#337 Looking at HVAC and Smart Building Controls From a New, Younger Perspective

Transcript for Episode 337 Control Talk Now The HVAC and Smart Building Controls Podcast

Looking at HVAC and Smart Building Controls from a new, young perspective.

Announcer
The following is a presentation of the ControlTrends podcasting network.You’re listening to control talk now. Smart Buildings podcast, the man, the myth, the legend, Ken Smyers and Eric Stromquist ControlTalk Now the weekly podcast with building automation and smart building control News You Can you now

Eric Stromquist
This Eric Stromquist Welcome to Episode 337 of Control Talk Now you’re smart buildings video cast and podcast for the week ending November 3 2019. Folks, that’s right, it’s November already as cold in Atlanta. And as usual cold weather sometimes that means that you’re close to mind. The man the myth the legend, secret agent man Kenny Smyers shows up missing and that is the case this week ladies and gentlemen Kenny Smyers secret agent man is missing my guests He’s gone someplace warm, but others think he might have gone someplace cold like Canada or something because he tends to face the pain. He doesn’t like cold so Sometimes he’ll just embrace it. So, where in the world is Kenny smiles to help us through this? We have two people that are stepping in trying to fill the big big moccasins, Kenny smiles. We’ve got the team from next generation innovation. Aaron Gorkha and Brett burrows. Guys, thanks for stepping in and welcome to the show.

Brent Burrows
Absolutely. Thanks for having us.

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, well, you always happy to be on the show.

Eric Stromquist
Well, awesome, dude. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, you know, and Kenny talked about cold weather but Aaron, man I mean, you’re up in Canada someplace. Aren’t you riding on a sled or something? Which is why we don’t have your video aren’t you? I like to go on a dog race or something right now.

Aaron Gorka
We’re cruising a big old truck fighting to about four feet of snow hadn’t hadn’t down by just down the lake to my in laws today.

Eric Stromquist
So what is So you go into the inlaws and all right well there you go there you go and you’re up in Toronto right or brown that way

Aaron Gorka
yeah Brad this way there’s actually no snow the leaves are just changing falling off the combination of beautiful colors and and winter come and meet

Eric Stromquist
well did you definitely have to since we don’t have your video and you can’t put the camera out the window and just snap a couple pictures of those leaves changing and we’ll post them on the on the website when we when we drop the episode

Aaron Gorka
that I can do no problem.

Eric Stromquist
Yeah, and I tell you what now for all you’ve professional football fans, I had the pleasure of seeing Brent burrows from Intex young son, I thought his name was Eric burrows. I was really disappointed to find out your name was something other than Eric but man he’s a big kid. He’s gonna be playing for Clemson here pretty soon anything.

Brent Burrows
I don’t know about that. Well, we’ll see. See what he decides to get into on the subject of the fall weather and the football may not be able to see here. I don’t have any front lines. Alright, I just went through a move so I was actually in the last month so I’m I’m still trying to get everything going the fact I was able to sit down and do all this it’s nice it’s a little relaxing especially with the five month old but I’m wearing a hat right now doesn’t color in very well it’s the Cleveland Browns and we’ve been taking been taking it on the chin here the beginning part of the season so so but but you know what they say iron sharpens iron so yeah, brown faces should be pretty tough from getting rubbed in it Yeah, but we got the path we’re going to finish nine and seven and we will see you guys at a private five wins the Superbowl

Eric Stromquist
February 2 same night as the control trends awards, buddy.

Brent Burrows
There you go you Well, we’re gonna have to control trends awards, then watch the brand’s win the Super Bowl, February 2. Well, I tell

Eric Stromquist
you what, Aaron that sounds like I know you’re Canadian and all but I think that sounds like a pretty sure bet going opposite Brett on that. Whatever you want to take up that action.

Brent Burrows
You’re not wrong about that. Yeah. That would probably be like put down $1,000 to win 10

Eric Stromquist
Yeah, no, I got you but I good price might know Brett, Brits, dad and my Patrick bros go way, way back in text men want to Strom quest long term. Customers partners great relationship and you know your dad was originally from Cleveland, right? They moved down to Atlanta What? Late 70s, early 80s,

Brent Burrows
late 70s. Then that that was kind of the story of he got stuck in traffic has four boards froze over. The heat didn’t work in his car. I think it was like negative negative 10, negative 12. And he was just like, I gotta get out of here. He didn’t know anybody down here. He just that was the thing. He’s like, hey, got the shop in Georgia. He said doesn’t snow down there.

Eric Stromquist
I’m coming up our community might not know tell him about in tech and what you guys did the company your dad started and then sort of, you know how you got into it and what you guys are up to these days.

Brent Burrows
Gotcha. So my dad started, as it was mentioned earlier, he came down here in the late 70s. been involved in the HPC control industry. Since that time, he started in tech in 1994. Started primarily on the commercial retail side of things, mostly mechanical service work, kind of migrated that into, I guess, doing like National Building commissioning and energy management, working with a number of large retail customers. And more recently, we’ve, in the last 1015 years been working more big projects around the area, chiller replacements and anything on the mechanical side and the controls division has kind of grown out of that over the same time period last 10 years. So we’re big tritium, Honeywell desta. Anybody that’s got the greatest products that’ll serve our customers best

Eric Stromquist
products and strong points and company handles because we handle the greatest products right so looking farther than Strom quest calm know what the greatest products are.

Brent Burrows
That’s right that that newly revitalize website.

Eric Stromquist
Yep, there you go Brother. There you go. No but but I love it Your dad is, you know in your company Your dad is. First of all one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met your dad’s hilarious, but he’s also one of the brightest guys I’ve ever met. And your dad had an interest in having a show I think he still does an interesting philosophy which is when a customer says something to me says if you want to paint a blue or paint a blue you want to paint a red I’ll paint it red. And it seems like that’s sort of at the core of your guys business philosophy has given the customers not know what they need but what they want.

Brent Burrows
Well, I think that’s the if you look at it, I mean, Eric, you’re the you’re the master sales person guru, you’ve taken every every type of sales training all over the world. You talk to me about it, and I’m just like, oh my god for real. What was that the one it was like I need you have to go sell this book. It was it was a horrible like, it was basically a no win situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric Stromquist
No, I think I think it’s, you know, sales is really about communication. And I’ve always said that sales is the easiest job in the world to do poorly in the most difficult to do, right. And when I first got in the business when your dad was around, I mean, it was like, you know, salespeople sort of had this, you know, you were trained, you had this attitude that I’ll tell you what to think. And it was all about manipulation and control. And that didn’t last very long. People don’t like that. And then it sort of it swung, too. Now most salespeople are so lame, they just will do whatever, they just get abused, right? Because they’re so afraid of offending somebody. So you sort of have to find that middle ground where you can help people buy something. I mean, think about it, when you bought something. Have you ever said I’m so happy? This person sold me something versus Well, this person helped me buy so I mean, that’s a sort of a subtle distinction, but and I think Eric, you could probably chime in on that because you You definitely a really good at helping people buy stuff and get it to sales game as well.

Aaron Gorka
Making a friend every time I go into basically anywhere and say hello and a big smile, honestly just figuring out what they, you know what makes them tick. To begin, I think and figure out what they what they want to what do they want to accomplish and how right. Ultimately I just try to make friends with them and show even if they don’t buy it right off the bat, you know, or they don’t use it in the future. It doesn’t doesn’t change your friendship, ultimately.

Eric Stromquist
I think you’re right. And I think persistence is another big part of it. Because I remember for example, back in the day before Landis and gear became part of Siemens, the Lannister gear guide done something really upset me is a vendor and so I just spaceship will never sell it again. That’s it. We’re taking off the line sheet. We’re never going to deal with it. And this guy came by around a little bit he a guy named Jim Fisher and Jim if you’re out there, you know kudos to you. Jim is was just just a great story about how it works. I’m live in Atlanta some years and I’m never buying it again. Jim comes in introduces himself, he goes, Well tell me what happened. I told him he goes, Well, look, I can totally see why you’re upset why you would never want to buy from us again. Would you have any objections if I came by, you know, periodically and you know, brought your counter people some donuts and stuff like that? Would that be okay? So yeah, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna tell my my counter people I turned down donuts for him. So this guy, he would literally come in every Friday he would spend time with the counter people the inside sales people it was to the point that within it took about three and a half months. For my inside people said, Hey, we want this product line back now because the products have always been pretty good. But we like this guy. We want to give him some of our business. So I think at the end of the day, people do business with people. I think that maybe it’s I’ll ask you guys is that kind of skill to get that connection now, sort of in the age of social media and the age of not being able to just walk in on a Friday afternoon and see everybody

Unknown Speaker
Well, I think one of the things is we

Brent Burrows
you see it you mentioned social media. I think we live in a society have such like an instant gratification, you know, in terms of like i’ve you know, if I post this I need to get this many views or this many likes this much engagement, almost like that. fulfillment, the immediate that kind of just, I wouldn’t even call it playing the long game, but just building a relationship like it, it takes it takes time. I mean, you mentioned it earlier. Everybody wants to buy something, nobody wants to be sold. Because you get sold something you feel like a schmuck. Yeah, at that just is it so kind of like what you described there that, that art of just building building a relationship where you’re happy You wind up your he flipped the script on everyone and there’s like, I want to do this for this guy he’s not trying to get, he really doesn’t have to try to get him to do it.

Eric Stromquist
So Right, right. No, I think there’s a lot to that I think we all know to intuitively when somebody is kind of slick and they’re trying to do something to us, right versus help us. And I think the other thing too, is that knowing that there are enough customers out there, I mean, it’s a little bit like Aaron, you can relate to this. I’m going to take a jab at Aaron right now. It’s a little bit like if you’re the you know, you’re the guy at the bar and you’re desperate. You have no luck with the women they sense that desperation and it’s like they’re just not interested you no matter how handsome you are, right. And and I think it’s just the way in sales and businesses that we want to do business with people that don’t need to do business with us but want to want to do business with us and and so I think that really comes from you know, use a great term grant, which is sort of playing the long game. And I think you play the long game. to a certain point, in other words, my biggest expenses to distributor Aaron, you can probably relate to this and Brennan know you guys can to one of our biggest expenses is salespeople, right. And you know, back when I first got involved, it was pretty easy. I could walk in any hospital, any school board or whatever, I could get access to people, I could get it, I could be effective. But now if you’re paying sales people just to walk around and try to get into spaces they can’t get into. It’s a very, very expensive thing. So you know, as a salesperson, you have to be respectful of the people that are paying you your salary, you can’t waste time so you have to be effective. And you know, how do you become effective is like a key piece. I know for example, in the industrial plants with my guys, sales people is like, you know, you you can’t get an industrial plan. They won’t even tell you who you need to see. You know, if you’re lucky, there’s a guard gate, but the guard won’t tell you who the maintenance supervisor is certainly will give you this phone number. If you dial up you get you know, any The person’s coat, you know, extension, but if you don’t know who it is you’re not getting in. Right? So what do you do with that because of vendors you got to get in. So I mean literally did we’ve adopted tactics like waiting outside the plant and the show is people drive out for lunch, we find out where they go to lunch, right? I mean, just one technique and you go to the restaurant, you start asking questions, and then maybe you meet somebody, that’s one technique. Another technique is, you know, if you’ve got other other people that are in the same area, you find out they know anybody on the planet. Another technique is, Hey, you know, reach out to other people that sell other products and say, Hey, do you have a connection here, you know, you help each other get in, I can get you into this planet, if you can get me into this point. So you know, desperate times calls for, you know, different approaches, and

Brent Burrows
I would not, I would say innovative methods. Yes, yes.

Eric Stromquist
Yes, for sure. So, no, no break. You work. One of the best salespeople. I know. Danna Haggerty is your sales man. jitter an errand you’re one of the most innovative, you know, salespeople I know, let’s talk about some innovative approaches that you guys have either had happened to you or somebody who’s got reached you that wasn’t able to reach you or somebody you use to reach a client that are committed, you might be able to use

Brent Burrows
that. Aaron, I think you’re gonna have to take that data keeps that under lock and key over sales secrets. I, to be honest with you, Dan has been been at it for such a long time. And she’s, she’s done. what she’s done really great that I’ve been able to see is that long game, which is you know, that’s that’s part of the deal. It’s, you know, anybody can sell something someone one time, if you don’t provide the value if you don’t follow through that and you know, even that even if you do that, and the person that bought from you doesn’t like you. It’s it’s not going to last over the long term. So what her and her team have done a great job of Building relationships, and then maintaining them. I mean, you’ve been in Eric, how long you been in the industry?

Eric Stromquist
Dude, I’m embarrassed to tell you, but I’m going on 40 years here.

Brent Burrows
Yes. And so how many people have Did you meet, you know, like my dad and the, you know, in the early 80s, and you maintain those relationships, you know, over a 30 year, you know, 2030 year period, and people move around, but they stay in the industry and, and if they like you, they’re going to take you with them. That’s, that’s, that’s so true. And I gotta

Eric Stromquist
tell you, the one thing you trade off of the currency trade off is more important. Your technical knowledge more important than anything else is your integrity, right? Because news travels fast. So I tell my folks, hey, anybody can be a great vendor where they’re no problems, okay? Where you establish that connection, that link is when a customer has a problem and you step up to the plate even if it’s not your problem. The last words out of your mouth need to be this is the losers philosophy. Well, you know, read the manual or really, sir, that’s your problem not ours, or I can’t help you with that. If you ever get a call from any customer, whether it’s your product or another product that you’re trying to break into, and you can say, let me see if I can help. That’s what those relationships come in. Because that’s what they’re going to remember. They remember you if if at four o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, you know, morning when errands still, you know, out partying, and they’ve got a problem and you pick the phone up and you’re able to go down and help them out. That’s where you build those long lasting relationships. Right? So agree or disagree, guys.

Brent Burrows
It’s funny, I just, I picture Aaron in an Uber at four in the morning aftershowing up and somebody might not be very effective, buthey, but he’ll get it done right?No, no, you don’t want to do that. It’s just not in control.Would you stop yourself stopEvery once in a whilekeeping your integrity and being honest about it.But it is

Eric Stromquist
true telling now Okay, let’s let’s tell the audience now. So it’s 932 eastern standard time on Saturday morning and we let you sort of slide with him. I’m driving to my in laws house. Tell the truth. Now. Are you sure you’re just not out at the tail end of a Friday night party and you sounds like you’re in an Uber domain.

Well, you know, not only is your wife beautiful, she’s smart. The fact that she’s driving but it was nice to meet you ControlTrends committee, because Aaron’s Aaron is fairly newly married. Well, you guys got a year anniversary coming up. Congrats. Congratulations, guys. There you go. That’s awesome. Toronto’s committee is dying to know what’s it like to be married to Aaron?

Aaron Gorka
It’s always interesting.

Eric Stromquist
So I’m getting the text lines right now, so I wasn’t as a snore. Yeah. Okay, what is

Aaron Gorka
whiskey? I’m gonna start for sure. what’s what’s

Eric Stromquist
his worst habit that nobody did? He would not want the ControlTrends

Well, you know, by year two for sure. And by year three, you probably in therapy, so, trust.

Brent Burrows
I gotta ask because, because Aaron’s told me that, that he kind of did the thing. Have you guys ever seen the movie Dazed and Confused?

Eric Stromquist
I think I’ve looked at in the theaters, but I haven’t seen the movie.

Brent Burrows
Oh, gosh, man. They’re just part in there, Matt and Matthew McConaughey are basically he’s the guy that graduated school probably five or six years ago, but then He keeps hanging around it. And you know, he’s the older guy and he’s like, you know, they just stay the same age and it was kind of funny it makes me think that’s how you guys want it up. He just kept coming back to school

Aaron Gorka
That’s it. That’s it.

Eric Stromquist
Was it was it love at first sight?

I know it was for you. Not for you. But was it for Aaron? Oh, yeah.

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, absolutely.

Eric Stromquist
Nice. Nice.

Aaron Gorka
first conversation once I realized that the great conversation

Eric Stromquist
Well, you have to stay on the podcasts and we’ll go monitor that as we go along. But you know, and I had to kind of haven’t given you a chance if our community might not know, Aaron, among other things, runs and technologies into our community, you might not know what does

Aaron Gorka
an operational software to run your control a track service business, as a service tracker is a project tracker. They do work pretty good together, we make it work even better and better all the time. We build features. every single week, we launched new function. Sometimes it breaks it, but usually we fix it fast as anybody else. Ever, that’ll fix your software that I can guarantee. We work hard with contractors. We built it in our own contracting company, Iran, a traffic control at a Toronto, our second biggest cable API in Canada. DMA applied partners in Regina, Saskatchewan, they always win.Yeah, good software for each package.

Eric Stromquist
Okay, so so obviously you guys eat your own dog food so to speak because you use the software that you develop and you guys are contractors So, yes. Okay, so I just got to ask the question why does it matter? Why did why do I need what do I need your software of I’m a contractor

Aaron Gorka
everybody do everybody out there’s got a way of managing a project of service and the services might not be the best way they know that but they weren’t good enough for where really makes a difference is when you’re in shit. Right when you need to when a customer calls in there, you know, there’s a big problem save your guys were just there or were there three weeks ago or a month ago and if you can’t find that information for that customer Fat Joe, you’re you start to sweat the bucket. Now you get into some big trouble, you know, say a project goes into a lien or or it’s legal and You’re not organized, you got to stop your whole business and your whole value towards your business to get organized to keep yourself out of trouble. And if you don’t have a clear, easy way of doing that all the time, either for the trouble or for the daily I mean your daily you have a flow anyway. You’re, you’re a huge risk to your business.

Eric Stromquist
Got you got you. So as a teacher, my one said in God, we trust and all else get documentation. So it seems like you guys make the documentation process pretty pretty effortless.

Aaron Gorka
Oh, yeah. The whole purpose of it is, every time anybody does something is saved into a database structure which you know, may not make sense to everybody. So it’s searchable and the magic of it is, is you know how, how easy it is for the guy in the field to do it. Right. And you know, when we all most people listening to this or in the office, from the office, you’re still an air conditioner, you’re in a comfy chair. You got your monitors, know you can do anything, it doesn’t really matter to see you how you organize because you have your way. But feel all you got is a phone, maybe a tablet and laptops are kind of heavy and bulky. And you know you’re really bad. But you still got one screen, maybe two if you’re if you use your phone, your tablet in conjunction. So that’s where the magic is getting back into into searchable.

Eric Stromquist
So what’s the what’s the secret sauce for you guys? Because I mean, when you talk about documentation, I think about sales force and having to you know, do a lot of extra work and so on and so forth. I mean, even though that would save time, down the line, But to your point, if I’m in the field is yours. What did you take that into effect or to account when you develop this? Is it easy to input the data or?

Aaron Gorka
Oh, yeah, yeah, that was how we started with our a track service division. Building. It’s make sure I’ll leave work for that. And that’s the big difference in how RL and Salesforce and these these companies like that they don’t really apply to what what I don’t think how it works for each chakra or a are building automation Tachyon electrician go to build you know we’re talking about point terminating them and programming them and building a graphic based on them and and showing manipulating them you know you need something that that actually applies right so when you could take in doing what what you’re already doing your your document to get liveso you know what you did yesterday yourdaily takes five minutes update when you’re capturing it.

Eric Stromquist
Yeah, yeah, so so just kidding. And I think if you think about from a business perspective, what I’m hearing is first of all, it saves money because if you’ve if you’ve got a processes You’re doing your team buys into, everybody’s doing it the same way. You’re capturing all the data points so that you’re not forgetting something. So you’re getting everything built properly. And you’re you’re reducing the amount of time it takes to find things. So you’re not scrambling at the end of the month to try to get the bubbles done or whatever. But there’s another sort of, you know, hidden thing here, I think that I think comes in, which is, you know, Britain, I’m gonna ask you to speak to this too, because I think you actually use this technology is that, you know, at the end of the day, it’s still competitive out there. Right. So you know, if you can respond quicker and offer better technical support, which I think one of the factors that would be speed, we’ve talked about that before, because time is money, right? We’re all are looking for the quicker answers. And if you can provide your customers with a quicker answers, because you’ve got a more efficient process, then you’re going to get the added benefit of people thinking these. These guys provide great tech support. Brett, does that resonate and how are you guys using it?

Brent Burrows
So yeah, as Eric alluded to, Not only errands friend, co host I’m also a client.

Eric Stromquist
truth comes out right? Exactly. We’re going to ask it we’re gonna ask Aaron’s wife how organized he is in a minute. So get ready for that one.

Brent Burrows
Yeah, I’d like to point out first off I bought from Aaron he did not sell me.

Aaron Gorka
Yes, true. He did buy it. Yes.Everybody that bought itcan’t Jim software down somebody’s throat anyway?Work? You got to be a friend anyway because you’re working together. So I know it works.

Brent Burrows
Yeah, that’s the gosh, that was that was funny. You know, when you do when you do like technical presentations or demos for people, you’re like, Okay, I got this really slick solution, and we’re going to drive them through a controlled environment. And Aaron shows up to the office sitting in sitting in my dad’s office with me, my dad and I’m like, hey, Glad I know this guy, man, Aaron, he’s got this project management software, you know, check it out. I think it’ll help us out. So he’s like, okay, Aaron comes in. And then one of those things he mentioned earlier, they were doing some type of software update to it and completely had the site just like down crashed it like they’re updating it. So Aaron’s just sitting there looking at him and I’m looking at my dad and I don’t really know Aaron very well at all. I’m just like, Oh, man.

Aaron Gorka
Watch this 45 second video that I made on anice night. Give me a Give me a minute here. Let me make a phone call andwe sorted that out.

Eric Stromquist
So but but it sort of gets back to if you can troubleshoot it in front of somebody made it the demo goes perfect. You never know. You know, how they’re going to how resourceful they’re going to be that there’s a problem. So you got to see Aaron live, troubleshoot the problem and fix it right.

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, well, I am. I absolutely always go live I have I have no belief. I don’t like PowerPoint. If I can avoid them with a software, it’s just it’s got to be live because they got to see where the problems are. Otherwise you’re, you’re hiding right and you can’t I software, they’re gonna find you they’re gonna, they’re gonna be bad.

Brent Burrows
Yeah, so, so one of the things we kind of talked about earlier Aaron mentioned and how fast that you know, if something does happen, there is a crash, how they’re going to get it up fast they constantly make changes. That’s one of the attractive things that I like about it and we primarily we use it for for our project side we use project tracker, and the thing that I like about using the software working with Aaron and and his team is that speed and the agility the the fact that if you need request to change, it can be done fairly quickly. Like when you when you have one of these big, you know, a giant software package like a sales force or show managers It’s kind of like trying to redirect the Titanic when you’re looking at the iceberg. It’s going to take a long freakin time before you ever see it if you ever see it. And I don’t know if you saw the movie didn’t go well. So Aaron’s got a speedboat over there. And the second he turns the wheel, you should see some pretty immediate action. But

Eric Stromquist
unlike Kate Winslet when when she says I’ll never let go, Aaron won’t let go. Right. I mean, that’s the thing about that movie. Remember, he’s on he’s on the log or whatever. And he she’s in the water and she’s on the log, and she goes, I’ll never let go and about a half a second later. She lets go and he drowns. Right. Right, right. Yeah. Don’t

Aaron Gorka
know. If you look closely at that, at that photo, there’s there’s room for two on that on that door. I’m getting on that door.

Brent Burrows
Parallel there wasn’t Kate Winslet a redhead in that movie.I was getting up on that door. I’ll tell you what, I’ll bepushing her off.

Eric Stromquist
Listen, Aaron I’m gonna quick at a point here So Eric, do me a favor when you’re not talking. Can you mute yourself? Because we’re hearing your hear your car car stuff? Yeah, no big deal. Just Oh,your phone on your phone right now

I’ll mute you here then But baby. No, because we can still hear you. We don’t answer you know you’re muted.

Brent Burrows
Tell us an extremely, you know, a secret you’ve never told anyone and we’ll see if you’re on mute.

Eric Stromquist
I can meet you here from here and so, you know, it’s not a big deal. Okay, that was that was that was kind of a cool segue. So now Mrs. Gorkha the question everybody wants to know is how organized is Aaron and Hmm.

Aaron Gorka
Oh, well, yes, very organized.

Eric Stromquist
The same clothes every day and forgets to wash him or he justclean laundry to save our spare bed and be dirty and thenI don’t see what the problem is it that I’m not complaining about

who’s doing what he’s doing the laundry done. Wow. Well listen, we’re going to get an annual report on how things are going in the Gorkha marriage and you know, that’s pretty impressive that he’s doing laundry. So Aaron, congratulations on that brother. But there you go. But but but I think it gets back to and I want to I want to sort of segue a little bit to you guys because you guys do a great podcast called next generation innovation. And Aaron on your last one you did just an incredible talk on change management and could talk a little bit about that sexy posts on ControlTrends. And tell us about the change management talk.

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, yeah. So every backtrack story. I brought University where I graduated, they do programs called service learning, where instead of going to business school studying Google or Lulu, Batman or big companies, they work with local independent contractors or companies, right. So when I was going through school, I thought it was great idea. And then when I became when I finished I got right in on it as a client. Actually how Charlotte and I met was in this professor. We just got to go with Dr. Dave I kept moving up i think is how you say his last name, but Dr. Dave, and change management was a course that I really I really focused in and I really enjoyed. So he brought me back after a few years of leading change initiatives and how The plans for our company Iran to grow and how to evolve into basically from a $5 million company, ultimately to a $20 million company. We were only about 2020 employees at the time. And we’re at 65. Now and we’re not quite on track on the financial goal, but overall is organization and the people change. perspective, we’ve done very well. So the professor basically brought me back in to talk to a bunch of I think it was MBA students might have been PJ, I don’t know, but a masters or batch level business. The change managers group is I focused on kind of four areas, because I hadn’t had much time to prepare for it. And it was around industry change that we’ve seen in any track controls, the big picture stuff, kind of contractor specific portions like that Iran saw very specific to what we do. And also when what happens when it goes into a contract here and how that comes. tractor that evolved from change management perspective and struggles and key points that you need to be aware of 1.2 correction in it is right, the very beginning I say, fence sitters are the people you need to remove in your organization and the change initiative. It’s not true. It’s resistors. Ultimately, if you set the direction of an organization, and people are individuals, no matter how long they’ve been with, you are resisting that change. Sometimes you need to make a change and that person has to leave the organization. And this resistorscan be your your power players. Interesting.

Brent Burrows
Yeah, I remember hearing that and like the beginning of the thing is like the fence sitters get rid of him. I was like, Man, that’s harsh.

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, it was the resistors get rid of it is hard to make But it is it’s a very important thing.

Brent Burrows
Gosh, do you remember it? Completely like a different segue? I’m not sure what made me. What made me think of it. Do you guys seen the movie? Happy Gilmore, right? Oh, yeah,yeah,

yeah. Gosh. I’m picturing Aaron Gorkha as the orderly Ben Stiller. And then you gotta lady saying my fingers hurt.

Aaron Gorka
Oh, really?

Unknown Speaker
Nice.

Eric Stromquist
Nice, nice. Well, I know it is very interesting when you think about the fence sitters. So how much that Aaron is in? I mean, how do you know when somebody is offensive or not? I mean, how much time do you give them? So you come in and you’re doing change management? How long do you give them before you decide? I mean, I might just add on the imparting your vision and getting people on board leadership’s responsibility, how much of that you know, how do you know when somebody Event Center in a resistor versus somebody that you just hadn’t sold the vision to

Aaron Gorka
in my, in my experience with it, it’s actually it can happen fairly obviously, the fence sitter, like there’s going to be people who champion it right away that jump right on to it, they believe in it, they know it’s going to help and they’re, they’re your championresistors are typicallygoing to be a little bit older on the older side, probably in accounting, honestly, because, you know, when you’re in accounting is very particular. And they like it their way, right. And again, they’re doing it their way for a long time, typically, so they’re very concerned about what you’re bringing into their office. That’s usually the first grasp of a resistor. The fence sitters going to be probably the decision maker side of things that you know, he’s just picturing fearing that that changed that little bit and going, Wow, this is a lot of money. You know, what do I do with it? Should I do it. And at that point, that’s when you gotta really work on division, or give them time, build trust, keep the sales hat off and turn it backwards and become a friend. Right?

Eric Stromquist
And I think you gotta kind of be careful to, at least in my experience, over the years is sometimes your, your resistors are giving you really good feedback. So it’s almost like you I think you have to, you have to create a culture where it’s safe to speak out and disagree, right? Otherwise, people just go well, I don’t want to be labeled a resistor because he’s gonna get rid of me or she’s gonna get rid of me. Right. So. So, at what point does somebody go from being, you know, offering an alternative, brave opinion that maybe you don’t want to hear, but it’s useful feedback to being labeled a resistor.

Aaron Gorka
Ultimately, the leader, the leader needs to be, you know, poised and calm and in control of that kind of scenario and understand, you know, if you’re a great leader, you’re going to be receiving Poland and open minded to to everybody’s ideas. So you can, you know, that’s just framing this box here, you know, it’s really important to always be open minded to work with everybody’s ideas, at very least what you need to deal with, which he says there might not be time for this right now you need to address you need to talk one on one with that person. And make sure that, you know, there’s good reasons and they understand why you’re not hearing them. Because you will lose, you don’t want to lose resistors necessarily, right? It’s when it gets to the point where you get your sense in the leader, you’ve done everything you can with it. You You You talk to them, you move past it, it’s time has gone by, and they’re hung up on it, and they’re just not buying in. Yeah, and it becomes an evident cancer side of things. And at that point is not good for either person, right? Ultimately, because they’re not they’re not going to be satisfied, no matter what now. So, if you’ve made mistakes along the way as leader you’ve caused your founders In that scenario, that’s one given. The other one you you’ve done an

Eric Stromquist
excellent job with your leader and you need to make so and I’m what I’m hearing you say is it if you if you sort of addressed an issue and you keep having to dress the same issue over and over and over again, even though that person has been heard and you’ve, you’ve listened to them and you’ve taken it down and they know you’ve been hurt, because you’ve maybe repeated it back a couple of times, but after the second or third time, you’re kind of going, Okay, we don’t need to cover this ground. Again, you’re a resistor.

Aaron Gorka
You’re when you start to impede the vision of the organization, ultimately, it would negatively again, framed with its with a strong leader, you know, that’s doing the right things. Right. And you have a clear vision and and other teammates you’re buying in. Now and there’s you know, I mean that that’s the moment and again, it’s it’s evident if it may hurt your heart and your gut, because there’s a lot of typically with heavy resistor, it’s not going to be a they’re going to They’re passionate about it because they spent a lot of time with you. Right? So that’s where you get hard. But, you know, sometimes you need to get over that as your organization. Organizations are not just should never be if you’re set up well, you should try to never be too reliant on one person no matter what, right? Because a boss can combine him right now. But, you know, if you’re, if you’re dreaming of a business, right, yeah, you gotta be prepared. You’re in a war. I were generals in a war of their right and from a business perspective, right. So

Brent Burrows
Aaron, I gotta ask. You said something there about the generals and having people step in. If, if a bus comes by and hits you, who’s stepping up for you? Who do I need to get in contact withMy friend, Steve from the awesomeSteve from the office,our core business line andhe’s your guy to start.Okay, cool. I really liked what you’re saying there and talking about the resistors. And then ultimately the the change, because at any business that has ultimately grown or had to change with the marketplace, first off, if you haven’t changed with marketplace, your app, you have to be out of business. It’s just, it’s inevitable. But everybody kind of faces that not necessarily that they’re in, you know, they don’t even have to be in that technological software field for this type of innovation. But you grow when you take in these growing pains and a humans are just we’re naturally resistant to change. There’s something in our brains, it’s already it’s that self preservation thing like this. There’s danger out there. We know this. We need to stick it This. So if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Exactly. But to get to the next level, ultimately I think it, it comes down to good communication between the top of the overall vision. That’s why the vision and the goal needs to be clear to everyone because then it helps the struggle makes sense as we’re currently right here. If we’re going to get to this point, here’s what has to happen. Not that there aren’t going to be not that you’re not going to have to take a step or two back in order to make that leap make that jump but uh, I think that’s, that’s one of the big things and leadership is having people you mentioned accounting, Aaron, like it people that are very set into their structure in their ways and having, having having your champions as like the leaders of those department, and kind of something you alluded to with your generals like, ultimately, I think those have to be those are got to be your generals. You know, if you’ve got The head of accounting, you got the head of administration service and software and say, Look, here’s the direction we’re going, here’s why we’re doing it. And you’ve got to champion this to your people, right? Because if your generals or your leaders in those areas are talking down on it, there is nobody in that department that has any type of, you know, they’re not going to do it. And then I think that’s at the point, I would say you would, it would be easier to deal with the resistors down the line. That’s something that think that can be, you know, dealt with more and chances are lower down, but when you have one of your leaders that you can’t drive it into, and that they just continue to resist. I think that’s that that’s where you hit that problem and you can really see that cancer.

Eric Stromquist
No, you’re right, if leadership’s not buying and then you got to go back and resell the vision. I know in our company, one of the one of the things they didn’t get we I really, really welcome diverse opinion. So it’s a safe space for to speak out against something But, you know, one of the criteria for us is, yeah, if you’re going to criticize something, then have another solution or an alternative way to do it just to say this doesn’t work and it sucks doesn’t fly in our company. So hey, this doesn’t work because of this. And here’s something we could do differently. Okay, and then that that that sparks to me that sparks convert positive conversation and also sparks innovation that’s where innovation comes from. Because if you can’t go after something that’s not working if it’s not safe to do that, but then if it’s okay just to criticize and not have something else to the table, because criticize is easiest thing in the world, right? I mean, you could just sit there and I can find fault in anything and so can you and token everybody else. finding faults, not enough, you know, so you can find fault, but didn’t have a better solution. I’m interested. You’re just finding fault. I don’t need you for that. Your resistor. Your you don’t need to be on the team. You’re getting off the bus at the next stop right there. They care about his mute button.

Aaron Gorka
Yes, he did.

Eric Stromquist
So innovative. Aaron Gorkha he is

Aaron Gorka
I had to do is hit backI know you’ve resisted that at first, but I’m glad you came.

Eric Stromquist
So Aaron is gone from new guys. Listen you guys, next generation innovations the podcast you guys do is fantastic. You guys got an episode that’s going to drop next week talking about change and innovation and innovative companies you guys have interviewed Kim brown from Cochran supply. Again, we’ll be posting that next week on ControlTrends talk about that episode of next generation innovation guys.

Brent Burrows
Gosh, Aaron, you want to start?

Aaron Gorka
Yep. It was so fun. Kim is Kim is like one of the most fun people in the whole industry to hang out with so insightful. She’s seen it all from a very good perspective and especially for distribution. She’s now had enough Cochran supplies whole tech team manager there and I’ll tell you what that gene we we Work heavily with them. Same way you guys would like your rent. And they’re just so awesome in there. And Kim brings a great perspective to change and a little bit of fun along the way. I think we do craft into like, what it’s like to be a woman in the industry.

Brent Burrows
Yeah, I have to say that was probably one of if not the funnest day interviews that are, you know, it wasn’t even an interview. It was just, it was an awesome conversation. And it was her story. It’s so cool talking about how she got started in the industry, how she progressed, got out, came back and then kind of her journey and then how it keeps going. Like I was really just fascinated to kind of sit there and just listen to her and listen to the processes they take on how how they embrace, really taking care of the employee. That was a huge that was a huge thing that I got out of it. That focus that they put on developing people in their, inside their organization to best serve their customers. I know sometimes it’ll be, you know, the customer’s always First, the customer’s always first and absolutely like you, it’s got to be kind of like one a and one be. But if you’re completely focused on, you know, the end result, you know, was it something about the carrot and the horse of the horse and the wagon? There’s something in there with that. But they do a great job of for, from what she was telling us of developing their people communicating that vision, and then getting the feedback. So it really was it. It was a lot of fun talking to her.

Eric Stromquist
How did they deal with resistors that she talked about that the Scott Cochran takes them out back and shoot them or what was the deal with resistors with them?

Brent Burrows
I think they had some type of Jedi programs that they might just take lightsabers they develop and just

Eric Stromquist
nice nice.

Aaron Gorka
I can ultimately Great great example of a strong culture and and the resistors all Julie there, they leave they find their out there.

Eric Stromquist
Very cool. So they opt out, self opt out sort of thing. Yeah. But it is a great organization. We’ve talked a lot to Kenny and I have a lot about, you know, Cochran supply and couple other distributors and how they’ve sort of reinvented themselves to deal with all the changes that are coming about and you know, changes definitely a foot in our industry. And I’m going to ask you, Aaron, I’m going to ask you Brent to what do you see in in terms of changes that’s surprising your this accelerator that you guys are paying attention to because you go Okay, this is here that we have to change long with this.

Aaron Gorka
We’re watching our economy real post actually, and we’re looking at a lot of things to do with in building a lot of upgrades, your cleaning kind of tactics, tequila, Internal, new technologiesinternal in our client base, looking at ways to findways to make money but also to provide value to our customers. I took a certified Energy Manager course I’m hoping to become a certified image manager, but it’s all about looking inside the buildings right now.

Brent Burrows
I gotcha. Yeah, thatthat ultimately, the thing that I always tried to pay attention to is, you know, kind of working our portion the business the primary want to work in the controls, and say, Okay, what are the what are the decisions? What are the factors that are the factors that are driving the decisions that they’re going to have to make? Why are they doing the things that they’re going to do so that I can, or we can best position ourselves to be that solutions provider or if we need to change course, you know, with offerings kind of like Aaron’s talking about With the duck ceiling or things like that, because just you know, showing up every day and doing what you’ve done for 510 years, that’s great, but you’re going to, you’re going to miss the boat or you know, when the next wave comes, you’re not going to be ready.

Eric Stromquist
You know, Brent, I think it’s really interesting, too, because you sort of are at the ground level, right? I mean, you’re actually doing an installation, the programming and actually the reality of the system and the building right? data and the rest of the team. They’re dealing with the people in the C suite, the consulting engineers, and you know, and I think you guys would both agree there’s the theory about how something should work and the reality about how something should work. And I want to sort of ask you this question. Are you seeing there being a delta between the theory about what customers are asking for in the C suite and the engineers are asking for, and the reality of what the people are actually needing in the day to day that are actually using the system day to day?

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, Ithink sometimes you run into that.

Brent Burrows
If when you go from, from the C suite and then engineering, and sometimes that can run into things of, you know, buzz words and things really, you know, like we talked about earlier getting sold. And then when it comes down to the practical application of what the building needs, or the engineering team needs to fulfill the, like the company’s overall objectives, you can kind of have that delta that you’re talking about, or do you know is you, you come down, you get the Delta in between what I want, and what the budget is. That sometimes a very large one there, but but I would say, you know that there are some times where I swear, people will, they’ll look at a job, and they’ll just be like, Oh, yeah, you just need to do this, this and this. And then, in theory, everything is a win. Everything’s done, right. It’s not that hard. It’s relatively simple. But if you don’t have the biggest thing that I, that I’ve seen in buildings that we’ve either gone to take over, or where we’ve had, you know, stop projects and stop slow down, is the quality assurance, like in your quality assurance, and I will tell you at the base level of your installation, if you don’t have great quality assurance, then nothing is it’s never going to work. You can’t You can’t build on a poor foundation.

Eric Stromquist
Quality Assurance also gets bad imitation right? Which Aaron’s jack.

Aaron Gorka
Well, we actually were talking about that we’ve kind of warm the internal QA team,you know, with a couple of short brokenthe timing of when to get him in is kind of what we’re what we’re getting better at tagged him in and get them into your building to scope through And besides, you know how to do that that effectively. But yeah, we’re using our document to document

Brent Burrows
works well. And that’s what I do with the like. So I’ve got a project right now where I’m kind of paying the installation for men, doing the programming, doing the project management, and all that. And that’s what I do every every day. I go in there, I get the reports from everybody and but what we’ve been doing in the field, all the commission stuff, any notes, and I go to project tracker, and I hit it all, and so I get everything in there and I have to do it every one to two days. Because otherwise the things, they stack up, they get lost. And then you wind up. If you lose, if you lose, you know, whatever, 40 to 80 hours, just in terms of that QA or really staying on top of it. You wind up chasing it a long time down the road, and that’s just not a good book

Eric Stromquist
to an errand. That’s where you come in right buddy. That’s about it. I don’t need to come in anymore. He’s got it handled. He calls me up when you when you need some help, or something weird with it? Well, what I meant was that’s what your software is kind of hit this very nicely, because again, it seems like you guys are definitely customized for the guys that are doing the work like your bread does, which is, you know, a lot of our audience. So

Brent Burrows
I’ll tell you that when when Aaron first brought the software to us, the the project tracker software, it was basically it was very it was task driven, check off the task, it gets done, and then it tallies up a completion percentage. And one of our big things was with the length of these control projects and maybe how many hours get put into them. It was like I need to see how many tasks were getting done. But I need to see how long it’s taking us. So that if I’m 20% into the project completion wise and I’m 50% into the hours, there’s there’s a major problem flag there and they were able I think probably within a within a month of us meet with Aaron and then get signed up for the software. They had the hours function on there and They’ve continued to work out any bugs or anything. And it really helps us with more of our, our workload, our progress tracking, and then our workload forecasting. So,

Eric Stromquist
well, that’s really cool. You know, and I gotta tell you if Kenny smilers was here right now, we would probably play a little game Aaron we like to call let’s make a controls to you. So for our audience out there who might be interested in playing let’s make a deal with Aaron Gorkha and at technologies. If they were to reach out and respond with the code, Browns go to the Super Bowl, what kind of discount Would you be willing to give them on their first purchase?

Aaron Gorka
I didn’t know about this game.

Eric Stromquist
Most people don’t till they get on the show. That’s why

Aaron Gorka
I would do a training some kind of training discount.Some kind of training discount. Yeah, that gets me excited. Come on air. Yeah,come on now.Somebody called me up. And work out a good deal. I don’t think anybody’s gonna call me over yet. I’d like somebody prove me wrong. Get a real good deal well how about how about how about how

Eric Stromquist
about how about the next three people that reach out and actually purchase your product and say Browns go to the Superbowl? Get to be your guest at the ControlTrends Awards. Okay. The resistant guy came up with an idea All right, I get to get say on the team hopefully so speaking it up, I was so he got you guys to do the young gun towards this year and talk about that talk about the Young Guns so you guys have any any candidates yet? How’s it going to work you guys are going to be in and the Super Bowl ControlTrends Awards extravaganza in Orlando. February 2, you guys pumped up about it. You guys got some plans? What’s going to happen?

Brent Burrows
Absolutely. I already alluded to what we’re going to be doing after the controls, trends, awards and who we’re going to be watching

Eric Stromquist
Aaron’s paying for the Uber so if you if you buy earned software between now and the control trends awards, he will be personally responsible for your Uber and if you do get thrown in jail, Aaron will bail you out. How’s that for an offer? There you go.

Aaron Gorka
wild night I

Eric Stromquist
don’t know what you don’t know about a wild night, give me a break. And so we’re taking for brown to go to the Super Bowl to air and get me out of jail. That will be the code and if you buy the software and use that then Aaron will be responsible for you have the control trends awards.

Aaron Gorka
He’s gone.At least at least the industry is getting older at least JV you know.

Brent Burrows
So that I mean, that’s an interesting thing. So Eric, Eric, hit me up earlier in the week know that. Talking about young gun to young people in in the industry. Eric hit me up with a guy earlier in the week and he sent me an email yesterday I get in touch with them. And it was basically about getting into the control industry, you know, kind of what it’s about what it’s like the barriers and and the process. And then he was like, Hey, I’m going to have you reach out to Brent. He’s a young guy in the industry and I’m like, man, I used to be I just turned 30 last week.

Eric Stromquist
I didn’t tell a man Don’t tell him that.

Unknown Speaker
I’m 30 years old.

Eric Stromquist
Man. You don’t get birthday brother.

Aaron Gorka
Happy belated birthday. Yeah.

Brent Burrows
Yeah, I’ll tell you what, Aaron that’s you know sales people got to know their customers birthdays. That’s that’s bad on you, man.

Eric Stromquist
Well, I’m just gonna you know, and yeah, that’s right. Yeah, it should be in the software someplace. Right so automatically send Aaron said Brett, birthday bottle of scotch or something. Right. But what is your birthday Brett? Was it yesterday or was it

Brent Burrows
was it last Sunday? October 27. I had that was another one. I had all planned out for a Browns victory and unfortunately, they didn’t come through but you know,

Eric Stromquist
back to the brown to the Falcons are the two most talented you know on paper change it can’t win a game but the Browns winning more than the Falcons.

Brent Burrows
You know what’s funny is when we had that interview or the interview with Kim brown Yes, I was given her craft that the lions because they’ve been so bad and now if you put the browns and the Falcons wins together it might not equal of lions. Thank you right about

Eric Stromquist
I’m sorry. That’s what I’m getting back to Brent’s point about you know, we’ve all been out you know at different places and you meet somebody and they just got a certain spark about him right so I go to this infrared spot. Spot place like hundred 55 degrees for 40 minutes, right. So there’s this cat their name Jalen and Dylan is just these great customer service really cool. We get to talk and he’s talking about well as gold as you know, to build smart homes. That’s what he wants this we talked about that he goes Will you do something with home? So you said no. I do you know building automation controls and we get to talking about his eyes get this biggest saucers. He goes, your industry does this and does that It does this and he’s just fascinated by the whole thing. He goes, Yeah, how do I get in? And I said, Okay, well, you know, I got I got a guy you should talk to he can he can hear what you’re about and talk to you about it, butand thenanother person there, they get to talk and you got all these young people that are learning computer stuff and all kinds of stuff and don’t know what to do. And they hear about our industry and they going Holy smokes, this is incredible. I could affect the environment, I could do this. I don’t have to be in a cubicle farm. I don’t have to do this kind of stuff. So I don’t think it’s that they’re not really qualified people out there that could they could be qualified to be great additions to our industry. I think it’s just they don’t know about our industry, which is, you know, part of why we have the young guns, right. And the young guns are basically younger people in our industry that we recognize that the control trends awards, and that Aaron and Brent are going to specifically recognize what the 2019 class of Young Guns

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, I think we should throw out here now some some nominations. If anybody Has young young people in their organization said that they want to nominate no thrown out there because we have here we can’t catch everybody and if you leave it to us we’re gonna we’re just going to pick the people we don’t want to be so throw maybe some reach out and maybe when you guys do your nominations for the actual words we can have a young gun

Eric Stromquist
Well, you know what, that’s you know what the nomination ballot is out and we don’t have something on that because that’s usually being selected but that’s not a bad idea. We might update the ballot for that but again, it’s it’s we kind of know those young people in the organizations that do it but you guys were young gun says how you guys got started. And, yeah, part of being a young gun is that you’ll be a guest on next generation innovation, which is what you guys are also trying to do because again, part of it is we’re trying to shine the superstar spotlight on these young people, so they don’t so look at our industry wide get recognized. You know, if I do some good things early on in my career, I’d like to wait till you know, I’m retired to get recognized. I can get recognized. You know, Leon and I mean what was it like for you guys to be young gun to me? What was that experience like for you?

Brent Burrows
It was a date to be honest it was unexpected I didn’t know that I was going to have to go up on stage until I got there. Yeah, and now Mike Oh man, I’m glad glad I didn’t wear my my jeans and my jersey or something.

Eric Stromquist
Yeah, what you can because there’s a Super Bowl party so you can this year but

Brent Burrows
exactly. I went I went in one year too early. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Stromquist
But what about you Eric? like for you?

Aaron Gorka
I loved it. I thought it was such a cool my dad came with me to Chicago and it was just such a nice proud moment to get to share with him do and it was cool to be up in front of everybody that I’ve been, you know, kind of working to be and make friends with with the hand side and a lot of team members are there. So that was that was that was it was awesome review. It’s like a you know, I said it out the year before as a goal. I saw that

Brent Burrows
Vegas

Eric Stromquist
now you should be here and you guys you guys are both great additions to our industry you guys are doing really really good stuff out there and sort of as we wind down How do people get hold of you bread and tech

Aaron Gorka
and tech buzz visit us online

Brent Burrows
in tech dash Inc. com You can call our office you’ll be directed one of our fantastic sales people or reach out to Eric at whatever whatever method he he is he’s currently at and he’ll make sure that you get in touch with the right people

Eric Stromquist
right because if you guys are looking for an integrator to do great work for you and the George area or you guys do national accounts all across the country severe national account. I mean, that’s been one of your guys strong suits back since I first met your dad we were doing national accounts together. So you guys is The guy Liam Neeson says and what taken or whatever, I’ve got a unique skill set and then Tech has a unique skill set they can do your national accounts or they can work with you locally. Great stuff there. And Aaron, how about you, buddy? What’s the best best way for people to track you down?

Aaron Gorka
LinkedIn to be honest with youfairly regularly.

Eric Stromquist
Right and then if somebody wants to get a look at your software now you got a pretty good website is it and technologies com if they just want to browse around and see what your software is all about?

Aaron Gorka
Technology

Unknown Speaker
technologiesfollowing wasn’t the highest priority, I’ll tell you what. That was the little red under Nowadays

Eric Stromquist
we’ll make sure to put the link in the show notes as well and then again Stay tuned next week man the next generation of the next episode of next generation innovation with Kim Brown is going to drop and that is something you guys really want to hear that as well done boys really really well done and listen if you want if you want to be a guest on their show man reach out I mean they would love to have you on and you guys primarily focused on the younger guys you occasionally let me and Kenny Come on but you kind of you guys kind of discriminate against older folks right?

Brent Burrows
Only one at a time. We have to keep that we got to keep the mean age down. The mean age has to come like under like 42 or something.

Eric Stromquist
Oh, there you go. There you go. What about you? What’s your cut off point for talking to all guys keep in mind your dad the show?

Aaron Gorka
I like right Yeah, I like I like the perspective of it. Bring them in and then just flashing back to when they were young folks. If I was good me anybody you know that wants to do a flashback trip. Yeah, I think that’s cool. Back to the old days when they were kids

Eric Stromquist
okay and then listen I just got a text in with a picture of somebody that’s doing like an Alaskan dog sled thing with the big old you know, head thing on and driving it looks an awful like Kenny smile so I’m wondering if Kenny is like in Alaska doing like a Alaskan dog sled type ride What do you guys think you think it could possibly be Kenny?

Brent Burrows
He’s pretty he’s probably taking medicine penicillin and everything to a to a remote village tried to save lives just you know, doing God’s work.

Eric Stromquist
Well, there is another picture somebody looks like Kenny and a priest outfit with Bible so maybe he is doing missionary work. I don’t know. Aaron DD Have you seen any pictures? That might be Kenny out there doing where in the world is Kenny spires?

Aaron Gorka
I certainly not in the car driving beside me. There you go. I don’t know

Brent Burrows
I’ll have to turn on. Turn on College GameDay here in a minute. You know, you may see that they always got people standing on each other’s shoulders. their shirts off and everything so

Eric Stromquist
I will scan the crowd. We might be a bit the Pittsburgh game and with the PP across it. Yeah, that’s right. It’s cold he’s got we got the shirt off.

Brent Burrows
I’ll tell you what that would be mighty mean if he was because Pittsburgh is playing here in Atlanta today. That’s right. He could be here and not even tell you.

Eric Stromquist
Well, he would he would definitely show up and not tell me because you know he is definitely the secret agent man But hey, listen guys, thank you so much. That’s it another episode of control talk now you’re smart buildings video cast and podcasts with the two young guns. Brett Burroughs medtech and Aaron Gorkha from hat technologies. So remember, be bold, stay in control. Be nice to a young person this week because they’re probably going to be your boss real soon. So have a great week. And you guys gotta go indeed.

Brent Burrows
I thought you I thought it was always and stay in control.

Eric Stromquist
change. Change it to be be nice to be nice to an old person might be your boss

Brent Burrows
In Deed

Eric Stromquist
Thanks so much. You guys. Have a great week and man, be sure to check this. Check the podcasts. Drop them this week on controltrends-update.mystagingwebsite.com