HomeTech.fm - Episode 295 - Catching up with Z-Wave's Mitch Klein

Episode Date: March 20, 2020

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, March 20th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from my basement in Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. Sheltered in place. Sheltered in place. Oh man, have you seen the meme going around with uh what is it the social distance champion and it's got like a picture of bigfoot underneath it no no i haven't seen that one but i saw a good one that was like um your your grandparents were asked to go to war you're

being asked to sit on the couch we got this this. Oh man. What a time. Unfortunately, as we were probably going to talk about, it is, it is, it is affecting actual businesses and small businesses. It's not just like from an employee's perspective, I get to stay home and work or work from home. But like, if you're in the service industry, um, like most integrators or, you know, even dining staff, you know, like the waiters and waitresses that are out there, like you're, you're probably hurting right now or will be very soon because of the, the, the mandatory, in some cases, mandatory like closures of businesses. Yeah. Yeah. It really is affecting people. Not, not just in obviously in the health ways,

which are all, um, you know, very sad and concerning in their own right. But yeah, the business concerns are, are very, very real. And it's, it's just unprecedented territory to have everything just shut down so abruptly. And, uh, I think we're all trying to make sense of it. And the reality is nobody knows exactly how this is going to play out. And so it's kind of a game of getting comfortable being uncomfortable right now and learning how to just press forward in the face of that uncertainty. I know that at One Vision, we've got a great network of integrators all over the country, and we've really just seen a banding together. And that's one of the silver linings about this whole thing is I think these sorts of things do tend to bring people together. And we're very much seeing that in our little corner of the industry.

We had a big conference call with all of our partners just yesterday. Today's Wednesday. We held the call on Tuesday. And we had really, really great turnout and engagement on that. And at One Vision, we're trying to play our part, and I think that's one of the things we can all take away from this is with all of this fear and uncertainty, one of the best ways to actually make yourself feel a little better is to go try to help others in any small way that you can. I think there's some real merit and truth to that. And so we're trying to break this problem apart and put some actionable strategies in place. We're going to be releasing some stuff out to the industry, hopefully later this week, early next week. I'm really looking at this in

kind of three broad buckets in terms of how do you deal with client and contractor relationships? How do you deal with internal HR policies and keeping your employees safe and remote work and absenteeism? And these are all big concerns. And then of course, there's the financial risk and economic risk mitigation strategies as well. So we're really looking at it in all three of those buckets and have seen our partner community really band together and share strategies with each other, and it's been pretty inspiring to see that. In fact, I wanted to open the show tonight by sharing a quick list. Chad Nichols, who's the owner of a company called Simtech in Cincinnati, Ohio, a really thoughtful guy, started a thread and put together a list of things you can do if you're a home technology professional to keep your team engaged. We know

that job sites are shutting down and cashflow may be a concern, but you want to, at least in the immediate term, try to keep your team engaged and productive. And so I'll just rattle off a bunch of ideas here. And I thought there were some good ones here that may or may not be on people's radar. So online training from CDA and manufacturers, looking into that, using the time to get your skill sets across the team beefed up, have your team create their own development plans. I know from having worked at many integrators, that's a big one where in a lot of companies, you never have time to sit down and really think about your professional development plan because you're so busy running around. And so using some time as a team to start thinking about that,

of course, clean detail, organize and restock vans is a big one. If you're able to do that, I know there are some limitations there logistically with people kind of staying out of the office and stuff. Wait, wait, wait. You're supposed to clean and restock vans? Yeah. That's the first I've ever heard of that. Right. Exactly.

We're here to prompt new ideas, Seth. That's right. Sprucing up the office or showroom, stockroom and inventory management, selling old parts on eBay. That's right. Get rid of some of that old gear that we've all got sitting around as integrators i remember uh that was always a challenge and you'll be shocked as to like some of the things people will buy uh we had a bunch of old like sony um these are like receivers that sony made that would fit in the wall and they

had like receivers amplifiers it had like a dvd player built inside of it we put them on ebay just like the random parts that we had well turns out they were put in by some company put in all these yachts so they they needed them for for service working parts and they paid top dollar for these things we shipped them all around the world there you go for for these yachts so you'd be shocked with like old gear will come to fetch on ebay especially if it's specialized parts yep ro Robert in the chat room said just sold an old RTI controller on eBay. So yeah, like there are, there is a market out there and, and take advantage of this time to finally get rid of some of that stuff. Uh, working on the tech design for your showroom, how to integrate

more voice at most better tools to illustrate your process documentation service processes to clients. Uh. So thinking through all that, here's a couple of good, here's one I really like. Clean up your remote systems management deployments. We know you're guilty. You know who you are and you've got whatever your platform is of choice. You've got a lot of cleanup and stuff to do in there, getting things properly labeled, getting things standardized across all of your deployments. That'd be a great one. And that's one you can do remotely. I like that one for that reason as well. Creating installation checklists and process documentation. That's a huge struggle.

Yeah. I like that one. I like that one. That's a big one. Jump into that. Clean up and redesign your folder structure. Is this organization? No. Okay. This is like on Google drive or whatever you use come on folders are so passe like come on search search is a thing it's 2020 next one next one next all right i'm freaking out jason what do you see my desktop jason i'm gonna send you a picture oh don't show me it'll make me itchy yeah yeah exactly clean up your crm oh i like that one yes yes yes yes yep clean it up purge all those deals that have been rotting in there for a year.

No, but they may come back. That's right. Review and update documentation for existing projects as-builts. You know that giant pile of marked up plans that you've got sitting in the corner? Now's the time to finally get those into your as-builts. Cross-train to reduce key man dependencies. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Because you don't want to be stuck with losing someone later on down the road. Not from a COVID or anything, but it's so smart to not be locked in to having one person having the sole knowledge of how to operate something. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. Cross-training is great. And then finally, create marketing plans. So developing a strategy for, you know, all those strategies that you've talked about developing to better market outdoor audio or your shading solutions or whatever the case may be, use this time to really put some thought and cycles into developing

those plans. Yeah. And, and you know what I like about each one of these, uh, that is on here. Um, most of them, most most all of them don't cost you any money to do uh other than maybe labor in labor but like like payroll but they also are direct investments back into the company so like if you want to you know it's it's a it's zero dollar from that perspective but it could pay tomorrow uh if you if you, if you had all this stuff done, if the, or as builds were complete, you didn't have that giant, you know, paper, paper log behind, um, behind you, uh, every day when you come in, uh, looking over your shoulder about to collapse on you. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's something you want off the desk. So yeah, it'd be great to get, you know, it's,

it's, it's time to take a breather and we definitely can. Just go ahead and use the time that we have here to the best of your abilities. I think this investment will come out that you put into your company will come out like tenfold once all this stuff passes. Right. Another suggestion here in the chat room from Rashid, updating network firewall rules at each site.

So going through and doing an audit of your network deployments. Not a bad idea. Yeah. Maybe password documentation. Maybe if you've been thinking about getting a better system in place for securely storing passwords, this would be a great time to work on that project. So a lot of ideas here. If you have others, send them over. We'll share those along.

Feedback at hometech.fm. I think these are good things to think about. Greg in the chat room is, you know, of course saying like eventually we, you know, we need billable work. And, and of course,

uh, all of these things are, are not going to sustain you longterm, but in the interim, uh, these are great things that you can make investments back into the company and hopefully buy yourself a little bit of time to, to figure stuff out,

um, and let the situation develop a little bit. This is like the dilemma, right? There's definitely income that has to come in for the place to operate. If those accounts receivables aren't coming in because you're not booking work, because the work all know, it is, it is going to be tough. It is going to be a problem. Um, so I'm hoping, I'm really hoping, you know, that we see this kind of like die down as fast as it's starting. It's, it's certainly, it's certainly gotten, I mean, I think I joked, I don't know if I was joking or just kind of like being more serious. It's like last week or the week before I was like,

you need to think about 25% of your income this year disappearing. I, in, in no way in my mind, was I thinking that 25% of your income could just disappear tomorrow? Like in, and you, there's no foreseeable future as to when that's coming back. So like, it's, it's a scary time. It's an uncertain time, but, um, kind of putting your head down and working on the business, the best you can do, cause it's really all we can do right now. That's right. Is, is, but, um, kind of putting your head down and working on the business, the best you can do, cause it's really all we can do right now is, is, is one way, one strategy behind, uh, moving past this mess. And then on the other side, when we do get out of it, you'll be better off for it. Yeah. Uh, Warren Buffett has the famous saying, you know, be greedy when others are fearful and

fearful when others are greedy. And I think right now, you know, you've got an environment where rightfully so there's a lot of fear and, uh, not dismissing that of course, but, but making sure you keep a level head and don't panic. And like, I think you hit the nail on the headset. These are things that you're doing that are, you're investing back in your business. So if you're finding ways to make these sorts of things work, Eric makes the point, these are things you can do so that after things cool down, you'll have more time to do billable work. You're making those investments in increased efficiencies. So certainly things to think about. And hopefully if you're a home technology professional, this gives you some specific ideas of things you can explore.

I did realize, Seth, we got pretty far into this show without teasing our interview. So I'll mention that really quickly before we jump into headlines. We had Mitch Klein, the executive director from Z-Wave, join us on the show. And I really enjoyed chatting with Mitch. We kept it pretty high level. We had Mitch on the show previously, but it's been a few years. And it was good to get kind of an update and 30,000 foot view perspective from him on, you know, the state of the market, what some of the big challenges are out there, what some of the big opportunities there are out there for integrators. And of course, sharing some specific thoughts about what Z-Wave has been up to. So be sure to stay tuned for that. We really enjoyed the interview.

But Seth, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines here? Let's do it. After several reports that Sonos was set to launch a new platform, the company has confirmed those reports through their support page. The page states that Sonos S2 OS will launch in June, and it will include a companion app. Sonos goes on to say that the new S2 OS, quote, will power the next generation of products and experiences. In addition to new features usability updates and more personalization moving forward sonos s2 will enable higher resolution audio technologies

for music and home theater cool i yeah i've always had problems with these uh these os names sonos s2 os okay it's uh yeah s2 os. It's a mouthful. I saw this come through and quite an interesting development. What I immediately scrolled to were the list of products that are compatible with the new S2OS. It's the Play 1, the Play 3, the Play 5, Gen 2, Play Base, Play Bar, Connect Gen 2, Connect Amp Gen 2, the Sonos 1 Gen 1 and 2, the 1SL, which is the new Lite version of that, the Beam, the Amp, the Port, the Boost, Symfonisk, the Move, all the subs, and that if users have the products that are not compatible, like ZonePlayer, CR2, they can keep them and they can keep on using them in their sonos systems but i think they have there'll be like a separate s1 app essentially that they'll be using for that

if i read that right like they're gonna kind of split these two things apart yeah it says uh sonos points out products made after may 1st 2020 will not be compatible with s1 which is what they're going to start calling the the current uh version and then it goes on to say you will also have the option to create two separate systems one with products that are s2 compatible and one with products that are not uh you can also upgrade incompatible okay so replace the hardware yeah they're still offering that 30 off uh upgrade thing for people who, I mean, now you know why they kind of started pressing for that. December of last year,

when they were offering 30% off their product, now you know why, because they need to move the whole platform forward. They can't do it with legacy product hanging around. Yeah, it says Sonos S1 users will continue to receive system patches and bug fixes for their system. So interesting stuff there.

I think, uh, you know, big question on integrators minds probably going to be as far as any, any sort of third party integration that they're doing, uh, what sort of shakeout there's going to be there remains to be seen. Right.

I'd certainly like to see more, uh, more surround features built into this thing. Like let's see a Sonos with Atmos, you know, like let's see an Atmos type setup. There you go. Um, I'd certainly like to see more surround features built into this thing. Like, let's see Sonos with Atmos, you know? Like, let's see an Atmos-type setup. There you go. Introduced.

That'd be really cool to be able to put a wireless Atmos. I mean, there's some companies that have done this already. So why can't Sonos, who arguably is one of the, or is the leader in wireless home audio, why can't they do it? So it will be interesting to see what they come out with. I'm looking at the stars here. Swing for the stars, guys. Let's do it.

Go big. Go big. Yeah, go big or go home. Parks Associates released a study done in cooperation with Hanley Wood and Builder Magazine called MDUs, Home Builders, and Smart Home Technology that addresses the current state of smart home implementation among U.S. builders of single-family and multi-family housing. This research focuses on value propositions for builders and buyers and delivers insights on the drivers and barriers, business models, technology strategies, procurement and production

processes, sales and marketing, and more, and value change partnerships that deliver smart home solutions into new construction. I ran across this. I thought it was a pretty cool survey. It kind of puts like a magnifying glass on what these builders are wanting in for their smart homes? Like what do they expect a smart home to be today? I mean, we all kind of have these ideas, but I thought it was just an interesting survey and something to take a look at if you are selling to those types of those types of projects. Right. Yeah, this is, again, amongst builders.

So take it through that filter, uh, looking at the, the chart here, Amazon Alexa way out up and top there with Google home, just a little bit behind them. And then about, uh, I'd say a little bit more than half of the amount of those two is then ring. Then you get down to home kit, Xfinity home, Alarm.com, and it goes down from there. Control 4 is on the list. They're a relatively small share compared to Alexa and Google Home. But anyways, Parks does great work, and they do release a lot of their stuff for free to the public. So if you're not familiar with Parks and you're a home technology pro, definitely go check them out, uh, just as a whole, like not even this study alone, but as a

whole parks does, does some really interesting work. Uh, absolutely worth taking, taking a look at. Yeah. I found it interesting to see what, like, like the brands you listed there, like, um, ADT is on there, you know, alarm.com is on there. Xfinity is on there. Like these are the brands that people know first. And even though, you know, control four and wink are on there, like an XC is on there. This is this, this kind of like, is more like a brand recognition thing to me. And of course you'd have Alexa at the top, right? So like, it's, it's kind of amazing that ring isn't higher than Google home to me. Like I would think everybody knows that one right now.

Right. Right. So so anyways interesting stuff uh go take a look at that moving on here to our next story after years of discussions about the possibility of shrinking the theatrical window nbc universal is going to obliterate it all together according to a new report the company is going to release at least some of Universal Pictures' theatrical offerings on demand at the same time as they hit theaters. When a book is written about this period in history, this may be a crucial turning point in the way the industry operates. And this, of course, related to the coronavirus outbreak, they're looking to do this. So this may be a catalyst for, uh, what could prove to be some, some cool, like lasting change in the way this works. I, I would, I would love this. I know that movie theaters have fought hard against this for a very long time and I understand why, but,

um, you know, as someone who doesn't get out a whole lot with young kids and whatnot, uh, the ability to, to get these sort of first run movies at home for a reasonable price is exciting. Rest in peace, that Cedia company that was doing like the $1,000 movies or whatever, like first-run movies. Because I mean, when this comes out, it's going to hurt. You can't put this cat back in the bag, I don't think.

Maybe you can, but I just don't see a way. People are going to want this. I mean, we were super excited because we thought Trolls World Tour was going to be released this last week, but we'll have to wait for April 10th to see the new Trolls movie, Trolls World Tour. Yep, indeed. April 10th, a few other titles listed here.

The Hunt, The Invisible Man, Emma. I'm not super familiar with these but uh well the hunt was like the hunt is like this plagued movie uh so yeah yeah this friday anything that's out in the theaters or will be out in the theaters or should have been out in the theaters now that they're all closed down uh will be released the hunt is uh was actually supposed to be released last year sometime. And it's about a group of people that go hunting other people. And it was kind of like they were going to release it right smack in the middle of all the gun violence and shootings that were happening. And so they were like, we're going to punt this one.

And, of course, they punted right into the middle of the coronavirus outbreak. So that's kind of like the plague movie of Universal right now. Yeah, maybe the universe is telling them something. Yeah, don't release that movie. Crazy. Movies will be available for a 48-hour rental period at a suggested retail price of $19.99. It's not totally clear to me.

I guess probably the dedicated Universal app. Yeah, I wasn't sure where to get them. So I'm hoping... The story doesn't make it very clear yeah i'm hoping it just appears on all marketplaces like maybe it'll be in the you know apple movies marketplace for 1999 i'd just pay right there through itunes and and for for rental and call it a day i i i have no problem doing this because going to a movie theater with with uh three people and and buying buying their $20 popcorn and that kind of thing, you're going to save tons of money doing these $19.99 rentals for sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

As a movie buff, I'm excited about this. At the same time, extremely sad because I love movie theaters. I love going to movie theaters and the whole experience. And I don't know. They're already shut down indefinitely right now. And I'm kind of scared we're not going to see a lot of them come back. Right. Because everyone knows the margins are super thin on these things.

And they make their money on that $20 popcorn. That's right. I'm not sure how long they can keep their expensive properties around. Yeah, I agree with you. It would be sad. I like what theaters have done in general. I don't go to them often, but I would. It's not because I don't enjoy it. Generally speaking, I like what the theaters have done and how a lot of them now you have the food you can order and the more

comfortable seating and things like that to really make the experience better. And it's fun. It's fun going to a theater. I totally agree with you. So I'm with you. I'm hoping that this isn't between COVID-19 and companies starting to do what Universal is doing here. I do hope it's not the death knell for theaters, but only time will tell. And in acquisition news, a Fox Corporation this week said

it has agreed to acquire San Francisco streaming business Tubi for, get this, $440 million in an effort to expand its audience and attract more advertising dollars. Tubi, which is a free ad-supported streaming service, has more than 20,000 shows and movie titles from 250-plus content partners uh this is wild i've never

heard of this one but it's out there and people evidently like it and the company said that it had 25 million monthly active users in december so check out tubi if you haven't it's got a bunch of stuff on i was looking at it today i'll tell you what seth i am thinking about going and starting a streaming company at this point you know, somebody's sure to buy you. That's the plan here. These are hot targets right now. There was the, what was it, Zumo we talked about with Comcast, bought them last month for more than a hundred million. Viacom purchased Pluto TV for 340 million. And one of the big takeaways of this story, which we'll link to from the LA Times,

is that ad-supported streamers like Tubi have become an appealing target for media companies because they're seeking to reach a younger audience. And they talk about how subscription fatigue is starting to set in. And so people are looking for these free ad-supported options. And apparently media companies see a future there because you're right, they're getting snapped up left and right right now. It's a pretty interesting trend. There's a new one too called Quibi. I remember them from like, I think they had some advertisements maybe around the Super Bowl and that, and that, in that era, uh, I remember seeing their, their strange commercials, but they've, I saw today that Reno nine, nine, one, one was going to have a,

uh, revitalized show come on to Quibi. And it's basically like, I think short form storytelling, like they're, they're real small. Um, I want to say 15 minutes or under type episodes of something. And each episode every day, each is 10 minutes or less. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes. I don't think this service has launched yet. Maybe it has. No, pre-order. But it's an interesting, it's a streaming service, but with this interesting idea that um you know 10 minutes 10 minute show is all you really need and they've they've designed content around that so interesting um yeah it should be interesting to see what this one does as well and i'm sure i'm sure jason uh that somebody will come by and acquire them and write them a big fat check big big nice check yeah yeah

well interesting dynamic. All right. Well, that'll do it for our news. All the links and topics that we've discussed on this week's show can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 295. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll send you show reminders and other occasional updates about all the great things going on here in the world of home tech. Once again, that link is hometech.fm slash 295. And don't forget, you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday, starting 7, 730 PM Eastern. You can find out more how to do that at hometech.fm slash live. All right, Seth, well, what do you say without further ado, let's go ahead and jump

into our interview. Once again, we are joined this week by Mitch Klein, the executive director of Z-Wave. And without any further delay, let's go ahead and jump right in. We hope you enjoy. Hey, Mitch, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm doing fabulous. Thank you. In spite of everything that's going on these days, doing very well. Yeah, it is an unprecedented time. And I'm sure like many of us, you're busy dealing with a lot of the fallout from that and trying to make sense of everything. So we appreciate you taking some time to come on the show. A return guest. I was amazed when I looked. It's been three years since we had you on. So I know you guys have been busy and we're going to jump in and kind of get a lay of the land of

everything that's new and what you guys are thinking about there at Z-Wave. But before we jump in, just in case any of our listeners aren't familiar with you, why don't you just give a quick personal introduction and talk a little bit about your background? Sure. Well, those of you that don't know me and those of you that do, it's one and the same person. So I've got almost 30 years worth of history in what we're currently calling the smart home, and that was long before smart and home were put in the same sentence. So I've gotten retail experience. I used to own and operate my own installation company for about 15 years. One of the original Cedia folks even got the Lifetime Achievement Award last year,

which was kind of cool. You did. Congrats. Thank you. And I've been running product development, business development, and now I'm working for a chip company. So you can say that I've got experience from every aspect of the smart home, from crawling in attics to working on selling chips for devices that are going to communicate to each other for the smart

home and every point in between. Pretty good perspective. How's that for a mouthful? You've spanned the gamut. You've certainly got me beat there. And I'm glad you mentioned the Cedia Lifetime Award because if you didn't mention it, I was going to. And congratulations again on that. That's quite an achievement and very well deserved. Thank you.

So congrats on that. And I'll tell you, my heart is still with the Cedia Group and all of the integrators that hopefully are listening to this. So no matter where I happen to be, that's still where my heart is. Excellent. Well, share a little bit about just your current role at Z-Wave and Silicon Labs, and then we'll jump into the meat and potatoes here. Sure. So I'm the executive director of the Z-Wave Alliance.

The Alliance is an organization of about 700 member companies that have in one way or another something to do with getting Z-Wave into the marketplace. The majority of our members actually creating products with Z-Wave. And as the executive director, that's like the equivalent of being a CEO of an organization. As far as Silicon Labs, Silicon Labs acquired Z-Wave about, I want to say just right around two years ago. And so we are now part of the entire portfolio for Silicon Labs. So I've become quite familiar with all of the other platforms, which any of your listeners are familiar with, such as Zigbee, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and others to be named

later. So it's actually a really cool place to be right now because we're kind of designing in the stuff that the product companies are going to start designing in that your integrators are going to start seeing in the marketplace two and three years from now. It's pretty cool. Excellent. Yeah, that sounds great. Well, let's jump in again. We're going to, we're really going to spend the conversation staying at a fairly high level and taking a look at the landscape and of course, talking about how Z-Wave fits into all of that. So let's start at that high level. And you talked about looking two, three, four years out, looking at kind of the landscape for home tech pros here in 2020, what are some of the biggest challenges that you see facing the home technology professional today?

And that's a great question because we, from a technology perspective, that's not something the integrators need to worry about in terms of where we're going to be three years from now. You've got more things to worry about, like, you know, finding and hiring staff, which is one of your immediate needs, of course. But I think the issue of do-it-yourself and the popularity of the devices coming out onto the marketplace are going to create one of the biggest challenges for integrators. Because you have to become familiar with what these products are. How are you going to deploy them? Customers are going to be buying some of them. You're going to be wrestling with some of them. So your understanding in terms of how these products will integrate

with your existing control systems and your existing customers, I think is going to be one of your ongoing challenges. How do you justify the value add that you have versus some do-it-yourself security systems? So, again, these are the kinds of things I think you've got to be looking at going forward, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the friction, I guess, between DIY and the CI market has always been, at least historically, has always been an interesting dynamic that's happened with the industry. But both having the CI industry trying to put in product and make money off of it,

and then the DIY industry kind of pushing forward in maybe a different direction or bringing forward technology. I'm thinking of voice control and that kind of thing. Like voice control was made rapidly better by DIY markets, not so much by the CI markets. We've had it for years, but it didn't work all that well. So it's very interesting to see how those two, the push and pull of those two industries really help each other at the end of the day. Yeah, and I've said for years that it's not a polarizing issue where you have do-it-yourself on one side and professional do-it-for-me on the other side.

I've always said there's a middle ground where I think the smart integrators are either already there or on their way, and I call it do-it-with- me, whereby in the good old days when a customer had their own products, the integrator would go, I'm sorry, I'm not touching your old products. You can't do that anymore because customers in many cases get interested in smart home because they bought their door lock or their thermostat. And now they want to bring you in and now you want to be able to work with what they have and expand it into a more, more of a smart home application. And in many cases, they're going to come to you simply because they've acquired enough products where they don't know what to do with. Do it with me, you know, come in, work with the products that

I have, make your recommendations in terms of where to go from there. And the old traditional philosophy of I'm not touching your stuff is not going to work going forward. Right. Well, let's talk about that a little bit because I think this is a conversation that has been playing out in the Cedia channel for many years now. And as you would expect, there are no easy answers to this. It's going to be an ongoing spectrum and challenge that people are trying to figure out. But you're a guy who's been around the block, Mitch. As you alluded to in your intro, you've seen all facets of this industry. So put yourself in the seat of an integrator. And what do you think the biggest... Let's zoom in on that specific do it with me

piece. And what do you see as the big opportunities there? I think we all know what the challenges are in terms of dealing with this dynamic. But where do you see opportunities for integrators to try to take a look at that challenge creatively and exploit maybe opportunities that perhaps others aren't seeing or taking advantage of? Yeah. I think Amazon tried to do this at one point, coming to the CD organization and saying, hey, people are going to buy stuff on Amazon, become, I forget what the term was,

certified or approved integrator, where you can go and install the door lock or the TV or hang the brackets. And that was really the tip of the iceberg. I don't believe that was a very good opportunity for the integrators, but it opened up my eyes to say, you know, there's some real opportunities here. I think that if the integrators are willing to collaborate with the homeowners who've now had a touch, they've tasted what some of these automated products can do for them. They've put in a lamp dimmer and seen how cool it is. They've played with a Philips Hue bulb and seen, wow, this could be really cool. That's an entree. So you've already got a potential client that is willing to play with the smart home

products and willing to come to you for some solutions. I'm not exactly sure how you're going to market this, but I believe that there's a real opportunity for the integrators. Yeah, I think taking advantage of that awareness and really looking at, I know one of the big things that we at OneVision continually preach and see a lot of success with our partners, and we talked about it on the show, I think just last week, the Best Buy story of really the way Best Buy, I think there are some takeaways there for integrators in terms of reframing the relationship. We've been such a project-centric industry for so long, very project and product

focused, and really pivoting to more of the relationship and ongoing. And like you said, maybe it's not that first one-time sale that's the big opportunity, but it's opening up that relationship and looking at things like recurring revenue and ongoing upsells and things like that, and really focusing more on the long-term relationship, I think is one of the big opportunities there. I think shifting, go ahead. Yeah, I just want to just add to that, because I think, you know, you hit on it when you mentioned the one vision. And, you know, if you're a contractor and you're an electrician, you do the work, you're done. That's it. I mean, that's all you're going to do. As a service company, you're going to constantly be adding capabilities into clients' homes. It's potentially a never ending business for an integrator to say, okay, now I put this stuff in, I'm available for your

support. Now you have a new phone, I'm going to help you with the application. Now there's a new widget or a new voice control or a new speaker or any type of new products. They know where to come and get the solution implemented and where the service is going to come from. Very different from other contractors. So I think the opportunity is very significant there. Right. And that's actually a perfect segue, I think, into one of the other big buckets that we wanted to talk about. And this is kind of category expansion, is the heading I'll put this under. And I think you alluded to it there when you talk about the ongoing nature of the relationship and continual upgrades, and it's not a one and done deal.

So really lean into that, take advantage of that. And I think there are these emerging categories that we're all starting to see. And I think I would assume you have some very interesting perspectives on going beyond security and entertainment, looking at things like energy management and water management, for example. So talk from a high level there about the category expansion trend as you see it, and then we can dive into some of the specifics on those. Sure. And I go way back, and I remember when we were just doing entertainment and I started touching lighting control. That was a huge category expansion, you know, and so back then we were constantly adding capabilities and you should be doing that now. I'm not really a big fan of the term of energy management. I think when you look in other marketplaces, like in a fragmented area, like in Europe, that's a big deal because of the cost of energy.

In the U.S., it's not. And to say, hey, I'm going to do energy management, I think you get a big yawn from people. Now, maybe it's just simply changing the term, but to call it being able to control the comfort in your home to me is a better option in terms of calling it energy management, which, in fact, you're still doing anyway. But to say, don't come home to a cold house or be able to set your sensors in the home so that the temperature is going to be adjusting depending on who's home and what time of day and what type of year it is. Yes, that's energy management. But from a consumer perspective, that's really all about their comfort. So I prefer to use that term, if that helps. And I think that's an enormous

market. I look at even my own place here where I have a large enough house with a single zone. Single zone heating, vending, air conditioning, that can be problematic. You can have cooler and warmer areas in the house depending on where it is. But if you can put remote sensors in the room and set it up such that certain sensors are active during certain times of the day, it's almost like you have multiple zones. So these are the kinds of things that integrators can really add value to. And again, it's about the comfort. So that's one of them. Yeah, yeah.

And I'd agree on energy management. It makes more sense in other markets where the energy is more expensive, like you said. Here in the States, I feel like we've exhausted every single way we can to sell this. Lighting control is, of course, a big part of that. And I think shading, too, came in. It was another expansion category that happened in the past. Exactly. But hitting on the whole house ecosystem energy management, I think it's kind of fell flat on its face here. And I think that's why you see other like there's been this talk of the wellness category or biophilia, depending on who you talk to, about basically making an environment that a human wants to live in. And that all falls back to energy management and being able to dim the lights or correct the color and that kind of thing. It all boils down to like the big, big points as well.

Yeah. You can save a little bit of money if you're actually monitoring for this stuff too. Oh, by the way, you can save a little bit of money. Exactly. Because again, energy costs aren't high enough yet for, to offset the investment. And I think that's why that concept has not gained traction in the U.S., whereas in other parts of the world it has. So one of the big, oh, sorry. I was going to go another area. It is what we call water.

I don't want to really call it water management, but being able to monitor the water in the home. I think any of your listeners that have ever had a pipe break or a hose break from a dishwasher or something like that will attest to the insidious damage that's done in the home. Never mind the insurance costs because, you know, that can be handled. But the way that it completely disrupts your life and everything. I mean, water gets everywhere. So this is a huge area that integrators should be on top of. Even if you don't want to call a plumber and put a shutoff valve, at the very least, you can put in water sets behind every water device in the home.

With dishwashers, washing machines, toilets, sinks, you name it. These days, they're all wireless, and you can just kind of toss them behind a device, and at the very least, get a notification saying, hey, you got water where you shouldn't have water. And even better yet, put in a shutoff valve that automatically turns it off and says, I shut your water off. You may want to go take a look at your water heater. It's leaking. So again, that's an enormous area for integrators to get involved in. And I can tell you, not many have taken advantage of this. In my day job, we sell these to integrators and dealers, these types of shutoff valves. And the guys who go out and actively try and sell

these things, sell them because it's just a no brainer at the cost of these sensors and the cost of little shutoff valves that are automatic. It makes no sense not to do it. You know, it's a double negative, but it makes it it's just a no brainer to get these things installed. And they work. I mean, like you said, you have water where you're not supposed to be. Well, shut the water off. I had one today. I was out watering the lawn and I get a, you said, you have water where you're not supposed to be. Well, shut the water off. I had one today. I was out watering the lawn, and for over 30 minutes, I forgot about it. And I get an alert saying, oh, we're going to shut your water off, and I ran out there and turned the thing off real fast. But it's a great thing to have. It saves you all sorts of headaches.

Yep, and it's an enabler. So even though the actual cost of the gear isn't that high, again, this is a service you're offering. And it enables you to really tie it this is a service you're offering. And it enables you to really tie it into existing systems that you're selling or maybe lets you sell a system that you hadn't been selling before. Right, right, exactly. And another big one of these expansion categories that's kind of come in recently, I'd say in the last couple of years, I've seen just a steady and it's got to be one of these. It's a steady uptick in the amount of products that's been coming into the kitchen and being labeled as a smart product for the kitchen. I'm reminded of the refrigerators that have the big TV screens on them and that kind of thing that we all kind of laugh at and roll our eyes at. But there have been like actual products that have been coming into the kitchen that make

a lot of sense. And go ahead and touch base on that because I've seen a lot of really interesting products that come in that integrators may not even know about come into the kitchen recently. Yeah, I think we're beginning to get where these smart kitchen devices are starting to make sense. I mean, initially, they were one-offs. You'd get a smart coffee maker that would be connected to the Internet that would enable you to set a timer and tell what kind of coffee you like and how you like it. And those are one-offs. And those are certainly useful and fun things to have, but how you tie it all in to the smart home has always been somewhat elusive, if you will. And now we're starting to see where,

well, maybe they are starting to tie in, even if it's just current conditions, whereby if the oven is left on, you know, you get a notification, turn the oven off. Most recently, we've had GE Appliance join the Z-Wave Alliance. And since we all know that, you know, the kitchen is kind of the hub of the home, and we've seen companies like Samsung putting these big touchscreens in refrigerators, and we kind of go, you know, it's kind of goofy, ho-hum. GE's taking it a step further in terms of actually putting the intelligence. They had a separate display. Now they actually have it built into a microwave, whereby, again, because it's a Z-Wave device, means it now connects up to the entire ecosystem, which enables programming access. It gives notifications and warnings, and they can tie other appliances together.

We're still a little bit away from that right now, whereby, you know, one device can tell another device where it is and have the next device start. So whether it's a coffee maker talking to a microwave or something, we're not quite there yet. We're starting to see it happen. And I think as integrators, start paying attention to that. Yeah, definitely. Totally agree there. I think shifting a little bit from category expansion and talking more about just technology trends and how things are evolving there, the contextually aware smart home and AI, these are trends we've been hearing so much about. And I think there's some room for healthy debate about how much intelligence is really in AI today, certainly, where it'll go is anyone's guess. But I think there's definitely, there's something here. And I think the idea of contextual awareness

and what I'll call, for lack of a better term, a smarter smart home, is very attractive and is an area we should all be paying attention to. Share your perspectives on the current state of, again, AI and contextual awareness in the smart home. Sure, Jason. Right now, I think what we're looking at and what most of us are selling are really connected homes, not necessarily smart homes. There's nothing smart about it because as programmers, we're programming certain devices to act a certain way. Where it's all headed to is this artificial or augmented intelligence, much prefer the term contextual awareness, whereby external inputs can determine what happens as a result of a command.

In other words, I come home and I say, turn on the lights. Well, the contextual aware home will know where I am in the house that I said turn on the lights. It will know what lights to turn on. It'll know what time of day it is. So it'll know which lights to turn on, to what extent, to what intensity. And it'll actually know what time of year it is, so it'll know which lights to turn on to what extent, to what intensity, and it'll actually know what time of year it is. So if it's four o'clock in the summer in Boston, you have a different lighting requirement than if it's four o'clock in the winter in Boston. So this is, again, a very basic, simple example of context awareness. I prefer to take a look at the longer

term opportunities. This is real, and we know that technology is available to help make that happen. And now there are ways, and I think ultimately when we get to the real contextual awareness areas where we'll be able to see whether or not your mom actually did she get out of bed today? Did she eat anything today? How do you know if she ate anything? Well, did the refrigerator door get open? Did the microwave get started? Was the pantry door access, was something taken out? These are all different types of sensor capabilities whereby this AI or this contextual awareness will become extremely valuable because let's face it, who are the caregivers? In that example, it's the family members. And the family members' lives get turned upside down when they have to actually be taking care of their elderly parents or elderly relatives. To be able to enable that type of contextual awareness into the home, which enables that person to live alone,

or live, I should say, in the home, and also enables the caregivers to actually, you know, know what's going on without totally disrupting their lives. I think it's really powerful stuff. And as an integrator, if I was still an integrator, I would really be focusing on that aspect of smart home and AI. Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. I know, you know, when you're talking about being able to issue simple commands, like turn the lights on and have the house make actual intelligent decisions based on, you know, where that signal was picked up and all that sort of thing is really attractive. We use an Echo here at home to do some of that stuff. And Seth often jokes about, you know, communicating with the Echo feels like back in the day when you had to interface with a computer using like the command line, right? You got to say things just so. And it took me like 20 minutes one night

to figure out how to, we had just put some smart lights in and I couldn't quite figure out exactly how to phrase the thing I wanted done. So I think just, again, making that, adding a little bit more smarts to it. And I like your example too of aging in place. You know, I think there has been kind of a debate and that market has been one that I think a lot of people have looked at and it hasn't quite materialized yet. But I do think there are some applications there and there are some companies doing some interesting things with regards to aging in place. So I do think, again, if I was still an integrator, that would certainly, I agree with you, that's one I would be looking at. Let's shift gears here again. We want to make sure we talk specifically about Z-Wave and some

of the moves that you guys have been making. An interesting one, back in December, Silicon Labs made the decision to allow other manufacturers to develop radios. Let's start with talking about the why. What was the impetus behind that decision? Well, as some of you may or may not know, Silicon Labs is the sole owner of the Z-Wave technology. Unlike the others, like Zigbee or others, we have multiple vendors basically building products. And the success of Z-Wave is because of the fact that we had a single silicon vendor staying highly, a razor sharp focus on the smart home. And there's only one version of Z-Wave. Whereas if you look at Zigbee and others, you have multiples, Bluetooth, you have multiples. So there was a really strong argument on why Z-Wave had been so successful to getting into the smart home where it is now.

We've now reached the point where the opportunities go far beyond what one company like Silicon Labs can do in terms of developing and growing the marketplace. There are opportunities everywhere, even within the razor-sh sharp focus of smart home, but look at the commercial opportunities. You're talking about smart cities and all these other verticals.

Well, we realized that to grow the market for Z-Wave, the best thing for Silicon Labs to do is to spin it off, make it an independent organization and enable other Silicon companies to build Silicon and address markets and verticals that right now we don't focus upon. So there's an enormous opportunity. So you think in terms of owning 100% of a specific market or owning 50% or 60% of a much, much larger marketplace, it's a good decision for Z-Wave and for Silicon Labs. Going further with it,

now you would also have additional developers able to create additional feature sets and use cases that again, one company really doesn't have the bandwidth to do. Overall, it would enable it to grow And we believe it will address a really badly fragmented marketplace so that we could, the goal is to make Z-Wave kind of the sub gigahertz platform for the home and actually for IoT for that matter, when you're talking about building ecosystems and smart devices. So we see that as an important aspect. Interesting. And what is the current

state of adoption for this new program you guys are doing? Well, it's still in the development stage. So, you know, we are still building the organization, recruiting founding members. It's premature to make any big announcements at this time. But the goal is to really have the organization spun out by late Q2, in other words, June 30th. That's about as late as you can go in Q2. And actually have a working specification by, I'll say, early first quarter 2021. And hopefully by then also have additional silicon providers at that time okay cool it so just uh kind of be clear on this like if i own some i do own some z-wave devices in here right now um after q2 and the new spec comes out new product starts coming out for

that will my old z-wave devices work with the new ecosystem you know, that's always been a mandate for Z-Wave. So absolutely, the certification requirements will be continued. So yes, you may be able to add additional features that are not available in your older product, but it will continue to work with the ecosystem. That's a mandate. And I think when we talk about where we were going with it, I think you guys may have heard of the Smart Start capabilities that were built in. When we had the previous series chips,

we call it the 500 series, which is pretty much all the Z-Wave Plus products now. We made available a feature called Smart Start, which with the latest set of chips is now actually mandated. What Smart Start is going to do is simplify end-users in the DIY space and also really benefits the professional installers. The reason is, you would basically take your cell phone and read a QR code, and that device will become automatically added to your system. So you can actually pre-kit before the installers leave the warehouse.

You put all the devices that are going into that house, scan them all with a QR code, and then when they go into the house to do the installation, all the devices are already included. You don't have to go through the process of figuring out each individual device as a different methodology of it being included into a system. So we're seeing more of that coming out. And I think the best example of a good implementation is actually the Ring security system. And again, I understand this is a DIY product, but again, as installers, you should be looking carefully at this. Ring is using Z-Wave and they use Smart Start so that the end users have the very easy way of actually installing their own system. And in the case of the

professional installer, because it's Z-Wave, think of all the things you can add to the system. Right. And speed, I mean, from a professional installer's standpoint, speed matters. And I think we can both agree or all agree that in the upcoming months, getting in and out and maximizing profit on each job is going to be essential to staying alive. So yeah, anything that, I really like that, anything that makes the install go fast and smooth is very welcome these days. Yeah, I would agree. And when you look at years ago and you installed devices that had an X price point, those price points keep dropping down. So the more efficient you can become, the more you can add to your bottom line. Yep, absolutely. Critical point there. All right. Well, we are running up against our time here,

Mitch. So in conclusion, and I think you've kind of touched a big picture, but what's next for Z-Wave? What are you getting excited about when you get out of bed in the morning and go to work in your position there? Well, right now, what I'm really excited about is all the other opportunities that Z-Wave is going to have in terms of markets, verticals. Z-Wave is going places. We've heard about what some of the other platforms are doing with the connected home over IP, where you've got Amazon, Google, and Apple all kind of working together to try and create a platform that's all interoperable. And from the installer point, Z-Wave is still heavily focused on the integrators and the professional marketplace. So, I mean, that jazzes me every morning when I get out of bed.

Cool. All right, Mitch, well, we really appreciate you taking some time during this crazy period that we're all navigating right now to come on the show and join us. If anyone's listening and wanted to connect with you to learn more or ask a follow-up question, what would be the best way for them to do that? Best way is you can tweet at me. I'm at Mitchell underscore Klein. You can certainly follow me on LinkedIn. You can look me up there. It's MitchellKlein1. Or just send me an email,

Mitch at ZWaveAlliance.org. Excellent. All right, Mitch. Well, thanks again. Stay well out there, and we'll look forward to reconnecting with you again soon. Thanks, Excellent. All right, Mitch. Well, thanks again. Stay well out there and we'll look forward to reconnecting with you again soon. Thanks guys. It's a pleasure. All right. Well, that'll do it for our interview with Mitch and Seth. I really enjoyed catching up with him. And again, I think Mitch as a long time veteran of the industry brings a really interesting perspective. A lot of times you meet with kind of the C-level types in the industry brings a really interesting perspective. A lot of times you meet with kind of the C-level types in the industry and they've certainly got valuable opinions. I'm not dismissing any of that, but to sit down with somebody like Mitch, who now sits at that vantage point,

CDA Lifetime Award winner, all of that, but who came from pulling wires through crawl spaces. So he's literally seen it all in the industry from, from crawling around in crawl spaces to working for chip manufacturers. Um, and I really thought it was, uh, enjoyable to, to sit down and catch up with him. Absolutely. Had a lot of good high level points to talk, to talk about and think about, like if you're an integrator, uh, there there's, there's some things that, that, uh, for the future to kind of think of and maybe a ways to expand your business into them. So good conversation.

Absolutely. All right, Seth, well, what do you say we jump into our pick of the week? Got another gem here. Yeah, I like this one. I'm always looking on this cable porn subreddit because it's always about cleanup, usually. People install nicely bundled cables. But this one, this one's a,

this one's a different beast altogether. And this, this, this really hits close to home because I, there have been plenty of times when I walked into a job site and saw a rack that looks like this on the left and had to work on it and, and leave because like, I just cringe still. Yeah. Yeah. Like my system's not working. It's like, well, where do I start? You know, like it's, it's been wired by, you know, a monkey. I don't, I don't really know like who, who can do work like that. But in the, in the commentary said there were three different MSPs. So managed service providers, uh, this is an it rack altogether, but, um, they had been doing a bunch of work over the years and, uh, clearly not cleaning up after themselves, plugging in cables randomly. And at the end of the day, you're left with this big hunk of mess. Um, so, uh, it's got

an interesting story behind it. It's a, it's a veter's a veterinary clinic, a three-story veterinary clinic, and they staged an internet outage or a networking outage with management to basically make a little emergency plan around it. And they did the drill during that 10-hour outage that he had to bring everything down and rewire switches and that kind of thing. So, um, a really good masterclass on like how a rack can get out of hand and then how you can get it back into working order and looking nice. Um, I, I just, there, there's a lot to kind of like on the left hand, on the right hand side, if you look at it, there's still a little bit of a mess with cables, but man, look at the left hand side, see where you come from. Right.

It is a, it is so much better with horizontal wire management, vertical wire management, a bunch of new cable trunks that come over. I mean, it's done. Somebody put some effort into this. Right. My favorite saying when I was doing work in these racks was like, if you don't have time to do it right the first time, when are you ever going to have time to come back and do it right? Right. Ever since I learned that little phrase, I would take the extra time.

And I would, yeah, five more minutes is all it takes to put a couple of zip ties on here and you're done. Uh, and, and that's what I do. So yeah, just, I thought those were pretty good. And that the cable porn subreddits are pretty good too. If you hang out in there. Yeah. Yeah. It's always fun. Still the geek, the geek in me. I love this stuff. And I agree. I used to be so, I'm just a neat freak and very OCD by nature. So seeing that one on the left, I'm, I'm, um, fighting all sorts of physiological reactions right now. Uh, but you know, I used to, I don't know if you've, have you ever heard of the broken window theory? Uh, yeah, like that really, like if, if, if one's broken, then it encourages all of them to be broken or something like that. Right. Yeah. So it becomes like that. It's that slippery slope where, you know, as soon as you, and I, I used to get a hard time from the guys cause I'd walk in and there'd be like, you know, sloppily put in because something changed at the last second. I used to be so adamant about that. Cause I'm like, as soon as you do that, you've now put us on the slippery slope to like, you know,

rack hell basically. To that left picture that you come back in three years, that's what it's going to look like. Yeah. So, uh, yeah. Kudos to whoever did this. And, you know, it takes some, some, some courage to jump into a project like that. Cause oftentimes you're also dealing with a dynamic where the client spent a bunch of money to have that system put in on the left probably. Yep. And they didn't necessarily know any, any better. I mean, I'm sure they looked at it and were like, that doesn't look right. They know. Yeah. If you talk to a client, they go, there's just a bunch of mess in there. I can't deal with that.

Oh, yeah. No, I'm not saying they don't know at all, but like, you know, they may look at it and go, Ooh, that doesn't look great. But like at that point they're, they're kind of in it already and whatever the case may be. So then as the integrator going in there for the cleanup job, it's just always that dynamic. Like every integrator listening knows exactly what I'm talking about, where the client's looking at you like, don't stick it to me right now because I know I'm in a bad spot here. But you as an integrator have to charge appropriately.

Right. Because it's not a quick thing to go in and do that. So that creates a really difficult dynamic. So kudos to whoever did this. And hopefully it was an equitable arrangement for everyone involved. I was trying to see. It was all completed over the course of three days with the 10-hour outage. So it's a fair amount of work to do something like that, get it back into working order, and do the job right. It is what it is. It costs what it is. It costs what it costs. But now there's a system on the right-hand side that is much more manageable and can be serviced by anyone rather than somebody who has some kind of domain knowledge about where that...

You see that one red cable there, Jason? Can you tell me where that one goes? It's the red cable, I swear. Yeah. Rashid is 100% correct. It's so hard to get people to understand the value of a clean rack until they see it. Yep. Absolutely. That's the challenge. So cool. Well, good find there. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or ideas for a show topic or

guest, please do give us a shout. We'd love to hear from you. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. Again, that's feedback at hometech.fmm or visit home tech dot fm slash feedback and fill out the online form we want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show but especially those who are able to financially support their show through our patreon page if you don't know about our patreon page head on over to home tech dot fm slash support to learn how you can support home tech for as little as dollar a month any pledge over five dollars a month gets you a big shout out on the show but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and talk about where we were talking about DMX lighting today, DMX lighting. That was fun.

Very good. Always a variety of topics going on in there. I love it. If you're looking for other ways to support the show, we'd appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice. Those reviews definitely help more people find the show. So if you get value or enjoy what we're doing here, definitely take a minute to do that. Or just shoot a link over to a friend or industry colleague that you think might get value out of the show. A lot of help doing that to spread the word. So we'd appreciate it. Yeah. Well, Jason, that wraps up the show this week. I kind of like it feels like we're we're venturing into uncharted territory here and kind of making me nervous. But, you know, it I like how we started off the show with that list of things that you can do today just to kind of keep your mind off of this like weird time that we're it's it feels weird now. And I think it's just going to feel stranger as we move along through this next couple of weeks.

I'm hearing schools are going to be closed until the end of the year in some locations, which is not end of the year, end of the school year, which is crazy to think about. And that puts a burden on families. Oh, yeah. It puts a burden on us, you know, and we just have one little kid who goes to daycare. I can't imagine anybody with more having to deal with, you know, all the things that you have to deal with. Plus having kids, you know, around the house all day. It's just it's it's it's crazy right now. So I'm really hoping that this all just vanishes and goes away into thin air.

It'd be very nice if that happened. Yeah. No kidding. Well, if you're not nervous right now, you're not paying attention. So I think, uh, you know, that, that's one of the big things to remember is like feel, feeling some anxiety right now is pretty normal. And, uh, there's a whole lot of uncertainty, but, uh, you know, try to keep your head on level to, uh, to the extent that you can.

And that's difficult right now, but, uh, definitely Seth, I know we're hoping that we can be a little bit of a resource here in the weeks and months ahead and looking to explore some strategies and topics around helping home tech pros really navigate this unprecedented landscape. So stay tuned for more on that. All right. Well, with that said, Jason, have a good weekend. You as well. Take care, Seth, and stay safe.