade Awards, and we had a set of product awards, we had Best Distributor of the Year, Best Manufacturer of the Year, Best Training Initiative of the Year. We actually give away 25 awards, which is very similar to what CEDIA do in the UK. As the industry grew and people were talking about smart home this, smart home that, Google came in with Nest, so they were talking up the smart home industry. Apple were talking about the smart home, the connected home, so we rebranded the Essential Install Trade Awards, which had kind of a 1960s feel about the title, and called it the Smart Building Awards. That's what this is. These are all the winners of the group shot, who won an award last year.

Ron:

That's awesome. They look very proud and happy holding their, it looks like, crystal awards, and a lot of smiles filling the room, for sure. All right, now here we have a building.

David:

There's a lot of fun. A lot of fun in that room. This is the venue. It's a brand new venue. This is the EI Live venue in Farnborough. It's called the Farnborough International Exhibition and Conference Centre. So, yeah. We tend to brand the outside, obviously, during EI Live, but I've got these pictures to you very quickly. But this is the venue where you'll be next week exhibiting, or in two weeks' time exhibiting.

Ron:

Awesome.

David:

We've upped our game this year. One of the main things with EI Live is the EI Live Technical Theatre. We have experts speak on various subjects. You're speaking there, Ron, of course. We have industry experts speaking about various subjects throughout the two live days of the show. Obviously, you're gonna be in there, maybe you want to give people a little piece here of what you're doing, but, you know, we've got things like demystifying video over IP. We've got an expert talking about that. We've got secrets of custom installers. We've got an expert talking about that. And in fact, if I may say this now, Ron, if people want to go on, I know you want the URL at the end of the show, but if people go on to www.eiliveshow.com, that's the one, there is a complete list, if you hit the Technical Theatre button, there's a complete list of the speakers and a synopsis of what people are speaking about. So that was the new Technical Theatre, the new structure. You see some of these here, it gives you an idea. Oh, look, The Website Blueprint: Essential Elements for a Standout Business Website, it's being put together by a guy called Ron Callis.

Ron:

Yeah. I heard he’s a swell guy. I have a question. I'm looking at the visual. I'm going to go back to that. I'm doing this with you live here. I see the stands and the chairs up front, is, I'm assuming there is projector and screen, or the ability to put visuals, or is it all verbal?

David:

No, no, no, no, no. We are recording all presentations. There will be a camera at the back recording everything. There will be speakers around. There will be the panelists. We'll have lapel mics. There's a lectern there. There will be a screen at the back for complete presentation. So you'll have everything you need in that theatre to present. The reason why I'm showing you in this form is this is the first year of this structure. We had another structure last year which people said was a little outdated. So we've upped our game, and this is an artist's impression of the structure we're building this year for the new EI Live Technical Theatre.

Ron:

Got it. Well, yeah, at the event on both days, and here I'm reading this now off your website, so it's making it super convenient for me. On Wednesday the 13th, so September 13th, Josh and I will be delivering our website essentials course, how to get your business website to stand out, and that'll be at 12:40 to 13:40. So what is that? That's 12, I'm reading, I normally don't look at time on 24 hours like this, but that looks like 12 to 1, 12:40 to 1:40, and then on Thursday, September 14th, it looks like we're teaching the same course again, this time at 1 o'clock, 1 to 2 p.m., and again, local time there at Farnborough Exhibition Center. So yeah, that'll be certainly looking forward to that, and that's always a fun dynamic bit of content also for anyone that's going to be attending. I like to interact with my audience, so I'm not going to be that guy that sits there and wags his finger and talks and tells. I'm going to be asking questions and interacting. I tell you what I'm also doing. David has shared with me in advance everyone that signed up for those classes. So all of the examples, or many of the examples of what's good, and maybe I'll sneak in what's not good, are gonna be pulled from live examples from the UK. So I'm not gonna be only telling you what's working over here in the U.S. and Canada, I'm gonna be pulling examples from your backyard and highlighting what's working. I'll also acknowledge, if anyone has ever attended a webinar from me or from One Firefly, we're not there to sell, we're not there to tell you what products and services we have and why you need to buy it. That's not how I teach, it's not how I train. I'm going to teach you things that are simply good ideas for you to implement on your website, in this case, with this content. And you don't even need me, you don't need One Firefly to do it. So I'm just going to teach you the good things to do. Have your team do it, have your marketing agency do it. Of course, if you want our help, we'd be happy to help. But that's really our belief, if we train, you know, train and teach and help you, you know, the good stuff will come back to us tenfold. So you're not going to hear any hard pitches from the stage from Josh or I. That's just, that's not how we operate at One Firefly. All right.

David:

I will be updating you, Ron, because there are more people registering for the sessions every day.

Ron:

Awesome. Yeah, keep me updated. I want to have fun. I like the audience not to know if their stuff's going to land on the screen in front of the room and I'm going to be talking about it. So, we'll keep them on the edge of their seat. What are we seeing here, David?

David:

This is just one or two of the booths, the stands at the show. That's FS Cables. They work globally. It's just to give you an idea of the way we do it. This is a Snap One stand. You will all know Snap One. In the background there, actually, I didn't realize that, but in the background to the left of that picture is the old Technical Theatre that we built last year. But Snap One are with us big time. Training is a big part of our show. Snap One have got a breakout area and they're going to be training. They've got four sessions per day training in a breakout room, as well as you can visit their booth there and play with their products. We've got all the key players there. You will see the Sonys there, the LGs, all the blue chip companies, as we say, all the key people will be there so you can see everything that these guys are launching. So, yeah, yeah, it's all the key people.

Ron:

I can't name names yet, so I'll be a bit of a tease here, but there's a vendor, a major vendor, that we might be able to announce a new program for the UK with at EI Live. So I'll give the general concept here and I won't take too much time, but a part of our business at One Firefly that's been a fast growing part of our business for the last five years is partnering and collaborating with major manufacturers to help them deploy, call them marketing funds or co-op funds, but to deploy them through One Firefly and then through the dealer's website, the dealer's social media channels, the dealer's email channels, all around raising brand awareness for the dealer and lead gen for the dealer. And so you mentioned Sony. Sony is one of our big brands and one of our big partners. But we're working with many, many brands here in North America, and we're in the final stages, so it's not done, but we're in the final stages of launching something, actually, for the UK. So, we'll cross our fingers and we'll see if we can maybe make that announcement in a couple of weeks, but if not, it should be forthcoming. And just as a demonstration of One Firefly’s desire to grow and support the dealers in the UK.

David:

Well, make sure we get all the press material for that one.

Ron:

You got it. Now that, well, let's talk actually for a minute. Let's talk about the amount of media. I know people listening to this, maybe from the UK and Europe, maybe they know this, but I have known of you, David, and the things you've been doing, but I haven't had the time or made the time to really know it. So, you and I spent a little bit of time earlier today and you shared with me all that you have going on. Again, what are the publications? What are the shows? What are the podcasts? Like, what is the entirety of all of that media activity that you represent today? And is it all in the UK? Is some of it in Europe? What's the expanse?

David:

Essential Install is in Europe. Well, the expanse is, we have a business model, which is ever growing, but the business model per market sector is a printed magazine. Now, I know what some of your viewers are saying, well, print is dying. Well, believe me, it's not in the UK and Europe. And I had this conversation with the guys and gals in Boston many, many times. So we have a leading publication, leading print title that's distributed by mail. We have a website that goes along with that. Now, the website, my journalists are loading up something like between five and ten stories per day to our website. We monetize our websites, of course. We have a weekly newsletter, which is a prime driver of traffic to the websites. We have a database in the UK, well, in the UK and Europe, we've got a 60,000, 70,000 database. That's, to be frank, that's a good source of revenue to us as well because we organize dedicated e-shots for whoever wants a dedicated e-shot.

Ron:

That's a valuable audience. If you're a vendor and you want to speak to the CI channel or the various markets you serve, I can see how that's quite valuable.

David:

Yeah, yeah, actually. And, you know, the UK database consists of three parts, primarily. It consists of AV and home installers and integrators. It consists of electrical contractors and electricians, and it also consists of data center installers. So that's the database to reach, the CI part of the database also has an element of architects, an element of interior designers, something that I always enjoy getting involved with because some people think the architects are involved and necessary, some people don't. The same with interior designers, but in my view both architects and interior designers should know our industry. And a lot of integrators do work as you know, with interior designers - partnering. And architects - partnering. And we’re talking about the residential here, not the commercial. So, we have, that's the business model per market sector. So, Essential Install is the main title. That's the magazine I founded the company on. That is simply that, custom install. It's everything about the smart home and AV automation channel. That’s the website. Oh, that's the podcast part of my website. We do podcasts as well. If you click on the news page, Ron, yeah, there we are. Well, if you go through that, there's the latest news, there's a piece on D-Tools there. But all of those things, you know, we publish 8 to 10 stories a day on that. Essential Install Magazine is the leading magazine in the CI field. Then we have the electrical contracting side. We have a magazine called ECN, which is actually Electrical Contracting News. That's a leading electrical contracting title. And I would say at this point, it's very easy, I've been around publishing a long time, it's very easy for a publisher or anybody to say that they have market-leading titles. But we can justify, in so many ways, why our publications are market leading. So it's not, we don't just pay lip service to it, if you take a look, for example, at any one of our publications, and you look at the volume of advertisers, and you look at the quality of the advertisers, like, for example, the Sonys, the LGs, all of those people again, they're all with us month in, month out. Now, if they weren't, we wouldn't be working for them.

Ron:

Right.

David:

It's as simple as that. So that's one of the reasons we justify the market leading statement. But then in the third market sector, we have data center and network news, and again that’s more for data centers. But, they're our titles, and we, how can I put it…..we exploit each market sector with a print magazine, with a website, with a newsletter going to the same database, and dedicated e-shots, as we will. We also distribute a digital copy of the magazines as well. So we kind of try and cover all eventualities. So basically, if you’re in the UK and some of Europe, you can’t really miss us.

Ron:

No, that's impressive coverage for sure, and company you've built there. Just to wrap up here, David - curious, what's super top of mind for you in terms of the EI Live show here in a couple of weeks? What is your goal or vision for a successful event?

David:

We have spent, and are spending, about 80,000 pounds on simply promoting the show. So we're investing in the show this year. We've had a couple of great years in 2019 and 2021, bearing in mind there was a pandemic in the middle of those. We've had two very good years. But it's a question of getting the industry together. It's a great networking event. The whole of the industry descends on Farnborough. But at the end of the day, it's a selling show, Ron. And whoever exhibits, I would want them to...I say this glibly, but I'd want them to increase their revenue by a million pounds by being there. Now, whether they do or not is a matter of conjecture, but the whole point is, I want people to exhibit there, I want them to sell products. That's why anybody exhibits at a show, I want them to sell their products and services to the integrators, and they are totally the visitor base. Again, we do have some architects come along, we do have electricians, of course, and we do have some interior designers. My expectations are to get 2,000 to 3,000 people through the door of visitors over a two-day period. We have a lot of fun, the people who come to the Smart Building Awards, we have an awful lot of fun. I've been seen with many clients at 4 a.m. in the morning, and then we've got to get up and do the show the next day. We're all young, fit people, we kind of get through it.

Ron:

That’s it. Maybe me as well, but I'll plead the fifth on all of the above.

David:

But expectations, just want a great show. You know, it's the only show of its kind in this industry. We've had people come in and challenge us, wanting to launch a show, but they haven't been able to get them off the ground. And if I may say, and forgive me, but it's because of the foothold we've got and what we've achieved over 15 years. So, yeah, great show, great awards, maybe some alcohol will be drunk on the Smart Building Awards evening, but, you know, again, I'll reserve judgment for that.

Ron:

The show does go on the next day, so hopefully, you know, not too much.

David:

It goes on the next day. And there's so much to see there, you know, there are over 400 brands on show.

Ron:

Wow.

David:

You've got all the top distributors there. I mean, if you liken it to the CEDIA Expo in the U.S., that's the content you'll see at EI Live.

Ron:

Got it. That sounds brilliant.

David:

We get a lot of people, we get a lot of exhibitors who are launching brand new products, brand new services at the show. They use our show to launch in that particular way. It may well be that some of the exhibitors are in the U.S. show at CEDIA, which is a week before, so they launch it to the U.S. market over there, then it's the first time it's been seen in the UK or Europe showing the various new launches at our show.

Ron:

Yeah, that's us. One Firefly will be at CEDIA and then Saturday, Josh and I hop on a plane and fly across the pond and meet all of your attendees. We're super excited to do that.

David:

Well, I've been, over the last 15 years, I've been to most CEDIA U.S. shows. When it was in Dallas, when it was in Indianapolis and all those kind of places. I love those places. I mean, Dallas is...I love Dallas. It's a great place for me. I heard today that they've signed a deal. I don't know how true it is, but someone said to me they've signed a deal to keep the show at Denver for the next four to five years.

Ron:

I've heard that as well. I don't know that to be exactly true, but I've heard of that and I just haven't taken the time to dig into it.

David:

But because of the…..because of the COVID pandemic, we had to move our show. Our show used to be mid-year, but then we moved it and moved it to September because of COVID. We got our show on in September. We kept it in September, but of course that means I can't go to the U.S. show.

Ron:

Well, yeah, it would be tough. It would be tight.

David:

It won't be this year, yeah. I leave my wife a photograph at the moment these days, Ron, so she doesn't forget what I look like.

Ron:

Well, my wife was making a similar comment. She's like, you know, leave a picture beside the bed because I'm going to be gone for a few weeks. But, you know, we do what we got to do for our family. So it's all good.

David:

100%.

Ron:

David, thank you for joining me on Show 249. Anyone that wants to get in touch with you directly, where would we send them?

David:

If they go to...we have a corporate website, which is AllThingsMediaLTD.com. All our details are on there. If they go to the contact page, all my journalists, everybody's on there, so they can get in contact that way.

Ron:

So repeat that for me one more time.

David:

It's www.allthingsmedialtd.com. So, AllThingsMediaLimited.com.

Ron:

I am going to attempt….we'll see. There we go. Did I get it right?

David:

AllThingsMedia, very good Ron. That's brilliant. I love this software.

Ron:

It's great. It's good. StreamYard's the bomb. It's fun and easy. It's such a delight compared to a lot of the software we've used in years past, so strongly recommended. Big fans of StreamYard.

David:

But this particular URL is the corporate site. And then there are links off to the EI Live site, the magazine sites and everything else we do. So, they're kind of all linked together.

Ron:

Awesome. Love it. David, thank you again for joining me on the show, sir, and I'll see you in a couple of weeks.

David:

Thank you for having me, Ron. I look forward to seeing you.

Ron:

Alright, folks, there you have it. Show 249. David was a pleasure, and I'm super looking forward to meeting him in person again. We actually didn't do it live, but David and I did share a drink or two, I think, at an ISE event years ago in Amsterdam. I think it was maybe 2010 or 2011, and we were actually chatting about that just before we went live and then forgot to mention it on air, but I look forward to seeing him again and One Firefly, you know, we're growing and we're trying to help more people. We know there's lots of CI businesses in the UK and in Europe, and if we can be of value, we certainly want to do that. So we're excited to spread our wings a little bit, step out of our comfort zone a little bit. That's usually a good sign, usually a good thing to do, and I'll leave you with this. I was working earlier today, had a one-on-one with one of my leaders earlier today at One Firefly, and I am trying to meet with all of my leaders on an ongoing basis, kind of a couple of them, every week. And we were talking about, you know, this month of August has been a super intense month at One Firefly, lots of things happening, lots of good things, lots of challenges, and just lots of everything in between. And we were just riffing around, you know, the things that are memorable about business or accomplishing things usually aren't the easy things. Usually it's the hard things that are memorable. So months like the month of August here at One Firefly, I mean, one of the big things is, we're launching a new product slash service, and that product is going to be released next week at CEDIA. We're very excited about it. We've been very hard at work on it, but it's hard. It's hard. It means I've been getting started earlier, and going to the bed later, and working a little bit of weekends. Don't try to make that happen all the time, but one of the things I was sharing with my leaders is that the opposite of that is, you know, things are easy. Things are smooth and, you know, not just smooth, but maybe.….maybe you're bored. Maybe there isn't enough to do. And in my personal life and in my business, I've usually found that when things are too easy for too long, it means I'm not challenging myself enough. And it means I'm not stretching myself enough. And so I'm not afraid of the hard stuff. I want my team and my leaders and all my team members to not be afraid of the hard stuff and to be proud of that hard stuff. Because hard stuff is good, it builds character and allows us to build this business, which means taking care of more business owners and businesses and…..entrepreneurship is tough. It is tough, man. I would not wish it on anyone unless someone wants to embrace it and then just, you know, get ready because it's a hustle. It's hard work. But rewarding. That's why I've been doing it for so many years. So anyway, I will not take any more of your time. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your Wednesday. Today's Tuesday, today's August 30th. It is about 1.30 p.m. here. I am signing off. And I did not bring up any of my show closing art because I forgot. And you know what? I'm human and I'm allowed to forget. So I'm just going to sign off and I will see you all in a few weeks. We have a bunch of shows, CEDIA and EI Live, and then I'll be back with another great guest right after that. I will see you all later.

SHOW NOTES:

David has 40 years of experience in the publishing and exhibitors’ industry. In 2009, he founded

All things media Ltd and introduced the Essential Install magazine which has grown to become the leading magazine in the CI field in the UK.

David also launched the EI Live! exhibition and the Smart Building awards. Ei Live! Is now the only dedicated AV and Home automation show now in the UK.

Presently, their activities span across three interconnected market sectors: Custom Install, Electrical Contracting, and Data Centre media. Their comprehensive publishing approach includes a print magazine, dedicated websites with daily news updates, weekly newsletters, and digital versions of their print publications.

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:

• EI Live! Webpage
• EI Live! Facebook
• EI Live! LinkedIn