The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Lutron Electronics, Inc. – Dimmers And Lighting Controls

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

Lutron Electronics, Inc. - Dimmers And Lighting Controls Lutron.com Lutron is a technology-centered and people-driven company. As a private corporation guided by our founder’s simple but profound Five Principles, Lutron has a long history of significant growth and smart innovations. The Lutron story began in the late 1950s in Joel Spira’s makeshift lab in New York City. A young physicist fascinated by the aesthetic manipulation of light, Spira commandeered the spare bedroom in the apartment he shared with his wife, Ruth, and set out to invent a solid-state device that would enable people to vary the intensity of the lights in their homes. The very idea was radical. At that time, lighting control was a complicated and expensive affair, requiring bulky rheostats that used a lot of energy and generated a great deal of heat. Consequently, lighting controls were used primarily to dim stage lights in theaters. Most people would never think of having dimmers in their homes because they were just too difficult to install. That all changed in 1959, when Spira emerged from his lab with a solid-state dimmer that could replace the light switch in a standard residential wallbox. Spira’s key technical innovation had been to replace the rheostat with a thyristor. A thyristor is a type of transistor, which had been invented a few years earlier. The substitution was effective because rheostats and thyristors worked in completely different ways. Rheostats dimmed lights by absorbing electrical energy into the rheostat, meaning that electricity was converted to heat in the rheostat rather than to light in the lamp. By comparison, thyristors dimmed the light by interrupting the power flowing to the lamp. The use of a thyristor shrank the size of a dimmer until it could fit into a standard wallbox. Spira’s dimmer also generated much less heat than a rheostat and used much less energy. By 1961, when Joel and Ruth Spira incorporated Lutron Electronics, they knew that lighting control could contribute to society in multiple ways. Dimmers were both elegant and useful, and they allowed people to control their lights as never before. Dimmers were practical too. They saved energy, and the more you used them, the more energy they saved. With energy costs already going up, the Spiras believed that the energy-saving aspects of the new invention would ensure the long-term appeal of lighting controls.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Lots of cool things going on in the Chris Voss Show. Be sure for your friends neighbors relatives to go to the cvpn.com and chris faust podcast network.com the podcast has been blowing up we actually did 10 of the volume of downloads and people listening to the show that we have done in 10 years and we did 10 of that last month so uh that's pretty freaking incredible basically in 10 months we'll do the same amount of volume that we've been down so we did in a year and

we're growing course rapidly and mainly it's because we've got such incredible guests incredible authors critical book people on the thing you can follow me at goodreads.com for just chris voss also to see the video versions of all these things, go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. You can subscribe and all that good stuff and check out the show. And, yeah, I think that's all the different links we want to take and plug. We've been reviewing over the last years a company called Lutron. And Lutron's been making lots of Internet of Tech, knowledge-y things, different products you can have for your home, et cetera, et cetera. And we've done several reviews here recently.

And today we have Melissa Andresco. She is the chief brand ambassador for Lutron on the show. And we're going to talk about some of the reviews we've done and also what Lutron is doing, especially for people that are working from home these days. Welcome to the show, Melissa. How are you? I'm good, Chris. Thanks for having me. And congrats on your success with your listener. That's great. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. We looked at the last month, and we're like, what the heck? It's amazing. But, you know, we've got a lot of great people on the show,

and people like yourself. Recently, we reviewed, let's see, the Lutron Smart Blinds by Serena. We, of course, have the Caseta. Did I say that right? By Lutron Smart Blinds. Caseta, yeah. Caseta. Man, I'm going to have to go to some language training, I guess, and learn. Clearly, I went to public school.

So there's that. That's my joke. So, Melissa, tell us what's going on with you guys over there at Lutron and how you guys are helping, especially people like me now, who are working at home pretty much full-time, at making their ambiance around their home better. Yeah. So, Chris, thanks. You know, for people who might not be familiar with Lutron,

we've been around for almost 60 years. Next year will be our 60th anniversary as a company. And so much growth over those 60 years. And we started out as the company that was making the rotary dimmer for the dining room that you probably saw in, you know, grandparents' house, relatives' house. I like to always tease some of my colleagues here. When I was little, I used to pull the knob off of the dimmer at my grandmother's house, and I'd hide it, and that was kind of like my cousin and my big joke. Who knew I would grow up to work for that company?

But, you know, Mr. McJones and Young Childs. Do you do that at the office, at the Lutron office? I don't. No, I refrain from that now. But anyway, you know, so Lutron started out as the company making the rotary round knob dimmer, most commonly seen in dining rooms. And today, you know, here we are 60 years later, doing everything from connected homes to connected offices. And that includes controls of light, shade, temperature. We recently acquired a smart fixture company, so now we're also offering lighting as well,

and at every price point, which is super exciting for consumers because you can afford to put this in any size home and do so really affordably, and the systems grow as your needs change and as you maybe modify your home. So it's just a great story in terms of just building onto the house and making those spaces richer and, you know, to your point, easier to use now that so many of us are at home more often. Not only do our products do great things on their own, but they interface with all of the common smart home products that are available today. So to your point, let's start with voice assistants. They interface with the Apple, Amazon, and Google voice assistants. So you could simply say something like, you know, Alexa, turn on good morning.

And all of a sudden, you know, lights come on to a certain level. Your shades will rise. Your music could be triggered by your, you know, your Sonos smart speakers. So just this wonderful immersive experience that's just getting easier and easier, not only to implement in your home, but just to operate. I mean, if one simple command, you know, triggers so many different products throughout the home. So the time saver and just anything that we can do to make life a little easier for everybody these days, I mean, I think it's just a great feature to have. And, you know, it's not any additional

money to do so. You know, as long as you have the compatible products, you know, making them all work together is really easily done within the app. So great value to the customer. Lutron gives you a mixture of both manual devices that you can take and have like remote controls if you want to control dimming or lighting and switches and everything else. You use like little manual things they're very inexpensive that's the other thing that's been great about lutron or you can use your app or you can call out to the different voice services so you've got a lot of different things that you can take and do there and it's very inexpensive early on with iot being coming out you know we saw a lot of expensive stuff and a lot of expensive hubs and a lot of expensive controls. And with some of the IoT stuff that's out there, you really only

have like either the app, sometimes they just have the app and it's like you have to use the app. A lot more stuff nowadays have the voice integration with the Alexa and Google. But you guys also have like the remote controls. Like if you just want to be manual, you can do that as well. And some people are very tactile like that. They like the manual. Yeah. There are times where I think my mom had some issues with Alexa, and she just for some reason her and Alexa didn't get along.

You know, she was arguing with it, yelling at it. And, you know, everyone's different, I guess, in their thing. And so, you know, for her, either manual or going with Google was better. And so having that variety of choices, I think, makes it better for the consumer as well. It sure does. And, you know, the thing about voice, you know, voice is great. But let's be real. Voice isn't always appropriate.

If I need to control my lights in the middle of the night or if I'm on a conference call, I'm not going to yell out to my voice assistant to adjust my lights, which is why, to your point, that manual, what we call our PICO remote control is great because that way you're not having to open your app and get to the right page, turn on the light. You're not having to open your app and, you know, get to the right page, turn on the light. You're not having to disrupt your conversation or somebody sleep by shouting to the voice assistant. You've got a simple, you know, bedside control or coffee table control or wall-mounted control that can easily, you know, trigger lights to come on or your shades to raise or lower. So we love being able to give people those choices. So and, you know, also giving them control at the individual device.

So if you walk into a room and you're, you know, gosh, maybe the kids moved the Pico remote off of the coffee table, you can still go right up to the dimmer or the switch itself and control it right from there. So we love being able to give people a variety of options so that regardless of, you know, whatever their situation is, they can easily control the lights and shades. And so you guys make dimmers, light switches that you can install so you can replace the light switches in your homes, fan controls, timers, in-wall sensors, LED dimmers, wall plate, and accessories are some of the standalone products you guys take and make. You know, one of the funny things about me is i love iot stuff and so if i'm gaming like if i'm gaming my office i'm on my beautiful gaming

computer right now if i'm gaming i turn the lights off so i don't have the glare and i can focus on what i'm gaming and so a lot of people hear me in game mode where i go hey gg le uh uh turn off the lights or lower the lights or something, you know, so that I don't get the glare. And like people that are in my game will be like, dude, does that actually work? And I'm like, yeah, it's like really cool. It's so nice because I'm not a morning person either. So usually when I stumble in in the morning, I'm trying to get a coffee made and I'm trying to get, and so I'm not looking for lights and switches and everything else. So I'm just always like, Hey, you know, turn on the lights and get everything going and cooking.

Um, and having that is so nice, especially if you go to bed at night. And then one of the things I love is I have dogs and my dogs sometimes in the middle of night, they're like, Hey, we got to go outside and do our business and I'm like seriously and so you you know you don't want to find light switches when you're half asleep and you know you're stumbling over everything that's on the floor and so what's nice is you can just call out the lights come on you find your way let the dogs you know do your do your thing um I love the whole automation thing of it when I go to bed at night I'm too tired to go find the light switches you know turn on i'm not sure i know where the light switches are anymore in my house actually i'm so used to talking to them and it really saves stuff and then

the a lot of your guys's stuff is really cool dimmers so you can just say hey dim the lights 50 hey dim the lights this certain sort of whatever percent you want, and you can get that nice ambiance that you want to take and have. You can create and set moods and everything else. And I think that really makes a difference in the quality of people's lives, especially when you're spending all your time at home nowadays. Yeah, and to your point, Chris, you know, lighting has become more important than ever in the home. I mean, especially when you think about the versatility that we need in our homes, maybe, you know, someone, you know, parents are doing,

you know, conference calls, need to have lights a certain level. Maybe the kids are doing homework or arts and crafts in that same space. Or maybe you're trying to socially distance, entertain a neighbor for, you know, a glass of wine, each one of those is going to require a different set of, you know, really a light level. So having the flexibility to adjust light. So, you know, like, like right now, you and I are doing a video and we're doing a podcast, the lighting has to be just right for both of us for this to look good. The same level of light would be, you know, not appropriate if I was holding a meeting in this room, or if we were doing a, you know, a video conference on the screen. So it's really, you know, lighting and

the concept of this home office and creating this home office has really become, you know, more important than ever. And, you know, what's great about Lutron too is if you're not ready for a connected home or a smart home, or maybe you don't think you need it, we still offer a lot of really great products that are not connected to the internet that are still going to give you that same flexibility and let you create those perfect, you know, lighting scenarios for whatever occasion you need. So again, super affordable. And again, the smart home maybe isn't for everybody, but we've got solutions for those people who maybe aren't quite ready to make that leap and then the hubs will take in control a lot of different things let's talk about the new wood blinds that we reviewed on the chris

fosh show you can yeah the serena wood blinds uh these things uh i i gave to my mom and i'm not an installer i'm not i'm like one of those people that I think years ago, I was building desks in our offices and my business partner, I built a desk and glued it and put it all together. And within five minutes of being done, it like literally fell apart and all the pieces on the floor. And my business partner said, yeah, you know, construction is your thing. CEO is your thing. Thinking about stuff and ideas, but not building, Chris. Construction is is your thing. CEO is your thing, thinking about stuff and ideas, but not building, Chris. Construction is not your thing. And so I was a little worried when, you know, Lutron is like, hey, we're going to send you these wood blinds, we want to review them.

And I'm like, oh man, I'm going to have to install these things. And I'm not good at this stuff. And so we got the wood blinds. And in fact, we should probably plug the Serena website. Do you know the dot com off the top of your head for this? Yeah, sure. It's Serena, S-E-R-E-N-A, shades, S-H-A-D-E-S.com. There you go. So check out Serena Shades. And you can see their view on YouTube and, of course, thechrisfosshow.com.

So I got them, and it was just amazing. And it was really easy to order them. You go online. They teach you how to measure them because that was the other thing I was worried about. I'm like, I'm going to screw up the measuring. They're going to come. It's going to be too – you know, I'm going to screw the whole thing up because I'm just all thumbs. And so it came.

The setup was easy. They built them. They customized them for you. You put in the inches and everything, and they ask you a billion questions to make sure that everything is just perfect. You can set it up. I think there's wood blinds, and I think isn't there two different other blind things that you can take and get other than wood?

Yeah, you can get roller shades, and you can get Roman shades as well. You can do honeycomb. There's a lot of different styles depending on your preferred window treatment type. Yeah. And so we got the wood blinds and the ones we got are battery operated. There's several different versions. You get battery, you can get, I think it's inline plug where it's, you know, wired. And then I think the other one, I can't remember what the third one is. Do you remember? It's plug in and, or it's either the, the, the wired version that you have to wire like into the window, into the ceiling or battery. There you go. And, and there's just so many variations, but you, you literally can customize it right down to how exactly you want it, including the top part that goes over the blind that makes it look really nice.

And so I installed them. It was, like, really easy. I pulled the old units down. I think it took me longer to pull them down to install the thing because we were having to unscrew them, and I was trying to figure out, okay, so how does this work? And put it in. in latches in nicely put the batteries in and uh and they look beautiful like we went from like just i don't know whatever old blinds we had that were

kind of these old vinyl blinds to these beautiful wood blinds and the thing i love about them is there's like you know how there's the cord that you're always pulling and fiddling with whenever you want to work the blinds and you're always messing with them and it's hanging down. It's always getting kind of, there's none of that. There's none of that sort of stuff. They tilt on the automation and you can either use the remote control. Of course, you need the Lutron hub for that. Or you can just talk into the Google machine or the Alexa machine and say, Hey, turn the blinds, open the blinds 50%. And then the other nice thing that my mom really loves is you can program it to where it knows, it knows where you're at on the planet

and it knows where the, when the sun comes up, when the sun sets, and it will open and close the blinds. She's a woman. She likes to have the blinds closed at night so people aren't looking at her. And then in the morning, she's got the beautiful sun, and you can actually program it so the shades will follow the sun so it's not blasting into your room throughout the day. It's really freaking nice. Yeah, wow.

You just did a great job explaining it. Thank you. It's really freaking nice. Yeah. Wow. You just did a great job explaining it. Thank you. It was, it was really cool. You know, if we could even just take a step back, because some people might not even realize that there are smart window treatments out there and we appreciate that, you know, you obviously enjoyed your experience and gave it a great review, but you know, people might not realize that these types of things exist or, you know, what's interesting is for the longest time, I'll say Lutron's been in the motorized shade business for over 20 years. And for the early part of that, Lutron shades and all motorized shades in the market for that matter were really for the highest end homes. They were very expensive. They had to be installed really

when the house was being built. You didn't really have a lot of flexibility. They didn't have the kind of precision that motorized shades offer today with that precision alignment. Today's shades are silent. Other versions, you know, or some of them that are on the market today, not from Lutron, they have, you know, there's a lot of audible sound that you hear as they're opening and closing. So not only have we, Lutron, come a long way technologically, but we've also made them a product that can be outfitted in any home. So to your point, we now have battery powered, do it yourself, or, you know, help with a phone call away, shades that come in a variety of colors and styles and really and truly like once you have one automated window treatment in your house,

you're literally going to stop and be like, where have these been all my life? Because they're great for hard to reach windows that maybe the shades have been closed for the last five years because it's just a pain to get up there and try to open and close them. Great for people with limited mobility or who maybe can't, you know, use their wrist to, you know, turn a mini blind or whatever. So giving people the power to have control over the amount of sunlight streaming in is a very powerful thing. And let's face it, not just high-end homes suffer from screen glare or sun beating down on the floors and the furniture.

Like, that's a problem that every home or every apartment would have. So the fact that Lutron, you know, took a step back and said, you know what, we need to re-engineer these so that every kind of household, regardless of size or price, could have these in their home. And so that's really how that Serena wood shade or Serena shade brand was really born many years ago. And so these great new wood blinds are just the latest iteration in that family. And we're super excited about them. They just offer so many tremendous benefits to the homeowner who loves that look of wood blinds. One of the things that I really love about the wood blinds from Lutron is how

clean they look. You know, I'm looking right now at the vinyl blinds that we have in my office, the old ones, and there's like this huge cord coming down. That's the, you know, the cord for messing with it and turning it and stuff.

And it just, when you look at it, it just looks awful. Cause you're just like, what is this? And it's going down the wall and crap. And you don't have that with Teleton blinds. There's none of that cord stuff because it's all automated.

You can either use a remote or you can use the voice thing or you can use the app if you want. And so it's so clean looking. I mean, that was one of the things I noticed about it because at first I was like, hey, where's the cord? And then I realized, hey, Eddie, you don't need the cord, man, anymore. And so it just looks really clean and nice. And now anytime I look at the blinds like I have down here and I go, yeah, this really looks awful.

Well, and it's really cool, too, when you have the roller shade or the honeycombs and you see them actually raise and lower, when you see a wall of them raise and lower in precision alignment, it's very cool. You know, you don't typically, I know in other houses I've had before Lutron, when you, you know, you have mini blinds and you're always trying to get them just to the right height so that it's, you know, even across, you don't have to worry about that with the Lutron blinds. They stay in alignment. So again, just helping with the Lutron blinds. They stay in alignment. So, again, just helping with the look. I've had that where you pull the wrong cord and, like, it goes up. Half up, yeah.

Oh, and you're trying to mess with it and stuff. I love it, man. I love Internet of Things. I mean, being a reviewer of Internet of Things products, you know, I have all the latest toys running around here. That's why I have to be careful what i say with the voice activated systems because yeah like uh whenever i'm doing the podcast if i say the wrong word it's like everything starts talking to me like what do you want what do you want um right right but the serena shades were

just awesome and it was so easy to deal with uh like i said i was so worried about screwing it up and i installed myself man all it took was a you know i've got my little screw blaster power unit put them in yeah it shows you how to do everything the instructions were really clear they walked me the instructions were like a structure like a map and they graphically showed me everything i need to do which really helped and uh yeah, it was really easy. I was really worried because when they came, there's a bigger part for the batteries and it takes these D batteries that you put into it.

And I was like, this thing looks really huge, but yeah, installed really nice. Looks really good and works good with the Lutron. You guys just announced the ring for those people who have the ring on their front doors. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, and we are so excited about that. You know, we, Lutron, as you talked about briefly, we talked earlier about, you know, working Lutron products, working with smart speakers. But Lutron products also work with, you know, brands like Sonos for audio, and we work with thermostat companies. And now, you know, Ring is the next alliance that Lutron

was so excited to announce. And when we, you know, we pick our alliances very carefully, you know, we want to make sure that connecting your lights and your shade to another product is really going to add value for the homeowner. It's, you know, kind of like when, when IOT craze started, just because something can be connected to the internet doesn't mean that it should be. I mean, how many times have we said that walking the halls of CES and you're going, what is that that's connected? I, you know, it's, I won't name any,

any products of course, but I've definitely kind of stopped and scratched my head a few times walking the show in Vegas. So anyway, we've all learned that lesson. But Ring, you know, when you think about what Ring's mission is, which is to make neighborhoods safer, and when you think about the power of light and how, you know, light adds that sense of peace of mind. And even before our relationship with Ring, one of the great selling features of our Caseta system is its ability to create that peace of mind for you. So for example, if you're leaving for the night or for the weekend, you can put via the app, you can put your home on like a randomizer so that your lights are randomizing for a couple of hours.

Or as you're pulling up to your house, you can set your geofence so that when you're within one mile, your three outside lights are going to come on and a bedroom light so that you're always walking into a lit house. So peace of mind has always been part of Lutron's Caseta story. So now, very recently, the beginning of September, Lutron and Ring announced a new alliance where when your doorbell, your Ring doorbell is pressed or your outdoor camera senses motion, it will trigger inside lights to come on as part of the Caseta system or our next system up, which is called

Raw2Select. So anytime somebody, you know, that person is detected, motion is detected, somebody rings that bell, your lights are going to automatically go on and very customizable. You tell Ring and you tell Lutron which lights you want to come on. If you only want those lights to come on in the evening, you can customize that too. I have it set up in my own house. I'm a big fan of ring devices, and it works beautifully. I absolutely love that added peace of mind that it gives me. I love it too.

Recently we had some of the kids. We have my dogs in the backyard and the neighbor kids behind us. They're renowned for throwing balls or shoes or for some reason they love to putting stuff over the fence accidentally and so they'll come over and muck about the side of the house and try and see if they can get it from the dogs and uh which is kind of concerned because they don't want the dogs to escape uh they're siberians uh and so recently we we we caught them uh trying to get in the backyard and muck around and they're not up to anything unofficial but the fact that we can let people know and i love how

the lights go on because i i got one of the first rings when it first came out that we reviewed on the chris voss show and we've had them we love the rings i've sold so many rings um i probably should uh you know been making money off of it and. And the thing about the ring is you can be at the store, and if somebody rings your doorbell, and you get, you know, whether it's the Seventh Day Adventist or the seller of the stuff, you know, selling different things. And one of the things that used to make me nervous was, especially if the guys were selling stuff and this is really

big in vegas i don't know about other parts of the country but there are guys that would go around and they would use that to case homes they would they would present themselves as like pest control sellers or some sort of marketer and then when they figured out you weren't home they would break in and uh so uh one of the things that I used to make me wary about the ring was, you know, I would answer and be like, hey, you know, what's up, man? And sometimes I'd be at the store or down the road and I'd be like, yeah, I'm not there right now, but yeah, I can't deal with you or come to the door. And I'm like, man, they could break in my home right now because they know I'm not home. And so I would worry about it.

And so I love this idea of where the lights come on, they're going to get the impression that I'm home, and they're going to get that concept of like, oh, well, yeah, they're here, okay, so they're just not coming to the door. Yeah. From a security aspect. Yeah, I mean, to your point, I mean mean it's a great additional feature and you know everybody wants their home to be as secure as possible and you know family to be secure so I just love the idea

of this added level of you know to your point not only can I tell people hey you know not interested can't come to the door it's a second but to your point now if there's any doubt to the person in the you know who they're catching on the camera or ringing the bell now with that extra added layer of seeing one or two or multiple lights come on i mean i i would guess that person's going to think twice about doing anything shady yeah i mean i i really see it as an added feature to what the ring does because i've seen so many ring videos. I mean, we all kind of watch those ring videos where the cape goes up to the door. Sometimes they're after Amazon packages.

That's the big thing now. And a lot of times they don't know anyone's there until somebody talks through the ring. But the fact the lights will come on and everything else, they can go, oh, crap, you know, here it is. There's a lot of people who have put rings on the back door and i've seen in vegas where they'll they'll come through the you know jump the back fence come to the back door and then you know the lights will come on with the lutron stuff so i think this is a definite added benefit to it so i think it's awesome you guys have taken out of this um i don't know if you want to name some of the other people in the app. Honeywell, Thermostat, you guys are integrated.

Nest, you guys are integrated with. Carrier and Ecobee and, of course, Sonos, the system you guys are integrated with. So all those different systems, if you have them in the IoT features on them, I guess we'll integrate with Lutron. Yeah. And, again, to your point, all of the smart speakers, so Apple, Amazon, and Google.

So we've got everybody covered. It's like my whole house is listening to me at this point. And sometimes my mom will get into arguments with some of the different IoT things, and she's like, I'll hear her screaming, like, Karen, stop the thing. And so it's funny to see. This is the world we live in with the coronavirus. We're taking care. Yeah.

What's funny, my mom's name is Alexis. And so she actually had to, they had, my parents had to move their Alexa unit because if she would be on the phone and she'd be like, oh, hi, this is Alexis, Alexa would hear some version of, you know, Alexa, close enough, Alexis, and would, you know, I'm sorry, what can I help you now? So they actually had to move their smart speaker to another room. That is brutal. But they love it. They love it. Having an IoT home, and I'm really surprised, and maybe'm really surprised, and maybe I've just always been on the cutting edge because we review these products,

but I'm really surprised at how many people don't have this stuff in their homes. And it's really inexpensive, especially with Lutron. I mean, sometimes we have some stuff that's like crazy expensive, and I'm like, do I need a mortgage? Do I have to get a second mortgage in the home to put this in but everything is really inexpensive to put into the homes and uh and and get the lutron hooked up it's very easy to hook up there's not that usually the you've got the lutron base model that will plug into your wi-fi or you can hook it up with an extension depend upon you know how you want to set up your thing but usually usually it just plugs right into your Wi-Fi.

The bridge takes and runs itself, runs all the different Lutron devices. It's really easy to add them on. It's like a total no-brainer. I can't see why anybody wouldn't want to have them attach their system and just make the lights better, set the mood better. You know, being able to, even I forget sometimes. I'm like, I should turn that light down cause it's really bright. And you're like laying in bed and you're trying to read a book or maybe watch your thing.

And you're like, I, the lights are blasting me right now. And you're like, I don't want to get up. I'm too tired. Yeah. I want to say, Hey, turn the lights down to 20% or 5% or whatever is so nice. And then I would change colors if you want different things. I love being able to do that. Well, and you know, to your, to your point, Chris, I think, you know,

I've, I've been with Lutron for 22 years. I've seen a lot of changes, not only at Lutron, but within the smart home industry in general. And the shift that I always like to talk about is I feel like as recently as even five years ago, smart home gadgets were still being viewed as gadgets. They were not viewed as problem solvers. They were not being viewed as, you know, oh, things that's going to make life easier or, you know, things that's going to help me remotely care for a loved one. Like these were people, a lot of people were looking at these things and saying, oh, what do you know? Gosh, I'm not lazy. What do I need a remote control for this for? What do I need to be able to know about this on my phone for?

But, you know, flip the conversation. And, you know, to the point we were talking about earlier, when all of a sudden you say to somebody, you know, do you prefer walking into a completely dark house at night? Do you like having to leave your lights on 12 hours a day while you're home because you don't have the ability to control them? Well, most likely you're going to answer no. And, you know, when you start explaining to people that, you know, with a catheter kit or, you know, fill in the blank brand, others do it, you know, under $100, you can have a great peace of mind story. And all of a sudden, you can now pull up to a lit house, you can now,

like I talked about earlier, randomized lights when you're not home. So all of a sudden, this smart home product is no longer a gadget, but it's something that's going to add value to my life. And it's going to make my life easier. And I think we are definitely seeing that happen. And I think we have a lot of the smart speaker companies to thank for that because, you know, with a low, very low investment, you now can, you know, have a friend tell you the news and, you know, give you recipes and, you know, add things to your shopping list. And it's a great entree into smart home, just like Caseta is a great entree into lighting control, you know, and that's why it's great that we sell these small starter kits, you can start small, maybe you just want to do

your outside light, maybe you've got a ring doorbell, and you want to, you know, make this under $100 investment. And you know, now when somebody rings your bell, your porch light goes on, your patio light goes on, what have you, and all of a sudden you've just changed the game at your home. So I think the more we see people kind of understanding those real-life benefits, I think we're going to see adoption skyrocket even more than what we've seen so far. I think security is a big thing for women, too. Like being able to, as you're coming home and you break the geofence that you have

and it triggers your lights to turn on, if your home was ever being robbed or invaded or something, it would signal to them that something's about to happen and maybe the cops are being called or something and they probably run off. It certainly would make it so you're not walking into a dark home. I know one of the things I like is being able to turn on my lights when I walk in my room because I'm usually playing with the dogs and like, oh, you're just in the store. I'm dealing with them and I don't have to deal with and I don't want to fight with the lights and I got to walk across the room to go turn that on.

I know a lot of parents are home right now, so they're juggling the kids because the kids are home now. They're in schooling and so you know moms and dads are you know doing 50 million things probably carrying a baby or two and uh you know just being able to yell out and turn on the lights it makes all the difference in the world after a while you get really used to it like you get really spoiled because you're just like you're just like uh every now and then I'll be like where's the light switch again and so it's really funny and then like I say

anytime I'm talking to people like whether I'm on a call or whether I'm you know gaming or something people are like did you just do it I think you did and I'm like yeah I tried oh that's funny and a lot of times go ahead

a lot of times it's amazing good go ahead a lot of times i'll let you go i'll be quiet go ahead no no go you it's your show all right all right uh you know a lot of times well my favorite thing to do is i actually go to bed with the lights on because i don't go look for him and stuff and then when i'm in bed and i know i've got the dogs there and and everything's settled everything's settled in, uh, then I, then I, you know, it's bedtime, turn on the lights and away we go. Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to say, you know, it just, it's amazing how everybody's going to have their own killer app, right? You know, for you, it's going to bed, not having to remember where all the lights are, you know, for your mom, it's being able to ask Google to, you know,

do things for her, for some people who may be entertained a lot. It's, it's being able to ask Google to, you know, do things for her. For some people who maybe entertain a lot, it's the ability to, you know, tell your voice assistant to set party mode. And all of a sudden, lights in seven different rooms change when we can have parties again, I guess. But anyway, you know, everybody's going to have their own, that one special thing that really kind of is that aha moment that they're like, okay, $100 or less investment can build over time. Yeah, you know what, this makes sense. And we're lucky that this cost of smart home products have gone down so significantly, and that they are so affordable, because I do, like I said before, the benefits, the, you know, the ability to simplify daily routines, and, you know, just giving yourself that peace of mind, you know, at any cost, it would be a bargain. But the fact that you can do it so inexpensively is just really tremendous for the homeowner. And then the other great thing is they're always adding features and different benefits or, like, integrations, like what you guys did recently.

And it just automatically downloads the updates or firmwares. You don't have to go out and buy new crap every year. Right. And that makes all the difference in the world. It really does, yeah. You can see a lot of the reviews we've done on the Lutron products. You just can go to chrisfoss.com, thechrisfosher.com, and type in Lutron, and you can see all the different products we reviewed over there.

And I think there's some more coming we're reviewing next week. Anything more, Melissa, we need to know about you guys, what you guys are doing? Yeah, I would just say, you know, stay tuned. You know, Lutron has been innovating for 60 years. I guess we're about to celebrate 60 years in 2021. And, you know, like I said, for your listeners who might not be ready to make that leap to a smart home, there are some very, very cool, very high-tech looking ceiling products that are going to give you all those same benefits of the ability to control light, but just without having to have them connected to the internet. And the motion sensor

is one of my favorite things, you know, great for when you're walking into a laundry room and you've got your, you know, laundry in your hands or you're coming in a back door and you've got, you know, kids or pets or sports equipment, you know, not having to use your elbow to, you know, laundry in your hands or you're coming in a back door and you've got, you know, kids or pets or sports equipment, you know, not having to use your elbow to, you know, turn on the light. A motion sensor is really great. So, you know, smart home means different things to different people. And for some, being able to walk into a room and have their motion turn the light on, like that is a smart home for a lot of people. So I love that Lutron can bring people all these different products at a variety of prices that are very easy to use and intuitive for, you know, whoever in the family might be using them. That's one of the things Lutron

really prides itself on is making sure that these products are as beautiful as they are functional. So we really design from the outside in and make sure that whether it's grandma, a five-year-old or visitors, everyone in between, you're going to be able to understand which button to press to make those shades go up or down or to make that light go on. Yeah, I love it too. One of the reasons I go to bed with the lights on is because, you know, I have dogs and I'm sure people have kids, you know, and there's always the light goes on the floor that you're going to step on. And my my dogs, there's, like, always a bone or a tree running around somewhere. So you can crawl into bed and have the lights turned off so you're not, you know, people.

In the old days, you know, I used to do the thing where you turn the light off on the switch, and then you're like, where's the bed? And you're, like, you know, breaking a foot off trying to figure out where, you know, the dogs are and fighting with them. And, of course, they take over the bed. And then the beautiful thing is if they've got to go out in the middle of the night or I. And, of course, they take over the bed. And then the beautiful thing is if they've got to go out in the middle of the night or I have to get up in the middle of the night, I can turn the lights on with my voice, and then I'm not tripping over whatever and bumping into stuff in the middle of the night. So, you know, just the whole automatic feature of it where you feel like you're living in this virtual world of the Jetsons,

you know, when you're a kid. Yeah. Pretty amazing. Yeah, just being able to call out and go, hey, fix this stuff and make it ready for me. And it just adds more ease to your life. There's nothing worse than in the old days, I remember I would go to bed, and you left the little kitchen line on. And you're like, oh, I've got to go.

Right. So there you go. Folks, check it out. You can go to Lutron.com. That's Lutron.com. And I believe it's Serena Shades for the wood shades. That's correct. There you go.

SerenaShades.com. And, of course, you can find the links in the Chris Foss show as well. And watch her review of the wood blinds. I've got to tell you, the wood blinds were really nice. I mean, they are sweet looking, uh, beautiful. And, and I really believe they add value to your home. I mean, if, if my mom were to ever sell her home, they would go into that room and be like, this is really nice in here. That's awesome. And I love the fact that you had such an easy time with them too. And I think just as a closing thought, you know,

Lutron does offer 24 seven 365 free regional, regional tech support. So, you know, if you decide to, you know, do these as a DIY and you have any questions, just call the free toll free number and they'll walk you through the process. They actually get people who call them from retail stores and say, I'm not sure which, you know, what is a multi-location? What's, you know, they'll actually help you through that process as well. So it's a wonderful resource. And, and like I said, help is always just a free phone call away. So glad to hear you're such a fan.

We appreciate it. And thanks again for having me on today. There you go. Thanks for coming on, Melissa. We certainly appreciate you guys. Be sure to check it out, Lutron.com or SerenaShades.com for the wood blinds or the other blinds. There's all the variants that are over there. Check those out. I love the automation. I mean, it's just – it's actually cool to show off. We put up videos on social media, on Facebook, and we're like,

watch what we do with the blinds. And people are like, oh, on Facebook. And we're like, watch what we do with the blinds and people like, Oh my God. Um, and so it's a lot of fun. And like I said, we've always given Lutron great reviews over the years. Uh, love their products. They're very inexpensive compared to some of the stuff that we see in prices that come down over the years, but for what you get and what the build is and the qualities there,

the last year's for you and you'll do well. Thanks to Melissa for being with us. Thanks to Lutron. And thanks to my audience. Be sure to go to the CBPN, refer to show your friends, neighbors, relatives,

go to youtube.com fortress, Chris Voss. If you want to see the video version of all of our videos, you can hit the bell notification and all that good stuff. Also go to goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss. You can subscribe to us there, all the great authors that we have. We just booked the great comedian Michael Ian Black, who's going to be on the show in a week or two,

talking about his latest book. Check that out. Some pretty cool authors coming up. Thanks, my audience, for tuning in. We'll see you guys next time.