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Since its launch in 2017, “Automation Unplugged" has become the leading AV and integration-focused podcast, broadcast weekly. The show is produced in both audio and video formats, simulcast on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and released in audio-only format across all major podcast platforms. Our podcast delves into business development, industry trends, and insights through engaging conversations with leading personalities in the tech industry.
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An AV and integration-focused podcast broadcast live weekly
Since its launch in 2017, “Automation Unplugged" has become the leading AV and integration-focused podcast, broadcast weekly. The show is produced in both audio and video formats, simulcast on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and released in audio-only format across all major podcast platforms. Our podcast delves into business development, industry trends, and insights through engaging conversations with leading personalities in the tech industry.
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Home Automation Podcast Episode #29: An Industry Q&A With Brian Good

Exploring the value of iPoint

This week's home automation podcast features our host Ron Callis interviewing Brian Good. Recorded live on Wednesday, January 10th, 2018 at 12:30 p.m. EST.

About Brian Good

Brian Good is the VP of Sales and Marketing at iPoint. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Corporate Communications from Washburn University. 

With more than 10 years of customer service, sales, and training experience, Good has a deep knowledge of how to create and implement efficient development strategies that ensure success. 

Prior to joining iPoint, he held executive, analyst, sales, and training positions for a range of companies, guiding his territories to year-over-year growth and helping develop software solutions to improve operational processes.

Interview Recap

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

  • The origin of iPoint and its value to integrators
  • Brian's take on groups like HTSA, Bravas Group, and ProSource
  • The importance of marketing and prospecting
  • Brian's background and how he got started in the industry

SEE ALSO: Home Automation Podcast Episode #29: A Custom Integration Industry Q&A With Brian Good

 

Transcript:


Ron:  Hello everybody. Ron Callis with One Firefly and another episode of Automation Unplugged. It's actually my first show of 2018. So thank you for checking us out. Thanks for joining us. As I often do, I'm going to come over here to my handy Facebook page at facebook.com/onefirefly. Of course, you already know that if you are watching this because it means you're watching it live. So let me just make sure that our stream is cooperating, that the evil technology gremlins are staying at bay. Yup. It looks like we're live. We are. We're working. So I am excited to be back with you folks. I had a great vacation. I took a couple of weeks, went up to Virginia visited my family up in Northern Virginia, brought my wife and son. Santa Claus of course, visited us. And I thought I'd tell you it was cold. It was in single digits. So for those of you up North that are getting hit with all that cold air and snow I feel for you that was no fun and we are happy to be back in sunny Florida and in fact people in Florida are wearing their winter jackets. It's been in the 50s, God forbid. So people have broken out their ski hats and their mittens and their jackets and my guest lives here in Florida, so he probably can laugh about some of these sights and sounds you see here in Florida when it, my goodness breaks below 70 degrees, you'd think it was you know, a bad time. But anyway, let me go ahead and introduce my guest. I am very excited. We've got Brian Good from iPoint with this. Brian, how you doing sir?

Brian:  I'm doing great. How are you?

Ron:   I am good. And you and I were just chatting offline and I understand you actually just recently moved to Florida. Is that correct?

Brian:  We did actually my family moved down here, very end of May, right before the hurricane. So it's been interesting. I really believe that we made the right move and I'm happy to be here.

Ron:   Where were you moving from, Brian? What where were you living before?

Brian:  I was in Topeka, Kansas actually.

Ron:   Oh, okay. That's a small town compared to some of the cities here in Florida. I used to call on Topeka when I was at Lutron. Topeka was part of my Midwest territory. Okay. Excellent. Spend maybe 15 years since I've been there. Maybe more. But it's good barbecue out there.

Brian:  Yeah, absolutely. Good food.

Ron:   Awesome. So it looks like we've got some people joining us. If you're out there in Facebook land. Thank you for watching. Thanks for joining us. Please like this episode please drop us a comment that if you want to learn from Brian about what makes him tick or anything, questions perhaps about the industry or iPoint please post those questions and I will do my best to chase Facebook comments here and get those read off to Brian so we can have those questions answered live. But yeah, we've already got some people joining us here. And also share the show, you know, we do this content to try to help the industry grow, expose the movers and shakers in this industry that make this industry work and that work really hard every day to help each and every one of you that are watching. So if you want your friends in the industry, your peers to see some of this content, please share the show and that way they have a chance to check it out. So first things first, Brian, let's get the formalities. So you are the VP of Sales and Marketing at iPoint. What is iPoint for those here attending that they may not know that company name?

Brian:  iPoint is a software, it's a business management solution built specifically to help solve a lot of the problems that occur as audio video companies scale. So really it's software designed to help AV companies run better and more efficiently and create the process and procedure they need to grow.

Ron:   Okay. So I wanna I want to peel the layers back on that. I can tell you as I talk to integrators every day, I hear the name, iPoint more and more frequently. So you guys are clearly growing your presence in North America and you know, so congratulations on that. And considering that's your role and responsibility to do marketing and sales, I'm assuming that a lot of that credit is owed to you.

Brian:  You know, without my team supporting me, it wouldn't be there at all. So I'm very blessed to have the team that I do behind me and yeah, we've grown a lot in the last years, the best is to come and we are going to do some really cool things in 2018.

Ron:   Awesome. And Brian, the internet may not be cooperating. You're getting a bit robotic in terms of the reply. So we're gonna I don't know if there's anything on your end you can do about that. We may even go as extreme as rebooting Skype if that is not going to cooperate. But we'll do the best we can. Yeah, you want to take a look at that? How's the the internet on your side? Does it look okay?

Brian:  The internet on my end is slow right now.

Ron:   Okay.

Brian:  So of course the channel will separate from back over there.

Ron:   Okay. We'll see if we can get it to cooperate here.

Brian:  Yeah.

Ron:   The technology gremlins, man, they fight us every step of the way. Yeah. Why don't we kill it? We'll kill the Skype and we'll bring it right back. I'll leave the feed live. So we'll see if we can do this quickly here. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the patience as we try to get Brian back.

Brian:  All right. Hopefully this will work better.

Ron:   All right, we're back in business. Woo. All right, well let's jump into it. Brian. First of all, how did you end up landing at iPoint, so I understand that you are you've been with the iPoint now just a couple of years and you have a diverse background, so how did that happen? Tell us a little bit about where you come from.

Brian:  Well, absolutely. No, I my background actually is in sales but not necessarily for the AV world. I worked for an insurance company back in Topeka and part of my territory was Southern California. And so the company I worked for had a relationship with the Dodgers. I was spending a lot of time on the road and in 2016 in January, my daughter got sick. She a type one diabetic and we learned that she had type one diabetes and so I needed to make a change to be able to be around more. And it was right at that same time when Brooks, the owner of iPoint who's also my best friend and one of the best people I know. And it came to me and said, look, iPoint is we're going to hire a sales person and if you want the job, it's yours. So I really felt like it was just sort of fate that led me to be where we are and when that change occurred in Topeka, Kansas less than two years ago and we're at 20 months later and now I'm in a much warmer environment then back home. So things are going very, very well for the company and for me.

Ron:   So did you, before you joined your friend, did you know what an integrator was or what the residential custom integration market was? Were you exposed to that in any ways?

Brian:  Well, yeah. Brooks actually he owned a company and Topeka that was an integration company and he grew it into the Kansas City market, merged with another company, started a security line and eventually sold the companies. So he's my best friend. I knew about what he did. I didn't know nearly how complicated it really was. But yeah, I was familiar with the industry before I came over to iPoint.

Ron:   So what problem was Brooks trying to solve when he developed iPoint? I mean that's a big bold move to go from running an integration company to launching a software company. And from my understanding, it's a software company that's trying to solve problems that most integrators face. So it what were those problems?

Brian:  Okay. Well iPoint is not unique to the AV industry. There are several softwares that were designed to help alleviate some of the stresses. But as Brooks grew his company, he used them and he figured out what softwares did things well, where there were holes and where there were solutions that still needed to be identified. And so through his years as an integrator and through his experience with all of the different softwares that were available for the industry, he really got an intimate knowledge of what was there, what wasn't there and how to make it better. And when he sold iPoint, it was his goal and his vision to create one software that you can use to run an entire company. And AV companies are complicated. You know, most of the partners that we bring on are using at least three, four, five, sometimes six or seven different apps to run their business. And his vision was to be able to provide a single source that you can do that. Track time, do your POs, everything from your phone. And that's what iPoint is, it gives you complete control of your business.

Ron:   So how do a lot of the integrators that you're talking to, how do they respond when they hear about I point, I mean, it is the word out. Do people know that this software exists now or is it slow and steady? You're trying to, how quickly you bring people in. Right?

Brian:  The last two years have been slow and steady wins the race. You know, we've really been very intentional about how but how we grow, because the big thing about iPoint is, you know, when you partner with us, you get a team that is there to support you. And we needed to be careful to make sure that we didn't bring on too many new community members that we weren't able to support them. And so we made a big investment in our infrastructure in 2017 to make sure that we had the people and the processes and the procedures in place to continue to provide that level of support as we go through 2018, you know it's on now. We are doing everything that we can to make sure that the industry knows about iPoint because we've got everything in place that we need to be able to provide a better level of support than we ever have. And we're prepared for the growth ahead.

Ron:   So in order for a company to grow, I would challenge that there needs to be a strong basis of process, fundamental belief that process is necessary in every facet of the business. And your software would be a facilitator of that process or a tool or instrument to help a company activate a process. Is that a fair way to put it?

Brian:  Yeah, absolutely. And we're firm believers in that too. We believe that process and procedure, documented process and procedure

Ron:   And then you actually have to write it down. Oh man. Yeah absolutely. I'm just going, man, we got a process. I just don't tell anybody.

Brian:  That's right. That makes it really scalable. Right?

Ron:   Right. Exactly. Well, look at our industry.

Brian:  The documentation aspect is huge and you can't really create accountability, you know, within your organization until you outline who's responsible for what. And that's a big part of the platform, like iPoint is to take a workflow and put it down and say you're responsible for this part. You're responsible for this part. There's a breakdown in between here and here. That's your job. You know, we give that tool set to everybody and that's a big part of what we do is working with business process dealing with inefficient processes and trying to help implement and help our community members share best process and implement the more efficient way to do things into their daily operations.

Ron:   How do you do that? So, how do you go to a company maybe they were born last year or maybe they were born 10 years ago, and how do you help them look at their current processes and then maybe look at alternative ways of acting and following different processes, thus use it, being able to use your tool or your software. How do you go about accomplishing that?

Brian:  Mmm, that's a very good question. And the way that we, when AV companies get to a certain point, you know, they become very hard for the management to run. And that's when a platform like iPoint comes in. You know, cause when you're a real small shop you probably won't have a lot of problems running the day to day operations inside your head. But as you grow and as you scale and as you realize I'm adding more people but I'm not really maintaining the same margins that I used to. That is when a lot of research gets done about how can I create efficiency, how can I streamline process? And part of what iPoint really wanted to do was to get our name out there so that as people and as companies reach the point in their business lifecycle that they realize, Hey, I need to do this. That they think of iPoint. And we've been very strategic about how we do that. We've made some really good partners within the industry and you know, the tool set that we provide is very, very specific for running an AV company. It's a different tool set than it is to sell computers or than it is to sell cars or that it is to do any other type of business. It's very complicated. And the industry referrals and the community that we built does a really good job of sharing the word about iPoint. So not only do we market, we actively market, but referrals are really our biggest source of new customers because our community is our biggest advocate.

Ron:   So for you personally, having spent a career in selling insurance or in the insurance industry and now joining this crazy business, what's been the biggest surprise for you? Or the biggest maybe surprise or challenge?

Brian:  The industries are very different. And I do mean, I really didn't know how complicated AV companies were and how many different moving parts there were. You know, as a wholesaler for an insurance company, my job was really call representatives, get them to sell my product. Right? Well, I don't, this is a completely different type of relationship because what I'm doing now is I'm saying, I'm calling companies and saying, Hey, I understand and, I know that there are some areas within your business that might not flow as well as they could. One, I'd love to partner with you and show you a better way to do it, to help you make more money to help you do less work. So if you spend more weekends at home with your kids, right?

Ron:   Amen.

Brian:  It's a different relationship. And, you know, we're not looking for a quick sale. We're looking to create a partnership with iPoint and I really appreciate that.

Ron:   What mechanisms or processes do you implement to try to help on the training side? Is it all one-on-one, you with the owner of the business? Or do you guys do webinars? Do you do trainings at CEDAI or different shows? Like how do you get the word out about that? In fact, there could be a better way or a different way, or at least as a single piece of software that pulls a lot of these extraneous functions. Every business needs to do it, pulls it into one platform.

Brian:  Absolutely. we, we have started, we've been very grassroots from the very beginning. The whole point is that we're not a major software, you know, dominating agency that's gonna throw $1 million on billboards around the country. I call people and we do more intimate shows. Like we support the HTSA we support Pro Source, we support Bravas. We partner strategically with organizations that are dedicated to helping their members become more successful because that's the focus that we have. You know, I don't really want to be the biggest software company in the world. What I want to do is make a difference in this industry because, you know, if I can help one dad make one more soccer game, then I'm doing something good. You know, and that's really what I want to do. And it really is, it's word of mouth. It's phone calls. It's we're doing some print this year. We're supporting Pro Source. We're supporting HTSA, we're supporting Bravas and management. We have some really good, really strong partnerships that are blossoming. And we're gonna, you know..

Ron:   For those watching that may not know what Pro Source is or HTSA or Bravas. Can you maybe in your own words, describe what these things are, these groups are, all in all, if you were to add all those members, it's maybe 800 companies. No, not even that much. Maybe 600 or 700 companies. And yet the industry in theory is, you know, many times larger than that. So maybe there's people that don't know what those things are.

Brian:  Yeah. Well what Pro Source is, what HTSA is, they're technically buying groups, but they're organizations that companies join to help create a better opportunity for their organization. So maybe it's discount pricing, maybe it's buying power, maybe it's community groups, but they're organizations that commit themselves and their resources to helping their community members or their companies that are, their members, run their businesses better and now help them operate more efficiently. And that's the power of the industry like AV is that, you know, there's not a whole lot of the oversight that there is in, for example, the insurance industry. So in order to create a industry standard or an industry process you need to sort of band together and these groups give people a way to do it and it gives them a stage to utilize, to share best practice and to help really move large percentages of the overall industry together. Forward together is something that most, it's a great opportunity and we're really, really proud to be able to accommodate it.

Ron:   And what's your take on Bravas?

Brian:  I really like Steve and Paul, they're great guys. I think that they have a very unique approach to how to scale and how to really, I don't know that it's really been done before. It's take a group of companies and get evaluation for them and then bring them to market, but they,

Ron:   At least in their reverse more merger model where everyone maintains their equity prior, up to the last minute where the sale is made. I think that's the unique, many unique flavors. But that's certainly one unique flavor of what they're doing.

Brian:  Exactly. And you know, another thing that is unique about them is the way their methodologies for running their business. You want to talk about process driven. Bravas is very process driven. That's how the partnership between iPoint and Bravos came about is we worked with them to streamline their billing methodology in a platform that allows them to do it at the push of a button instead of spending, you know, payroll person spending 10 hours doing it every payroll period. You know, and all of the billing and all of the invoicing and all of the integration with the accounting platform. We've streamlined that through the iPoint platform to save a ton of time on the daily operations of the Bravas company.

Ron:   So Brian, at iPoint, who is the person that people contact if they're interested in learning about, iPoint are you that point person?

Brian:  I am, absolutely. I've talked about iPoint all day.

Ron:   That's why you're willing to go on camera here. You're like, I'm the man baby.

Brian:  No. I don't, there's not very many things I enjoy more than talking about iPoint. So, yes, call me, you know, visit our website.

Ron:   What's the right type of company like, so what's the right fit when you, I would assume as with any company, you know when you're going to have some inquiries that come in and they're great prospects and in fact the software is a great fit and they rock and roll. And then other times maybe they heard something that sounded great, maybe something you've said already but maybe they're really not a good fit. They're not likely to be successful in implementing it. So what, and maybe that's a false assumption. So feel free to correct me if it doesn't make sense. Who's a good fit?

Brian:  The target market for iPoint really is an AV company and we fit best with audio video companies that have grown to the point that the owner can't run them in their head anymore. You know, cause that's really the mechanism. That's the change agent that leads support for a solution like iPoint. If the company is not there, if they don't want the process, if they don't want the procedure, if they want to, you know, something fast and light and you know, shoot from the hip and I don't really want to do things the same way all the time. I don't really want to dedicate myself to a proven procedure and process that's not a good fit for iPoint we're a good fit for the companies that wants to create a scalable, repeatable process and they want to get their team working out of a business manager platform instead of in their accounting platform and they want to be able to use just one software to run all of the aspects of their company. That's where iPoint shines and the fact that we have so much detailed design for the audio video world. Yeah, I'd love to show you if you have any questions, come and visit our website. iPointsolutions.net. It's probably even a link to it from your website.

Ron:   Yeah. You know what, I'll leave that here while we're going live or immediately afterward I'll put a link to iPoint, I'll put it in the comment section so that as we push this video out the world can know how to easily find your website.

Brian:  That's awesome. That's definitely the way you know, and there's a demo request form on there. If you fill it out, I'll stop what I'm doing and call you immediately. That's my commitment to you. I want this to be an easy relationship. I don't want it to be hard.

"In terms of scaling, you can scale the business and the amount of revenue coming in the door by operating more efficiently, reducing costs, you perhaps could even keep revenue the same and just cut inefficiencies to increase profits."

Ron:   So in terms of scaling, right, you can scale the business, the amount of revenue coming in the door and, or you can scale profits by operating more efficiently, reducing costs, you perhaps could even keep revenue the same and just cut inefficiencies to increase profits. But I just, for a moment, I want to focus on the front end. Let's assume we want more revenue and, or say more. And that could either be in bigger jobs or selling more stuff to the same customers or it could be new customers. And most of our industry from my experience talks about earning most of their work through referral and it's a referral based industry. Do you have thoughts or ideas around prospecting or how integrators could scale their business through effective prospecting or outreach?

Brian:  I do actually. And I think that marketing is important and if your referrals are great, they're very effective. The probably the best way. The probably the most, the highest probability of success is in a referral. But in order to really get your message out and to get access to a broader audience yeah, I think marketing is important. One of the things that we've done inside of iPoint is we built a marketing module. So you can create a template based targeted email marketing campaigns, newsletters you know, really give you the tools to break, to create a marketing plan, a strategy, and then the end will make the strategy. So yeah.

Ron:   I don't remember the name and even if I did, maybe I shouldn't mention it, but I think we, my firm One Firefly, we just started working with an integrator that has us using the iPoint email component I think for an email campaign. And I don't know if you know who that is, I've got to look at my notes, talk to my content marketing team to see who that is. But I think that's actually how it came to the surface. Rachel on my team recommended, she's like, Ron, you gotta have iPoint on Automation Unplugged. We keep hearing their name drop. So that's pretty good. Well, what's your opinion do you think most integrators are doing some form of email marketing?

Brian:  I don't think most of them are no. I think that a lot of the bigger ones are, but I'm not sure that they've had the ability to really target that effectively and to be able to dissect and to really have a laser focus on, I want this message to go to this group of people or this type of customer or people that have bought this brand and product from me in the past. Right? That's effective. That gives you that laser focus that you need without just sending out a bulk email because sending out a bulk email, there's issues that go along with that too. Cause you don't want your emails to be spam, you know? And you want to be able to make sure that when you do present a message and is delivered in the most effective way, that's not always email. Sometimes that's over the phone, sometimes that's in person.

Ron:   I have the name for you. Rachel actually just dropped a note here on the comment section. She said it's Automated Lifestyles of Texas.

Brian:  Awesome. Awesome. Yup, yup.

Ron:   Those fellows said, you know, we're going to do email marketing and we're using iPoint to do it.

Brian:  Perfect. That's perfect. Yeah, I transitioned, you know, it's something else that's really cool. I have full support from my business partners, you know, from the owner and everybody else in the business to help make the platform better. In order to do that, I have transitioned to where I only use iPoint as my CRM. So when I make phone calls, I track them in iPoint when I do marketing campaigns, I build them in iPoint, you know, there's still some other tools and there's still some additional functionality that I haven't quite got into the platform yet. But it's important to me to be able to provide a ground game, you know, a grassroots. I want to be able to see what my sales guys are doing. I want to make sure that they're doing the right things if they're having enough activities. Being able to report on that and being able to make sure that you're able to use one platform not only to take care of your existing customers, but to help stay in front of them.

"I've been selling for 18 years since I got out of college in 2000 and I only started using a CRM in 2014."

Ron:   And on this point, cause I personally, I've been selling for 18 years since I got out of college in 2000 and I only started using a CRM in 2014. And so prior to that I had notebooks and I had Excel sheets and then I had Google sheets and I had all sorts of glorified mechanisms to help me keep track of who my customers were and how I would rank them and how many times I needed to reach out to them and so on. So I'd like you for our audience to explain what is a CRM and what's your observations around very specifically why they should be using a CRM. Cause I'm going to imagine most of our industry is not using a CRM. And I think he froze. Ladies and gentlemen, bear with me. We're going to get it right. I hope we're going to get him right back. Oh no. Yeah. Hang out folks. We're going to try to get him back. Oh no, I see it. I'm just seeing it live on Facebook guys. We may have lost. Well that stinks. Here. Let me switch to this view. Oh, no. Rule number one, when technology fails, you do not panic. Yeah, I was talking to Brian just before we went on and he mentioned that Marco Island had been hit pretty bad by hurricanes and that the internet was very spotty in that market and he was kinda cross his fingers that we would be able to do a full show here uninterrupted. And it looks like we may have been bitten by the internet gremlins, so I'm going to take that as a message from the interwebs. We're going to go ahead and end the episode. I appreciate you guys watching and again, please join us every week. We're generally shooting on Wednesday or recording on Wednesday. The majority of the time technology fully cooperates. We have a bunch of really good and exciting guests lined up here in the coming weeks. And Oh, you know what, I was going to sign off. Brian's going to try to rejoin us. Well, let's see if it brings you back in here. I'm not getting any video yet. Let me, so, Hey you are, I was just in the middle of my sign off and saying goodbye to you. Did you reboot the computer.

Brian:  Yeah, my computer shut down.

Ron:   Oh, the computer. Why not? Technology gremlins that they're going to do that to you? Well, what I was asking you before, we were so rudely interrupted by the delay not that you were rude, but your computer was not nice. What's your opinion around the number of integrators that are in fact running a CRM and should they be?

"The real benefits of a full-blown business management platform is that it does everything human. Even if you're using a system that doesn't do everything you should be using a CRM."

Brian:  I do think that integration firms need to have a CRM. I really do. And a lot of them are. The real benefits of a full blown business management platform is that it does everything human. Even if you're using a system that doesn't do everything you should be using a CRM. It gives you the ability to create accountability and it gives you the ability to track progress and to track initiatives and attract without that, it's really hard to know without knowing how effective what you're doing is. You really don't know what you're doing. It's effective and you need to be able to look at that and the CRM will provide you that capability.

Ron:   And so you said you use a CRM. How long in your professional sales career have you used a CRM?

Brian:  I've used a CRM in one version or another probably since I've been selling anything. I don't know.

Ron:   Yeah. So you are an early adopter then. I mean, again, I was saying I've sold for a long time and I've only started using it in 2000. I use Zoho CRM and I now can't imagine my life without it. I looked like the pre 2014 as the dark ages.

Brian:  Exactly, exactly. And you know, early on in my career, very early on, I partnered with some pretty big organizations that have the ability to invest in a lot of infrastructure. And so I used I've always had tools like that available to me. And I think that that helped me. Part of what I really didn't know a lot about regarding the AV world was the sales process and the way that you go about doing that effectively. And so as we grow and as we scale and building, you know, bringing a foundational knowledge of what it takes to be successful from a sales perspective and having essentially a blank slate to write that into a software platform that is going to dramatically impact an industry is, it's pretty cool, you know? And so I mean it's really cool and my team is very dedicated to making the improvements that I recommend because their improvements are going to help grow our business. And if it helps my business, I would imagine it would help most too. So let's grow together. Right?

Ron:   No, you're in a very unique spot. You know, there's not a lot of competition and you have the opportunity to help a lot of people. And I think that's why I do what I do. I love helping people and I do it through my company and our products and services.

"In the end, the better ran a business is, the more efficiencies they have, the better the customers gonna be taken care of and the more referrals are going to get, the better, you know, they're gonna be able to pay their employees, the more money they're gonna make."

Brian:  Exactly, exactly. And you know, that's really what it's all about because in the end, the better ran a business is, the more efficiencies they have, the better the customers gonna be taken care of and the more referrals are going to get, the better, you know, they're gonna be able to pay their employees, the more money they're gonna make. You know, it all stems with how good can we can we build this business? And I had a great, very fortunate to have a great tool for that.

Ron:   No, I concur. Well Brian, I am very happy that you were able to time out of your busy schedule to join me on an episode of Automation Unplugged episode, I think 29. It's hard to believe I've done 29 of these already. They just kind of time flies when you're having fun and believe it or not, I was just looking at this data recently. We've started doing these shows in April and April to the present. We've had, I want to say the number was around almost 60 or 70,000 views on these videos.

Brian:  Nice.

Ron:   Isn't that wild?

Brian:  That's awesome.

Ron:   Through the interwebs, we can be sitting here in our home offices and then going out and touching that many people. It's pretty spectacular.

Brian:  It's pretty cool.

Ron:   Well, Brian, I wish you nothing but a tremendous success. I know you're, you're helping a lot of people. Actually, you did have an announcement. Did you not? Are you allowed to talk about this announcement? You had some news about attending a certain event?

Brian:  I said it already, I just didn't make a big deal of it.

Ron:   All right. Well, I'm going to highlight this because it's kind of a big deal.

Brian:  Yeah. We're very excited.

Ron:   Well yeah. Restate it. What's the news?

Brian:  iPoint is going to be attending the ProSource conference this year in March. We're also going to be attending the HTSA conference in April. So we're..

Ron:   So those groups are new for you?

Brian:  Yes. Well, ProSource is brand new. This will be my first ProSource event and HTSA we've had the opportunity to meet one time previously. We're definitely continuing that relationship as well.

Ron:   Okay, well congratulations Brian on your continued success. iPoint's continued success. I look forward to watching you take that train all the way up and I know you're going to help a lot of people. So I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule and even fighting the computer gremlins here a little bit as we made this show happen. No matter what. So appreciate it.

Brian:  Absolutely. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Ron:   Awesome. So this time folks, this is really the end of the show. We'll see you next week. We have more exciting guests lined up. I think we're booked out through March at this point. And hope to bring you lots of valuable information and insight and tips and ideas from the leading thinkers in this industry. So on that note, make it a great day. Have a great rest of your week and I will see you next time.

Show Notes

Brian Good is the VP of Sales and Marketing at iPoint. He has more than 10 years of customer service, sales, and training experience and deep knowledge of how to create and implement efficient development strategies that ensure success. Prior to joining iPoint, he held executive, analyst, sales, and training positions for a range of companies.

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:

You can also learn more about iPoint at https://ipointsolutions.net/ Be sure to follow them on Facebook and LinkedIn.