Global Wave Integration Founder and CEO Kyle Steele has had quite the professional journey. From an aspiring rock star to a standout in the custom integration industry, he’s learned how to remain adaptable in life, let alone his profession. Here, we dive into the many challenges facing CIs today, including new technologies, AI, business operations, and more.
Rob: All right, we are back on the Connected Design Podcast and still kind of surreal to be able to say that, you know, we’re only a couple interviews, couple weeks into relaunching this platform. And, you know, the reason for doing it, the reason to be is for conversations like what we’re about to have right now. And that’s one with Mr. Kyle Steele, the founder and CEO of Global Wave Integration. Mr. Steele, always great to see you out on the road and connect in person, but the in-between conversations are, you know, where the real fun happens, right?
Kyle: Exactly. Very true.
Rob: Well, first of all, how are you? Let’s start there. How are things going?
Kyle: I’m great. Thank you for having me and congratulations Rob. I’m very excited for you and Connected Design. I’ve always been a big fan, so this is great. But it’s 2026 now. We couldn’t be more excited. I mean, post pandemic, tariffs, all that good stuff. The first two weeks of 2026 has been fantastic. So, things are looking good.
Rob: That’s awesome. So, for those that I feel like, you people know you, it’s safe to say, I think, but like for those that don’t, how would you introduce yourself? Tell us a little about yourself, your background, you know, in the business and just kind of how you came in, came to be at, you know, Global Wave founding and, and starting the business there. I feel like two entrepreneurs, like entrepreneurial spirits here. We could talk about starting businesses and that’s something, you know.
Kyle: Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I always introduced myself as a home tech technology professional and sometimes I have to explain exactly what that is. But I guess getting into this business, it’s quite the journey. I’ll try to give you the shorter version of it. My background is in digital systems engineering. I’m very passionate about music. So, in college, I was splitting time between playing in cover bands, going to school as in the College of Engineering. College of Music, College of Business. And it was kind of like my dream eventually to have my own recording studio. I was not sure.
Rob: Looks like you’re sitting in one.
Kyle: We actually got this drum room from a client who’s a very famous drummer. So, it’s trade off where we’re building out his recording studio in his house and he got rid of this. So, I’m like, I’ll take that. I got a drum kit in a drum room. He’s now turned into the accounting department, which is pretty funny. But yeah, in school, I was actually on track to be a quality assurance engineer for Raytheon. And I got cold feet. I really just didn’t like the idea of a 9-5. I mean, sure, it was in Tucson, we got every Friday off, but I figured it was the only time in my life where I didn’t have a ton of responsibility. So, I feel bad for my parents, but I was like, you know what, I’m moving back to Portland, Oregon, my hometown, and I’m starting a band. And they’re like, what is this kid doing? But it was just, I mean, just the best time I moved back to Portland with my college roommate. He’s an electrical engineer, just the best guitarist I’ve ever met.
We met this incredible singer songwriter in Portland, and we started gaining a lot of traction in Oregon playing clubs and we’re kind of selling out places. So, the record labels started calling and they’re like, if you guys are serious, you have to move to LA. And I’ll never forget, I went back to our apartment, my then girlfriend, now wife, I kind of nonchalantly looked at her and was like, hey, I guess we got to move to LA. Are you down? She’s like, let’s go. And within the week, you know, the whole band jumped in a Buick Cadillac, and we drove to California and we found a 400 square foot condo in the South Bay of LA. Pretty close to the beach because our lead singer went to surf every day. So, if you can imagine here I am LA out of college living with my girlfriend in a band and it’s pay to play in LA. We’re touring. It was just the time of our lives. But after that year living with the band, I looked at my girlfriend. I’m like, you know what? You’re definitely a keeper. You’re a trooper.
And this was over 20 years ago. We’ve been married going on 18 years. But back then I was like, you know, how am going to make a living to support us? And I answered this employment ad and sound like electrical engineering, like working recording studios, building stuff, breaking stuff. And I was the first employee for an integration firm in the South Bay. And sure enough, the first day on the job, I’m crawling underneath the house, pulling cat cable, you know, just kind of getting stuck under the house. I’m like, this is not what I expected at all.
But I absolutely fell in love with the industry, just every aspect of it. And my boss at the time, he was very honest. He’s like, I know nothing about this industry, but give it 10 years. If we have this nice little niche of like luxury living and high residential, this could be a very viable business. And he’s very honest. He came from a big five marketing. He had a master’s MBA from Stanford. And he was just like, I know nothing about this. Just run with it. Um, he had a young family. He had, he had kids at home and he’s just like, I’m going to be at home and you just kind of take care of this business. Wow. And we took off pretty quick. Um, we built our showroom in South Bay, uh, in Hermosa Beach. Started getting trucks, hiring up. We got a new office. It was great. I loved everything about it.
And then I met this alarm company where I was so blown away by their operation. The owner of this alarm company, I mean, he was like this mad scientist, right? He was doing special effects for big Hollywood movies. He’s blowing up stuff. I mean, when it came to low voltage, I mean, he was a guru and I met him on a project and the client, it was actually a neighbor of ours. She was 84-year-old woman living by herself and she had this big beautiful home had it fully pre-wired and She’s like I wish I knew you guys did this type of work because I would have hired you guys But I hired this alarm company to do the whole automation system, you know, it’s really expensive Can you just come vet, you know, we’re about to do this walkthrough Just you know, just make sure everything’s above board keep an honest company. And so, I did this walkthrough with my neighbor and the owner of the alarm company, and it was mind blowing for four hours, the owner of this company was just way too much detail for this homeowner, right? I he was explaining the physics and different cat cable and like why and transmission speeds. And she’s looking at me like, what is he talking about?
Rob: You’re the translator. You didn’t know this at the time. You were the translator.
Kyle: Yeah, I think at the time she’s like, just say you’re like my nephew or something like that. And I’m sitting there after the walkthrough, and she looks at me like doesn’t know what to say. She’s like, what do you think? And I looked at the owner of the alarm company. I’m like, are you hiring? I was so impressed. I mean, know your audience, I guess. But I mean, I was like, I can learn a lot from this guy. And sure enough, he was doing surveillance security for you name it, who’s who of Hollywood, A-listers, a lot of my idols, and he’s really mostly just doing alarm.
And we’re still very good friends today. Like we have a building now. He’s our alarm company. We call each other kind of sister companies. By the time he didn’t know Crestron Electronics, I was already a Crestron programmer. And I was like, let me help you kind of blow up your business because if you’re just doing security on like 40,000 square foot of states, let me be the home automation arm. And so, we grew his company pretty quickly with the context knowing that I’d eventually start my own company.
So, I officially incorporated Global Wave Integration back in 2008, probably the worst year in American history to start a company. And that could be a whole other podcast of what not to do. But it was amazing. Like that was the year I got married. We bought our first house, incorporated Global Wave, and we had our first major client that I had no business getting. The client was a—he is an iconic filmmaker. And he reached out to Crestron. He wanted to interview six companies to kind of, he had this grand vision of all his states, his yachts, jet, the same interface. So, no matter where you are is the same user experience and he’s looking to hire a company to do so. And so, Crestron at the time, like I kind of got a reputation when I was an independent programmer, like the Crestron fix it guy. And at that time, Crestron was going through some issues. They’re changing chipsets in their wireless devices, and they weren’t the most stable systems. So, every time Crestron had like a complaint or bad install, they were kind of calling me like, hey, go fix it. So, the ongoing joke was like, I was the fixer in LA. So eventually I called Crestron being like, it’s great. Thank you so much for thinking of me to go like rescue these projects, but it’d also be nice if we got like a new project where maybe the client wasn’t already kind of fed up.
And so, I think for this iconic filmmaker, they kind of threw my name in the hat just because just as a courtesy, not thinking I would get it. But after my last interview, they called me and said, you got the gig. And I was honestly frightened. was like, I cannot like it was me and a helper at the time. And everyone else interviewing with this client was around 30, 40 years at the time, well established. And so, I had to go ask the client. I’m like, I’m sorry sir, like why do you choose us? And he’s like, well, you’re talking about things no one else is talking about. You seem to be very forward thinking and you’re younger, so maybe you can age with us. So that’s something I’ve always really like kind of hung my hat on, right? Like let’s try to be the most forward thinking, innovative company out there. And I believe we’ve done that for the past 18 years. I mean, even last year, all the awards we won in terms of excellence and innovation and the things we develop in-house.
We’re pretty unique in that regard. So, it’s been quite the journey.
Rob: I was gonna say, I mean, you look at it, all because you answered a newspaper ad. Like that’s, that’s—
Kyle: Yeah, I mean, my entire career, it’s just been one thing after another of just half a stance and yeah, like I couldn’t be more grateful, more blessed and it’s all because of the team we have, but it doesn’t, it feels very lucky. mean, the kind of work for the creators of the world and allow them to create what they do, whether it’s building a recording studio or a home cinema so they can watch their dailies, writers, people doing podcasts from their home. It’s like, we get to be that service provider for people who are creating out there. So, I think that’s kind of our motivation and what really drives us as a company.
Rob: I now, I mean, your start on the music side of things, like, is there anything you pull from the, aside from maybe just an interest in this space and kind of seeing how, you know, setting up a, a show at a, you know, a local place, not quite in integrating a home with all these automation systems, but is there anything you can kind of pull from that lifestyle or just what you were doing on, on the music, music side to what you’re doing today?
Kyle: Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question because I feel like music always pulls me back. In fact, I’m looking at a sign that we stole from Sonia’s at their showroom we just installed this week, but it says life is better with music and neon above my desk. And it’s like, the more we get into home automation or like just running the business, now multiple businesses and you know, I gotta be a businessperson but music always pulls me back whether it’s a project solution we do now we do a lot of like sonic branding now. A lot of people in our company, come from audio engineering. So, we’re one of the few firms, I believe, that we actually create content and sonically within a home, we kind of build scenes. There’s so much you can do with music in terms of health and wellness. So maybe we’re not recording an album, but the fact that we get to create scenes and audio tracks and simulations using music and then still go build the recordings studios and now not be not media rooms with media lounges we call them now but there’s so much we can create and do in those spaces so it’s not just doing the install and programming but we’re actually creating content now that’s really focused around music which is really cool like if we’re working in a spa resort or working with a wellness consultant which is very unique for this space is like sonically we’d ask them what’s their brand you know what they what it is that experience and how do we tailor that to them? So, I feel like it’s very music driven, audio driven, especially when we talk about health and wellness, there’s so many benefits. And so, it’s our job as integrators to educate what’s possible.
Rob: No, that’s awesome. Do you stay in touch with the bandmates?
Kyle: I mean, the guitarist is still my best friend. Ironically, he’s in the industry. He essentially runs a very large commercial firm out of Arizona. And it’s funny because you talk about like what keeps bringing me back. But when, you know, the bandmates were all living together, we did get signed and dropped pretty quick. And it’s funny because the person who signed us saw us play live in LA. And he’s got 34 Grammys and he came up after her set and it’s like that typical LA story. He’s like, I’m signing you guys, come to my house, we’ll do like a six-month deal, six song, and then we’ll get you a major deal after that. I was like, wow, that just happened. negotiations kind of fell apart. And then years later, I’m working for an interior designer and she’s like, hey, we’re doing this home cinema, beautiful, you know, fully just decked out cinema and I’m just there to do the Crestron programming and end of the day I’m done with the Crestron 8x touch panel and the homeowner walks in and sure enough it’s that music producer who signed us. He saw me walking up and I’m showing him like here’s your touch panel this is how it works this is how you turn on the projector and I looked at him like do you remember me by any chance he’s like no should I I’m like nope, so this is how you turn everything on.
I always have these full circle moments in our career where it just feels surreal. There’s just never a dull moment and we can go on forever about stories. Next Azione conference.
Rob: We’ll do that for sure. I look forward to that. Obviously, a lot going well. I’d love to flip it for you for a second and just give you the chance. Are there areas where you find that whether it’s you personally, your business or just the channel in general where it is tough? You know, what are some of those struggles right now that you’re kind of having to get through?
Kyle: Yeah, I think just at a macro level, there’s a lot going on obviously, right? You have the big players coming in more and more to the space, whether it’s Apple, Google, Amazon, and then you throw AI into the equation. I mean, I know everyone’s talking about AI. It’s like, how do we leverage this? And even this year, there’s so many new developments in terms of AI. Like AI won’t take business away from us, I strongly believe that.
But companies who really embrace those tools will thrive and the companies who do not, they’re gonna have a tougher time. You know, I mentioned earlier coming out of the pandemic and tariffs and kind of everything going on in the world, we’re very optimistic about this year. Like we’re already seeing the phones ringing more. I’m talking to other integrator friends, very optimistic. I think the challenge really is that middle market, right? It is becoming more of a do it yourself, but we strongly believe in do it for me. Our clientele, you the 1 percent of 1percent, they’re not going to be impacted by, you know, economic kind of downturns, anything like that. They’re always going to need companies like us. But I think it’s important as an industry that we need to help up those other companies, show them other opportunities that we should be talking more about, especially when it comes to power, the lighting plan, the power plan, like lead with that.
Don’t lead with AV. You know, I’m really trying to, we’ve always been 100 percent word of mouth and the past two years I’ve intentionally just trying to, trying to get back in a way or just help other integrators because there’s so much opportunity out there. We just need to know where to look. And I think part of that’s just education and what we talk about.
Rob: What’s crazy in there is to hear you say, don’t lead with AV. that, is that something, you know, you look back five, 10 years, like that, thought of saying that seems kind of surreal or taboo, right? Like, could you ever envision that being the case of like, you don’t have to lead with AV when this, this channel was like, I mean, that’s its heart and soul, its foundation.
Kyle: It is, and that’s how I started, You know, home cinema, AV, whole house systems, you know, very intentionally, probably about maybe even 10 years ago, you know, telling our team like, we are not the AV guys. Yes, we are. And then it was like, we’re system integrators or, you know, home automation, you know, but even now, like, people don’t really want to hear that designers don’t want to talk about systems or automation. Let’s talk about experiences and environments. That’s really what we should focus on. But if you’re talking about black boxes and universal remote control and that’s all important. Control systems are not dead and that’s a whole ‘nother thing I can get into. But no, it’s that experience. It’s that invisible layer of what technology should be providing. It’s that layer of care that’s kind of working in the background that enhances your experience. And not just, you know, AV systems, right? Those are that focus. Interior designers, they don’t want to hear it, you know, they don’t want to refer in the AV guide, because now they feel like they’re on the hook, if anything happens, you know, the interior designers getting that call, that’s the last thing they want. So, I think you really got to frame it in the experience, like, how do you want this room to feel? Start with that. Just don’t ask, like, you know, what size TV do you want?
Like, how do you want it to feel? Do you want to feel relaxed or is this a workstation? You know, what is the application of the room and then kind of work back from that. So, I think if you kind of speak the language to the interior designers, architects, developers, what they want to hear, now you’re not just a subcontractor selling like black boxes and AV.
Rob: Yeah, no, I, I love that. And there’s like three ways I want to go with this. So, I’m trying to figure out which path do I truly want to go down and start doing it. ‘Cause I think the conversation and how you talk, I, there’s almost like a humbleness to that, right. Of, know, knowing that so much of the, so many of the businesses in the space had that same origin, right. Of coming up as AV, integrators and that being the space, but, you know, in order to grow and, you know, evolve the business, which is something that even just in your relatively short time compared to other businesses that are out there, right? Like you’ve had to evolve and adapt, and you’ve been able to do it. Like they have to sort of remain humble if they want to get along with and understand the designers and the architects and the way they speak. Like, you, do you find, was that I imagine you’re having success with it. So, I imagine, I, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it was easier for you. It seems like to understand what it’s like to connect with that, those disciplines and those professionals. Do you find it that, you know, your peers, like, what is it? Is there anything that sort of allows them to, or something you all have in common, as far as wanting to understand how to talk to designers?
Kyle: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you hit two buzzwords, keywords, humble and adaptable. Being a smaller company, we’re extremely adaptable. You know, we listen to our clients, the design team, and we kind of work from there. The ability to listen in this industry is kind of paramount, right?
And that takes being humble. Like we are not a technology provider, we’re a service provider. And the more you really focus on service—service is everything to us. I mean, especially these days, I think every company should be offering 24 seven, 365 support. That’s barrier to, I mean, that’s the first thing you should be educating your design team about, but it’s just not being that subcontractor. Like, you know, I think the design team, you know, they look at it like, the AV guy is almost like, you know, the electrician or the IT guy, you know, it’s like, you don’t want to be pigeonholed in that. And we all say it’s never too early to get in on a project, but how do you actually do that? Right. if you’re just getting a, know, your contractor, the contractor, the design team’s always going to look at you slightly differently. Right. But how do you get on the design side of things? And that’s where we really focus on. And that was one of the pivots we did or being adaptable. It’s like, that’s where we need to be because we learned the hard way, like on some of these really large projects, we were almost brought in as like an afterthought, whereas almost too late, like no one really factored in the quality of power. We just assumed electricians would take care of it. So, we came in late in the game, you know, we put in a system with eight racks, fully integrated. I think there’s like 400 motorized shades in the home.
And sure enough, we had two video walls and sure enough, when we commissioned it, video walls were a little finicky, motorized shades weren’t stable, reliable. And then we started measuring the quality of power and it was all over the map. It was crazy. So, we finally put in a solution after the fact, all the issues went away, right? And so that was like our aha moment is like, all right, this is one way you can get on the design team, design side early on, just asking the simple question, what is your power plant?
And they might look at you funny and it’s like, we got a generator for backup. Well, that’s not good for our system. That causes chaos. A lot of lockups, dirty power. So just having that conversation, you almost scare them into like, wow, our clients spending all this money on the AV system and there’s no protection for it. They’re not protecting their investment. It’s not going to be reliable. It’s like, all right, well, let’s like get the AV guy to meet with the MEP, the electrical contractors, and have those discussions early on, you know, before they break ground. And now you can really leverage the entire design team, all the subcontractors and really be that resource and glue for the entire project. And I think that’s where we really shine as a company.
Rob: That might be, if not the probably most important segment of this, just kind of hearing you say that, I think it’s up there with, with one of them. And I don’t want to, there’s like a million follow-ups we could have to that. And I, to your point, I feel like we’ve said this at least seven times. So maybe you are, you are going to be on for a regular appearance on this podcast for all these topics. But, you know, I don’t want to go too deep into that rabbit hole. ‘Cause there’s like I mentioned something else I want to talk about, but.
Perfectly well summed up and I love it and appreciate you diving into that. The other thing I want to ask, go back to you mentioned AI, those two letters, right? That everyone’s talking about these days. I want to ask, you know, in what ways purely out of curiosity and also just to hear your answer to it, you know, the fear of like AI could replace the jobs in this industry. AI can’t install a system.
So, like what, what, in what ways do you think that, you know, unfounded ways potentially to your point, right? Integrators are afraid of it. Like what, what could AI do or what are they thinking? Like what are the misconceptions out there about how AI can negatively impact this industry?
Kyle: Great question. I think AI only enhances our offerings, right? You know, we’ve done a lot. We’re a little, a little bit different because we built our own AI platform a few years ago, just for our sister company, Future Care Solutions Group, which really focuses on aging in place. And we kind of took our platform as like looking at home automation, how can we give home automation a deeper context for meaningful interventions?
So, we’re kind of earlier on in AI, but I mean, my biggest advice, like, you know, just start using it in some capacity, empower your team to start using it. Right. Cause collectively it’s like any software, whether you use Slack or Asana, any of the tools out there like D tools, you know, if you’re deploying a system internally, there’s no one piece of software that does everything right. And then if that one team member doesn’t use it, like Slack communication, it all kind of falls apart. I strongly believe it’s the same idea with AI. Just get your team to start using it. Like have competitions. If you have weekly meetings or your all hands meetings every quarter, have a challenge like, hey, use an AI tool. We just bought a new work vehicle. Whoever comes up with the best rap for the vehicle using AI, like there’s a gift card or something like Gamify it. It’s so important just because in the past two weeks, there’s been major developments with AI, where not to go too deep into it, but Anthropic, Meta, ChatGPT, they are now sharing resources because they understand it’s this race who can kind of, I mean, it’s kind of between other countries, right? Yeah. So now that they’re sharing things like skills, I spent all day yesterday with our team just in Claude. Start with Claude. That’s all I got to recommend. Like, I know this is a little off topic, but we’re not being replaced by AI like, like you mentioned, AI is not going to be installing systems, but how we leverage AI in terms of operations, client communication, planning. I mean, you can now give skill sets like pretend you are the head of business development, like come up with a roadmap in quarter one for, your new prospects. You click a button and you get like a 20-page report as long as you have hooks into all the software’s you use. So operationally for efficiency, it’s been a game changer, like the whole team is literally getting hours back in the day using it. But in terms of installs, like the way you can present your company to end user and user manuals, like we just generated a doc for a house we just finished is like 40 pages and it’s, and it’s now Wikipedia, you can search it. I mean, the homeowner loves it. It looks like we just like we put weeks and weeks of time putting this together when really it was just a couple hours.
Yeah, I mean, how that impacts your brand, right? How you look in terms of the design team. I mean, we’re working on a project right now where the directive is it has to be the most prolific property on the planet in terms of wellness, longevity, technology, and luxury. And so, I have this whole folder in Claude that just looks like we haven’t even pulled a wire yet and it’s a 40,000 square foot house. And I have a full installation guide created for every component that’s gonna be installed in the house as one example.
And I can give that to everybody, and we have a meeting tomorrow and we’re doing all kinds of renderings like the design teams like what about this and the whole presented video and it’s like, you mean this using AI? They’re like, that’s exactly what we’re thinking. So, this is all kind of infused on how we do things operationally and how we present things. It’s been an absolute game changer. This is why I’ve been doing this over years. And this is the most excited I’ve ever been just because we have this tool set now.
Especially as a business owner, when you, know, there’s a million things you can be thinking about, but like this morning I woke up and said, you know, Claude triage my day and it went to my calendar, went to my emails and went to my sauna. And it basically populated this quick little narrative of what’s going on my day, where I need to like, put my attention towards and what to prepare for and meetings rest of the week. And then, you know, forecast for the rest of the quarter if I wanted.
It’s amazing that peace of mind of just asking a simple question and it’s done. And AI is not replacing any team members, right? We’ve now trained AI and we have personas and they have skill sets. Those AI personas are doing things that no human has ever done in our company. So, it’s enhancing all our jobs in production. And I think the more as an industry we embrace it, we are the industry that should be embracing AI, right?
Humanoids are around the corner. That’s another topic. I mean, that’s this year we have, we have two clients who’ve already, yeah, they’ve already ordered humanoids. One client ordered three that will be at his property in a couple of weeks. And they’re like, what can you do with it? It’s just exciting time to be in this industry. We had another client, they just embedded a RFID chip in their hand. And he’s using it to unlock his car. And so, he called me like a couple of weeks ago, was like, how can I control my house with this? Using AI, I just came up with this whole narrative of all these things we can do and we’re gonna use him as a test bed of embedded RFID chip in your hand. Let’s see what we can do.
Rob: Start integrating people here we go…
Kyle: I know! To answer your question, we’re not like replacing humans, we’re actually enhancing homeowners, right?
Rob: Right. That’s unbelievable. So, that’s it. The word enhance, right? Like it’s, you’re making things more efficient. You’re making things like your lives easier. And I mean, so American of us, right? Like just being so efficient and like over the top with how productive we are like that, it’s just adding to that level of productivity as a as an individual, as a business, as you know, your end users, too. So, it’s awesome to hear, you know,
All over the place. Yeah. But AI is all over the place. Right. So, it’s, awesome to hear how you guys are in many different ways employing it. Even though it might be like just a couple of different tools that you’re talking about here, but important to hear, you just got to try. You got to start somewhere. And I think that’s the message that you just got to jump in. Yeah.
Kyle: Just start playing with it because it’s a huge learning curve. You just got to do it. And once you do it, you just have that skill set, just like you’re teaching the AI skill sets. It’s incredible.
Rob: Yeah, so I know a lot of other things I want to ask. I think I’m going to save them for another time, but there’s one I want to end on because we could keep going. This could be hours long, man. But I know we both have days to get I don’t want to mess up with what AI told you that your day is supposed to be like. So, we’re going to try to stay on track. So, I want to close with one question, and I think it’s a cool one to be able to ask. Looking back 10, 15 years, you know, is there a piece of advice that you would give the Kyle Steele of 10, 15 years ago, you know, knowing kind of how your career has gone and sort of what you’ve been able to accomplish?
Kyle: Good question. I think the short of it would be trust the long arc. I think when I first started, it was kind of chasing what is the next job? What’s the next project? And it’s, it’s always like, go, go, go. But the long arc being like, you know, we’re not just building a business, but we are building like platforms on how people live in their environment. And that’s going to take time. So, it’s like asking the questions, you know, how do you want to live in your home 20 to 30 years from now? Right?
And what does that home look like? How do you prepare for that? I mean, that’s kind of the long game. It’s not just like, here’s the next install, here’s the next home. It’s like, truly, I mean, how do you, how do I wanna live in my house? I mean, 20, 30 years from now, like, I don’t wanna go assist a living facility. What does that look like? What can we be doing now that enhances that, prepares us for the future of living? That’s what I tell myself back in the day is like, don’t just think of like the project, you know, that stress of what’s next, what’s next. It’s like, let’s actually look at the long arc of things. And I think part of that, I would tell myself to just live in the moment. I think when we all get lost in that as business owners, this industry, this industry is hard. If it was easy, there’d be a lot more people doing it for sure. But it’s difficult, you know, at the luxury level, dealing with the 1 percent of the 1 percent, I mean, the expectations are high, right? So, I’d tell my younger self like, just be in the moment, be present. The difficult times, those are gonna pass. The amazing things that happen, just don’t let the highs get too high and the lows get too low. Just keep it level, enjoy what you do. And if you wake up in the morning and you don’t wanna go to work, do something else. That should be a sign to just pivot what you’re doing. Fortunately, I haven’t had that day, but I think just keeping that even, and just being, if you’re with family, be with family. If you’re on vacation, be on vacation, right? Like I have a tough time turning that stuff off because I’m always available for my clients, but just be present, be in the moment. And that’s just the right way to live in my opinion.
Rob: I love it, man. Mic drop moment for sure. And, one that, like I said, we’ll, we’re going to have more conversations. I feel like this, this isn’t a one-time deal for sure. but I appreciate you, you know, taking the time to chat with us, be one of our early interviews here on connected designs podcast. you know, just your projects too. I I’m interested to see what this, this house that’s to beat all houses is going to look like, you know, about come the end of the project, but, you know, some exciting stuff to be able to follow with you.
Kyle: Very grateful for you and congratulations again and look forward to the next one. So, thank you.
