Rob Stott: All right, we are back on the Connected Design Podcast and excited to be sitting here in Denver ahead of CEDIA Expo. As we were scheduling this, part of me was a little sad that we were not doing this on Friday, but at the same time, it is the catch-22 of, does anyone want to do anything on the Friday of CEDIA Expo except sleep? So this is probably better that we are doing it ahead of the show, when we both still have a little wind under our sails before we get to the end of it.
Mr. Daryl Friedman, global president and CEO of CEDIA, I appreciate you taking the time as we get ready and gear up for this show to sit down and chat with me.
Daryl Friedman: It is a pleasure always to be with Connected Design. And we are actually in the show. The education sessions are going on today, and there are a lot of activities. Tonight is a town hall where we are going to unveil our annual research on the industry. So we are in it.
By the way, the alternative would have been to do the bar crawl that we are doing on Friday at 3 o’clock, and that would have been, every time I answer a question, I have to take a shot. So we could do it that way.
Rob Stott: Hey, I am still game. If you have time, I am down for that.
Well, you mentioned a lot of great things in there that I do want to dive into, but before that, for those who are likely aware, this is, I believe, your final CEDIA Expo. I know you gave a sort of not-definitive end date, but I have to imagine this is the final CEDIA Expo for you. What are the emotions coming into it as you gear up for what likely is your last CEDIA Expo?
Daryl Friedman: I will say, and I am telling everybody this, this is not my last CEDIA Expo. It is my last CEDIA Expo as CEO. But I am hooked on this show. I am going to be here. I love walking that floor, and every year I can come, I am going to come as a civilian, walk the floor, see what is new, and see what I can put in my own home.
But it is my last as president and CEO, and that is very bittersweet. This is my fifth Expo. It will be over five years by the time I leave, and that will not be until sometime in 2027, when the board conducts a very leisurely and thorough search for my successor. I have great confidence in the board that they will find somebody awesome who will be 10 times better than me, and nothing would make me happier than that.
But, yes, walking the floor this time is going to be bittersweet, and as I see people, knowing that it is my last time in this context. But knowing that I will be back as a civilian gives me a little bit of happiness.
Rob Stott: Well, that is awesome to hear because that means, and I know in your letter you even expressed it, just the love you have developed for this industry. To know that you still want to come back, I think that is exciting to hear. It is one of those shows where you can walk around and find something. It does not matter how similar the layout is, there is always something new to find on this floor.
As you are thinking about walking this floor for the last time in the seat, is there any aspect of it, or any of the little things, that you will notice more as you walk it for the last time as global president and CEO?
Daryl Friedman: I already have. I went up there as they were setting up yesterday, and there are already some very interesting things that are new. Some exhibitors are taking much larger spaces, which gives you an indication of where the industry is going. Some of the old favorites blow me away year after year.
It was actually last year at the show that I said to my wife, “Okay, I had a little bit of technology in my house, but we have got to bite the bullet and put this stuff in because some of it is just so amazing.”
The floor is great for products and seeing all that stuff, but the people. This is a community, it is not an industry. As I said, I have worked in three different industries, and this has been my favorite because it is a community.
It is very different than the music industry, where I came from. The first time at the CEDIA Expo when somebody said, “I am so glad you are here. Thank you for taking the job,” and gave me a big hug, I was like, there is no knife in my back. I am not in the music industry anymore.
So it is the people, and that is what I am going to miss the most. But I will be at ISE as well, so I am around for a while. I will get to do my round of goodbyes.
Rob Stott: That is too good.
You mentioned the transition, and I know this was a point you brought up in the letter you released a couple months ago. It is a really awesome opportunity, and I want to relate it to something else. As we sit here today, there is a new Apple CEO, and they talk about the transition that Tim Cook had from Steve Jobs and now John Ternus has taken over. That was the legacy Steve wanted to leave behind. He did not want to stay in that seat forever.
Talk about your approach and the opportunity for this organization and this industry to go through a leadership transition like, as you say, it has not really experienced.
Daryl Friedman: Let me start by saying there will be nothing in the coming days that I will hear better than a comparison to Tim Cook. Just like what Tim Cook is doing, Daryl Friedman is doing. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Thank you for that. There is not going to be another comment that I love as much.
CEDIA has not had the luxury of having an orderly transition. We have had CEOs before, and they have left, and then there is a gap, and the board had to figure out how they were going to run the company while searching for the new CEO. I said on my first day, “This will never happen. If you get tired of me, or if anything happens, we are going to commit that the next transition will be orderly.”
So I told them in April, and I said, “I am not going to another job. I am going to retirement, so you take the time you need to do a thorough search. You do not have to worry about the company. I am not taking my foot off the gas.” As any of the staff will tell you at CEDIA, I am the same hard ass I have been for the last five years.
We are just going to keep running the company the way it has been. Right now, every decision I make, I think about what is going to set up my successor for success. I think we are doing that, and hopefully we will have an amazing person to announce.
Rob Stott: That is awesome to hear. One thing you will tell them as they come into the seat, whether it is about the industry, the organization, or the community, what would be the one thing you would tell them to set them up for success? I am sure there is going to be a lot you will tell them.
Daryl Friedman: There are so many things, but I would say, first of all, listen 10 times more than you talk in the beginning, because there are so many nuggets of wisdom that you are going to hear from the professional staff, the volunteers, and the board members.
That really helped me. I spent my first three to six months on the road all over the world hearing from the members and finding out what was of interest to them. Then take that information and form that into what the next iteration of CEDIA needs to be, because we are not a trade show organization anymore. Forge owns the show, and they are our partners, but CEDIA needs to be that preeminent organization that professionalizes this industry. We are the only industry trade association. There are other groups, but they are not CEDIA. It is the CEDIA channel.
Rob Stott: You look around, and you mentioned it, the Expo opens tomorrow. Today, as we are sitting here, there is a ton of education going on. I know that has developed over the last couple of years. It is always a great track when you come here, but talk about the advancements there and the things that are going on. I know there is a lot that goes on throughout the year, but even specifically here, in terms of education, you guys have really put an emphasis there.
Daryl Friedman: Education is going to be a key emphasis for the coming years, not just at Expo. I will talk about Expo, what we are doing here, but we started something called CEDIA Connect, which is a pilot program that we are going to expand next year. We are going to take our education to wherever our members are.
We just picked four cities. We did our certification training, and classes were full. There was a hunger, because an integration company is busy, and you have got jobs, and you cannot really spare your techs. Sometimes you cannot get them away to come to Indiana for training. So we want to go to them.
Of course, CEDIA Expo is the one place. It is the largest residential technology gathering, so we want to be here. We have an amazing conference. A new conference director this year, Evan Hicks, has put together really phenomenal sessions, from power to AI to finance, technical training, owning your business, running your business, and workforce. There is nothing that we are not covering here, and I would encourage folks who are here to buy a class pass or buy the conference pass.
Rob Stott: You mentioned all those things, and it is almost indicative of the different initiatives you guys have gone after over the last five years: AI, workforce development. You guys have done so much with you at the helm. I know you want to say you are proud of all of it, and I know that is the cliche answer, but is there something that stands out? What are you most proud of from what you have been able to accomplish over the past five years?
Daryl Friedman: I think the staff has done an amazing job, and the board. The partnership is this team effort that I think has really done quite a bit. But I think it is really honing in on our unique values.
CEDIA had been known as a trade show for so many years, decades. When CEDIA sold that show, what I found in my listening tour was that there was a gap of, what is our value? So we did a lot of strategy work. We came up with advocacy, connection, and education. We call it our ACE.
Those three things are what I am very proud of. Advocacy is, for the first time, asking the government to recognize us as an industry, which will help integrators from insurance to recruitment to apprenticeships, everything. Connection, of course, is not just with ourselves at the Expo and other events, but we are really doubling down on the design and build industry and making sure that partnership is solid.
At KBIS this past year, at the Kitchen & Bath Show, with a thousand designers in the audience at their awards, I got to present the first CEDIA Smart Home Tech Award for a partnership between an integrator and a designer. That is going to be so important for people to build their businesses.
And, of course, education, which we are updating, revising, reinventing, and taking on the road. So all of the ACE is what I am most proud of.
Rob Stott: We already broke down the E. To break down that A, you mentioned the Smart Home on Capitol Hill day has been a big part of that, and I know that is getting even larger this year. Talk about how that has developed over the last couple of years.
Daryl Friedman: First of all, long before I came on, CEDIA was doing amazing work at the state level, and that is very important because licensing is done at the state level. Sometimes electrical folks would try and say, “Integrators cannot do this,” and we would push back. We have a tremendously hardworking gentleman named Darren Reaman who does that work.
We had not done anything at the federal level, so we decided to play at that level for a couple of reasons. One is that every 10 years, at the fast pace of the U.S. government, once a decade they reanalyze job classifications, and technology integrator was never in there. We want that in there, so we applied for that, and we have been lobbying on that. We expect that to happen in 2028.
We also met with the Department of Labor last year because we are trying to get an officially recognized apprenticeship program. Imagine how useful that is. What is the biggest challenge every integrator tells you?
Rob Stott: The pipeline.
Daryl Friedman: The pipeline. So by creating a new pipeline of government-recognized apprentices, that will help.
Next year, we are going to grow it. Each year has been scaling. The first year was just the board. The next year, we invited some key manufacturers to join us. Last year, we invited those manufacturers to pick their top two or three dealers and bring them along. This year, we are going crazy. I am saying it is a movement. It is not going to be just a day; it is going to be a movement. We are going to have a march on Washington.
We are inviting all of our members to join us. We are inviting many of the buying group members to join us, and we expect this to be the largest one yet and make an impact.
Rob Stott: This most recent one, I know there was like a mini trade show. You had a small booth. Talk about that, because was that something that had been done before or was that brand new?
Daryl Friedman: That was a new activation for this past year. We decided to do a demonstration because the Hill is obsessed with AI. There is a hearing every week about AI, and they have covered it from different angles: how it affects finance, how it affects national security, et cetera, but not how it affects the most important place in people’s lives, their homes.
Working with a lot of manufacturers, and I hope I do not forget anybody, we had Lutron, Josh AI, IC Realtime, Sonos, and Ketra. They basically put together a demonstration model where you could show a member of Congress how AI is going to work.
When a staffer would come up, and the people who run the country are all in their 20s, we would have some cute little demonstrations. We would say, “What are you doing this weekend?” They would say, “We are having a party.” “What is the theme? Tell this monolith what it is.” They would say, “We are doing a retro disco party,” and then the lights would change, the shades would move, and the music would come on. It blew their minds.
But for the members of Congress, we had a gun. Not a real gun, because that would be very risky to have at the Capitol, but we showed them the threat assessment that it can do. It recognized the gun, closed the shades, the lights started flashing red, and the sound system became a siren. It was just a great way to open their eyes to what AI can do for people.
Rob Stott: Homes, right. Again, it just shows the vastness of this space, too. You can have AI and all the smart home technology for fun, and then there is the safety aspect, too. It is whatever appeals to the senses of someone to get them to understand why it is important and the benefits of it. It is pretty cool.
The connection, I know we talked about a little bit. One thing I want to dive into, separate from what we have already discussed with connection, is a cool story I heard very early on in our bringing back of Connected Design. Early on in the podcast, I had Amanda Wildman on, and we talked about your connection to the industry and an early story of you going on the road with her. When you talk about diving hands-first into this industry and learning it, from what I understand, you really got your hands dirty. Talk about that a little bit.
Daryl Friedman: Amanda made a generous offer to join her crew, her and her husband Ponch, who we unfortunately lost this year, just to see what it is like to be an integrator for a day. I got to go on the crew, and I carried the tool bag. I was not the apprentice.
I think she loaded up the tool bag with the heaviest tools that we had no intention of using. She just wanted to mess with me. It was incredible to see the dedication and the skill. They had me terminate a cable. I just assumed, like most consumers, that a machine does this and you stick it in. The handwork that is involved, the skill that is involved, it took me like 20 minutes. It did pass the first time. But it was a great day.
Rob Stott: I was going to challenge you and ask. I know she mentioned it.
Daryl Friedman: I always carry this with me. This is my totem. This reminds me of how hard the work is, how skilled it is, and who I work for. This never leaves my pocket.
Rob Stott: I love that, and I am glad you did it because I was going to ask regardless if it was on you. That is so perfect.
I know we have talked before about the association-at-heart mindset: do you get someone who can understand the industry or someone who is an association professional in this role? You may have understood a little bit about custom integration or technology, but your willingness to go into the field, really get hands-on, learn it, and see what these people are doing speaks volumes to the past five years and how you have run the organization. It has been incredible to watch, for one, but I think it also sets an example for what could be next and what you hope to get in the next leader of CEDIA.
Flipping the script, I do want to ask, in the five years, you have done a lot. We have highlighted a lot of the great initiatives and things like that. Any regrets you have as you think about your time winding down, or maybe things you did not get to that you would leave as a bug in the ear of the next person, like, this is something that we need to approach as an industry?
Daryl Friedman: There are going to be a number of initiatives that my successor will need to take on that were on our list. We just did not get to them because we were doing so many things.
One thing I think is really important, and I would encourage when I have my chance to talk to the next CEO, is peer groups. CEDIA is so large. One of the advantages that smaller groups have is that they can have this sort of dialogue and interaction with each other. The advantage of scale is incredible. We can be the CEDIA channel. We can do things no one else can do. We can do the advocacy, the workforce, and design and build. But by being so large, it is harder for us to have that small thing.
So there was an attempt at this several years ago to do peer groups, and a couple of them are still going on, but I would encourage them to figure out how we can break down the membership into like-minded people who really can, on a day-to-day basis, interact with each other. That is one thing I wanted to do, and we just did not get to it.
Rob Stott: Last closing question. I know we are sitting here ahead of the town hall, so this will drop after the fact. I am not asking you to drop secrets ahead of the town hall or anything like that, but I do want to get you to comment, just as we sit here, on the state of the CI channel. As we enter CEDIA Expo and think about where things are and where they are going, where are we at?
Daryl Friedman: It is going to be an interesting discussion. This is the first time we have had a professional research department in-house at CEDIA. We are going to build that out, and he has got a very enlightening deck to share with the folks.
The one thing I would say, to tease it in answer to your question, is there is a lot in there about the construction industry and there is a lot in there about the integration industry. The two are very much linked, as you know. We rise and fall sometimes based on what is happening in construction.
When people go to that tonight, pay particular attention to the forecasts that the construction industry is looking at and their expectations of the long term, and the forecasts that the integration folks are looking at and their expectations of the long term. They do not match. I am not going to say which is which yet, but it is a fascinating split and dichotomy. I would encourage people to sit and think about that and what it means.
Rob Stott: I think back to earlier this year. You mentioned the Builder Show, and I sat in on what they did around the state of the builder industry while we were there in Orlando. The one thing that stood out, and I do not think this would be surprising to anyone, is that the luxury end of the industry is very different from what we will call mass market. I know builders see a lot of ebb and flow in the mass market, but for this industry, it feels like the luxury end, where a lot of these integrators tend to lie, is not shielded, but it is a little less impacted.
Daryl Friedman: You do not worry about mortgage rates when you are paying cash.
Rob Stott: No. As far as that goes, to your point, the higher-end side of this industry is definitely more stable, but it will be interesting to see. I am a big data nerd, so diving into those numbers, I look forward to doing it. It will be a lot of fun.
Daryl, this was awesome, and a great start to the show for me. It is great that the first thing I get to do is sit down with you. I feel like it is all downhill from here now.
Daryl Friedman: I appreciate that. Always great to talk to you, Rob. Congratulations on the relaunch, and we are really looking forward to working with you.
Rob Stott: You as well. We appreciate it, and best of luck over the coming weeks and months. We look forward to continuing to follow the story of CEDIA. It is always a fascinating one.
Daryl Friedman: Thank you very much.
