Rob Stott:Â All right, we are back on the Connected Design Podcast and real excited for this conversation because it’s one that, know, I it’s going to sound I don’t mean it to have this connotation. I took time out of a vacation to go see your office space in Fort Myers or your new office space.
But it was an awesome experience and I was excited to be able to do that It was fortuitous for us that I was vacationing somewhere that there’s the the language I want to use fortuitous for us that my vacation was somewhere I could be close to your new office there. Mr. Steve Weber CEO and president of liaison technology group. Thank you for joining us this week on the podcast
Steve Weber: Rob, I really appreciate it. And thank you for stopping by our place. I wish I had been there to show it off, because I’m passionate about our places and our business. I get energized by showing people stuff. So I’m glad you were able to go by and experience, or at least the preliminary part of it, because you did see this construction going on.
Rob Stott: Heck yeah, and we’ll dive into it, but I did tell Brad while I was down there, that’s kind of like the stage I love to see it in because that’s the work being done, right? Like that’s the stuff we love is to see the nitty gritty and kind of behind the walls, if you will, of what’s happening in a space.
Steve Weber: Yeah, and when you’re building out of space, there’s, well, there’s two things that can kind of hold it up. One is that you got projects that you got to get done, because that’s what pays the bills, right? You know, it’s the old Cobbler’s kids, right? The Cobbler’s kids don’t have shoes and our place doesn’t have working audio. Yeah, we got to get the customers. And then the other thing too is, you know, as I’m creating a space and I’m not really a creative, right? I have to work on being creative, but I have to feel this space as we build it out. And so I get into it, some of it’s done, I’m going, okay, I feel this, I think we need to do this. And I’ll have somebody else come through it like you and say, and they’ll give the ideas, have you thought about this? Or, hey, I saw this other dealer do this, right? If we have everything all designed out, then we can’t use suggestions by other people on that. it just makes it for slower process, but it works. In the end, we’re usually pretty happy with it.
Rob Stott: That’s awesome. And I look forward to diving in deeper, but I want to start by giving you a chance to introduce yourself to our audience. cause you got your background and I know you guys just published a blog not too long ago about kind of your, your background. And, I don’t want to spoil anything. I want to give you the chance to talk about it, but it’s such a unique story that I, that’s why I was most looking forward to having you on the podcast to be quite honest.
Steve Weber: Yeah, it’s been an adventure and yeah, I I’ve got an interesting past and most people kind of look at me once they find out my past and they kind of look at me cross-eyed going, what? And so, yeah, but, know, and I normally just don’t advertise that. There’s a lot of different reasons not to, but I’m not ashamed of anything. It’s just sometimes it can be intimidating to people.
Rob Stott: You gave up what?
Steve Weber: And I don’t want people intimidated. I’m just an average, everyday guy, just like everybody else. And so I don’t want any of that to influence any conversations that I have with people. But yeah, I I started my career in medicine as a general surgeon and I loved it. It was great. But I built my career that I was going to do something else before the end, right? I was going to have a, some people call it second half, right?
And you know, you see that in a lot of professions, but in medicine, people go, well, you went through all that training and why would you give that up? And well, I’m no different than somebody else who starts with one company, moves to another one or changes careers. It’s, you know, I wanted to do something in the business world. And although I did a lot of stuff in medicine and the business end of it, I wanted to do something more that was strictly business and not related to medicine. So I built my career and path to do that at a point. Obviously, you can’t wait until you’re in your 60s or 70s to make that transition. So you got to do it when you’re still got a lot of energy. And the timing was right, medicine was changing, and I made the leap.
Rob Stott: So why custom integration? Because that’s also, mean, the medicine to tech is a cool story to begin with. But then I know you have a unique story as to why specifically the custom integration space is what attracted you to that new career arc.
Steve Weber: Yeah, I mean, I’ve always been very technology minded, even in medicine, I pushed the envelope and a lot of technology stuff. it, I was building a house out in Colorado, putting in a Crestron system, hired a company out of Denver, not knowing much about the industry at that point. And no, I wanted to control things and be able to see it with cameras and, know, turn up the heat and do all the things that we can provide through the integration channel. And I heard a small company out of Denver and they just weren’t able to do it. Sure, they could procure all the parts, but we’ve heard the story. They couldn’t get the programming done. So I went back to my Crestron rep or I found out who the Crestron rep was and I said, look guys, these guys aren’t able to complete this project. It’s been going on for four years. I mean, that’s how patient I was with it. I wish my clients when we have bugs would be that patient, right? It might be a week or two or something like that. But four years, you know, I wasn’t living there full time. So it was easy. But every time I was out there, I had a programmer sitting at my kitchen table, you know, programming it. And so I went back to Crestron and they said, look, let’s help you with this. We’ll get it through it.
They still weren’t able to do it. And I just went back and I said, look, we need to find a better path. I can’t work with these guys. And they gave me the name of three companies, which is their policy. I contacted them, found the guys I ended up taking on and they came into our house and you know, basically in two and a half days of work, weren’t able to finish the system with the other guy couldn’t do in four years. So I said, okay, there’s something different here. Let’s find out what it is.
And everybody that’s on this podcast, that’s in our industry understands that, right? You just have to find a Crestron programmer who really knows how to do it. Crestron is not easy. We all know that, right? But I had somebody who was learning Crestron on my house. so, you know, I saw that I was looking for an opportunity. I learned about the industry and I said, you know what? I think there’s some opportunity here to build something. I hadn’t really found anybody that had scaled this. Yeah, there was companies who had one or two locations within a city, but nobody at that time had multiple states, multiple locations. And it was, okay, how do we figure that? How can we figure this out and scale this? What are the processes we have to put in place? What’s the software that’s needed, you know, to do that? And that’s how it all started.
Rob Stott: No, that’s such a unique origin. And it’s like very apropos, I think, of who you are, right? Like going and solving a problem and, recognizing a problem and finding the solution and then going and to your point, everything you’re mentioning, scaling it is kind of just in your nature, I guess. Easy to say.
Steve Weber: Yeah, it is. Yep. I’m a builder and a fixer by nature. I like to fix things and I like to build things. And so I saw at least part of the industry, I don’t want to paint the industry as totally having problems because I have met a lot of great people and great companies and know that there are people that know how to do it right. so, you know, but there is a segment of the population and most everybody calls them trunk slammers, right? They take on projects bigger than they should. And, you know, so I saw something that could be fixed and I saw something that hadn’t been scaled. Sure, I could go out and buy, you know, a couple of McDonald’s franchises, right? But I’m being told this is the way we do it and this is the way you’re gonna do it. I’m not one to take orders very well. And so for me to have to dance to somebody else’s song, it doesn’t work. I want to create my own song and, you know, create the best one out there and build from it there. So that’s what we’ve been doing.
Rob Stott: What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about this space or this industry?
Steve Weber: Wow, great question. Although the business principles are the same, right? How do you run your books, right? What’s your accounts? What are your KPIs? How do you track that stuff? How do you track labor? The things that Vital is teaching, Vital’s great. Matt Bernath, what he’s doing with that, those principles, that can be extended to any industry, right? But when you get down into the people factor, and actually doing the integration and finding out what works and what doesn’t work together. it’s not cookie cutter, know, everybody on this call understands that everybody understands what, know, they go through the various things and I could go through a laundry list of manufacturers of like, yeah, we all remember when this happened and this happened and this happened, right? We all feel that pain. So I would say that’s probably the biggest obstacle and problem that everybody’s working on. And like I said, there’s a lot of great people and the passion that’s out there for what we do. It’s just really, it helps me when I go to our meetings and meet other people and just to hear the passion about it. So those are.
Rob Stott: You know, that’s, I think that’s an awesome answer. And it kind of like, think lends itself to, to just prove just how difficult, it, and I think you’d agree difficult in terms of trying to do what you’re trying to do with liaison, right? In terms of scaling, because it isn’t cookie cutter. Markets are different. Projects are different. Types of homes are different. So I want to give you a chance to, to, you know, talk a little bit about your approach to that and growing and expanding. Cause you guys, you’re in quite a few different markets at this point, right? I know Florida, like up Chicago. Where are you guys?
Steve Weber: Yeah, we’re in, yeah, sure. So we’re in Colorado. Our states are Colorado, Illinois, Tennessee, and Florida, and some Texas. We haven’t really, don’t have a strong presence there yet, but, and then we’ve got multiple cities. know, Florida alone, have now five cities in Florida on the West coast. We pretty much have something from Marco Island all the way up to North of Tampa. Nothing on the East coast, but the West coast we do, you know, I’ve picked our markets for several reasons, right? One is you need to go where the money is, right? So a lot of our markets, you look at our markets and say, those are, you know, places where there’s nice residents and the higher end clients live there. Number two is we’ve had some diversification. If we’re going to scale this to multiple more states and more locations, we need to make sure our processes work in all those different type of venues or avenues or whatever. It’s like the old, what the saying is, if it plays in Peoria, it can play anywhere. If it can play in a Decatur, Illinois, which is small, 80,000 people city and Chicago, which is big metropolitan or Nashville, which is growing, right? But it’s totally different vibe. And then Denver.
If you can get that to work, your process to work in all those, then you’re probably gonna be successful in just about any other market.
Rob Stott: Yeah, I love that. That’s a, I love that approach and it’s kind of giving you the chance to, I think, test sort of what that process is in different areas, right? And kind of learn from one another. Are you guys, you know, from location to location – like are things shared? You’re one team, right? So you’re talking to one another and things like that. I, I know too, it gives us a chance to talk about, you guys have a meeting coming up too, right? That you can kind of dive into for the team and all that good stuff that I know we talked about, but talk about that a little bit. Just like the sharing from location to location.
Steve Weber: Sure. Yeah, so communication is the crux of everything we do. And actually what I tell our team is, if you look at the problems in the world, 99.5 percent of them are due to communication or miscommunication or poor communication, whether it’s parent to child, employer to employee, vendor to integrator, whatever the right country to country, right?
Usually if you dig down into it, it probably goes down to communication. There’s some exceptions to that, but it’s communication or miscommunication or non-alignment of principles, which to me too, it comes down to communication. Because how do you communicate your principles with somebody else that is done in a respectful way? I mean, you can communicate your principles or mine are different than yours, but if you do it in a disrespectful way, all of a sudden you got a clash. And we’re seeing that throughout our society right now. So, you know, for us to have a business in multiple locations, we have to be able to communicate really well. And there’s a lot of integrators that look at me and go, man, I got so busy with just my one location. If I went to my team and said I had another location I was adding, they would mute me, right?
The difference is, is we started from the very beginning, knowing that we were going to have multiple locations. So everybody that comes in the team understands, you know, we’re going to grow and we’re going to take on. that’s the mindset of how to do that. So it’s not, you know, like it’s not shocking to them. we got another location. No, it’s like, okay, yep. It’s time to add another location. And that’s part of what we do. And, and how they look at their processes is — okay, I want to make this suggestion on this way we do things. They have to ask themselves, okay, can we institute that in 10 different markets at the same time? Right? Or is that only so unique to your market that it would never work in another market? If it is, then that’s probably not a solution for us. So that I think most of our team understands that.
And that’s what we try to communicate.
Rob Stott: No, that’s awesome. And I think, I think that shows too, like you talk about communication is not even just, you know, department to department. It’s, really, I’ve seen this, it stops along the way as well as it’s set from the top down, right? Like if leadership can communicate well to the rest of the team and sort of set the, you set the tempo, right? For kind of how things are going to run and the strategy, the mission and all that. And I mean, if the mission’s getting across to the rest of the team, then it’s going to be a success because they’re, you’re creating that buy-in.
Steve Weber: Yeah. So I, you know, to answer the rest of your question, we have an event coming up in May. will be the first time we’re bringing pretty much most of our team together in one location in Tennessee and in Nashville. And so there’s a lot of people on our team have never met face to face. Of course, they’ve done the video like we’re doing right now, but they’ve never sat down at a table and broken bread together. And so that’s been one of my goals is, you know, when we’re at a point where we could support that financially, I want to do that. And so last year I said, okay, I think we’re at that point. Let’s schedule this, you know, in eight months, do it in the spring of 2026, 2026. Wow. That we would do that together. So we’ve been planning that and it’s not, it’s not so much a training for manufacturers to come and teach us the latest and the greatest. This is about culture building, right? This is about us learning about each other, about us learning about the culture that we’re building, our core values, our growth, where are we going, where have we been, where are we going, those sort of things. So we’ve got two full days of that plus some fun times in there. And yeah, we’re looking forward to it. I’m excited. I think the team is excited for it, although the admin team’s kinda, some of them are going, wow, this is a lot of work. It’s good, so.
Rob Stott: You — no, that’s awesome. I mean, I, you know, the two C’s that you mentioned there, I think kind of, would echo just the importance of them, right? The culture, every integrator I’ve talked to, the manufacturer I’ve talked to, a lot of it comes down to, you know, having that solid communication within their team, externally with their partners and their integrator partners and whoever else, you know, they may be working with. And then, you know, setting that culture and creating that, that’s sort of like, is that flagpole for the organization, right? That everyone can see and work towards and they’re like great and super important independently, but also I think go hand in hand in terms of creating a, at the end of the day, a successful organization.
Steve Weber: Well, that’s what we’re striving for. I know there’s a number of integrators out there that have ventured into some of these operating systems to help build their business, two of which are scaling up, Vern Harnish, the other ones, EOS, which is Traction and Gino Wickman. Those are great things and we actually use both of them. And so I love to study business. And so that’s one of my passions. so study these guys that have done lots of research and worked on it. And we take some of that stuff. So that’s how we can kind of pull this together is we’ve got some framework that other people have built and we just apply to ourselves.
Rob Stott: Yeah, kind of the realization of one of those expansions. We mentioned it at the top. I got to experience it and see it in person. And that’s the Fort Myers location that you guys have opened up. Independent Circle, think, if I remember right, is the address is not too far away. drove eight miles down one road and I was there and it was fantastic. And talk about that, because that to me, if I remember, I saw Brad Payton while I was there talking to him.
Steve Weber: Yeah, yeah, right.
Rob Stott: That location is unique in that you’re co-located with illuminated, IDS, the Illuminating design. Yeah. So Bruce and his team and, or what, know, his, what he’s got going on there from a training perspective. talk, just talk about how that space came together and sort of the, know it’s, it’s an evolving space internally and sort of how it’s coming together from a design perspective, but.
Steve Weber: Yeah, Illuminated Lighting Design, right? Which is a…
Rob Stott: Your approach to that and kind of what you guys are trying to accomplish there.
Steve Weber: Yeah, sure. Great. And again, we appreciate you stopping by there and helping us get the word out because what we’re doing there is training and it’s really important for integrators to know about this. you know, as we got into more and more of the integration and everybody else is getting more into lighting, right. It came to our realization that there’s more to than just buying fixtures. So we partnered initially with lighting designers. so the illuminated lighting design and Bruce Clark is heading that up. Some people would know him from Ozion because he’s their educator on lighting there. But Bruce and I struck up a relationship, man, it’s probably been five, six years. And I’ve used him as well as a couple of lighting designers out of the Naples, Fort Myers area.
And we, the three, I introduced the three of them, they came together under one company, Illuminated Lighting Design. And so as we were looking at spaces, they were looking for a space. So we felt it was just, it was good to bring them into that same. It’s, it’s separate, but yet it’s together. Right. The other thing too, is that as we’ve gotten into lighting and as the lighting designers have been doing more projects for integrators, cause they don’t just work for us. They work for, you know, many different integrators out there. They’ve realized that, their lighting design isn’t always carried out to what, what they did. Right. They, there’s a purpose behind the lighting design. You go through the four different steps. Is it functional? Is it safety? Is it, you know, and so on and so forth. but if it, if the fixtures aren’t installed with that intent, then you don’t accomplish what you wanted to accomplish with that. And so the lighting designers who usually are remote to a lot of projects may end up seeing the end results or going to the project to help aim stuff. And then they find out, whoa, the electrician didn’t put those lights in the right spot. You know, they could be three inches off, but if it’s a piece of artwork and it doesn’t work that well.
So, what we kind of started brainstorming is like, you know, light up lose is great. It’s teaching a lot of really good things. And, you know, Tom Doherty has put together a really good venue for that, but it’s not teaching lighting installation. And many integrators don’t feel empowered to tell the electrician, Hey, this needs to be followed like that. Right. And, and a lot of times it’s the confidence they might not have the confidence of knowing why to do it. they go, the electrician’s the expert, so he must know. In reality, there’s a lot of electricians that really don’t know, right? And because they’ve not really followed lighting design, they followed lighting layout, right? And four cans and a fan, right? That sort of stuff. And that’s easy, right? But when you really have a lighting design and you have a lot of linear lighting, there’s a lot. So we…
Rob Stott: Right. Yep.
Steve Weber: …we started brainstorming what should we do? So we came up with the idea of let’s teach and make it available and come up with curriculum to show people actually how our fixtures installed. we, along with Illuminated Lighting Design, Collider Light, and Integrated U, which is Henry Clifford and Dante, there’s, so we came together, came up with the curriculum, and now we’re teaching lighting installation…
Rob Stott: Yep. Henry. Yep. Dante.
Steve Weber: …to the point where we even teach you how to solder, know, linear lighting together. And how do you make corners, right? How do you turn corners with those lights that you don’t have a blank spot? so Bruce and Dante have done a great job of putting Crickham together. It’s three days and you’ll come out of there feeling very confident that you know how, even if you don’t do the installation, you’re managing that part of the project. And how do you hold that electrician or whoever’s doing the installation accountable? So, three days hands-on experience. It’s manufacturer agnostic, although we have to have fixtures to show. manufacturers that have stepped up the plate and given us donated equipment to teach on, of course have exposure, but it’s really about the installation and best practices of that.
Rob Stott: Yeah. And when you say the cool thing about it, um, and not that you’re underselling it by any means, cause everything you’re saying is like incredible and important for the space to understand. But that space, like there are, think over a dozen or 16, I could be wrong on the number, but like live areas to do this work. mean, there’s work benches. There’s like the, the looks like designed with like two by fours, but like, structured to be like a ceiling where a can can move and you got all the different ways to mount and that it’s in front of pictures so you can do it like it’s in front of artwork and see the impact of that like the this is not education in the sense of sitting down and Watching videos or hearing presentations. There is some of that. I know there’s tables and you know a projector for that if and when it’s necessary, but I mean this is hands-on education and training for those that are there.
Steve Weber: Yeah, so, you know, that’s how the you know, then we came up with the name Dojo because Dojo is is is a martial arts hands on experience, right? You go to the Dojo and you’re doing martial arts or you’re learning how to throw a punch by throwing a punch, right? You’re not watching somebody. You’re actually doing it and you see the results of it. And, you know, then you can improve on it every single time. So that’s why we called it the Dojos, because we want people to actually be experiencing it. So yeah, so we came up with some training modules. I we, I use that term loosely. was mainly Bruce and Dante, and I gave some feedback, but those guys are the ones that really brainstormed it. But it has to do with both down lighting as well as linear lighting and the effects of that. And so, you know, we have different surfaces, so you can see how the linear lighting, if it’s farther back and on a different surface and even good lighting versus bad lighting.
Rob Stott: Yeah. Well, that, that day I joke about this, but I, that named Dojo too. could see Bruce wanting there to be actual fights in that space. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t put it past him to like `be handing out black belts and, you know, having people break two by force, with a fist, but no, I love him. The great guy, but, like really an exciting space too. Now I know there’s more there too. You got like the, living room area that’s being developed in a bed, like a bedroom showroom. There’s a home theater in there.
Steve Weber: Thank
Rob Stott: But that kind of co-locating, is that something do you plan or without thinking out too far ahead in terms of the business for you guys, but like, is that a model you could replicate at other new locations or plan to?
Steve Weber: Yeah, and actually we’ve done that in other locations to an extent. You know, so often our showrooms sit vacant, you know, 70 % of the time, right? And there’s a lot of integrators say, yeah, it’s not worth the money. We don’t have the traffic. Nobody wants to come in and see it. Some of that’s changing, but if we can generate more traffic by a different trade being with us, then that’s better, right? So.
That’s so in Denver with a high end window and door company. And so they’ve got plenty of traffic that comes in that way. And we introduce and they introduced to us. And in Chicago, we’re in a golf simulator club. And so we’re part of that. So we’re in the process of finishing out the, the waiting area or the foyer area per se with some automation. So when people come into golf.
then they can see our stuff and we can use that. So it doubles as both for purposeful for the golf simulator club and for us to be able to demo it. We have an opportunity downtown Chicago with a lighting store, decorative lighting store that wants to put in more than just lighting control, right? And so we are in the midst of designing out with them, you know, space with a
a theater, a conference room, and a lighting lab, right? And we could talk about what we mean by a lighting lab, but so we always try to build a relationship with somebody that with related industries or building of some sort that we can cross pollinate with clients on that.
Rob Stott: I, that’s awesome to hear. Number one, it makes it a cool experience for you and the partner that are in there and can kind of share the space and, um, for, you know, clients that might come through. I have to imagine too, and this was something Brad told me while I was, uh, walking through the space is, I mean, there’s something to, you mentioned it, this being kind of like, you know, renovating your home and you’ve got, you’re busy with other projects. So that’s what kind of extends the time of, of what you expect from a finish date for this, but a good problem to have, right? But it also, the thing he mentioned was how. You know, this is like, you’re installing so many different types of lighting, which is not what you would do in a home. So it’s almost like stress testing your team from like what they’re capable of accomplishing in a project to where this might be the most difficult thing they work on ever by the end of it. And so they go into a home and by that point, it’s, it’s easy to them.
Steve Weber: Yeah, I you’re absolutely right. With the lighting in our experience center, we want to show good lighting versus bad lighting. Some of this is patterned off of what we learned. ProSource had their lighting showroom center down in Dallas. Now they’ve since moved that out to Golden, Colorado. But in Dallas, with Light Can Help You and the ProSource lighting committee, we developed out a space of what’s good lighting and bad lighting. And it made a big impact for a lot of people. so…
It’s that’s what we see too is unless people really see and can compare, they may not understand, you know, the difference on it. Right. So our intent is that they come in, we show them here standard lighting. Right. And then we start showing them, you know, what real lighting design by introducing the different layers of light. And most everybody has heard those terms before. And then you bring them back to what it was.
And they then realized there’s a sharp contrast to that. And they go, okay, I get it. You I like to say it’s going into a, you know, a days in lobby or going into a Marriott Renaissance or high-end hotel, right? There’s clearly a difference. Yes, the finishes that they use, maybe the flooring and the countertops and drapery and stuff is different, but really a biggest difference is the lighting.
And if you don’t experience the differences between them, then you’re not willing. There’s a philosophy of selling out there called the gap selling, right? And what that is is the bigger the gap, the more likely the sale is going to happen, right? And as a salesperson, you need to show the client where you’re at and where they’re at right now, right? And then where they could be. And the bigger that gap is, the more likely you’re to get your sale. And so if we can show them
Okay, here’s what your standard lighting is. Now here’s what really good lighting is. And if they can understand and feel that gap with emotion and so forth, then you’re gonna make that sale. So that’s what our experience center in there is, is to really show them good lighting versus bad lighting.
Rob Stott: That, I love that model, cause you’re, you’re taking what, you know, someone that would typically be redoing or moving into a space and wanting to make it the best possible, you know, they’re going to take that approach of this is wanting to show off what they can do as opposed to what you’re used to. So kind of merging those two together and making a whole sales experience out of it in a showroom. that’s pretty unique.
Steve Weber: Well, I mean, it might be, but I’m just, I haven’t invented any of this stuff. I’m just taking good business principles and selling principles and applying it to our industry. That’s all I’m doing.
Rob Stott: Yeah.
Rob Stott: No, that’s awesome. Well, this is a cool story to follow, Steve. I appreciate you taking the time and sharing it with us and again, opening your doors and allowing me to come in and kind of, you know, see you guys in process, right? Not that finished product. I, that’s like I said at the top, you know, that’s where it’s exciting to me to get in there and see sort of how things are being built as well. So by the time it is done, you know, and I get in there again and kind of
Got to see that finished product and that finished experience. It’s going to be unique for me, I think, to go back and look at what it was and what you guys were able to accomplish down there in Fort Myers, let alone, you know, kind of what you’re doing from an expansion standpoint as well. So, you know, it’s just a unique story and one I thank you for sharing with us.
Steve Weber: Well, I appreciate the opportunity. I hope you saw some of my passion through my dialogue with you. But yeah, I’m passionate about what we do. I’m passionate about liaison and the team and where we’re going. So I love to have the opportunity to share it. So thank you.
Rob Stott: You bet, and look forward to catching up down the line for sure.
Steve Weber: All right. Thanks, Rob.
