This week's home automation podcast features our host Ron Callis interviewing Joey Kolchinsky. Recorded live on Wednesday, February 21st, 2018 at 12:30 p.m. EST. 

About Joey Kolchinsky

Joseph Kolchinsky is the founder/CEO of OneVision Resources and is focused on modernizing the smart-home service channel, transforming today’s professional smart-home installer into tomorrow’s Technology Manager for the connected family.

He sold his first service contract for managing the smart home in 2008 and after nearly a decade of providing services to clients directly, he focused his efforts on building a platform for integrators. Today OneVision is redefining the relationships integrators have with their clients, changing the smart home one experience at a time.

Joseph holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He invested in and served on the board of Ihiji, a start-up focused on remote management of the smart-home which was acquired by Control4 in 2017.

Interview Recap

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

• History of OneVision Solutions
• What is the future of our industry and how does service play a role?
• What happens when you focus marketing efforts just on legacy clients and maintain those legacy clients through service?
• Why does the industry need a service conference?

SEE ALSO: Home Automation Podcast Episode #35: A Custom Integration Industry Q&A With Tim Bigoness

Transcript:

Ron:  Hello everybody. Ron Callis coming to you again with another episode of Automation Unplugged, brought to you by One Firefly. That's my day job. I'm even sporting my handy Automation Unplugged shirt today. There you go. A few of you have those. I think we gave those out actually at our recent trade show event or maybe we gave those away at CEDIA and today is what is today? Today's Wednesday, February 21st. So thank you very much for joining me for another episode and I am excited to bring to you a bit of a industry celebrity here in Joey Kolchinsky. Let me without further ado and bring him on. Joey, how you doing, sir?

Joseph: Doing great, but definitely not a celebrity, but thanks Ron.

Ron:  You're writing articles and you're teaching and presenting. You're all over the place. That's awesome. But you're trying to move mountains.

Joseph: Trying to move mountains. That's right. Trying to move mountains.

Ron:  Trying to move mountains. All right, let me jump over to Facebook real quick. Here we are streaming live. If you are out there please like this stream like it, comment, share it so that we can get the word out. And there you are. Hey Suze, thanks for the like, appreciate that sir. And if you're out there watching us live or even your after the fact, please throw down a comment. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love to know what your thoughts are. And Hey, there's Jason. Hey guys. Hey Jason, thanks for watching sir. Appreciate that. And let's jump right into it, Joey. So for those of you that aren't aware, Joey is the fearless leader, founder and CEO of One Vision Resources and Joey. What is One Vision Resources? What would be an explanation of the company for those watching that may not be familiar with you?

Joseph: One Vision is a service platform for integrators that supercharges their service efforts and leads their service departments with best practices in in, in culture and technology and business process. In order to become technology managers for their families.

Ron:  Awesome. I want us to go into that business. You are out there really trying to, my observation having been in the industry for a bit, what your company is doing is really on the cutting edge. And it's really touching, one could even call it a sore spot of what would my observation is lacking.

Joseph: A little bit.

Ron:  A little bit, right. Touching an area of the CI industry that is maybe not as paid as much attention to as it should by many business owners. And so I want to peel the layers back on that, but before we get there, I always like to, to introduce or learn more about you as a person and kind of where you come from. How did you land in this industry? You know, what brought you here and what's given you the fortitude to really continue to persist and work so hard and really inspire others with your inspiration of what you guys are doing to change the industry. I'd like to my audience to know a little bit more about you. So if you don't mind, can you give us some of that background?

Joseph: Yeah, a brief background. I'll try to keep it brief. I'm not known for that.

Ron:  You don't have to be brief, you know, give us add color to it. Yep. Run with it.

Joseph: So, you know, I started as a teenager in the tech support field. My first client was a really wealthy family in the Boston area and this individual had hired me to rip all of his CDs to MP3s cause he had one of the first Ipads. So it was a great gig, $15 an hour back in 2001 better than Starbucks, but really only works if you're living with your parents. So I don't recommend anyone try that. But it you know, it started there and this client kept asking me to continue to, you know, service and address more technology needs for him. And gave me the opportunity over the next several years to really learn and understand what it meant to be his technology concierge. That's what we called it back then. We didn't really have a good name for it. And fast forward to 2008 you know, I had serviced this family from through high school and through college and I learned to be available all the time instantly responsive and incredibly empathetic, right? They didn't want me to get lost in the technical piece. And so in 2008 I decided to start doing this full time and this family introduced me to a bunch of their friends and family and I had several clients. So that was the start. But before I knew it, you know, I am being pretty responsive and available all the time to several families. And that became pretty taxing. It was really hard to keep up with. And so I started charging some form of recurring revenue back then in order to figure out a way to make this model work. And so from 2008 to 2015, I had experimented with all different forms of recurring revenue and throughout that process I'd also become an integrator. These same clients and said, you know, your IT support is really great. You know, it's great that you're so responsive. Can you also really start taking care of my AV things? I mean, my computer needs and all that stuff is great that you're doing that. But I hired this integrator to build the system and they're not really that responsive, so can you do it? And so I started supporting and installing AV things and and backed into this industry and started building smart home systems. And by the end of 2015, I had two distinct groups within the business. One was a traditional integrator with project managers, engineers, designers, installers, programmers. And the other was our service department and the integration group, looked like a traditional integration group, but the service department was really special. We had created a service operation with 40 families where each family was paying on average two and a half thousand dollars a month for us to manage all of their technology. And so we had a $100,000 a month in recurring revenue coming in on the first of every month. And all we had was four people servicing those clients. It was an incredibly profitable business. Not a very scalable one. Right? It's a very, very high end, high net worth. But it had given us a glimpse into what people would be wanting. So, you know, you had people who had a lot of technology, you had people who had therefore a lot of tech support needs, and they also had the money to pay for the best type of service of their technology. And so we had simply sort of tapped that that market. And it gave us a glimpse of what the future would be like. And so that's why in 2015, you know, we shut down the integration group and took all the lessons that we learned from the service side of the business and built this platform in order to partner with the best integrators in the industry who really saw the forward thinking integrators who could really see that service was the future and that they too were sitting on what is effectively a gold mine of clients who all have increased demands for better support and are willing to pay for it. And see the need to modernize their business to become more sustainable and more in tune with what their clients are asking for. And so that's what we enable and we enable it by doing their tier one remote support for them on their behalf. We pick up the phone and with the integrators name and we use their branding and we then do all the marketing and sales of all of the recurring revenue for them on their behalf. We spin up all the technology systems behind the scenes, the ticketing systems, the on-call management systems and we manage all of it for them so that overnight they can effectively become an incredible service operation for their clients.

Ron:  So what was it like when you were, you spun up the integration business and you're collecting recurring revenue and it sounds like for you that it was a pretty logical way to proceed and provide that level of service you needed? You know, regular money to pay talented, you know, smart, expensive members of your staff to take care of those customers, as they said. Sounds like that's how you came to that decision to charge some monthly money to do that. And when you'd go to say CEDIA and you talked to your industry peers, and I'm betting they looked at you funny when you said you were doing that, was that your experience?

Joseph: Yeah, for sure. You know, I mean I had two things that made me really weird back then. One was all this recurring revenue that seemed very normal to me. And I had started doing that maybe five years before I read my first CE Pro magazine. Right. And I didn't even quite appreciate this industry existed. You know, and even when I started becoming an integrator, I learned to terminate Cat5 using YouTube. Right? Like I just really didn't know what I was, what I was doing. I had to figure everything out from scratch. But you know, when I would start to sit down in industry venues and engage with my new peers you know, I would say things like, yeah, we were experimenting with not marking up on hardware. We just found that was a more you know, it was an easier discussion with the client, and I would say that not knowing what kind of bomb I was dropping right in those conversations and it would spark all sorts of debate. And I was definitely labeled you know, in a few different ways. But you know, nothing short of innovative, that's for sure. Right? We were always trying new concepts, new approaches, and we wrote a whole case study internally on all the different things that we tried on how to deliver valuable services to clients in a way that they are interested and willing to pay for them. So that we could become sustainable and profitable. And eventually we figured it out. Right? But you had to try all these different things, but for sure it created a lot of interesting discussions.

Ron:  I want to touch on that bomb there for a minute. So you experimented with no markup on product but yet charging the service or the maintenance plan and if you did that, what sort of net profit, if you're willing to disclose is, was possible in such a circumstance?

Joseph: You know, it's interesting whenever I would say that everybody would sorta think like you're immediately undercutting others or something like that. And that actually wasn't it. You know, if you look at the average integration job, let's just take an integration project that's for round numbers. Let's call it $10,000. And usually in the integration business, usually it's let's say $6,000 or $7,000 of hardware and $3,000 or $4,000 of labor. Then all I did was flip that. I just didn't mark up on the hardware, but I charged a lot more for our labor hours. So we just pass through the cost of hardware, let's say $3,000 or $4,000. And then we charged a lot for our service. And what did, is it showed the client that our incentives were aligned, right? I told the client, I was like, look, I need to make the money I need to make in order to make this a profitable job for my team. But I don't really care if you're buying the, you know, a 100 inch TV or the 60 inch TV, it might take us a little longer to install the 100 inch TV. We might need a more expensive mount and we'll certainly need a more expensive TV. But, you know, we're, we're happy to do whichever one you think is best for you. Don't feel like we're pushing one or the other. Your way. And so it just aligned, you know, the conversations. But the cost of the project was the same. It was still a $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 project. It's just that the way that we got to that number was, was more aligned with how the client wanted us to behave. Right. And not have to not try to push hardware on them in one direction or the other. Naturally. I think the industry is actually already trending in this direction anyway, at least in the sense that hardware margins are naturally compressing and everybody I think is seeing the need to differentiate on quality of service and spend the time it takes to do the job properly. And that means that we're all starting to charge more for our labor hours anyway. And so the industry is naturally progressing in that manner.

Ron:  So what inspired you to go from being an integrator with a successful service model? The technology concierge model to wanting to help the industry at large or provide this or build a company that was capable of servicing the industry at large and in empowering integrators to adopt or adapt to this method of thinking and operating. Like what more than the mechanics? Like what made you want to do that versus just printing money in Boston?

Joseph: It was tapping potential. I mean, so look, there's, there's two reasons. One is very selfish. I wanted to build a scalable business, right? I really personally struggled with building a business that was key man dependent on myself and I didn't want that from a personal perspective. I really wanted to build something that could live without me. The irony in that is that we actually are helping every integrator solve that problem today, right? And so we found a way to actually help the whole industry. And that tapped into, you know, the other reason why I'm doing this is because the potential for everybody, I want this industry to reach the potential that it has. It is sitting on a gold mine of opportunity. And you know, this is not a matter of whether, retail, like we've historically talked about retail. It's going to take over and DIY is going to take over. And I don't believe in any of that. I think that there is an opportunity for this industry to become the future technology manager of the market. And I see a future where every connected homeowner is going to be paying some form of a monthly fee for ongoing marketing, ongoing monitoring, management and support of all of their technology systems and not just their home systems but their computers, their mobile devices, their services. Just there's going to be a single point of contact and we call that person a technology manager. And I think there's no better industry to become that provider than this one. Of course we continue to design and engineer and install awesome systems. That has to happen. But the additional value that's there, the additional potential that we could capture and develop into is this idea of becoming a technology manager. And I am dead set on just helping this industry go see that, see that through.

Ron:  So Joey, Hagi from Access Networks is watching. He just said, yo, as in yo, Joey, I'm watching you. Got good stuff. Keep it up. Joey, can you expound on, Hagi said agreed, what you perceive as this gold mine that integrators are sitting on? And I'm just going to shed, you know, my perspective is that integrators often, and many of them are simply going from job to job winning the new job. Excited to get out of the last job, sometimes struggling to get the job done to 100%. They're so excited to get onto the next job. And therefore this customer base that is for some dealers and I'm gonna say maybe the majority of dealers is not often touched or serviced. And you have this perspective that guys, that's where all the value is. Hagi by the way just commented, he said, trust equals a gold mine. So could you expound on kinda your perspective? Cause I'm gonna say for the industry at large, it's a more of a unique perspective. And by the way, I believe in what you're saying, I just would like you to put it into words and maybe we can convince some people listening that it's something they should be looking at.

Joseph: Yeah, I mean, I think we're entering the age of the relationship economy, right? This is where people are making their decisions based on the relationship they have with their service providers. And you know, Hagi guy said, the trust that they have, that trust is gold. And you know, as a little anecdote when our old business, you know, the reason why we sort of entered the integration side of the business because my old service group whenever they would get the opportunity to do a smart home project and we were doing six figure systems, it never went out to bid with our existing clients. Our existing clients just said, Hey guys, by the way, we're building a new house and you know what we need, go ahead and just tell us what needs to be done. And yep, we'll sign whatever. Here's the check. It was just a non a non issue. And that ranged from small projects to large projects. So you know, that I think is emblematic of the idea that that trust is gold and it really leads to everything else. To sort of put it into numbers. I think that, you know, a good example is if you take a project that's $50,000 and we have to have whole teams of people to engage in that project. We have all sorts of costs related to it. And for a good healthy integration company, you get to between 10 and 20% of net margin. That's $5,000 to $10,000 of profit on that project with a lot of work that goes into to achieve that profit. And if we also assume that those clients are going to end up paying something on the order of, you know, $100 a month for service then you know, and we leverage, we sort of use the experience that One Vision has. And by the way, the a hundred dollars a month comes from experience. We can currently see this playing out. You know, our average membership, these, all of our partners or integrator or are out there selling is on average $125 per month per home. And if you sort of use that average and use the experience we have from our legacy business for our clients who are with us for several years and are still with that team and they're not going anywhere, the churn is incredibly low. Okay. Let's say they're with you for 10 years, that's about 120 months paying about a hundred dollars, that's another $10,000 in value. And that's just the recurring revenue, nevermind all the service revenue that comes from it, all the little upsells that come with it, all of the small projects that come with it before you get to the next big project.

"Stay in connection with your customer."

Ron:  Stay in connection with your customer and the fact that they build it in house or they add a new wing, that's right, name it.

Joseph: Yeah. And in that recurring revenue, if designed properly, should be incredibly high margin. And so if you buy to that idea that you know, you're able to on average push those kinds of numbers and get $10,000 of additional lifetime effectively profit you incredibly high margin revenue on top of everything else. I mean, you've now doubled, tripled, quadrupled the value of that client. Right? And really leveraged your sales force and your sales team. And so, you know, we talked to integrators every day who have a 10 person operation. They're doing a couple million dollars in business. They have maybe $200,000 in profit every year. If they're healthy, maybe a little bit more, and you ask them what their client base looks like. They have 500 clients that they've done business with over the last several years and that they continue to engage with. If you invest in converting those clients into that, you know, that lifetime service relationship we talked about, you know, again, let's take 500 clients paying $100 a month gets you to $50,000 a month, times 12 gets you to $700,000 a year or $600,000 a year in high margin revenue and really healthy sustainable business. That just what? Tripled your net profit without adding all of the additional overhead. Right? That's what I mean by the gold mine, right? There is so much potential for this industry. And we don't have to go seeking tons of new projects to reach it. Of course, keep doing that, right? We want to enable our partners to all go and do tons of new projects and hit it out of the park. But there's also all of this service opportunity and the best part about it is when the economy swings one way or the other, the service revenue is usually the most stable. And your company has a much better chance of riding through that through those swings when you have a really healthy service space as opposed to just being dependent on projects.

Ron:  When we talk about opportunity, what percentage of the, and I'm going to be specific here, say the residential CI custom integration marketplace is currently leveraging their customer base with profitable service plans in some capacity. You have some guesses?

Joseph: Yeah. How so? I know that there was a study recently done. I'm blanking on who the journalist was. The strategy publication that's out there. He had interviewed several integrators across the industry and actually he was writing..

Ron:  Residential Systems?

Joseph: Yeah, well he was writing a piece for Residential Systems. I'm blanking on the individual, but I know one of our listeners would probably pipe up with the name of Ted Greene. That's his name, Ted Greene. Sure. Ted, you know, was writing a piece for Resi Systems. And he went out to on RMR on the status of the state of RMR in the industry. And he went out to go and interview all the integrators across the country and where a lot of them write a representative sample. I mean, and he found that almost nobody was really making a significant attempt either they just didn't think it was a big deal for them, or they were making the attempt, but it wasn't making a big enough dent to really matter. And it wasn't, it hadn't taken full hold within the company. And so it prompted him to really dig deeper and try to understand what was happening. And you know, I think the latest numbers from CEDIA came back to, I think they're approaching 8 or 10% of the market is, actively pursuing and making any progress of any reasonable amount on RMR. By the way, Ron, I don't think it's all about the RMR. It's really the question should probably be broadened, you know, who is making an active attempt to transform their business to lead with service. Whether or not it really results in RMR is a different story. But the important critical component is the business service oriented and service focused.

Ron:  So how does an integrator that's maybe been operating whether they were born, a couple of different questions just popped into my head. You know, one is how does an integrator that's been operating a certain way, let's say not a service-oriented entity or operation? How do they go about becoming a service-oriented? How do they make that pivot? I mean, what rec do they read a book? They go to attend a seminar? Do they call you and your team and chat about it or do they? How do they go about making that change?

Joseph: Yeah, so there, there's the, I just have to get this one out of the way just to get out of the way. Of course, give us a call and talk to One Vision. We would love to engage in that. So now that we've put that to the side..

"Never be shameful about promoting your business."

Ron:  Never be shameful about promoting your business. Man. Anyone that knows me knows I do it at all costs.

Joseph: Yeah, I just wanted to state the obvious, so that's obvious, but that aside, so we all sort of go from there to the next layer. So everything that we talk about, we blog about, it's on our website, go and, you know, we're an open book. You know, we really want to see this whole industry rise to the occasion and take advantage of this opportunity. I mean we are currently teaching courses at Mark and Frank White's tech summits this coming Spring and Fall specifically devoted to how to actually execute on this service. I think the industry as a whole as sort of figured out, okay, we need to act, service is important and now the industry is starting to dig into how do we actually make this change? You know, that question can be answered in a few different ways. You know, number one, I would always start with why, right? This is a classic Simon Sineck thing at this point that has permeated our culture and ask, you know, why are you doing what you do? Is it to get the latest technology into homes or is it to create an awesome service experience or is it to make sure your clients are always happy or, you know, pick your why, find it and anchor on it. And my guess is based on most conversations I've had with integrators, that the why is anchored around the client and it is all about creating a better experience for the client. And now keep that question and keep it really close to you as you now go and evaluate every component of your business. Are you selling with that? Right? Are you selling with service? Are you starting with the concept of, and I challenge integrators to go and experiment with this concept. I think it's a worthy experiment to try it maybe on your friendliest clients first. But next time a client asks you to come in and talk about a project, try to pivot that conversation as quickly as possible to service and see what happens. It's like, yeah, great. I'm here to talk about the design and engineering of your system and to create an awesome tech experience within your home. That's wonderful. But really let's, let's focus also on service because what you're really hiring us for is to actually manage that experience and ensure that it's always there for you. And it's always operating at full potential for the life of your experience at the house and, you know, please evaluate us as much as you evaluate the technology and make your decisions on maybe the products that are going in the tech experience. You're going to have evaluate also also on service and what that means. Right? And that you'll be surprised? Clients will actually come out and start sharing it saying, you're right. My tech doesn't always work. It's foolish to think it always will, and it's frustrating when my existing integrator's not there for me and you know, let's talk about that. And you'll find that the sale now changes your sales process changes. Okay. Well your engineering and design process change of everything is really about a better service experience and a better ongoing experience. Then do you start integrating RSM devices, you know platforms and tools into your projects. And it keeps going from there. What is the project to service handoff? Right? At One Vision, for example, we preach the idea that when you end, when the client starts using their technology, we call this day one when they start using their technology, even if the system is barely finished and there's a punch list, you know, a mile long, they are now a service client. Don't have them call the project manager. The project manager is not always there. Have them start calling your service team right away on that first day. If all they have is the family room and the TV and the family room is up and running and the rest of the system is still getting finished while they're moving in, great. They're now a service client and treat them that way, right? So go through your whole business and every process you guys have and ask, am I matching this process with, trying to match it up with your why and that will probably lead you to some incredible evolutions within your business.

Ron:  Joey, Andy says this is great content. He just made a post. Thank you Andy. Appreciate that. Remember if you're out there watching us and you want to ask Joey questions live, at least for the next little bit. Here we are live. So if you, if you post a question, you can get a live response from Joey. You know, Joey, in terms of your business, One Vision Resources, can you go through the mechanics? How does it work when someone engages your business? What's the nature of that relationship? What are you doing for them and what are they expected to do and what can they expect your operation to do for them?

"For us it's all about cultural alignment. We are not necessarily looking to partner with every integrator out there."

Joseph: Sure. so you know, for us it's all about cultural alignment. We are not necessarily looking to partner with every integrator out there. We know that there are a select few integrators who really understand that service is their future and you know, they base their why in service and the service experience. And as a result, you know, it all starts, you know, frankly, with us getting to know one another. And you know, as much as our potential customers or we can call our customers and partners as much as our potential partners are evaluating, they're going to be an addition to our family and our partner network. So it starts with some pretty in-depth conversations and in many cases, we actually fly our potential partners out to our offices and we host them here for a day, for an evening and a day to see our operation, to see what's going on, to explore everything and get a really great feel for what it's like. And that gives us an opportunity to get to know them. And when we move forward and start working together, you know, we have an onboarding process of two to three weeks where we match you up with our partner development team, which is a team of former integrators and professional trainers whose full-time job it is to simply develop the best processes for service in your business and then help teach and train them and implement them within your business. We will do a lot of video calls doing the system set up and the training of your, of your team will fly out to your opposites and spend time in your offices. You know, depending on the situation. And we'll, you know, get down to the nitty gritty of also just importing a lot of your data and making sure that, you know, there's a good system link between us and you know, between our team and your team. Our basic support team really becomes an extension of your team. By the end of that onboarding process, you really feel like, wow, these guys are just down the hall from us. We don't see them every day. But we talk to them all the time and we're engaged with them every day and they really become a part of our company. And then we, you know, start actually providing service and support. So on day one of working with us, all of your service and support is funneled into our operation and we immediately elevate the experience for all of your clients, every phone call, every email you know, we work with your team to show them the best ways to forward things to us or you know, properly take messages from clients and set expectations that, you know, the basic support team will get back to them. And you know, from there we also begin the education and marketing process to start to change the expectation your clients have of what service means, right? You can't do that cold turkey. You can't sort of rip the carpet out from under your clients and say, today everything's changing and you all have to start paying money for something different. You really need to engage with your legacy clients. And sort of walk them through the changes that we're about to be implementing and giving them some time to process. And so we develop all of those campaigns and our own service team, educates your clients, you know, and engages in that conversation whenever your clients call or email in. And we basically draw a line in the sand and after a couple months from that point, you know, all of your clients are now in this new service environment. They are all acknowledging the terms of service that we've set up with their company. They all are choosing a membership and you now start bringing in the recurring revenue and we start writing you a check every month. And I think, you know, the best part about this is it's all turnkey, right? So, really, you don't have to bring anything to the table other than frankly, your energy and commitment. And, the commitment is just to an excellent service experience. We'll take care of everything else and start writing you a check at the end of every month.

Ron:  Wow. So a dealer, if they partner with you and you really partner with each other, sounds like you're as selective about who you partner with as them evaluating you, it happens and it's reciprocated. And the end of those partnerships is the dealer has money coming in the door in some volume, I guess based on your success at getting their customer base sold into memberships. Is that what it is?

"It's important though to remember that even without the recurring revenue, the value that's being created between the two organizations is incredible."

Joseph: Yeah. And so we have a handful of partners who are now actually making more money than they'd pay us. So it's really cool to actually see it net out that way. And we expect that for everybody. I mean, the whole business and pricing models set up to do that. And you know, it's, it's important though to remember that even without the recurring revenue, the value that's being created between the two organizations is incredible. Right? So all of our partners have an incredible competitive edge on everybody in their marketplace because they're able to just say with confidence, Hey look, we provide this level of service and support. And you know, we actually implement a process within all of our partners were at the end of every project, all clients are given a complimentary membership that guarantees an elevated level of service and support for a certain period of time so they can competently make these statements and know that they're following through on them when they're meeting with architects or builders or clients. Their team is way happier because, on day one, all of the clients or all of the support calls are coming to us, all the emails are coming to us. So work-life balance is immediately improved. And we've even seen our partners able to hire much better because they can now recruit with this benefit, right. And say, Hey, you're probably burning out over at that company, but come join our company where, you know, we don't really have burnout like that. Their operational efficiencies have gone through the roof, right? Because again, all these people who are not getting distracted with service and support during the day, you know, the salesperson is able to focus on sales. The owner, the founder, the owner of the company is able to focus on being a CEO. The project manager, can focus on finishing projects and the texts that are out in the field can focus on actually doing the billable work that's in front of them, right? And not get distracted by all sorts of fires that are inevitably coming up every day. So all of that value is generated and we haven't even gotten to the recurring revenue and the longterm benefits that we work on. So this is really, really transformative, right? And any integrator who really believes that service is the future and you know, is already engaging. You know, the company and seize the opportunity to redefine their relationship with their client. You know, it was probably a good fit to connect with us.

Ron:  Now I know that you guys are also cooking up a conference. And can you talk about the purpose of that conference and, and what is the tentative timeframe for when that's going to take place and who should attend?

Joseph: Yeah. So you know, along the lines of us just believing that the whole industry has massive opportunity in front of it, whether or not you partner with One Vision, we want everybody to really see the future and see the opportunity and go after it with service. And so in that vein, we've launched the insight summit. And the insights supplement is a conference focused exclusively on service and the technology and the culture and the business process behind service and all the changes in new ideas that are out there or required to make in order to make that conversion within your business or in order to enable your business to become more service-oriented. So this conference is brings in a lot of industry outsiders because one of the other amazing things about services, we are not the only industry that has gone through this problem. There are many other industries that have capitalized on service, potential and have gone through this transformative process and have built service into their models and there's a lot to learn from them. So we have some excellent speakers lined up from a variety of different companies outside this industry. The people lined up to speak on some really engaging topics about what service means for the company or for your company as an integrator. And we encourage anyone from service technicians to service coordinators and service managers to the CEO or the operations people within your organization to attend the summit. And I would go so far as to say, if you have to pick one choose to send your service manager over the CEO. I'd rather see your service manager here because they're going to become the you know, our goal is to empower them to become the champion of this cause within your organization. And that's what we'll focus on with this summit. So it's 1nsightsummit.com. The number one is in place of the I. So 1insight summit there's a one at the beginning.

Ron:  Got it. Now Joey, I'm cognizant of everyone's time here. We've been on for 39 minutes. It's a few minutes over what we typically produce here, although it's been great content. So I know I've been listening and learning. For those that are watching and they want to know next steps, how can they learn more about your company? How can they talk to you or a member of your team? What would be the best channels of communication?

Joseph: Our website is perfect. If you go to www.one visionresources.com all spelled out and reach out to us through there. And if you ever see me at an industry conference, we're lined up to attend just about every single one over the next for the rest of the year. You know, please stop me in the halls. Our teams will be visible and strike up a conversation. You know, even if all you want to do is use this as a sounding board, we're here for you and want to strategize with you and engage in the discussion.

Ron:  Awesome. Well, I know that I'm going to see you in a couple of weeks out in Nashville at the Pro Source event. Yep. And are you a few weeks after that? Is the, Azione Unlimited event, are you going to be there as well?

Joseph: Yeah, well our team will be there as well. Yep. And then a couple of weeks after that at HTSA as well.

Ron:  Wow. You guys are all over the place, man. That's, that's fantastic. Well, Joey, I wanna thank you very much for your time. I know you're a very busy man. You're moving mountains as they say, so your time is pressed. So thank you for being so generous and joining me on the show. That was great to have you.

Joseph: Thank you for having me.

Ron:  All right, folks. Well, that wraps up episode number 35 of Automation Unplugged. And maybe give us a comment. Tell me if you want one of these Automation Unplugged tee shirts. We'll see if we can't get those out to a select few of you. These are prized possessions. But anyway I want you guys to have a great rest of your week. You remember how your day goes, how your week goes, and how you react to what happens. It's all a choice that you make. So make it a great day. Make it a great week. And I will you next time, I'll see you next week on the next episode of Automation Unplugged. And until then ciao. Have a great time. Be well.

Show Notes

Joseph Kolchinsky is the founder/CEO of OneVision Resources and is focused on modernizing the smart-home service channel. He sold his first service contract for managing the smart home in 2008 and after nearly a decade of providing services to clients directly he focused his efforts on building a platform for integrators. Today OneVision is redefining the relationships integrators have with their clients, changing the smart home one experience at a time. Joseph holds his B.A. in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He served on the board of Ihiji, a start-up focused on remote management of the smart-home, now acquired by Control4.

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:

• CE Pro
• Residential Systems
• Azione Unlimited

You can also learn more about One Vision Resources at https://www.onevisionresources.com/   Make sure to follow them on Facebook andInstagram