Announcer: The following is a presentation and the ControlTrends Podcasting Network.

Eric Stromquist: W One, two three. Hi, this Eric Stromquist Welcome to ControlTalk Now. The HVAC and Smart Buildings video Cast and Podcast for the week ending June 9, 2019 this is episode 319 when we talked about all things smart building controls and what would a smart building controls conversation be, but the day your coast in mind, the man, the myth, the legend, the one, the only Kenny Smyres to control man from that’s per Pennsylvania Kenny welcome to the show!. Am I getting better at that? I’ll keep working at it. Yeah. Is it getting any better?

Ken Smyers: It is. I had to start smiling because it’s like, um, you know, rocket man, uh, Elton John Movie. Did you see that? Did you sit movie yet?

Eric Stromquist: John? I want to, I want us to have, we just, we just got into an Avengers so man would make my make or so the vendors, it’s awesome. But, but I want real quick, I’m practicing because we’re kinda thinking about the control trend towards us coming up. It’s the same day as the Superbowl and Orlando and it’s going to be the biggest Superbowl party and the history of Hvhc controls. And we’ll throw the control trends of wars to boot. But we’ll, we’re thinking about doing is, you know, having the cheerleaders and everything and you know, it’s going to be more casual this year, but we’re thinking about doing is like if you’re a platinum sponsor and easy ios already signed on as one, so we’ll, we’ll use him as an example. So imagine everybody else’s seed it and then you get an announcer voice and I don’t know whether I’ll do it. We might have to hire a professional announcer, gone and now please welcome to the welcome to the field. The team from ECI, oh, the purveyors of the beast from the east led by Captain Mike Marston and yellow.

Ken Smyers: MMM shocker. Rod and the tutors going, we got the music point and they come, you know, going into their table and so on and so forth. So less. I’ll comment too if you think that’s a good idea. Well, you know, like the, I think it’s going to be, again, it’s good to be the biggest Superbowl party in Orlando. There’s going to be 350 people there and they’re going to be in their football moods. But first we’re gonna take him through the 2019 capital trends awards. Uh, our heroes are superstars of our industry and transition right into a super party because, uh, we have the facility lined up and we’ve already worked with the staff down there and they could put the television, there’s 21 television throughout the facility, but they’re going to put two one stage apparently. And uh, they’re going to be giant screens. And so there’s not gonna be a better place to watch the football game. What is and who it’s going to be like. Uh, I mean the controlled trends wars or kind of be like the pregame show, right? So write your own personal pregame show. So imagine, and God, I’m just thinking, I’m thinking out loud can, how much fun this could be. So imagine if we had a two, two imitators, I can Howard Cosell imitator or whatever. And then in between when people are walking up to receive their awards instead of playing music, it’s like, wow, I didn’t see that one coming. Did you? Kenny will know. But you know, you got to know that this guy has been doing so and so on. Someone or maybe a Jon Gruden imitator or something like on, it’s going to be memorable. So, uh, I’m looking for what, you know, what’s happening and as we talked to more and more sponsors and we’re getting support at this, always a good feeling to know that, uh, you know, we’re on the right track. People, people think it’s a great idea because a, they get to do something and nobody wants to miss the Superbowl. So to give them a place that a, they’re going to have a nice fixed from place where they can take their customers, enjoy the, you know, joy, the audience of the controlled transporters, and then have a Superbowl party and you know, this is the BB King’s clubs. So we’re going to have the music, they’re going to have the food and all the beverages and refreshments that uh, you know, you could get anywhere else. You’re going to have them there. And the sort of saved a lot of traveling. I mean it’s just going to be super compact by staying because it’s going to be near the convention center, uh, for HR. So yeah, it’s about a half a mile, half about an international. Uh, was it international road or boulevard?

Eric Stromquist: International. International Boulevard. But it is kind of rock and roll. But Dude, uh, we’re getting ready to, I talk about it on the road. Again, you and I are getting ready to go up to Nashville, but before we do that, this show is brought to you by two sponsors this week. And we mentioned on the last show that Kenny and I are opening up a controlled transfer or sponsorships, specifically the smart road needs video casts in podcast show. So if you’re interested in that to reach out to me or Kenny CT for control trends, marketing pro@gmaildotcomctmarketingproatgmail.com. We’ll get you the details, but Kenny, tell us who our sponsors are for this week’s episode.

Ken Smyers: I’d love to. This episode of ControlTalk Now is brought to you by DG Lux and DG Lux is really excited about their PROJECT ASSIST, uh, the robust graphical applications to monitor and analyze building data. Dg Lux five. We see a whole new surge from DGLux. I mean, these guys have been around a long time and are the professionals in presentation and visual data and now they’ve got the, they’ve really brought more technology to bear and it’s even better. So please check that out. We have a link on the site and also Egio. Uh, we came back from the world conference. Uh, it was, uh, an amazing event. Got to see all the, the uh, the hierarchy of Egio from all over the world. Malaysia, Mike Marston was in there and the moon shot, uh, was there. Uh, and then the European contingent with Johan and his team guild. Uh, what’s his name? The your, your favorite guy? The handball player. Guido. Oh,

Eric Stromquist: well great, Quito is great. And of course, Gina Elliot, who’s running the North American operations for mouse. So, uh, absolutely appreciate easy, I’ll support, uh, they’ve, we sort of had been with them since day one and vice versa. I mean Mike and limb, uh, I’m more, I think the first people to sign up as controlled tend towards the sponsors as soon as we got started. And they did that. And another one that signed up every year was a Eugene Mazda on the team from DG locks, him and Arthur, we call him the men in black. So these are good folks. They take good care of people, they’ve got great products, they’re very innovative and like you say, it’s great to see, uh, the men in black TG back. And uh, so definitely check them out. I will put a link in the show notes for both of these companies and what that Kenny Smyres, you and I are getting ready to go on the road. Willie Nelson’s Tao again next week. So tell her out is where we’re going to be going. Oh, we’re going down to Nashville, Tennessee, a music city hall, and we’re going to attend the con real calm 2019 conference. And again, this is a, I mean, you talk about smart, connected, high-performance intelligent buildings and what is entailed there. This is, this is going to be a mecca of, of technology innovation. Uh, I’ve talked to hundreds of people now, uh, through throughout the United States, uh, that are going to this. And uh, and we just had the, uh, Roger even act in his team’s coming down from a Indianapolis, uh, because, uh, they realize the value of being there. I mean, it’s, got it all, it’s got the, uh, the networking. I mean, the case studies that they have in the buildings of smart, connected buildings are probably the most outstanding grouping of, you know, you know, Missouri style show me, uh, you know, case studies where you can go in and talk to folks that helped install it, helped pick out the solutions and own the buildings and they can provide testament of what you could do. The first steps. I think the biggest thing that Jim young and Howard Berger always, you know, they’ve got this great solution, a presentation, but the, it seems to be that it’s always that first step. And the way I understand it is there’s probably a large percentage of people that after they come here, they are very, very confident in taking that first step, going back to hometown USA and going back to their, their buildings or their businesses and saying, you know what, the next time we do something, we’re going to do it this way. We’re going to start to begin our, our, our smart connected building intelligibility, make our buildings smarter, and we’re going to do with the next installment. And next time we make choice and payment. We saw a great article come out of Europe, uh, like Dolly. Um, you’re supposed to kill Dolly Welt with Dali lighting.

Ken Smyers: There you go. He put a great article out on a three 3,300, 3000 metric. So the Jones Lang Lasalle has an enlarged that the concept of their metric on how much energy costs you per square foot, how much overhead and how much, uh, you know, occupancy, uh, you know, productivity. Well, now, uh, there’s another metric add to that the $3,000 that if you have a smart, intelligent, total room automation style facility, you’re likely to really produce incredible dividends and, and, and really get a spectacular performance. Uh, metrics are now, you know, what everybody’s looking for. So everything that we, you always said you have to have the basics, you have to have quality, you have to have a good app, you have to have, you have to have that just to be in the conversation. But now how do you get to the end user? How do you get to the facility manager to this show? I become real calm is how you doing?

Eric Stromquist: Well, listen, I gotta tell you that I put a post up this week about, uh, you know, this is the year you want to go. And to be candid with it’s probably too late. You might be able to get in. We’ve got a link there cause we had a control trends, a special, you could get a disk and it might be too late. So, but two things, uh, watch this video, uh, uh, that we, we posted read the post, cause I, I think Jim Young is basically saying in the video highlights we put up that Microsoft is coming out with supplements just going to, he says is gonna rock the industry to its core and, and Mike, Anything else when somebody is disruptive, uh, is, is either an opportunity or it’s a nail in your coffin and that sort of depends on you. So we kind of realize that you’re not going to probably be able to get there if you’re not already going. So Kenny, I can do everything we can to bring the conference to you. We’re going to live stream as much as we can. So if you haven’t already subscribed to the youtube channel is that we’d be using youtube live stream as much as we can. So it’s not as good as being there, but it’s close as good. Closest to good to be in there. And, uh, you know, again, the analogy we use and to listen to Jim Talking, we’ve known Jim for a while county. Um, and I’ve never heard him this definitive about something he thinks is going to really, really change everything. And it kind of reminded me of what it must have been like back in the early days. And I think it was 1975 when um, Microsoft got founded. I mean we put a picture of a Paul Allen and Bill Gates and they must have thought those guys had three heads. They kind of look like they do, they have so much hair back then that, uh, but you know, you sort of wonder what would you have done. I mean if he could be transported back in time, you know, your, your business, your, all your priorities and so on and so forth. I mean, would you have given them the time of day? I don’t think I would have. I think I would’ve just said, I’m too busy. This doesn’t make sense. I’ll catch it on the flip side. But, but if you had been one of those that said, I want to take the time to try to understand this, your life could be completely different. And my question is, if gems to be believed, which I think he is, I mean, he’s one of the brightest guys around and he’s, this is not his first Rodeo. Is this gonna be one of those definitive moments that if you’re paying attention, you can capitalize on it?

Ken Smyers: Well, um, to your point, uh, and he, and Jim says that in the video, but you know, we, we called them a profit because of some of the predictions he’s made. Now we’re actually living through them and living within them. Uh, you know, as far as how it affected the industry. I mean, I remember, uh, once he said something about, you know, this real calm, I be con networking event people buy businesses and whatever. And we’ve seen several acquisitions in several mergers that have occurred to it. It’s almost like a, you know, it’s unbelievable now. Uh, so he believes that this, uh, presentation, especially with Microsoft is going to change the way people look at the building business itself and, and the partnerships that are being formed within it. In other words, you used to have our own HPAC industry and they had their facility management industry and you know, there was intelligent buildings, you know, that we’re just doing the real estate people or the convergence. It’s all happening at these events. And what’s Ha would I think is going to happen is there’s going to be partnerships introduced there that are going to be so compelling that they’re going to look for new channels. They’re gonna establish channels of how these things are going to get done. So, you know, they’ve got this potential, this cloud solution. We’ve got these, you know, he said there’s a pavilion of 32 corporations and you know, ABB, Honeywell, Eg, the Microsoft pavilion just into Microsoft pavilions. So, I mean that shows you from eight to 32 something substantial has happened and something a very, uh, you know, uh, magnitude and importance is, is, is, is alive and going to be present at this show. And it’s almost like being a senior. Great. Contracept I mean, if you, if you, if you can get there and see it in person, you’ll have a impact a certain way. If you can’t, then please, you know, check with control trends a and they do our best to convey that information. But yeah, it’s exciting because, you know, I mean that’s 2019 now. And uh, you know, I just, I just had my car inspected and I got a sticker on my car. It says 2020. I’m thinking 20 though. I mean, I mean it’s just a strange date. You know, it’s like something out of a movie or something, you know, but we’re just going through times. Yes. Hey man, the decade of the 20’s is going to be our decade, baby. We’re going to rock and roll. We’re going to make it happen, man. We’re not getting older. We’re getting younger. We’re not getting, well we are probably getting uglier, but we like to think we’re getting better looking. But you know, speaking of that man know you talk about this show Kenny, it’s the only show I know that you can learn about the latest technologies, right? And is kind of unfiltered because there’s not like a manufacturer. It’s not like a particular manufacturer’s conference is all about um, uh, you know, the best technology available. But then the customers were there as the huge, huge thing. And I got, I got to asked you, remember it was San Antonio. We’re sitting there at a cybersecurity breakout session, right? And there’s this guy sitting in front of us. We didn’t notice the guy first I got to confess, he had this really beautiful assistant, you know, all dressed up business like beautiful hair and all that. She’s taking notes. And so we’re looking at her and we kind of look well, who she said wasn’t, is this guy’s got the slicked back hair. He’s got the braces on and all that stuff. And so of course, you know, when the break comes up, we’re curious about when the break comes up, Kenny and I go and talk to the guy because we really want to just find out what’s the story on the girl is right. And, uh, this guy is, he owns real estate, commercial real estate. And we got to talk about one of the jobs in Atlanta. We’d done, what’s a huge bank building? And he sort of said, well, you know, what are some jobs you’ve done in Atlanta? I’ve got some properties in Atlanta. Tell him. He goes, yeah, I own that building. They wear out. You’re going to find something like that. Right? Well, yeah. So the, uh, the networking opportunities are incredible. And uh, you know, I’ve seen people change jobs. I’ve seen, I don’t know if that’s good or bad for an employee to here, but now it’s just, it’s a goto place is the Mecca of intelligent buildings and, uh, it’s growing in magnitude. In other words, I think that, uh, yeah, we remembered if we met Dave Lorenzini, we saw the first Google glasses. So we started the technology. So the drone presentation on the stage, that was incredible because, I mean, I’d never seen a drone up close and then it invented Google glasses and Kenny and I are hanging out with him. And you’ve got to do, it was called, I mean, but you know, it was at the real car might be gone. So Jim was saying that there’s some incredible stuff. Yeah, I’m looking at the real calm edge book. This, this book by itself is worth its weight in gold because the new buzzwords and their technology is being captured inside of a very condensed book. Uh, it makes anybody that reads this thing more intelligent about the industry, you know, and about the success stories. And again, going back to all these things that are here, and that impressed me the most, the case studies are, are what’s really probably the smart building best practices showcase. This is where you’d go down and they didn’t have Ford land. Energy pushes the envelope enabling energy efficient, smart campuses, Sas smart campus in another thing. I mean it’s, it’s, it’s loaded with so that whether you’re in a high school, uh, facilities management or you’re in college, you know, university campus management and you know, also now the, the, the new things or cyber security, I mean, there’s going to be some solutions down there. There’s a vendors, uh, area, uh, you know, uh, we saw who’s those people aware last year and he went from that show a astronomically. We had them on the launchpad, remember? And it was because of us, well is Jane is a, there’s own own right. And he solved the problem that was affecting his family. His kids were a subject, all these allergies and a, the VOC. So they’re in the air and he created a sensor that, uh, you know, gives you a, you know, an accurate measurement of what your, your voc level is and, and you know, and then you can take action, fresh air or better filters or whatever you’re gonna do to react to it. But he got a, I think, I think he gets started there. I mean, cause now he’s an net. It’s in every magazine. It’s everywhere. I look engineered systems everywhere and uh, one time I think he was looking at distribution as a channel, but he probably went direct because that sensor, that sensor didn’t require a whole lot of uh, you know, support and, and you know, things that you have to create a, you know, maybe a two step proposition.

Eric Stromquist: He just sold directly to the market and I think he’s kicking butt. Well, I think he is too dude. And, and uh, but again, I think it gets back to something we’ve talked about on the show a lot as you can have the greatest product in the world. But if people don’t understand what it is or don’t know about it, it’s not gonna do you any good. That’s where Kenny and I go, what are the game show host? Who the industry man where the king makers you want us to get your product on? Man, we’re rocking. Won’t speaking to that, Kenny, we got on awesome guests teed up. He’s ready to rock and Roosevelt had to introduce me. I’d love to Eric, this is a real industry veteran of substantial experience. I mean, he’s got 38 years in the industry. Uh, and he’s young and energetic. Still. Doug Miller, a lead AP vice president of sales for KMC Controls is welcome to the show. Doug. Welcome. Doug

Doug Miller KMC: Thank you gentlemen. It’s a pleasure to be here. I, I couldn’t tell you how thrilled I was with Eric called me and asked me to join the show. And you guys are iconic in our industry wanting to do what you’ve been doing and the control turns world. I mean guys really elevate us to the status of superstardom as areas Eric puts all the time. So I’m absolutely tickled pink.

Eric Stromquist: Oh, right. Well Doug, thank you so much. We’re so glad to have you here. Who’s had over your right answers that pitcher you back when you played football at Michigan State

Doug Miller KMC: Mortal Desmond Howard when he ran against Ohio state in November of 1991 it was Heisman pose right in front of the Ohio state. Oh yeah. We all did that. Uh, everybody can practice doing it. Highs when that was a fad for about two years. Every time somebody did something, they did the Heisman. Yup. Yup. And there’s the, he’s the man who started at all. Yeah. Well what deck, let me ask you a question, sort of set the frame for our, our community here because you’ve been around the industry first quite some time, you know, like Kenny and I have a as well, so walker community a little bit through your career and sort of how you got in controls in which you’ve been doing. Sure, absolutely. You know, um, well back in the days, Eric, when you and I both in care and I started, um, actually put myself through college working for an Hvc and the gap around service and installs. Um, I joined Honeywell in the very early eighties, and I spent 11 years with Honeywell, Honeywell and spent seven with Siemens, uh, subsequently three with Johnson controls and more with the train corporation all. And I became, see now for 13 years. So if you’re doing the math, that’s 38 years. And I’ve had a lot of titles over those 38 years. I’ve been a tech field, a private project manager and the applications engineer, an operations manager, service manager, branch manager, pick titles. So I’ve seen the industry from a number of different perspectives.

Ken Smyers: Wow. Well that’s pretty, pretty special in that old, well you don’t, but you know what Kenny and I tried to tell people, we recruited him to the industry. As you know, controls guys don’t get old. We just get better looking as we get older.

Doug Miller KMC: Oh, you’re not, they say they don’t put marble tops on shoe firms.

Eric Stromquist: There you go brother. There you go. I love it. Well, so listen, you kind of uniquely qualified to talk about Kmc. Given the background you’ve had resolved some of the major players. What is it about KMC that not only attracted you but this kept you for 13 years? Well, that’s a great question and you know, I mean, there’s never been a better time to be at KFC. We’re celebrating our fifth year anniversary this year. And Nice. It’s nice. I mean, we’ve had some, we’ve had exponential growth over the past few years and that’s been a good problem to have. We’ve got some really great new system integrator art, or if we’ve got some excellent new OEM relationships, uh, that are coming up. We’ve got some new OEM contracts that we’re developing right now. Actually the company got started, well people don’t know that. It’s still probably 35% of our roads and um, it’s been a great business for us. We’ve got some new sales team members, but more importantly I think the thing I really love about it is, you know, we’re an American owned American reading company. The products are made right in Indiana, in the bread basket point. American workers and Eric, I think you’ve been to our factory. It’s just an extremely impressive place. It really is. We bring folks there and they’re always amazed at what we can do in the middle of a corn field, in the tech, the technology we have. It’s just great.

Doug Miller KMC: No, it is quite impressive to me more than anything else is sort of the family values. Right. You got Eric Kreuter who is what the grandson of the founder, correct. Uh, of, of, of KMC controls and you know, far our older guys, if you remember, like the velocity reset controllers and a lot of the pneumatics, I mean, that was cruder that made those, those are still out there. And, and the fact that they’re out there and they never break, uh, you know, it’s kind of a testament to the quality, but to speak about the values, if you will, because that’s really the technologies. Impressment we’re going to talk a lot about that. The products have impressed me a lot, but what impresses me more than anything is, you know, I shared the values. Yeah, no, absolutely. And that’s one of the things about the organization as, as it is a family run business and you know, you’ll walk on the production floor, the orders know everybody out there. Most of them they know by first name. They’ve been employees of our company for a very long period of time. We have very little turnover. People start working at KMC and they typically retire from KMC. I couldn’t be more proud of those folks there. And they’re all dedicated and passionate about what they do. They genuinely care about the crack at their building and shipping out the door and those gallery show in the fact that we have such a small percentage of returns, we make a great product. Well I think you guys do in the fact that it’s American made and I don’t want to get political on this show. And Kenny, I’m gonna let you ask a question for this cause I’m just dug in are like old friends mantle work catching up. But uh, but, but I think you guys have already been very, very price competitive, but how about fill in that gap might widen a little bit just because you guys are making the viewers products are made in the u s and some of some of the impending tariffs on some of the others. Uh, it seems like not only you guys are going to have quality, but you’re gonna have a pricing advantage as well. Yeah. You know, I think that’s a very good possibility. Um, we’ve certainly been approached more salt than ever by some folks that simply can’t get product through the normal channels that they need to get them in. And they’ve come to us and say, Hey, can you help us get this? Cause we have an order for x number of these we’ve got to fill in, we can’t do it. So there’s some advantages there. Well, sure is in fact a this uh, what is it? The tariff a section two, three, two tariff is going to change a lot of people’s business models because it’s going to be a substantial impact. The thing that I’ve always enjoyed about the KMC and I’ve, I’ve, I remember being a mildly surprised sometimes when I found out that camps he was making this product for this manufacturer. We label labeling this of fact according to hold the pneumatics, uh, one of the, the uh, not really a surprise, but it was a testament to the quality and I think you put it the first five year warranty, all your products are warrantied for five years, right? Yeah. But, um, I think in this day and age right now, manufacturers have a problem. So the district was trying to solve solution selling versus product song. Back in the old days things were easy because your song products, the product you go through the future feature benefit list and it was pretty self explanatory in easy. Now we’re selling solutions. I think we’re KMC has really moved their needle in a different direction. Was that you guys would be very good at selling solutions. Tell us about some of your favorite solutions that came. See. Okay. Well thanks Ken. I, I do appreciate that we have um, some things that we address the marketplace, you know, it’s real easy to to push your product out there and say, hey look, we need this fancy new widget or the real value add comes in. How do you take that and incorporate into meeting the need of a customer? Um, we recently had a situation with a school district down in Florida and they were their production of food production area where they make lunches for the students and that type of thing. They were using a lot of energy but they weren’t quite sure how to separate out how much energy they were really used. So we went in and overlaid the can we enter solution on top of that wearable, actually monitor and track your energy usage of a fucked up to production facilities. And so what that allowed the district to do with that setup or billing network that can actually fill that part of within district or the energy they were using. So that’s really cool. Yeah, like I said, I’ve keep tracking like, um, I’m on your website right now. It’s a great website too and you have a lot of really lot of good information for people that need information about controls and whatever. One of my favorite little reference books is a this little KMC commander book I got, I got this at this show one time and I still use it when I’m trying to write something and I want to make sure I get the terminology right. The Kate Green building and controls glossary. Yeah. I think another thing that came see did early on was took the initiative of, of the concept of collaboration. You’ve got involved with the two very serious, uh, industry players, Dell and Intel that are obviously really good at what they do. And you incorporated incorporated that into the KMC, uh, world. Tell us about that, that story. Yeah, it’s a really unique story. It’s kind of cool. We were at a real calm, I become conference a few years back and um, you know, they had a panel discussion up front. They had Dell and Intel and all the big it players there and Richard Newbury, our CEO was in the audience at the time and he was listening to what they were talking about, you know, something clicked in his head right then the wheels started turning. We need to be a part of that. I need to get involved in that. He had literally just come back to the organization after a little bit of a hiatus, getting that business cards. So he grabbed somebody else’s business card, wrote his name on your back, gave it to some people. So I really want to talk to them about this. And, and, uh, that’s kind of where it went. And you know, he kept following up and following up and trying to get ahold of the right people and you know, the standard gatekeeper run around type scenario. And then one day out of the blue call came into the switchboard and then somebody from Intel call us and say, Hey, there was a guy that showed up and had dark glasses and he was at our meeting. We really don’t remember what his name was. We want to talk to him about this. And of course we meet soon as they said the dark glasses. Right. We all knew that was Richard. So they put him on hold, they kind of ran down the hall into Richard’s Office. Um, I guess somebody from mid tail on the phone, I think they want to talk to you. So that’s really kinda how it all started just through Richards.

Ken Smyers: Well, and I think there’s a lot to be said for that. And, you know, Doug, you and nine Kenny all came up through the sales ranks. And you know, there’s, there’s really something to say for being persistent and for following up. I mean, I’m amazed at how many people get discouraged early on and don’t accomplish great things. But I think it’s a testament to the values of KMC that, you know, you’ve got the CEO who is, uh, you know, work and work and work and following up, following up, following up, not getting anywhere, not getting everybody doesn’t give up. And, uh, so I, I kind of bring that up as a framework because my experience and we’re distributed KMC and we, we loved the product. My experience with working with you guys is that a, you get that same kind of persistence and follow up, uh, when you’re a customer KMC. Wow.

Speaker 6: Yeah. Well thank you. I mean, you know, our mantra is integrated intuitive solutions for responsive and supportive people. And that’s not just a buzz phrase for us. We really do live that our people are responsive. We are supportive. You know, we, we are, we’re not the biggest name in the industry. We realized that we make up for that buyer responsiveness.

Eric Stromquist: Well Dude, I want to talk to you cause you got two great videos that I want to make sure that our community sort of tapped into. And I’m going to set, set one up and, and then I ask you to respond on that later. But uh, the first one is, uh, on your website you got Richard Newbury. It’s a cool black and white video, uh, and it, and it talks about, uh, you know, Dell and Intel and KMC in that partnership. And I’m a big fan of black and white. Have you out of control? Trans ain’t time. I shoot something in black and white. I do. So kudos for the video. It was great. But Richard talks about the fact that their 5 million buildings, I think it was 5 million that don’t have a proper energy solutions and they’re wasting a ton of energy was in the millions or billions, I forget. But he talks about in the short little video and a, a sort of setting the framework up with this collaboration with Dell and entail in KMC. You guys, as he says, you’re providing an affordable solution that anybody can afford. So I want you to respond to that. The second one, you don’t have to respond to it other than to go of course. That’s why we did that. The second one is we’ll talk about in a minute, which is I think it was shot at HR. It was kind of going through the conquest product line and there’s a B roll footage because you’re talking about how you can do the near field. Uh, uh, okay. Yeah. Near field communications and there’s somebody who’s there with a smartphone and I’m, I got that shirt, looks real familiar in the name tag, looks familiar. So I want to know who took my shirt and my name tag for that video.

Doug Miller KMC: Well okay, in reverse order. That was probably Tim Vogel at the time would be my guess for sure. No, I think it was me just didn’t see the face cause you know Tim Tim note I have much more buffed body than Tim did so I’m sure he wanted to, I was like a body double. I can add that to my resume now. You’ve confirmed that for me, but go ahead. All right. No, that’s fine. Um, yeah, the, the video that um, uh, that was great. I mean we get a lot of hits on that because it is a fact and that’s one of the driving factors to the incredible work and acceptance with that of commander. There are a lot of buildings out there, right? These specific that don’t have any type of automation, Rachel and simply because there isn’t an affordable solution for that space. And our goal with commander was the design something that was Margaret Ready, easily deployable, you know that you could deploy it by somebody who doesn’t have HPAC or bass computer skills. They can go in and get this thing set up, get up and talk and pushed out data to the cloud and on someone’s mobile device. In a matter of a day, the industry is going, the world is going towards, everything is mobile. Everybody wants everything on their phone. I bought a window, air conditioner for my house recently. There was a mobile app for that. Now I can control my mobile phone. So it’s just an example of of how everything is moving. And of course when you get into those scenarios now security is always the question, right and everything, you know, the whole, unfortunately all thing that happened with target a few years ago kind of thrust us and controls industry into a spotlight. We really didn’t want to be it, but we’re there now and it was inevitable that the social security is obviously a very important issue. We’ve built in several layers of that and the commander, we’ve written white papers on it and when we find ourselves a lot of times now, and I’m sure it’s not unique to us, anybody that operates in the iot space, finding ourselves inside of CIO or I it offices explaining what we’re putting on our network, where it’s going to do and has been a functional cause, it’s a concern. Sure. Well and I think again, having that concern and, and engineering your product to meet those concerns. But the, again, the, the whole concept of Iot, I think you guys came, see, had the understanding of where things were going. In fact, the, I just wanted to review the history a little bit. Uh, last year you all were recognized by Crn, the brand of the channel company. The named KMC is one of the top 50 companies, corporations in the United States that really get the Internet of things. You made it to that list of the top 50 in the Internet of things list, which recognizes companies whose innovative offerings help connect objects, computing devices, infrastructure, data storage. So the, where do you see this all going to a dog? I mean we’ve got, again, we talked about pneumatics, the, the uh, the c a c 2000, what was that? The receiving alerts, 30 11 thing. I can still remember it. We sort of just hundreds of them now. We’ll talk about it. Yeah, the stop sign. Exactly. And, and now we’re talking about Iot, but now we’re talking about young inclusions, Dell and Intel, where we are. And then there’s 5 billion buildings out there and KMC has a full portfolio of solutions that are modular, scalable, and ready to go. Where, where do you see us all going to be? It’s 2019 how is this in 40 we can make progress? Are we going to get there and see the, the Iot really get fully deployed or what’s your thoughts on that? Oh yeah. I don’t think it’s, it’s a matter of if, it’s just a matter of how fast it gets here, truthfully know, depending on the numbers you believe in here, but there’s going to be billions of devices that are going to be Internet connected connectivities and it happens on, I just talked about my window air conditioner. That happens all the time. And with each of those layers receiving the intelligence being pushed further out to the edge all the time, um, you know, our controllers, we have scheduling trending alarming right at the edge, right at the final year, and those layers are going to continue to grow. We’re going to see that deployed even further out. Um, I don’t think, again, it’s not a matter of volume. It’s going to be your, it’s a matter of how fast it comes. We saw that early on. We’re definitely becoming a part of that. Um, there’s just so many ways to versify itself. Uh, is it incorporates other systems because for a long time we’ve always incorporated our worlds, right? The H Vac. Well, it’s so easy now to integrate things like lighting and landscape. You’re Asian and solar and wind and all these other things. I’ve been a part of rebuilding and street. Let’s tie those all together into a smart bill.

Ken Smyers: Awesome. Very cool. Well, and you know, we’ve covered several of your conferences, which I encourage our community and if you ever get to go to a KMC conference, they’re fantastic. You guys always have great speakers. It’s insightful. And you know, one of the things that I think is a huge expense for all of us is getting the product sold. And here was something that I heard the Dell guys say and uh, it might’ve been intel as well, but you know, those guys are out selling iot solutions. I mean, you know, they, they see that what a huge market it is. So one of the cool benefits I think of being a KMZ partner is those guys are out there and they’re going to bring the building controls in. That’s going to be a referral. Uh, flow for, for Campuses partners. Is that, did I get that right?

Doug Miller KMC: No, that’s absolutely right. That is how it works. Here can be Intel and Dell for that matter. They have literally thousands of salespeople out there and they get into spaces that we don’t get into. It’s just nature of the beast. And again, it’s a nice thing for them because this is another arrow in their quiver that they could bring a full service solution to their partners and it’s a piece of the arsenal that comes out to be a referral for us. Ran this thing and you can go in there and you’ve got an opportunity to build the survey, maybe install some additional here. So it’s easy way to pick the low hanging. Interestingly enough, and I can’t pull the curtain back too far and shit because I’m still not fully baked, but we’re about to enter into a partnership with a major player in the it space right here. All this fervor that for us.

Ken Smyers: Wow. Wow. Well that’s great. Well listen, just real quick came, we ask the next question for our friends at Intel that are out there selling and for our Michael Dell, I know Mike listens to the show. Listen, when you get those, uh, those illusions, we need to bring a building automation specialist and there are only two words you need to remember, which is Trump with.com cause Doug will tell you were one of his favorite partners. I’m not his favorite. Dug in and say that, but that’s fine.

Doug Miller KMC: You guys going to Punky at the end and say, you know, let’s say Scott Cochran.

Ken Smyers: Yes. Oh well Scott Scott’s a good third choice. I mean there’s acid Kenny and then there Scott. So yeah,

Ken Smyers: I just remember you got punked in a video. Somebody did that to the science lab.

Eric Stromquist: Yes sir. That’s good. I’m glad you, I’m glad you’re following our stuffed. I guess what I love about you buddy, you’re falling our stuff you’ve been around and how you remember the deputy 7,600 days when you were in Honeywell. So, uh, I actually installed the program me to believe it or not. So, uh, but anyway, but you know, your product sort of hearkens back to us, but I want to get, go back to the commander just for a minute. It hearkens back to that a little bit because the cool thing about the WCAV 600 was it was geared for the light commercial space. It was easy to program, it was flexible, it wasn’t overly complicated, although there’s is pretty expensive relatively speaking. But with the commander, getting back to your light for lack of better term, right? Commercial solution is really for that 5 million buildings. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s inexpensive, it’s powerful. It’s very easy to use to work with. And to the point that I have heard, and I want confirmation from you on this, that there are several service contractors out there that actually will, if you signed a service agreement, don’t actually put one of those in for free because it allows them to offer better service, uh, and, and give all kinds of additional features to the building owners. So, uh, I’ve heard several people are doing that.

Doug Miller KMC: Yeah, that is actually a fact. Um, we do have several of our system integrators, particularly the ones that are more service industry focused that do that. One of the branch managers in the organization actually made it a mandate, uh, to all of this service. Salespeople that are service contracts they sell will have a commander as part of the install and it really makes good business sense for them because I’m going to go in and do a full service maintenance contract. I’m responsible for compressors, fans, all the other mechanical gear. If I can have an early I early eyes on it system what, what’s going on before there’s failure and it makes my life much simpler. I can control my costs and my value add to the customers very easy. And that station game, because I’m fixing things and solving problems. He as before he knew me. I, I want, I want to just, I want to hit a couple more points on this because we have a huge amount of user group of the people that listened to us or Hva service techs in Hvc service companies. Now, what I want to get at is, you know, from what I know about the service business is very predictable. You’ve got a service contract. Every service contracts you have, you know you’re going to get x amount of dollars in upgrades, x amount of dollars in equipment replacements and stuff like that. So they guard those service contracts like you know, with their lives because it really is the bane of not the Bain, but it is, it’s what makes your business go round and round. And in the past when I’ve talked to service contractors about, you know, putting in automation controls the age you want to do it because they didn’t want to risk losing that business because the system didn’t work. And what I would say now, and I’d like to get your opinion on this and yours to Kenny, is it’s almost like if you don’t at least offer that now to your service contractors, you’re in jeopardy of losing was more risky not to offer that I met Maurya not to offer than it is to actually offer. And the reason I say that is because it drives your costs to serve down. They are expecting things cause you get so much information from things like their smartphones and stuff like that. And also, uh, you know, it allows you to be more predictive. Like you say you can and if you don’t do it, somebody else who’s going to offer it. So I think it’s more risky, knocked off or something like the commander. Agree or disagree?

Ken Smyers: Well you know I was going to get to that in see I, I think uh, and Doug I kind of Said Jeff Cause I was trying to transition into that managed services that y’all had began to open up our minds. One of the important things that came seed meetings do is they’re concerned about their partners being aware of where the trends are coming, what’s coming down the pike and what are you better start moving some chips over on the side and learn a little bit more about it, get some exposure in certain areas. But there was a term where a yet one of your partners that came there was selling us about the, he was in growth facilities and he started out, he wasn’t even in Hac or building automation. He was coming in as the managed service provider for the it stuff, the printers, the computers and networks and whatever. Then he stumbled into some of the issues that we were having to building automation, how we were being resistant, temperamental about learning new new technologies. And we’ve realized what this was probably what four years ago was in Chicago. I think meeting, I’m talking about these Alvarez wasn’t it? Yes it was. And never since then it stuck in my mind because now, uh, you know, the, the things we’re talking about are all, you know, solutions selling, you know, cross selling, collaboration, selling, building solutions. You know, and, and really you guys were early on that conversation, but that is the future. I asked you what you thought and you led us right to the, uh, what we do for living with contracts and distributes new for living is provide solutions. Now we don’t provide just products. And you have to really truly work at that and learn it. But it’s, it’s really good when you have a product portfolio that lets you do it at different levels. I think a, we use the triangle thing where everybody fights over the top one 10th of the market for these big integrated buildings and smart connected goes and they’re important too for the, I think for the big players.

Doug Miller KMC: But the real market, the real untapped market is that 5 million buildings that we need to get products to these building owners or facility managers that really solve their prompts. The lowest level I think with the KMC does, is provide that portfolio that gets you in the door, maybe a commander, but then from there you can build, once you put that commander in or you can integrate anything imaginable, it’s all doubt on a network. And so the, the opportunities I think that are there for contractors and distributors is to learn the game better. Get started maybe and make it, I wouldn’t, I don’t know. But given the services or the commander way, I, um, I don’t know how you make money when you do that unless you make better service work than me, but we make a living by selling solutions and, and uh, but I think KFC is doing a great job. You guys are showing leadership in the market. And the question I think I’m bearing down on is what do you have next? What’s next up? Is it just going to be refinement on some of your product platforms that you have some knockout punch that you’re going to release soon? Fireflies.

Eric Stromquist: Well, you know, there’s um, there’s always enhancements to commander. I think. Um, one of the more recent ones is, is a product called node red. If you ever heard of node red. And so a very common language in the it space, uh, it is, uh, the next phase of commander that we’re moving to. So that’s, that’s coming out. There’s always products that are in development. Those kind of things never stopped. Um, we’ve had a very vulnerable product for us to over the years called flex I, the flex debt has been sold or an OEM space is that sold over the counter. We have a number of those national accounts, very large drugstore chain and we’ll name literally has thousands of those things installed. We’re going to be coming up with a new version of the flex stack. Could be a nice color touchscreen display. We have some neat features. It’s Ip based as well as MSTP based and we’re going to be showing that at the Ahr show in Orlando.

Ken Smyers: Wow. That sounds great. Bodes well. It looks like I came, she’s really done their homework. I applaud you guys. Uh, we, we um, we can’t help but recognize the success you’ve made and the gross, you know, it’s, it’s always good to see a group of successful people, engineers at heart taking the solution side of the market. And Sharon and Sharon, it looks, cause I, I think I, every time I’ve gone to one of your meetings, I’ve been benefited by it as a, as a business owner. And the next time I have to get in front of people and try to sell them and get them started. It’s always good to have these good reference points. Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1: What is, and of course the ControlTrends community has recognized, uh, you guys, um, over the years of the control trends, awards, you know, numerous rewards. Everything from Richard Newbury being uh, uh, you know, executive of the year day Bowman and your tech support guys. One, I think you’ve even won a couple of [inaudible] Doug, I’m not one yet.

Doug Miller KMC: I’m looking forward to that day. Well there you go. Well, you know, you and I are probably be competing for best looking bald guy, the in the industry. But none of you, you know, you should definitely be on that list. Uh, you guys have been great about supporting the controlled trends awards too, so thank you so much for that. But a sort of getting along the lines, you know, Kenny had the scalability of the product. I mean, if you go from commander, you go up to conquest and uh, you know, Walker Committee a little bit through conquest because that really does allow you to go from, you know, the, the, the 5 million buildings up to compete with that 1% of the triangle like Kenny’s talking about, right? The conquest is, is a hardware product line. And um, when we, we’ve brought conquest out a few years back now we go with conquest was to simplify as design and selection. One of the things that was always a challenge and brought somebody was, you know, there’s all these different part numbers and I’m a new guy and I’m trying to figure out the engineer. My first job, Oh man, I got this many of your handlers and these many Vav boxes and all these other ancillary devices and what do I pick and what do I put on work? And so we, so we simplified it and you said you’ve got a unitary control or a Vav and we narrowed it down to three devices. We’ve simplified it from my perspective, all of our devices are advanced application controllers, which means that they’ll come from the factory with preprogrammed algorithms in them, but if you decide you want to change them add a side loop that controls the exhaust fan or interlocks radiation or something like that, it’s simplistically do that. Probably one of the bigger things that we did that though on this kind of alludes back to your infamous photo with the name tag in the background, but if your our viewers are familiar with RFI or near field communications, we’ve invented an RFID chip in all of our control products and what that allows you to do is take an app from your smartphone and you can lay your phone on top of the box while it’s still in the factory packaging and unpowered and be able to configure that device. For instance, the smartphone, and this was for the first time I saw that was kind of spooky it how’s that? How does that work? That was cool. That was cool. Yes. Entering your pop on your phone powers the RFID chip and you know again where it’s really been a value add for customers, it costs x amount of dollars to make the product right. I mean it costs x amount of dollars to populate a circuit board and enclosure loaded up with software. There’s only so much we can do on that out of that from a cost reduction perspective we can really bring value to our partners is by cutting the amount of field installation time. Cause that’s always their biggest variable in putting the project together is how long is it gonna take to actually do this. So as an example, you don’t see, you’ve got a 20 Vav box job will. The way we always did that we asked was, you know a technician would take 20 controllers, are the box and put them on a table and where are the communication for wall and tolerate them all up and they plug in his laptop and he’d helped work program and all those devices. If the tech was really good, he could probably pull up a 20 box job in four to six hours. Now we can do in 40 minutes. So it’s a tremendous labor savings and we’ve incorporated all of those features in the product. So we made it easier to pick, easier to set up and program easier. Commission easier. Yeah,

Ken Smyers: no, no, you’re right. It makes it more predictable because like I said, the installation is done predictability part of it. And most of your stuff connects with cat five as well now. Yeah, we offer MSTP, which is the way we’ve always done it, you know, the industry as a whole as always done it for years. And then ether net connectivity back. That’s been an interesting transition for us. You know, we, we offered Ip controllers started about three years and we kind of thought, okay, well we’ll see what the acceptance rate is in the marketplace. And A, from a manufacturing perspective get ramped up a lot faster than we thought it was going on. Which tells us kind of tie in our conversation together of Iot, the age of connectivity, intelligence at the edge. That’s moving a lot faster pace. And I think we realize it is, no, no, no, no, no. Agreed. And other thing too. I just want to get back as a simplistic thing about, uh, no simplistic but powerful about conquest because again, you know, you’ve got the near field communication for your Vav controllers. You got your unitary controller year, uh, and then your, um, uh, what I would call a plant controller. I think you use a different term for it is kind of cool as ADM potato outputs, but it’s expandable up to 40, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s kind of cool because all those things come with pre factory program algorithms. If you want to use them, you don’t have to, again, you can use the dues line or block programming with any of those, but for that expansion, I mean you’ve got little cards that you just put in the slots, right? So, you know, particular application preprogrammed, put the little cards in and you’re good to go. So that’s kind of really knocked down installation time down and the potential for, uh, an installer to make an error down a bunch, I would think. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, the Hoa cards are great. They use quite frequently. Um, owners love them. Just from a perspective of, you know, if a guy’s got a damper that’s not opening right, he can, he can put that card in and deliver it to manual and you know, turn the pot. It’s the damper Romans and he knows he’s got a software problem. It’s a damper, doesn’t open then he knows I’ve got a mechanical issue there. Right. They’re are great on construction jobs because a lot of times the Arab Palliser wants to get started before the jobs maybe be ready to go or we haven’t written the controls jet for the air handler. You can plug that card in, he can dial, we have for you to do whatever he wants them to be at and start as their balance. Very cool.

Ken Smyers: Okay. Doug, I just wanted to say something of Eric and I had just recently returned from overseas a trade show and we were listening to the European version of our vas and how it was evolving. They called it it based, uh, Controls no more, uh, of the, uh, you know, they, they were making fun of the telephone wires, MSD wired. And, and you know, it was of a revelation that, you know, we hear a different perspective on how other people in different parts we currently are common currencies, buildings and we’re all pushing air and water to buildings. Uh, uh, you know, but the different styles. But to hear what you just said there is very consistent with what we heard over in Europe. And that is the, it, the Ip based controllers are going to have a, uh, you know, almost a advancement. It’s going to be exponential, the growth in the years to come because as we become more and more familiar with the networks and less and less intimidated by it, we’re going to take advantage of that bandwidth and all those other increased, uh, features. One question I had when we’re talking about Ip and, uh, is, is the security how, what’s your thoughts about when we use more and more IP controllers, we taken greater risks? Are we actually putting those controllers on a network that’s really truly secure because the IT professionals have full access to it and they’re going to make sure that if it’s on their network is secure. Yeah. And I think that’s a very good statement. That’s again, something that we see that we kind of came across in the command, the early days we started dealing with it departments in there. Again, very concerned with security and as we transition from the MSTP it based controllers, we are getting involved with it departments and by the very nature of what they do, they’re much more stringent insecurity and that rolls down to us as well. Um, so I think the fact that we’re underneath the it umbrella in that arena I think is definitely helping to secure the networks. And it’s like nothing else. It makes them feel good. Sure. Yeah. Well I agree. And then you’re not a, there’s no duplicity and there’s no, I thought you were doing it or whatever, whatever. I mean, in other words to me that over over the, especially on an enterprise level or larger, maybe the mush market people, university schools and hospitals, you know, they’ve got a department, you know, having them. So what I mean is it, I think we’re going to see more collaboration between our, our technicians, our building automation specialists, our masters systems integrators, and our distributors are going to become more, more this conversation we’re having now. Next year will sound almost antiquated because by then we’ll all have it experience. Uh, and you know, we’re going to grow. And one last thing I wanted to say before is that you guys also have a tremendous product portfolio with valves, actuators and all the goods that we’ve, we focused but 95% of this onto your high level solutions. But you guys make some Dang good products. Tell us about your, what else do you have? Do you have to sensors? I mean, you’d have it all you have a, to z came see is actually, uh, the manufacturers that literally can provide this smallest center to the most, uh, you know, complicated controls and building automation system. Yeah. And you know, we, we, we talked to people about this allowed, I mean, we’re in the midst right now of we’re doing a major push with consulting engineers. Our sales force is getting out there and we’re getting in front of consultants, we’re doing about 16 of those a month right now. So we’re really making focused in your market. And I think one of the things we talk about in that is the fact that we really do offer a can that’s offered. We’re the only American us based that our offers you. Everything from basic controllers, pneumatics, we still make a ton of pneumatics. Okay. Talked about earlier, all the way down to sensors, valves, uh, relays, any type of accessory device, ancillary device. If you might want to get actuators. Um, we just kind of cover everybody soup to nuts. We can even show you an enclosure to put the system in if you need.

Speaker 1: Here we go. All right. Well, Doug, listen, I know we’re to have a lot of people in our community and they’re gonna want to know more about KMC and how to get involved. Uh, what’s the, what’s their next step? So I’m, I’m a service contractor or I’m a systems integrator or under distributor. What, what’s her next step to get more involved with you?

Doug Miller KMC: Um, I have the simplest way to do it as you can either you can either to reach out to us the old fashioned way and call us or you can go to our website. Um, and there there’s a page in there that you can sell out if you want more information, I guess electronically submitted those come to me. I’ll folk who goes out and myself or someone from your organization, depending on the nature of your question, we’ll reach out to.

Eric Stromquist: Cool. Excellent. I can’t tell how much I appreciate you taking the time to talk with his KMC, man. Great products, great people and a good times if you go to one of their events. So yeah.

Doug Miller KMC: Thank you so much again. Now you guys are really, I sent it before but your iconic in our industry back as you a allow me this time to spend with you. I can’t tell you how much I pretty sharp. Pleasure. Well listen, I’m hoping to get you to come back on. You’ve been a great guest. So what do you say we try to get, get every six months or so? You come back on the show, tell us what’s going on. I’ll be more than happy to do that. My brother, man, I appreciate it. Doug Miller, KMC controls. I met Kenny. Great stuff from Doug Mintz. Super Good Guy, man. I tell you what, I’ve, I’ve worked with him over the years. He’s a class act. So a glass company, man. We’ve got some other posts to get to you before you and I get busy.

Speaker 3: What’s the look what’s next? Well, I always take a pause. I’ll pause while I want to make these statements about, you know, how we talked about some incredible solutions and products in the market and 5 million buildings, you know, but, uh, one thing I remember from my earliest days and then controls was Penn products. Uh, Penn regulator valves, you know, a nineteens. All this pen products were, so I remember just the quality of them then, you know, and now we’ve got a pen still, they had your hundredth anniversary. And uh, it’s, it’s, it’s very exciting to see how they’re making another marketing thrust and keeping themselves fresh in everybody’s mind. But they make the most reliable, simple products, electro mechanical controls, temperature controls, electronic temperature controls, modular digital controls and water valves. And again, uh, you know, W I’ve sold these things in my entire career in the industry and, and never thought twice. They always had high quality, you know, just they work and they’re very simple and they’re getting last another hundred years.

Eric Stromquist: That’s great stuff. And we were actually at that party, Kenny, remember at the aquarium, Georgia aquarium, we covered it for control generally get footage up there, but uh, what they’re doing to Kenny as they’re making those now where they can communicate, you know, Johnson controls to get the viruses, which is a light commercial system that now can talk to those are, it makes it easy to get that data and information out and pretty much many of that. You got a bunch of places you can buy it, but why wouldn’t you just buy it from either dms controls.com or a [inaudible] dot com thank. Yeah, well that’s part of the post is that there’s available at your local distributor. These are the bread and butter things that you go to and a local to everybody on the planet. We want to be a, what’s a ubiquitous word everywhere. All the time. Yeah. We can be everywhere all the time. All right, thanks to the magic of the Internet Bill Gates. Yup. Well the, you know, I did like that post by the way. And uh, you know, you said something about, would I jumped on that if I heard that?

Ken Smyers: Heck No. I had my head, I didn’t know where my head was at, but 1974 I graduated, but check this out. I actually went to the first computer class at our high school and they were making a big fuss about it. And I walked up and I listened to about half our, I actually volunteered the whatever I signed up to go and see the first computer at our high school was plugged in and it was like all the, the brainiacs and nerds were there and they are just all excited about what was going on. You know, the fact that they were talking to somebody else somewhere else. And I’m like, Nah, I got things to do. I got to get out of here. And you know, the needs. Well, I had, I had, I had influenced maybe, maybe if you were to, you say, Hey, we’ve got to get into this.

Eric Stromquist: Yeah, I wouldn’t have said that. Oh man, baller foosball or something like that. That’s what I’m talking about. So, yeah. Yeah. But here we are now, so many years later and uh, probably a little bit wiser, you know, but, um, we wish we woulda, Coulda, Shoulda, but, uh, yeah, so that, but taking this thing, uh, in some sort of a stretch, we’re going to, we’re going to jump the national cybersecurity and the national cybersecurity center of excellence and they’re having a workshop and it’s on June 13th, 2019. Now, the reason why this was an important post that I thought is because it’s all about IPV six enabled enterprise workshop. Now we know that IPV four Ivp for looked like it could never be exhausted, but the most incredible statistic here is how many Internet connections or are in the world and how we need to, um, we need to get a whole bunch more. We actually are, we’re, we’re hitting the ceiling of, of how many, uh, Ip addresses are available. So, uh, the public input of this, it’s pretty interesting, but I thought maybe something like Fred Gordy or somebody might, might have interest in this to see what’s going on, but they have the, uh, you register on our website. We have a short form to registered June. Uh, you know, you have to register by June 11th. It’s June 13th. And then if you go to the bottom of that post, you’ll see that there’s an improving mobile authentication from public safety and first responders. So of all the places you wouldn’t think cybersecurity might make a, you know, we’re, we’re, you wouldn’t think people would mess around with it or whatever. Uh, this is a very interesting, uh, video about making these, uh, communication, uh, capabilities more secure. So it’s a very interesting post. Very cool. Take a look at it. Yeah, for sure. And then did our man, Brent burrows, young gun, Bren burrows, who is it within tech, he’s one of the young control techs, rising superstars and HVC and smart running controls put together awesome video on how to reset adjacent 8,000 controller. Uh, and we included a bunch of commonly asked questions regarding the j. So hopefully it’s kind of a definitive piece that you can use a speaking of Brent Kenny, his wife I think went into Labor yesterday. They’re expecting their first child, baby boy burrows. And I’ve suggested that a great name for the baby boy would be, uh, Eric Kenneth.

Ken Smyers: Oh, he’s a good guy. And you know, to do that under this, uh, domestic, uh, pressures, we wish him all the best. And that’s exciting as can be. Brandon, I’m a neighbor and he’d go to the hot vote, just a minute, honey. That one was done literally, you know, hey, here’s, here’s what’s cool about that. And I wrote, I tried to give him a good, uh, uh, you know, Kudu on, on linkedin because here’s why. We probably get that question asked like you say once a week, whatever, once. And we normally send an attachment and it normally works and then somebody will read it and then they ended up having a bad day and they didn’t. You’re really still want somebody to help them if you watch this video and you just stop it and do what he says to do it. We walk, she’s through as well as ever. I’ve been of any presentation I’ve seen so far that is a heck of a good quality, um, you know, tech demo tape that we can refer people to. So I mean it’s a, it’s a great ad library added to the Technical Library of Control Trans. But thank you Brent. That’s a good host.

Eric Stromquist: Awesome. Awesome, awesome. And then you know, our last post of the week, Kenny was a no brand is joined forces with Aaron Gorka. There’s a podcast have we promote called next generation innovation, which is, you know, kind of the HVHC smart building controls from a younger person’s perspective. And they kind of screwed this episode up cause they interviewed an older guy, but I think he held his own pretty good. But uh, actually I, they’re just separate control con was kind of cool cause we got busted with security and wonder what the hell we were doing. And so you get to see sort of a little bit a day in the life of a podcast or, but it was, it was a great episode. And what do we really focused on, Kenny? We focused on social media and what became really apparent to me is that a, um, most people, and so a couple things, so I’m, as you know, I’ve been paying a bunch of boxes to study with copywriting, with a company called a Gore of financial, which is the top copywriting company on the planet. They make billions of dollars for people. And I’m a firm believer, we’ve talked about this a lot on this show that a correct theory plus effort equals profound results, right? You can have all the effort in the world, but if you don’t have the correct theory, then you’re not going to be successful. I’m pretty much convinced that, uh, our industry for the most part, okay, for the most part, we’re putting a lot of effort in, in terms of marketing, but we’re not getting the correct theory. So it’s kind of a personal mission of mine to understand the correct theory. And, uh, and I think some of the younger people intuitively understand that better. So I think this is a really interesting episode to listen to, if nothing else from the perspective of how younger people in our industry view and use social media pop. And you know, and I love that about him. They asked me, they said, you know, should we, because we’re producing the podcast for them and they said, you know, should, what should we, does it just be yourself man? It’s fresh. It’s interesting, as fresh, as fun as they are completely different than us. But, but they’re finding their own voice, which is cool. And you know, in this part of what we are, we’re offering, because Kenny, I need to get paid, man. We’ve been working at this for decades now. So we’re making no bones about it. We want to create value for the community. So one of those potential options is a will help produce your podcast and promoted for you. We’ve got the control trends podcast network. We’re all set up, ready to go. So this is a podcast. We produce them with Brent and Aaron and we can produce yours too. But uh, it’s interesting Kenny. So one basic thing. So I’m reading this, uh, article from a pretty big magazine Industry magazine is back, you know how to use social media and saying stuff like, well, you know, here’s some ideas for posts. You could post pictures like you’re the employee here, pointed the month, post pictures a year and talk about your company mission, your company values, focus, uh, focus, uh, post pictures, cute pictures of your employee’s kids and stuff. I don’t go going, that’s the worst frigging advice you could possibly have and nobody cares about that. Okay? So what I will tell you right away, there’s only one radio station. If you’re marketing or selling or talking to anybody. So only one radio station you need to listen to, which is called W FM. What’s in it for me because we all so inundated with information that if you’re going to be successful in marketing or sales or whatever, you need to cut straight to the chase. What’s in it for them? Nobody cares how cute your kid is. I mean they might want, but if that’s what you’ve got on your Facebook page or your answer Graham account, stuff like that, people are not going to pay attention. You have to be solving a problem that they have. And so again, this is kind of like, you know, remember in the early days we learned about, you know, the features, benefits. So much of what I’m seeing comes out all the features of this stuff. But the benefits, some people talk about the best of us. Doug talked about, you know, the benefits on, on uh, the interview we just had dug motor from KMC. But just how can you even, you’ve got to start with that. You really have to start with what problem is it solving? And here’s the other thing that most people were making a mistake at. You start with one problem because just fund their biggest problem. And that’s what you’re, you know, everything else is a bonus. And I’m going on and on. We’re going to be writing more about this and bringing more the, uh, about this out. We were actually doing an email newsletter for about marketing. We’re going to start, you can sign up on the control trends website for that, but I could go on for hours about this county. But it is a really interesting, the theories that the successful people are using, uh, in marketing toward, of across the board. So well enough to say anything dumb or benign like the music changing, you know, from generation to generation and each generation having some sort of a, you know, criticism or, or lack of, uh, you know, appreciation for the newer generation’s music, you know, but this isn’t like that this is, this is more important. This is dialogue of, of an industry and we’re seeing the importance of social media is there’s learning involved. Almost like the, uh, we’re talking about, uh, uh, how to reset a JC using, you know, that, that’s basic to me. That’s social media to me, that that video he made, putting that up on Youtube and putting it on control trends and whatever, that to me is engaging since social social media and it’s so effective, so much more effective than sending a piece of paper and reading it off of a pdf. Yeah, no, totally, totally dead. But what Brent did does is really interesting because a lot of people put videos out or just technical videos and those are fine too, but, and that, you know, if you can only do one thing, have it be technical, right? It’s gotta be useful. It’s got to be something they can use. But what bread does so well is he’s also engaging somebody section to listen to. There’s a guy on a youtube, a k, h a c I think is the gas, so it’s got like 40,000 followers. He’s the guy who gets it because he’s, he’s, he brings his personality into it, but at the same time he’s creating value and listen, part of what Kenny and I are her gearing up to offer here too, is we want to be your go to source for if you need help on social media, you know how to do things. You know, we’re going to be in a position to help you with that if you’re interested in that. But I think the one thing we can say for sure as social media is not going away. Uh, you know, you’re going to, I don’t know anybody that’s not using it. I don’t know too many people, including my company, stronger this, there’s not using this using of, well, I mean I’m looking at what I’m learning and again, I’m spending a lot of money to learn this stuff and I’m studying with some of the best people on the planet to learn how to do this. And I look at our stuff is tromp us, we’re, we’re like everybody else. We’re a, me too. We’re not doing anything. There’s going to be overly engaging or is going to attract people in and that’s what you gotta do. You gotta rise above the noise because there’s so much out there and as one of the sayings is what stands out gets in. So with that, we know we’ll talk more about this as we go on. If you’re interested, we’ll be putting the marketing newsletter app so you can sign up for that control can stack kind of, well that Kenny spires man, I think, I think we got to call it a week your man. Cause what’s in it for me radio, right?

Ken Smyers: Well yeah, but I want to do real two quick ones. One is I wanted to ask or just make a statement. I saw something that came through Thursday last week and it says any quotations including this email are material only and does not address any material surcharges relevant to sec two, three, two, all tariff charges will be built at the time of order not to exceed 25% of the total value of material. And I just wanted to buy control trans community. If that main Kenny, I’m telling you, something’s up, something’s going on. So we’ve got a quote from somebody and then I quoted somebody and, and I, I thought I better put that same warning on the bottom of my quote because what’s happened is it controlled transworld that their community tell us if you have any, uh, any experiences on it so we can keep on track. But I’ve heard different things. Eric. I’ve heard the, the different, the tariffs are coming in now. They’re finally starting to show a post. I know we paid some a tariff, uh, surcharges and there’s considerable one, one was like 13%, almost like 22%. So I’m just wondering, you know, how’s that going to impact everything? And the last thing I want to do was a cone out there from, uh, the, uh, our European. Yeah. Just from Labor for visuals. Cohen and Bo have a little short, a teaser video from the Eio, um, conference from Amsterdam. And we’re going to be posting that, uh, real soon here. So Nice. Nice thank you. Call. And they’re going to have a full vote. And as he said, we’ve got a full verse, the video coming out. But uh, it just kind of neat because I mean there was a heck of a two and a half, three day event and it was a beautiful place actually. It was just remarkable European and yet, and it was so condensed as far as the technical and networking things. So it was a great, great event. We’re already looking for forward to the next one or is that going to be here? Wait, uh, I’m not sure where that’s going to be, but I think you gave me a great segue into, we’d like to thank our sponsors this week for this show. Easy Io, cio.com. They call it easy for a reason. And Dg locks, I mean, you know, you know, you know this, some of my girlfriends, she used to say he can’t be good, at least sound good to be camp. Sound good, at least look good. And I thank that a DG Lux does all three of those, so be sure to check them out. We’ll have links in the website for you guys. Actually there’s a banner ad on the side of control trends for both EASY IO and four DGLux. Right. And did lux is offering a 30 day trial of a, of the x five and, and I think if, if you give that a whirl, taking it, take a spin and see what happens to see if you like it.

Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely. For sure. So, well that’s cool. Kenny smarter. So with that buddy, should we do our outro? Yeah. So here you, I’m gonna I’m gonna get my announcer’s voice. I could some practice for the control Tanja awards. And there you go. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s another week on control talk. Now you’re smart building is video pass and podcasts for the week ending June 9th, 2019 he is Ken Smyers, the man, the myth, the legend. I am his sidekick. Eric Strom cause we appreciate you tuning in. Remember be bold, stay in control. Be sure to listen to w I m radio. What’s in it for me? Radio when you talk to your customers this week. So be bold, stand control and stay relevant

Speaker 3: either. Well done, Kenny. Smarter. So it’s like a filter to, now we’re talking about the Superbowl. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Whoever did this. We slammed the door. He had to come over to flip it. [inaudible] that’s what I was just going to go to computer class. [inaudible].