← Lighting Controls Podcast
Lighting Controls Podcast
Episode 128: Episode 128 - Technology Doesn’t Have to be Scary with Jonathan Perlis
00:48:19
🎙️ From Fixtures to Full Control: The Lighting Industry ShiftIn this episode, we dive into the re...
Loading summary
Transcript53 lines
- [00:00]
John
The opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the sponsors, advertisers or presenters. Advertising does not imply endorsement by the sponsors and presenters.
- [00:15]
Ron
Hey guys and welcome back to Lighting Controls Podcast. We have another fantastic episode for you today. But before we jump into the conversation, let me remind everyone, today's episode is presented by the lca, the Lighting Controls
- [00:27]
Dolly
Academy and it's financially supported by the national association of Innovative Lighting Distributors or nailed. Check out our website lightingcontrolspodcast.com got all of our episodes and a whole lot more. But huge shout out to our sponsor for this episode. We cannot do this without their support. MWConnect. You may know them as Mick Wong, but they have rebranded as MWConnect. You can check them out. MWConnect us. They're still the same but award winning Bluetooth mesh solution for your lighting control systems. You know they have really great products, really great United States based support and manufacturing support. So I highly recommend you check them out. They even have really great content on their website. If you're looking for guidance on, you know, maybe some typical applications for networked lighting control solution or if you want to go down to LLC even they've got some really good options for you. So check them out. MWConnect us. Let's get into the conversation. So today we have John. John, do you mind just giving us a quick breakdown on who you are and what you do?
- [01:34]
John
Right on. First off, thanks for having me guys. It's quite a full circle moment for me to be joined by the two of you guys as I've seen you guys only virtually on these episodes in the past or to be here is truly an honor. So yeah, I've been in the lighting industry for 17 years, the last 10 at a manufacturer called Stan Pro here in Canada, based in Montreal. And for the last two and a half years I've had the pleasure of jumping in up to my eyeballs into the controls world as we are a lighting manufacturer celebrating our 65th anniversary this year. But for the last two and a half years, starting to get more and more involved in controls and really learning. One of the things that we talk about in our training, selling fixtures is not at all the same thing as selling controls. And I'm really looking forward to jumping in and kind of tackling that with you guys.
- [02:30]
Ron
No.
- [02:31]
Dolly
Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on. And it's always fun to hear people say like, yeah, I watched you or I listened to you and it's like, wow, people actually pay attention to it, but thanks for coming on. And, you know, one of the reasons why we wanted you to come on was because you do represent two really interesting slices of people. One is, you know, across the border, north of US to Canada, but also, like you just said, you know, that, that conversion from just selling fixtures to selling fixtures and controls. And so I wanted to start with that. Like, you know, maybe for those who help haven't made the leap yet or are tip dipping their toe into the letting control side of things. Like what, what is something you wish you could tell yourself when you first started?
- [03:24]
John
That's a great question. To answer that, I'll go back to a line that someone asked me when we first started getting into this and it was, are you guys looking to move metal or are you guys looking to be a controls company? And it took me a second and I looked at him and I said, oh, that's great, I'm stealing that because that really kind of captures the essence of it, which is, well, are you just looking to sell more fixtures that, you know, happen to have some kind of a sensor in it, or are you actually looking to evolve to that controls company, which is a totally different dynamic top to bottom, you have to essentially learn to rewire how your company operates. And that's been a big part of the, we'll say the exciting challenge of the last two and a half years is because every so often more and more opportunities come around and you, you know, they're different, just slightly different from the opportunities that came before. But now you're learning, you're uncovering more of that wiring that needs to be rewired. Because the expression I use when we do our training, you know, no longer is an order for 100 fixtures, just an order for 100 fixtures. Right. You need to start asking the question, how are we laying them out? Are we going one wide open space, 10 by 10, you know, and then maybe you only need a handful of occupancy sensors. Are you taking your 100 fixtures, are you installing them in 50 small offices? You know, two, two, two by twos per office? Well, you're going to need 50 occupancy sensors, right? And it's, it's that whole paradigm shift that is so much easier said than done, you know, in this format. But you start talking to, you know, kind of lifers. People have been doing this for 20, 30 years and now you tell them, okay, so the way you've been doing it is. Right, but now we're going to change it on you because x Y, Z and that's, that's the part that's been interesting is every day, every week, it seems there's another facet that we need to, you know, rewire and keep things very interesting.
- [05:50]
Dolly
No, I think, I think that's a really good way of kind of explaining it because I think that is the mentality that a lot of people come at it. If they've been in wholesale distribution, it's just like, okay, you know, we're gonna drop ship more controls, devices and, and that's gonna be great. And it's like you could absolutely do that, but if you just let them kind of lead that you may be leaving money on the table as a result. And so just asking one or two questions will open up, you know, a possibility for a completely different sales conversation and you know, really bring in to focus, you know, something they might not realize and won't realize until way too late in the game. Like, you know, okay, you've got 50 offices and you only got three occupancy sensors. Well, now you need to buy a whole lot more occupancy sensors. So you know what, like, what are like one of the most common questions that you've learned to ask when you get brought onto a new project.
- [06:57]
John
So the theme that, because my role so as national Business Development manager, I do a lot of different things so I touch on primarily the specification. So our business model is we do stock and flow on one side, we do a lot of specification or design build on the other. But I also oversee all of our product training, both internal and external. External and controls has been a very big part of that over the last two and a half years. And the kind of the concept, and that's what we try to focus on more is concepts rather than just, you know, the five digit codes or the nomenclature. Because that changes, as we all know, is this concept of the pregame, right? Kind of like, you know, when you're younger, everyone knows you go pre game somewhere before you go to the bar, so it gets everyone's attention. But basically what it's saying is, okay, before you start this project, this opportunity, you got to get the stakeholders to the best of your abilities in the room. And like you were just saying, you want to ask as much, get as much information figured out at the beginning because that's going to save you a whole lot of time, effort and pain and money at the end, you know, getting those things done. And then we'll get into no doubt C I N S O and you know, leading to that but at least getting everyone to comfortable with the idea of just have this pregame. Because for us with our system, although the system itself can do all these different things, not every piece of hardware, right? It's like hardware versus software. One of my colleagues has really honed in on that. Software wise, we can do all this stuff, right? But hardware wise, can't do everything. So if you don't ask the right questions and select the right hardware when you go to program your software, when you get to the end, you may end up with, you know, two weeks worth of work because you didn't make the right. And maybe the contractor integrator, you know, whoever's ultimately responsible, maybe didn't budget for two weeks of work, they budgeted for four days. And now you've got a lot of people working for free, which no one wants, right? Yeah. Yeah.
- [09:12]
Ron
So what was the real driving force for you guys when you started looking at this probably, you know, three, four, five years ago, with the idea of getting into controls, like, what was sort of the driving force that you decided, this is a road we want to go down, and these are the reasons why, versus letting someone else handle it.
- [09:30]
John
So I can say that I was not in the room when that conversation happened, thankfully. But I could say that it really is driven by the fact that everyone kind of the direction of our, of our organization really sees the writing on the wall and that, you know, it's evolution. Right. LED is kind of, you know, some people think it's that last big technological leap with lighting. You can only get so many more lumens per watt out of it. So what's the next logical step? Well, it's controlling light, right? It's that classic, hey, it's, you know, two in the morning, you're driving around and you see buildings fully lit up and, you know, there's nobody in there. How do we mitigate that? Right? How do we implement a solution to be more energy efficient? And then you get into the whole conversation of building management systems and, you know, the Iot of things not to just throw buzzwords out there, but those are really were kind of the initial conversations that led to, okay, so how do you go from being a fixture company to then, you know, becoming a controls company? There's, as you guys know, there's so many different avenues and eventually you just kind of, you know, you jump.
- [10:45]
Dolly
Yeah, well, and, and again, like the other, the other facet here is, you know, you're, you're up in Canada, which is a different market from the United States. And so you know, from that stance there, there has been a marked increase in attention towards lighting controls in, in especially like the Toronto region. But you know, what are you seeing at least compliance requirements wise?
- [11:14]
John
So for us one of the challenges we have is our national building code is pretty comprehensive, can be pretty strict. But we, you know, we're a country of 10 provinces and much like you guys are familiar, you know, you have federal and state, federal and provincial, you know, you have a national building code. But then each province has their interpretation of it and like anything, it comes down to the inspector's interpretation of those codes. So thankfully for us we only have the 10 provinces and three territories. So it's a lot less open to, we have a lot less opinions in the room. Right. Versus you know, having the 13 versus 50. Right. But it's still, you know, whether you have some provinces that really go deep on ASHRAE and other provinces that don't even know what it means, what it stands for. You have certain provinces where their utility rebate programs are hell bent on DLC premium in order to get them, when you have other provinces that as long as you know you have DLC if it's standard, that's all. So and then as a country, the population centers are heavily focused in just a few areas. So then in terms of the volume of your business, right, The Canadian market being 10 of what the American market is, these are all decisions that lead to, you know, bigger discussions and decisions about how to shape and build this business. And we haven't even talked about 347 volt. So that's a whole other.
- [12:52]
Dolly
No, I think that's a really good, good topic too because there's like everybody in the United states assumes, okay, 120277 volt, we're good. And then as soon as you cross over the border, you have this additional voltage. And so if you don't mind explaining
- [13:08]
John
that a little bit without putting our listeners, your listeners to sleep, what I'll basically say IS 347 is a way of, it's kind of like hacking your circuits to allow for larger load because in Canada it gets really cold and or at least this is the story I was told 17 years ago. And it was because heating is a really big factor. It's a really big driver, or not driver, but consumer of our electricity and to allow for building circuits to be more efficient. That's what 347 ultimately was. Whether that's true or not, don't fact check me, that's my story, but it does kind of make sense. But it does. Thankfully with LED though, and wattage consumption loads coming down more and more. I mean 120 is a lot more common, especially on new construction, but the retrofit market still represents such a huge untapped resource. And that's where, you know, across the board, whether it be fixtures, controls, making sure to focus on that347 component is important. Yeah.
- [14:26]
Dolly
And I, I feel like that's a good like indicator of whether a group sells in Canada or not is whether they have the 347 volt option. Because otherwise it's like, okay, you know, they probably don't do a whole lot in Canada. And so that I think it's just really interesting because if you only design in the United States, you're never going to really run across this, but then it'll just like surprise you. But, so, so, you know, there, there's that, but you know, are there other like nuanced differences between the Canadian market in the States?
- [15:03]
John
The other one that has really. I started my career working for a high end architectural, linear architectural manufacturer. So a lot of exposure to the US market. And it's only been the last four or five years that it really dawned on me that the Canadian market is far less on the lighting side, impacted by strong lighting design firms. Whereas in the American market you'll have, whether it be regional, whether it be out in San Francisco, in New York you have some really large powerhouse lighting design firms, not divisions of architect, their own lighting design. And they'll, you know, run the projects on the lighting side. Whereas in Canada, not to say that we don't have those lighting design firms, but they don't have the same cache I guess is the word. You have a lot of, you know, you have lighting design people that work within architectural firms, but then for the projects that are less flashy, that aren't as big budget, it's really on the engineers to go ahead and specify lighting. And so that's kind of a big departure that we see. And again, when you work with different partners who are used to selling to one market or the other, or like with controls, you know, listening to some of your guests come on and speak and seeing that, oh wow, the people making these decisions, you know, getting access to the end user becomes just that much harder because you know, a lighting design firm is that much closer and really understands the nuance, the budget, the true goals and objectives of the project. Whereas an engineering firm or you know, who has maybe an architect on staff, they May have a vague understanding, they know what the budget is. Their mandate may just be put some specs on some plans and, you know, make it meet the budget. So it's. That I would say is another interesting challenge that we, we deal with that's different from down south.
- [17:12]
Ron
So who's typically in charge of sort of controls design? So like, you know, for us it's. It tends to often be on a lot of smaller projects. The electrical engineers. Right. Especially if there's no lighting designer involved. But even if there is a designer, very often they don't have a controls team. Some do, some don't. So it often falls back to the engineer because they have to stamp it. So how does that work for you guys? Is it the same process or is it different?
- [17:37]
John
So I am still really getting my bearings on some of those larger projects as we haven't. We're. We're just starting to get there in our ramp up. But I would say it's a combination of the electrical engineer who's obviously, you know, putting plans together and understanding and the lighting agents. The lighting agents up here definitely have a lot more say, primarily because they have the knowledge of the. What I'll call, what I like to call the legacy systems. Right. And controls is. Is still very much that, oh, you need controls. Where's Jim? Okay, Jim's our controls guy. You know, we're gonna take the project, send it over to Jim and. And you still see that at so many different levels. And that's kind of the approach that we've tried to take is not necessarily demystify, but take a little bit of that stigma that sting out of controls. One of the. And I apologize, but I'm very big on analogies. My boss loves to point it out, but, you know, we kind of see that we're at with controls today. What led was, you know, 16, 17 years ago, where, you know, you look at an electrical wholesaler back then, you know, oh, someone has a question about led. Where's Jim, the LED guy? You know, he's got his briefcase with his Samsung Toshiba or LG Par 38 lamps that, you know, cost $75 each. And it was, oh, LED. So that's kind of what controls are today. And different from led, where it took like almost a decade for everyone to get comfortable with it. My personal belief is worth three to five years from. Everyone sells controls. Just. It's a question of what do you want your lights to do because you're getting controls. It's like, which, which system, which protocol Fits your budget. It's, it's no longer an are you doing controls, it's just how.
- [19:36]
Dolly
No, I think that, that, that's a really good point. And I think one of the interesting things is going to be which technologies really manage to take off versus which ones get left behind. Because ultimately, I mean, we, we're seeing a lot of sort of wild west approach to the technology and everybody's jumping on board and, and trying to get their opportunity. But you know, from your standpoint, I mean, you're, you're at the end sale point, you're seeing, you know, what is getting purchased versus what is getting asked for. And so what are you seeing? Like what are the more common things that are getting bought?
- [20:15]
John
So it, we are not so much what's being bought, but it's trying to get to the answer the question of what are you ultimately looking to do? And what we're seeing is that, you know, seven times out of 10, all anyone wants truthfully is sensors that when someone leaves a room, the lights are going to shut off. Yep. Right. That's like 70 of what? And then from there, that's kind of your baseline line. And then it's okay, can we start incorporating case? So for building code, you want to have switches on the wall. Maybe you want to start talking about daylight harvesting, which I have a love hate relationship with daylight harvesting because we
- [20:59]
Dolly
all young people do.
- [21:01]
John
It's the number of calls that you get that the lights aren't working and it's like, no, they are. It's, you know, but that's a conversation for another day. But I'm really understanding, getting to the heart of the matter. Are you looking for your fixtures, how for them to behave? What are you truly and for so long? Because again, the Canadian market's a little bit different. Everyone got so used to reaching for those, you know, the legacy brands that not take anything away from anyone. But when you're looking at these, you know, they're inherently more expensive because they're oftentimes wired systems and decisions get made at the outset. And then once you're reaching for this system that does all these things, well, people start talking about buzzwords and it sounds like if I'm getting something expensive, I should do. And then there's that, you know, broken telephone of, well, we're going to program it this way. But you don't, you know, the person who's ultimately sitting in the office doesn't know exactly what everything does. So it's, it's, it's really the big Challenge is getting everyone on the same page. And that's why to bring it back, we really internally try to focus on everyone about that pre game meeting to really understand, you know, what are the, what's the objective here? Because the we say there's, you can do controls four different ways. One answer will be more right than the other ones aren't wrong. They're right too, but one is just a little bit more right. And if you ask the right questions, you figure out what is truly the right answer.
- [22:42]
Ron
So what have you been finding works
- [22:44]
John
for you when, when you're, you know,
- [22:46]
Ron
talk, trying to talk to people and get the right questions? Who, who are you talking to? What path are you sort of taking? Because your path, I think is slightly different than, than ours, right. Just because of contractor workflow. So how are you getting in front of the right decision makers to help make sure that your projects go smooth?
- [23:05]
John
So for us, we've taken the approach of we need to talk to everyone, right? It's, we can't just pick one lane and say, all right, we're going to focus on, you know, the electrical contractor or the electrical wholesaler. You can't just go one. Because in every territory it's a little bit different in on every job who has, say or is closer to the end user or who understand. So we just need to talk to everyone. But as we all know, the big challenge is as much as, you know, you're going to talk about the same device or the same, you know, widget, you have to speak, talk about that six different ways, depending who you're talking to, right? You want to speak their language, right? And there's some people, you know, we always laugh at the company here when people always refer to, well, the customer asked, the customer asked and I'm the guy who's going to stop. Who's like, which customer? Who are we talking about? Because if we're talking about an engineer or a consultant, well, the, the collateral, the answer to that question might be a little bit different than if it's the electrical wholesaler and even within each of those stakeholders, right. If you have the guy who's in charge of, you know, estimating the scope of the job and he's just, you know, dollars and cents versus. Are you talking to the guy who's trying to wire this up on site?
- [24:31]
Ron
Right.
- [24:33]
John
That part is so important and getting even that information sometimes is difficult. So to answer the question in a roundabout way, it's, you have to be talking to everyone because, you know, like you guys have talked about on previous episodes. For you guys, it's even a little bit trickier given the. The size of the country and the regionality. Terminology. Right. Getting everyone on the same page with is a controller different from a power pack, different from a relay. Right. And those are some things that we, as a company kind of. We made a few, we'll say rookie mistakes early on with some terminology of things that we realized. We've. We've recognized it. No thanks in part to this podcast. It's definitely shed a lot of light on things because for me, as the guy who's tasked with going out there and talking about it all the time, it's okay. I understand we have our partners that we work with to learn the technical side, but it's. How do I make this relatable to what other people are talking about and to hear you and your guests like it's funny. In prep for this, I went back and watched, or I didn't go back and watch. I got prompted to go watch episode one where you guys did the handoff. And I swear I had to stop and. And look because it clearly said episode one and I clicked on it. But the conversation that you guys were having it. And it was what, three, four years ago that I think you guys did
- [26:01]
Dolly
that as a while ago.
- [26:02]
John
It could have been last week. Yeah. Having that conversation because the, the themes of. And it just. That kind of gave me a lot of comfort as the new kid on the block sort of speak. Right. That's part of the other kind of discussion we have with controls. We're a mature company. We've been around for 65 years, but we're kind of new to controls and some of the terminology. So inherently, you get a little, you know, we don't. We want to learn the lingo and understand the way. And then you realize, oh, it's. You mentioned before, it's like the wild ball. It's still the wild work. We're coming in at the right time. We don't. We still have a lot to learn. But good news, so does everybody else.
- [26:44]
Dolly
Right.
- [26:46]
John
It's kind of the great equalizer in that regard. So that was reassuring.
- [26:50]
Dolly
No, definitely. And then I'm curious, you know, you mentioned some of the terminology that, you know, you use maybe not aligned with like, for instance, IES's recommended definition, but do you mind sharing some of those words that.
- [27:06]
John
So at first. And that's where, again, we. We have a really great team that are working on this. But, you know, when you start pulling people who are used to working sometimes on fixtures and they're things like a fixture controller versus zone controller and just understanding kind of what those do and you know that they're synonymous with a power pack and that a power pack that you may have that in lighting power loss, a power package is something that you need to power something. But in controls, a power pack is a relay or a controller and there are certain other properties that it's required. So can you. Getting everyone to kind of understand that terminology is interesting. And you know, a fixture controller versus a zone controller, where we call them two different things but they're basically two of the same. Just different amperage. Right. Just different size of what you're. So we're able to, you know, over. Oh, it's big and little. Okay, so let's just change the names and. But those are things that when again you're talking to. Because the other. I don't want to say. Yeah, I guess it's a challenge that we have or at least that I have. I train people internally and I train people externally and a lot of fixture companies, lighting companies, you know, kind of done the same thing forever. They take their spec sheets, they make a presentation out of your spec sheet and. Well, no, when you're kind of starting from scratch, you've got to teach your teams internally using one language, using one presentation and then it's a second presentation for external. Because how you sell and how you learn, it's. So those were all in the beginning, some of the bigger challenges just because we were starting from scratch. But again, having the fantastic team that we had here, we, we caught up fairly quickly. In the beginning, everyone laughed at me. One of the expressions is, guys, we got to walk before we run here, right? We don't want to. Well, does this thing do building management? It's like, let's kind of. We're going to get there, right? And then you got other people in the room going, what's building management system? And so you realize you've got to walk and chew gum at the same time. Because we are a mature company that people know and come to us for a certain level of expertise. We need to respect that. And you can't, you know, in business, like you guys know, in your day to day, you can't just say, sorry, I'm new here. Give me, give me a couple of months. No, as soon as you go to market, you've got to be ready. Right. And it's been a really fun, you know, two plus years of doing that.
- [29:49]
Ron
Nice. When. So when you're working on training and you mentioned doing both internal and external. What have you found really sort of works for you external, right? Because like you said, they are so different. We spend so much time with our colleagues and then you realize you're getting out and you're talking to engineers or end users or distributors and they all have different skill sets. So have you found that you have to tailor your trainings certain way based on the user?
- [30:17]
John
Absolutely. I'm very fortunate. I work with some, some really great people who, you know, one of my colleagues, Cody, he was, prior to joining us, however many years ago, he came from the sales side at being an electrical wholesaler and, and selling some of those other legacy systems. So he was able to bring this understanding of, you know, as much as we're figuring out how to talk to our people internally, he was able to bring that context of, well, this is how contractors talk, this is how wholesalers talk. This is, and identify some of those little, I'll call them, rookie mistakes that we made way in the beginning and kind of clean it up and understand that if, and then all of a sudden you go, oh my God, that was the reason that. And so the key is to not think, you know, you know, everything. You're the smartest person in the room. It's to be more inclusive, right? Lean on the people around you who have that expertise and just, you know, keep, be open minded and keep learning as you go. But, you know, use that guiding principle of internal is internal, external is external. And just because it would be easy for us to, you know, do one training for everyone and say, you know, here you go. No, you can't, no more broad stroke painting. Right? You need to really tailor your messaging to the people you're talking to because that's how, that's how the message lands.
- [31:42]
Dolly
No, and I, I, I think, you know, there's a lot of thematic elements here that, that do kind of resonate with a lot of how Ron and I approach lighting controls in general. Because, you know, I don't think people listening to this podcast really get a chance to, to see what Ron and I are like on a job. But, you know, we don't just like, come in and, and, you know, solve all the problems instantaneously. It usually starts with a series of questions that, you know, we usually start like, personally, I'll start like the most basic, like, okay, what is the light? Like, what is the source of illumination? And then go from there. But, you know, there's, there's a level of curiosity that I think one has to exercise when they're control specialist because of the fact that, you know, sure, you could be the smartest person in the room, but just because, you know what dolly stands for doesn't necessarily mean that's going to help you in that particular conversation. And so, you know, that's one of the reasons why we like to get guests like you on the show is because, you know, you really help draw us back to the basics of, you know, what helped us get to where we are so that we can help everybody get to a level of understanding and knowledge. And so, you know, again, really appreciate you kind of helping us peel the curtain back a little bit and see, you know, the goings on when it comes to this. But looking towards the future, you know, if you had a magic wand and you could change anything in the industry, especially in the Canadian market, you know, what's, what's the one thing that you would change to, to make it better?
- [33:30]
John
Oh, easily 347 volt gone. That would make life hilarious so much simpler. But no, actually, that's a very good question. That's. I think it would be, you know, kind of getting everyone standardizing a way to market for controls in terms of, you know, that. I call it the pre game, you know, the control intent, narrative sequence of operation. If there was a way to kind of have everyone sign on to a document that just kind of says, all right guys, here are the rules of the game. This is what we are all going to follow. Whether you're, you know, a contractor, building manager, you name it, top to bottom. I think that's the thing that would just make life easier for everyone because it would still, we would still have the complexities of all the jobs that we work on. You know, it's construction, there's budgets that are still, you know, play a role, the complexities of the physical, you know, is it a new construction, retrofit, all that. But at least it would take so much of the guesswork, broken telephone aspect out of it. And I mean, there's, there is nothing worse than getting a call on Friday. All right, we're ready on site to do our, you know, our controls. Can you guys come on Monday? Sure. You know, we'll go out on Monday and we show up and they're like, okay, so you're here to do the commissioning? Yep. Great. Where do you want to start? Where do I want to start? Where, where's the plan? Where's the layout? Yeah, what do you mean? It's like, well, what are we? Okay, let's go in that room. What do you want to do in this room? I don't know, you tell me. It's like, I'm sorry, wait. And you need to be off site by Thursday to give your certificate of occupation. Like what? That. So to avoid. And again, it's not every job that's like that, thankfully. But if everyone kind of signed on and understood the right way of doing things, I think regardless of which side of the border you're on, that would just make life so much simpler for everyone.
- [35:55]
Ron
Yep. Standardized documentation, control and narratives, sequence of operations, all those fun things. If we could see those just. I know there are documents out there. They exist. Whether or not people use them is a different story. But I have a question for you. When it comes to, you know, control protocols, dimming protocols, what do you see the most? Because we know we talk about 0 to 10 here a lot because that's what we run into the most. But what, what are you seeing?
- [36:20]
John
0 to 10 is the, the primary one that we work with in our side of the business. We see, you know, TRIAC 120 volt also kind of that more economical price point of certain products. And I think at least in the Canadian market, the biggest, the spoon that's kind of stirring the soup as they like to say, has been the multi unit residential condo apartment building type jobs where you start to see that bleed of the bleeding of commercial and residential kind of blurring into one. And now you suddenly have, you know, projects where it's very budget, they want to use residential type products but they're at 1214 foot ceiling heights which necessitates a commercial grade product to get the lumen outputs that you. So yeah, 0 to 10, 120 volt triac is, are the two that at least for us we see most often. But the fun part of controls and where that's where we try to tie it back to, you know, cost savings. When you start to talk about some wireless systems and we explain to everyone that the next layer, the next level in the future is you could have a wireless wall switch that's connected to both 0 to 10 and 120 volt TRIAC dimming fixtures because it's Bluetooth or some type of wireless signal, you don't need to run those 0 to 10 or other wires. So you know, technology doesn't have to be scary. It could actually serve a purpose. Right.
- [37:57]
Dolly
But it does sound like the, the wireless conversation is just has just as much friction across the border as it does over Here because there's still a lot of squeamishness around wireless.
- [38:10]
John
Yep, absolutely. And it's, but I think that's just, it comes down to education and it's, you know, like we were saying in the before about going need getting to talk to everyone about it so that everyone can kind of be on the same page. Because people often hear wireless, they think WI fi and they think, oh my God, my network is gonna get hacked. And we try to, you know, it's, well, it's possible, but that's why you also put security protocols in place. But like, you know, the system that we are currently championing is a Bluetooth system. And one of the reasons that we opted to kind of start with that was the knowledge that it is a very safe and secure from the standpoint that it's not connected to anything else in the building. So you're not going to have external, you know, infiltration. And you know, when we do the training, I always remind everyone Bluetooth is a local system. So, you know, if an employee had access and is no longer an employee and you're worried about them, you know, having the access, well, they're not going to be sitting at home on their couch and their underwear playing with the boss's lights, right? They'd have to, you know, get back in their car, get on a bus, a train, get like there's a lot involved. And if they really wanted to get back at the company, there's probably a few other things they would do first. Then, you know, cozy up to the, to the wall to get signal kind of thing. But it's just getting that idea, right? Helping everyone understand, you know, the different, I guess, the nuance of wireless technology. Certain, you know, government projects, wireless, they don't want you, they can't even, it's a no go. It's right there in the spec documents down to, you know, oh, you're doing a wireless system where the servers being like, where are the servers located, you know, which country, which island which, you know, so it's, there is, you know, it's nuance, but every day we want to talk to more people and try to, you know, break it down.
- [40:19]
Dolly
No, and I think that's a good, good point for us to just kind of take this conversation and package it a little bit because, you know, we, there's a lot when it comes to entering the lighting controls world and that might not be immediately obvious. And so getting a sense, I mean, obviously listening to the podcast is a great first step. I, I, you know, Feel like a lot of people do come to me and they're like, yeah, I learned so much about it from listening. But I mean ultimately like, you gotta, you gotta make the leap. You gotta. And the leap really is that choice of are you just gonna take a box from one location and hand it to somebody else or are you actually going to curate an experience? And I think a lot of distributors, a lot of manufacturers, a lot of sales groups in general need to basically make that choice of, okay, we are no longer just drop shipping stuff. We are actually ensuring compatibility, functionality, compliance. And that is a task it takes a rather large amount of resources to start doing. It's not something you can just, you know, change tomorrow and, and be ready to go. You have to understand the technology, you have to understand the capabilities, the, the ins and outs, the challenges that come with the technology and be ready to adapt with new technology as it evolves. And I think one of the things that, that I've, you know, pulled from this is it doesn't matter where in the world you are, it is always going to be a challenge. If you are going from fixtures to controls, it's more of, you know, your sales channels, but do you know your sales channels from this perspective? Do you know the questions to ask? Do you know who to ask those questions? And if not, be ready to learn because you will. Oftentimes, you know, maybe you start small scale and try to grow into larger integrated systems, but in reality, you know, you may end up with large scale headquarter buildings as your typical client. And as a result, you need to pivot rapidly to understand building management systems, which are a completely different world from just standard lighting controls coordination. And so, but in reality, you know, we really do in this industry need to do a better job of standardizing how we document lighting controls because we really, it is such a disservice to everybody that we have, you know, six different types of documents that the lighting controls could be found on and they may or may not exist on the project. And they certainly don't look consistent consistently from one group to another. And they're not even like, you know, you, you break out E sheets, you know where the, where the electrical power distribution is going to be, but you don't know where the lighting controls are going to be. And that, that really is a problem. And so, you know, one of one of the things that the lighting controls academy is trying to do is provide like documentation, standard, or at least not a standard, but a template for sequence of operations. So we have design express and so we are seeing some movement with that, but we really do need more people like you kind of championing lighting controls and being out there with the different groups and saying, you know, this is how they work, this is what you need to think about. These are the, the ins and outs of what you're saying and asking the questions that they're not. They don't even know they need to ask
- [44:21]
John
100%. Like we talked before, selling fixtures versus selling controls, very different at its core. You know, in the fixture world, if you've got a lighting schedule with 10 items on it, as a manufacturer, if you can, you know, all right, we can match seven of the ten, great. We'll find a way to find those other three. You make the package work. Understanding that in controls, if you need five components to make a project work and you have four, well, you may as well have zero, because without that, without that fifth one, it doesn't work. Right. And that's a concept that in the beginning of our journey with it was having to explain that internally to some, you know, in trying to push ahead in what we want to, you know, grow our offering. And it was like, but we just started. We. Why can't we kind of do what we need to do with. With what we have over here? And it's like, well, no, no, what we have over here is great. But, you know, you need to understand it's. It's all in the details, right? If you don't have that one little thing there, well, then the rest is, you know, and that little thing can be the difference between those big. And so it's. It's a different conversation. It's nuance, right? And it's trying to have those conversations kind of everywhere with everyone to really, to understand. And it's not about a. A big legacy, expensive system versus inexpensive or has nothing to do with that. It's just controls are controls, lighting is lighting. And you know, you've got to teach old dogs new tricks, right? And that's a lot easier said than done.
- [46:02]
Ron
You think you can come down here and train a bunch of the reps on that? Because they have a hard time understanding that if they don't have all the componen, they don't have a complete system because we see a lot of VED systems and there's a lot of times where they, they don't, they don't work the way they were designed because this component doesn't match what that component was. And people just want to push the almighty dollar and sometimes forget about the fact that it was designed a certain way for a very specific reason. So if you can come down here and preach that, we'll. We'll take you.
- [46:33]
John
No problem. I'll have your people call my people. Right. As the Joker once said, if you're good at something, you don't do it for free.
- [46:41]
Dolly
That's right.
- [46:43]
John
But on a previous episode, I remember you guys, you were just talking about and I just lost my train of thought, but that kind of. Yeah, we'll come back to that.
- [46:57]
Ron
It's all good. Jonathan, man, that was. That was. Thank you so much for coming on today, man. This has been an absolutely fantastic conversation, honestly. Wish you the best of luck. And as you guys continue sort of down this journey, it sounds like you are doing all the right things, asking all the right questions, trying to talk to all the right people. So just, you know, keep doing what you're doing, you know, and really appreciate your time coming on today.
- [47:21]
John
Thank you guys for having me. This is, like I said, full circle moment and like, I'll be watching, I'll be listening and, you know, keep pumping them out.
- [47:30]
Ron
Awesome. Thank you again. I will just close this out and remind everyone. Today's episode's presented by the lca, the Lighting Controls Academy.
- [47:37]
Dolly
And it's financially supported by the national association of Innovative lighting distributors, or Nailed. Check out our website. Lightingcontrolspodcast.com Got all of our episodes and a whole lot more. But huge shout out to our sponsor for this episode. We cannot do this without their support. MW Connect. Speaking of Bluetooth mesh solutions for those projects that need those nice wireless communication capabilities, whether it's simple or complex, all the way up to building management systems systems, I highly recommend you check them out. MWConnect us. Thank you for joining us and John, thank you. This was an awesome conversation.