For those of us who aren’t independently wealthy it often takes time to assemble an impressive home AV system. A piece here, a piece there, another piece over here. As an aficionado, especially one with a budget, a lot of time gets spent contemplating your options before selecting just the right component. It takes years. […]

Manufacturers and distributors aren’t just responsible for growing their brands’ business and market share — they’re also responsible for maintaining their brands’ image and position in the marketplace, as well as supporting the best interests of their dealers. Products deserve to be sold for what they’re worth, and dealers who support the brand deserve to […]

When I first took an interest in AV installs, I was working for A&B Sound, a small Canadian regional chain, and they had begun to take tentative steps into offering custom installs. Being a nerd, and being very gear focused, I mistakenly believed that the core differentiator that would set us apart as a serious […]

  The history of cinema is littered with technological missteps best left forgotten. I continue to think that 3D belongs on the trash heap of history, but that’s not what I’m here to rail against today. In January we spent a week in California, visiting Disneyland, Sea World and the San Diego. Overall, it was […]

Even now, in the age of cord-cutting, the cable guy from the cable company still has opportunities to vex the work of AV pros. When I say “cable guy,” I mean to encompass not only the installers, but the customer support personnel in the call center. 
I’m sure that cable company personnel are all hardworking […]

    As a manufacturer and distributor sales rep I get to play a lot of different roles. Getting my dealer clients to buy stuff is great, but my favorite is probably helping them trouble shoot their problems. I don’t have to put on coveralls and get dirty on one of their jobsites (at least, […]

When it comes to tools, I often quote Pablo Picasso, who said “everything is either easy or impossible. As I interpret it, oftentimes the difference between the easy and the impossible is whether or not you have the right tool. Don’t believe me? Try running wire between drywall and insulation without fiberglass rods. My love […]

In a meeting last week with the senior management at one of my biggest clients, they shared with me a metric that was frustrating them. Their retail sales associates, as a whole, are incapable of getting attachment sales of any accessory that costs more than $50. Management can see it in the numbers: in the […]

Inspiration for blog posts come from the oddest places sometimes. Last week my family and I took a trip to Disneyland and other destinations in southern California. It was my first trip to Disneyland, and in addition to my childlike sense of wonder, I also saw it with the eyes of a trained professional. I […]

I made a blog post recently about dressing appropriately for the workplace, and Leonard Suskin left a comment about one of his pet peeves: Technicians who wear rock concert t-shirts and grubby jeans on jobsites. He’s right, of course. That got me to thinking about professionalism, and what constitutes professional conduct on the job site. […]

  I have a lot of experience with sales contests, both running them, and participating in them. Personally, I love sales contests, and I think they’re a fantastic way to sharpen the focus on promoting a brand. They’re also educational. Running a sales promotion shows you who amongst the participants are driven by incentives to […]

I’ve blogged before about how the key to effective communication is listening, understanding, and expressing yourself in a way that is best for your counterpart. However, communicating effectively with people in the manner that works best for them isn’t always easy. It becomes challenging when your counterpart has their own issues inhibiting their ability to […]

It’s been my repeated observation over the years from getting to know AV pros all over Canada and the United States that AV pros, regardless of where they’re located, have more in common with each other than they have differences. That applies to both the people who make a career out of the AV business, […]

  So, I had a thing happen to me this past week. I guess you could even say, “I had an Internet of Thing happen to me.” I received a prototype sample from a vendor, in order to test it, and show it to a few key resellers in order to further its development. You’ll […]

When I worked in retail I sold lots of AV gear that was surprise Christmas presents. That’s why I stopped writing thank you cards in mid-October, and did them all in a big rush in January. When I moved into the AV design and installation, the number of surprise presents people bought were fewer, but […]

Clients left in the lurch by AV pros who had no business ever calling themselves an AV pro in the first place is a very real issue in this business. As AV pros, we often feel a sense of schadenfreude (perverse joy at someone else’s misery) when looking at pictures of botched projects. I know […]

    Christmas is just around the corner! Time for a holiday Public Service Announcement. I believe in the importance writing Thank You cards to clients, as well as sending them Holiday greetings as well. It can be somewhat arduous and time consuming, especially if your handwriting is as poor as mine, but it’s an […]

My program of switching over all the lighting in my house to LED continues unabated. This past July was the last time I had taken stock of the percentage of bulbs in my house that were LED rather than incandescent, CFL or halogen. The score then was 41%. Since the year is just about over […]

Time is money, and, for that matter, money is money. Everything your company does needs to focus on making the best use of both. Efficiency is everything, not just in project design and installation, but in after-install service as well. Your service techs need to follow processes and function as efficiently as your installers do. […]

As an avid and voracious music lover you’d think that I’d be a prime candidate to sign up for Apple Music. But you would be wrong, and I’ll tell you why. Regardless of the fact that my music collection is hopelessly intertwined with iTunes Apple Music holds no interest for me. The reason is simple: […]

I’ve always found myself drawn to and interested in problem solving devices, and sometimes I find them more interesting than larger pieces of equipment, like loudspeakers and video displays. The BT2A Bluetooth audio receiver from Lockburne, Ohio-based manufacturer StarTech is intended to turn any audio output device like amplifiers or integrated receivers into a Bluetooth-compatible […]

  This is normally the time of year where I dust off my standard blog post about how to batten down your company’s hatches in preparation for the Christmas holidays. Instead, however, I find myself irresistibly drawn to talking about my choices of Holiday sustenance from all those years working in retail. In other words: […]

An awful lot of my blog posts are inspired by things breaking. There was my antique DVD player a couple of weeks ago.* And before that, over the years, various other pieces of equipment. Well, this week my thermostat croaked. It didn’t croak in the sense that “OMG! Winter is coming, the furnace won’t work […]

Last week the Canadian business magazine entitled, appropriately, Canadian Business posted a brief blog on their website entitled “How Giving Freebies To Bloggers Can Backfire.” It’s a short read, and I don’t want to steal their thunder. However, for the too long/didn’t read crowd I’ll summarize: giving free products to bloggers doesn’t guarantee that they’re […]

Slowly but surely, we’re moving towards the future of lighting. In January of 2014, Canada legislated to ban 75- and 100-watt incandescent light bulbs. Then in January of 2015 40- and 60-watt incandescent bulbs were outlawed. Businesses are still allowed to sell through their existing inventory, which is why 40- and 60-watt bulbs are still […]

It’s that time again. The oldest of my hard drives croaked. This failure is unlike the last time. Last time, when the internal drive of my previous laptop partially died, my laptop had the decency to warn me that the hard drive was about to fail. That courtesy allowed me to order its replacement online […]

Having just returned from corporate retreat, I found myself reflecting on both the upsides and the downsides of these events. Of course, none of you readers want to hear about the good stuff, the team building and brand building. No, you want to hear about the DANGERS! The greatest risk of course, is what I […]

To me, the thing that stands out the most as the biggest difference between residential and commercial AV is the approach to starting new projects. Specifically, I mean the bid process in commercial/institutional AV versus the design retainer in residential. It speaks to a different dynamic, not least of which is that the buying process […]

Everything changes. That’s neither a good thing, nor a bad thing; it just is. Mostly I think of it as a good thing. Sure, old, reliable, profitable categories are superseded by strange new ones, but those scenarios have upsides too. Don’t forget how often new product appear that are exactly what you needed on a […]

Haggling and negotiating is to be expected when striking a deal. Of course, like anything, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. What constitutes appropriate negotiations is, naturally, dependent on context. How you go about getting a good deal on a new car is different from how you negotiate the price […]

Everyone knows the expression “it’s not what you say, but how you say it” but how often do people think about its implications. I do. Since my job centers on communications I spend a lot of mental energy finding the best way to communicate with my customers. This past week a friend shared his customer […]

This month Apple lifted the curtain on its new Apple TV, dubbed, oddly enough, The New Apple TV. Since then, many of us in the AV business and media have spent time parsing the specifications, guessing at the hints Apple has dropped about its capabilities, and pondering the implications it’s going to have on living […]