1:02:32
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, talking, facility, helping, companies, business, iot, clayton, question, great, dust collectors, sensor, awesome, andrew, building, occupancy, customers, data, systems, technology
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Clayton Brust, Jill Valdez, Andrew Deutsch, Grant Mathis, Jacob Warren, Dennis Bolger, Ajay, Andrew Cross, Majid Zafer, Mark Scrimenti, Pete Alexander, Stewart Gerber
Andrew Cross 00:00
Turn your mics and camera on again.
Damon Pistulka 00:03
Bring him to the stage. There. They are not on stage right now. So I’m going to bring him on stage. Sometimes it does that. There we go. Now you guys should be able to get in.
00:17
I should be in.
Damon Pistulka 00:18
There we go. We’re good. All right, well, I’m gonna get us live on LinkedIn. And we are going to get rolling, guys.
00:24
So
00:27
Are we rolling?
Damon Pistulka 00:29
We’ll be in just a moment. All right, everyone, Welcome once again to the eggs your way business roundtable where we help people with hopefully interesting events in and learning in and getting to meet other people. I see the chats already rolling. Great to see mark and Jill. Andrew chipped in my EAD good stuff, guys, we got the chat to the right now we’re going to be talking about some interesting stuff today. If you’re listening to us live on LinkedIn, go ahead and tell us where you’re listening from.
And if you’ve got some questions for our speakers, get ahead, go ahead and drop them into your comments on LinkedIn. I’m watching LinkedIn over here too. So if you see me doing this, that’s what I’m doing. I’m looking at your comments over on LinkedIn, we’re going to get gone here. I’m really excited today, because we’re going to be talking about IoT industry 4.0 and how this is being used around us. We’ve got a couple speakers here that will introduce later, we’ve got me Hayden Clayton, they’re going to be telling us about some of the cool things they’re doing.
If you are listening, or you are on the tables out here, go ahead and drop your LinkedIn URL in the chat people connect with you. And we have Chris wrangle, who just dropped in, he’s got listened to us listening in to us from Florida. Good to you, Chris on LinkedIn. So without further ado, we’re going to start and in my head and Clayton have no idea what we’re going to go through right now. So part of what we do, which is always it’s kind of fun as we pull everybody up, so they can this they can say hello, introduce themselves.
And then they can go ahead and answer our question of the day. So we’re going to have short introductions. We’re going to talk a little bit my my Miss mystery Question of the day. So I I pick one. I go, I searched the internet far and wide to find the wisest questions of the day. And if that is NBS? I don’t know what it is. So yeah, so we’re gonna have So Andrew is going to be pulling people up as we’re doing this. And if you’re, if you’re on LinkedIn, go ahead and answer the question yourself there, Chris or anyone else that’s listening.
Andrew Cross 03:02
guys go first today.
Damon Pistulka 03:05
Who gets to go first? Andrew,
03:06
the first victim?
Damon Pistulka 03:08
Yeah. Let’s see. Professor Alexander. How
03:12
are you today, man?
03:13
I’m great.
03:14
I’m great. Tillman. How
Pete Alexander 03:15
are you guys doing?
03:17
Well, draw your name came up there.
03:21
Hey, that’s okay.
Pete Alexander 03:22
That’s it. That’s totally okay. Usually with the Alexander I’m one of the first ones but on this one. I’m usually one of the last ones. So okay.
Damon Pistulka 03:29
I know.
Andrew Cross 03:30
We usually pick on Andrew. But enter Deutsch but we’re, we’ll give him a break this week.
Damon Pistulka 03:39
Yeah. Well, Pete, we can’t complain about the weather in the northwest lately. We’ve had a little clouds with moisture been nice when it’s not cloudy.
Pete Alexander 03:47
That’s right. That’s absolutely right. It’s cloudy right now for me. But I’m it’s supposed to be partly cloudy later. So look at that.
Damon Pistulka 03:55
We’re looking for a couple nice days here. So Pete, tell us a little bit about yourself how you’re helping people and then we’ll get to the question of the day. Sure. Sure. So
Pete Alexander 04:03
in addition to being the host of the popular, winning a business and life podcast, I’m the president of loss office plants by everything grows. And we help companies reduce stress, improve productivity, and receive outstanding ROI through the methodical design and placement of lush living plants in work environments.
Damon Pistulka 04:27
Yeah, yeah. Now I just say that Pete is understanding the fact that he does a podcast, you’ve got like 252 hours and 60 episodes and the thing now,
Pete Alexander 04:38
yeah, just recorded 200 and the 270/5 yesterday and I published I forgot I’ve just published this morning. Yes, some 260 something.
Damon Pistulka 04:49
Yeah, yeah. And your company where you help it helping office people with the live plants and really i think that that is that’s interesting, because I would kill everyone if it was me doing it. But being live plants really helped a lot.
Pete Alexander 05:05
They do they actually, part of the reason that I bought the business back in 2005 was because, you know, lush, living plants actually reduce stress and improve productivity. It’s not a bunch of BS. There’s actually science behind that.
Damon Pistulka 05:21
Yeah, yeah. Awesome, man. Awesome. Well, this is a question that I don’t usually ask questions like this. But I want to know, what is the favorite thing? What do you think your favorite thing is about yourself?
Pete Alexander 05:39
What is the favorite thing I think about myself?
Damon Pistulka 05:42
Yeah. The other thing you like about yourself?
05:46
Probably if I was
Pete Alexander 05:48
the first thing that comes to mind is my Encyclopedia of jokes that I know and you’ve experienced a couple of those Damon another
05:55
call.
Damon Pistulka 05:57
Yeah.
Pete Alexander 05:58
And so it just you know, it’s it’s one of those things that comes out. You know, I have this, this ability that in conversation, I hear a key word and boom, I know the joke. And sometimes you know, I I share it sometimes I don’t it depends on on the situation.
Damon Pistulka 06:16
Yeah. And the crowded the joke that comes to mind. I’m sure have a lot.
Pete Alexander 06:21
Absolutely. You know it exactly.
Damon Pistulka 06:25
So awesome. Thanks so much, Pete. Glad to have you here today.
Pete Alexander 06:29
Yeah. Thanks for hosting.
Damon Pistulka 06:31
Yeah, AJ, great to see you again.
Ajay 06:34
Hey, guys, how are you?
06:37
Just real quick. I’d
Andrew Cross 06:38
also invited Troy McCoy up. And I’m not sure I think he’s fairly new here. But if you, Troy if you can hear us, you’ll want to turn your camera and your camera mic on when you come up on stage.
Damon Pistulka 06:52
Yep. Yep. Sorry. Oh, good. Good. AJ, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you’re helping people.
Ajay 07:02
This is AJ, I’m from India. So I’m into the IT staffing. So throughout the US so I work as a recruiter, business development manager for ID companies. So I work on the mostly it roles like a developer developers at mainstage was QA and all this kind of stuff.
Damon Pistulka 07:20
Yeah. So AJ is helping and this is relevant to you guys. I’m Aiden Kramer, he helps manufacturers mostly in the US source, remote IT staff that can support their their systems. So good stuff. So what do you think is what is your favorite thing about yourself? Maybe?
Ajay 07:43
So first, I thought that first question would be me. Luckily, Professor paper, first week came. So. So if you just look into the three I have two qualities. So what I like about myself is like, see, I’m very sensitive to the things. So I just like, What I mean to say is is like if anything is going bad, so I just feel that see I need to help something to do get better and most qualities. The second thing is I like my voice a lot.
Damon Pistulka 08:17
All right, awesome. Man. I like it. Great, AJ, awesome to have you here today, man. Love, love. Love to see you around. Thanks for stopping by to be over here. Yeah, have a great, great rest your evening, Stu. How are you today, sir?
Stewart Gerber 08:39
I am. Well, thank you.
Damon Pistulka 08:40
Awesome. Awesome. So can you feel here? Is your video cut out a little bit, but we’re good. Yeah, if you can still hear us.
Stewart Gerber 08:48
I can hear you. You’re still able to hear us. Okay.
Damon Pistulka 08:51
Yeah, we’re good. We’re good, man. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you’re helping people do.
Stewart Gerber 08:57
So my primary business is with parallel business solutions. And I’m the President and Founder and our focus is on helping small businesses and our biggest nation is actually trying to help a lot of these small businesses get access into government grants, just to help them push ahead and get across that finish line. When I’m not busy playing on the computer and helping these businesses I spend time in the shop in my work shop and I ground myself and I have great delight in playing around with things that all things would.
Damon Pistulka 09:33
Yeah, yeah. And still your your winning creations are incredible Dude, I look at them and you share. I really liked the way that you share the different types of wood when you go into your suppliers and take pictures of the different types of wood and and describe them. That’s cool stuff. It’s cool stuff. Well, what is the favorite, your favorite thing about yourself? It’s Do
Stewart Gerber 09:59
you You know what the thing, my favorite thing, I think is the fact that I had to learn to grow up. And as a kid growing up through the foster homes and through through a system that was a little bit broken, I always thought that I wasn’t going to make it. Because you were always that person that was kind of pushed out. And the person that people said, wouldn’t amount to anything. And I think my favorite thing is, is the fact that when I was young, I set an intent in my mind that they were never going to stop me and that I would rise above everything that they ever set in front of me.
And I would only use that as an obstacle, rather than it actually being something that stopped me. Yeah, my favorite thing is that I was able to rise above. And that is a daily motivation for me still today. That keeps me going. That’s awesome, dude.
Andrew Cross 10:57
Yeah, that’s
Damon Pistulka 11:01
incredible, man. so so happy you shared that with us. scaly. Thanks so much. Do thanks so much for being here today. It’s incredible, man. Just thank you. Mark Whiting. Guitar behind you, as usual. Hey, good. Thank
Mark Scrimenti 11:21
you. It’s great to see you. Great to see you guys. Always good to be here. A little cloudy here in Chicago. But you know, I’ll take it. It’s warm. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 11:30
yeah. So tell us how you’re helping people, man. Yeah,
Mark Scrimenti 11:33
I’m a fractional coo. And I work with small businesses and startups, particularly visionary CEOs who have got a vision, but they need some help with the strategy and execution. My background is in e commerce operations. So that included digital marketing, product development, customer service, and I’ve got a client now I’m looking at other clients, really helping people grow, grow their business and scale it for sustainable growth and profitability.
Damon Pistulka 12:05
Yeah, awesome, man. And Mark is Mark is pretty subdued about what he really did. Because when you get into his background, and really understand how he went with it with his ecommerce experience, it’s really pretty incredible. When you look at that, you know, tripling or quadrupling quadrupling the size of a company and, and to the size that he did, it really is something. And I just feel fortunate to be able to talk to you about those things and get to know you better. Thank you, David,
Mark Scrimenti 12:38
I really appreciate that encouragement. And I’d rather have you say that than me. I really appreciate that.
Damon Pistulka 12:47
So what is your favorite thing about yourself, Mark?
Mark Scrimenti 12:52
You know, I think I’m, I’m open minded. I’m fair minded. So I can see both sides of the coin, typically. And I think that helps me, you know, when it comes to negotiating with people, and you know, understanding there’s an empathy there. So really, you know, different points of view, kind of seeing both different points of view and then trying to come to some kind of leading people to consensus.
Damon Pistulka 13:16
Yeah, yeah. That’s
Jacob Warren 13:18
cool.
Damon Pistulka 13:19
That’s cool. And that’s a gift. Really? Yeah. I don’t you can learn it somewhat. But it really is innate, almost. When you when you like to bring people together to to come come up with better ideas as a group.
Mark Scrimenti 13:31
Right. Right. I think there’s some, you know, family of origin stuff there to kind of negotiating.
Damon Pistulka 13:37
Yeah. Yeah, that guy. Yeah. Good stuff, man. Thanks for being here today. Mark. Good to see you. My pleasure. Yeah. Great to see you, man. Gil, my friend from Portland.
Jill Valdez 13:52
I’m so good. How are you? You know, I’m
Damon Pistulka 13:55
incredible every day that we can wake up and do what we love to do. It is an awesome day. And every day that we can wake up, it’s an awesome day. So it’s a doubly awesome day.
14:10
Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 14:11
So tell us about yourself. How are you helping people? I,
Jill Valdez 14:16
I’m working with small businesses, small business service providers. And I work with them to develop their staff from mediocre to amazing. And I love that because it provides more certainty for the future for those small business owners, those business leaders and I have figured out how to do it without any service disruption without having to start from scratch. And we get to just keep working as as business is going and making things better. So it’s, it’s a joy to be doing that.
Damon Pistulka 14:50
Awesome. Awesome. And I know that it’s it’s great seeing your stuff and how you’re helping people I just love, love the love the stuff that you do. Thank So Jill, our question of the day, what is your favorite thing about yourself?
Jill Valdez 15:08
My favorite thing is my tenacity. Like, I just don’t know how to give up. And, and I, that’s been really beneficial for my own personal life. But I also take that spirit and that attitude to the people that I work with. I, you know, my friends, I’m going to, you know, instill that in them. I’m going to fight for them. I’m going to work with them, my clients, so that’s my favorite.
Damon Pistulka 15:41
That’s a good one. That’s a good one. That’ll go. That’ll take you far. That’s for sure. Yes, sir. Awesome. Great to have you here today. Jill. Jacob Warren?
15:54
Yes.
Damon Pistulka 15:57
The man with the beard in our grill. So
Jacob Warren 16:02
our thing today, things today are absolutely awesome. It’s been a wonderful morning so far. And yesterday was great. This week has just been full of a whole bunch of different things. So it’s been really good.
Damon Pistulka 16:15
Awesome. Awesome. Well, I think I think you’ll be interested in the guy’s talk today, cuz you are a technology guy. And knows a little bit about how you’re helping people, man. Yeah,
Jacob Warren 16:28
I help people by making technology work, managing it, taking care of it, making it where you can just focus on running and growing your business. That’s most important thing. We put people ahead of the technology and customize the technology, and make sure it’s working for what you’re trying to do. So that’s about as simple as I can put it into a little nutshell.
Damon Pistulka 16:52
Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s awesome, man. Because you do make it simple. And when Jacob works on your stuff, it’s like Jacob’s not even around. It just works. That’s the good thing. It magic. Yeah. It just works, man. That’s a good thing. So what is your favorite thing about yourself?
Jacob Warren 17:11
So, you know, it’s, it’s interesting when you put on the spot to answer a question like this about yourself. And I saw, I was going back and forth in my head, and I boiled it down to, I think the thing I like about myself is, and I know it sounds so Philly, and touchy and all that stuff, but it’s actually the heart. The reason I say that is, not a lot of people realize, but you know, we tend when we pass people, they say, Oh, hey, how you doing?
And oh, yeah, I care about you. But the truth is, is when I’m actually talking to somebody, or whether I just met them, or whatever, my heart actually really is concerned about them and really wants the best for them. And so I think I learned that from my grandfather, the most, I’ll contribute to that is just genuinely caring and loving on people for who they are, where there are, what they’re doing.
Damon Pistulka 18:17
That’s awesome, dude. That is awesome, man.
Jacob Warren 18:22
Thank you. It kind of gets you Where? When? When somebody says that’s awesome. It’s like, okay, yeah. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 18:31
Hey, that’s great that you shared I think that’s, that’s incredible. Dude, thanks so much. Thanks so much. Awesome. Great to have you here today, man. Grant. wonderful to see you from from sunny California. So how are things today?
Grant Mathis 18:48
Not so sunny, but we’re good. I can never complain about the weather in California. You know? Yeah, people. People beat me up if I try that.
Damon Pistulka 18:58
Yeah, yeah. So tell us a little bit about how you’re helping people and what you’re doing
Grant Mathis 19:03
the short version manufacturing to reduce contaminant exposures and consumer skincare and manufacturing a landfill degradable packaging I’ve been, I’ve been reaching out all over the place. And so thanks for the support. And if anybody’s got some ideas about you know, that manufacturing these these small plastic bottles, I, I could use some help on that. But I think the the main thing that that I guess I would like to unpack at this point is that, you know, industrial practices are contaminating our biosphere at a global scale. And so this is our way of pushing back on that.
Damon Pistulka 19:46
Yeah, yeah. So grants helped me they have a clean skincare line and then they’ve got a packaging that packaging that breaks down in the landfills in and in robotically in landfill. So it’s really an end to end solution that’s, that’s better. If you if you’ve looked at your lotions or anything else you use in skincare, there’s a lot of stuff in there that you really don’t know what it is. And then it’s in a bottle that you think about all these little models that we buy of this lotion. And and what happens to them after it’s not a not a pretty, pretty picture. So great to have you here today, Grant. So what is the pick your favorite thing about yourself?
Grant Mathis 20:27
I am entirely redeemable. Like the money also make mistakes, but I’m pretty good at recovering. And I think in my darkest moments that’s kind of helped me realize that. You know, I’ll figure things out and get better.
Damon Pistulka 20:49
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. That’s a great one. Because you know, I think I think especially as as we put a few years on, that gets easier to realize that no matter where we’re at, there is a solution. If we just take the first step and the second step, the third step, but good stuff, man. Great to have you here, Grant. Awesome. See you again. Thanks, Andrew Deutsch. How are you today? Sir? I’m good guys. How are you? I am awesome. Andrew, boys are resident video expert, and strategic marketing expert. So tell us about how you’re helping people, Andrew.
Andrew Deutsch 21:32
We help people get unstuck and grow by taking them back to the core and building an actual strategy based on their customer or customers and what what matters to them, as well as how you as a company can differentiate to make and beat all of the other alternative solutions to your customers problems and challenges.
Damon Pistulka 21:53
Yes, yeah. When you hear Andrew talk about making your customer and everyone that you touch for aces advocates, I encourage you to have a couple conversations with him about that. Because I learned so much just talking to you every single time. We just talked yesterday on the phone for a few minutes, and you’re blowing my mind again. So I was like, Oh, God,
Andrew Deutsch 22:18
I just blew my own mind. There was a twofer. It wasn’t gonna get out of hand. Yeah. You
22:43
Question of the day, what
Damon Pistulka 22:44
is your favorite thing about your job?
Andrew Deutsch 22:47
I think it’s it’s what I now bring to the table creatively after spending most of my life living outside of mine and everyone else’s comfort zone and embracing difference and learning from it.
Damon Pistulka 23:02
That’s awesome. That’s awesome.
Andrew Deutsch 23:04
And blowing shit up on screen. That’s
Damon Pistulka 23:06
always Yeah, that’s forgiven.
Andrew Deutsch 23:08
That’s one quick thing while I while I can steal the stage. I’m working on a project we’re looking for guinea pigs for a potential podcast, myself and another partner who will rename be nameless until you get to see how cool this is. We’re looking for people who are stuck in their business from a marketing perspective, to be a guest on a podcast with two experts to flesh out an idea for 30 minutes. So if you know of anyone who is in a tough place doesn’t have the money to pay for an actual consultant and wants what would normally be a $500 session for free. Send me a message or a note of those people in our pre interview and see if they’re a fit for what we’re doing.
Damon Pistulka 23:56
Awesome. Great. Great. That’s awesome. Andrew, I hope people are listening on LinkedIn or in the group here that want to take advantage of it. I’d say jump on it, jump on it, you will you will benefit from
Andrew Deutsch 24:08
- They will win if they if they join the show.
Damon Pistulka 24:11
Nice, nice, good stuff. There’s a lot of ways you go with that show. So great. Great, great. Great. So Dennis, how are you today?
Dennis Bolger 24:23
Hey, we’re doing great. Thank you for asking. And last but not least, okay. So what we do is we independently help businesses and and personal folks understand their risk, their insurance risk, and then we pass that risk off to somebody else that will take care of it for them when there’s a catastrophe. And so that’s what we do. It’s a little bit different than what you would think an insurance guy would do but and we really we really care about what we do. And it it’s a fun gig and we and we’re here. We’re moving along, relatively new business, and we’re doing great. Um, can I tag on to something that you said, Hey, Damon?
Damon Pistulka 25:19
Yeah. Okay, so
Dennis Bolger 25:21
a guy told me one year, a long time ago, that I’m not who I think I am. I’m not who you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. I kind of lived with that for years. And whenever I see somebody, I go, Hmm, what are they thinking about me? And how do they think about me as I go along? And so that that’s what that’s what I try to live by. But anyway, what’s my favorite thing about myself?
It comes down to about three different words tenacity, empathy, and resilience. And I have that kind of rolled into my makeup. And that’s what I do. So, Dave, we’re here to help. If anybody has any questions about any type of risk, whether it be life insurance, health insurance, any of the different kinds of risks, we’re here to help. We’re and we go as an unpaid consultants when that comes around. Thanks. Awesome.
Damon Pistulka 26:33
It’s great. Great to know something better write it down, because those are great. I think that’s the powerful as well. We’ll get your far. Thanks so much for being here, man. Whoa, all right. If we’ve missed you go ahead and drop it in the chat. But we’ll let we’ll let my he’d go. So my he’d tell us a little bit about yourself. And then we’ll have Clayton go. And then Andrew, and I’ll go and then we’ll start.
Majid Zafer 26:58
Yeah, well, you guys are about to find out what we do. So before that, if and then when it comes down to your question.
Damon Pistulka 27:09
What do you what is your favorite thing about yourself?
Majid Zafer 27:13
And, you know, if I had to think about it, I would guess curiosity, you know, I’m extremely curious, which, which makes, which makes me very fractionalized, right, and kind of gives me more of a growth mindset and a fixed one. So always looking to learn always looking to grow, and I enjoy the process of it.
Damon Pistulka 27:38
Yeah, that’s awesome, dude. That’s really awesome. And yes, we will learn about what you’re doing here shortly by curiosity and write that one down. That’s a good one, too. And then then how that develops into the road mindset. I really like that. Clayton? How will you respond to our question of the day, sir?
Clayton Brust 27:56
The day Wow, get to go last. So how do I how do I answer that without sounding like I’m copying people? A lot of great things. But to try to differentiate, I will say, fearless comes to mind, whether it’s good for me or not. I’ve gone for it. And nobody has found a way to make things happen one way or another. But more importantly, I would, I would go back to what Jacob was saying. And that’s hard.
And that actually came from my grandfather as well. I’m willing to truly listen to anyone give anyone a chance. And I truly do want to help and I truly want to be a friend to people. Whether it’s a business relationship or someone I meet on the street, and you tell me just for self serving reason to makes me feel good. Or if a reward center that that is there or trying to do right by other people. I’m surely trying to be there for them.
Damon Pistulka 28:53
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome, dude. Awesome. Good stuff. Boy, Andrew, what about you? Yeah, slow bit about, you know, people. Go ahead.
Andrew Cross 29:03
You’re gonna make me do it. Well, David, and I are most of you already heard this before. David and I are partners, we founded exit your way. And we’re a, you know, a m&a advisory firm and a boutique consulting group. And we specialize we basically we work with small medium sized businesses we not use their companies to sell them for more money. So that’s, that’s exit your way. Yeah, hopefully it says what it is.
And we love doing it. It’s a lot of fun to see somebody you know, you know, a what they deserve, you know, for really their life work in their big biggest investment in their life. So it’s quite an honor to be able to participate in that. Oh, the question, dammit. I thought no, it’s my body. My You know, the hotpot was kind of my favorite thing but
30:03
but, you know,
Andrew Cross 30:05
I thought about that a little bit I curiosity, I think but but he did. That’s, that’s great. And you know, always kind of wanting to learn as in as I get older too and I see, you know, my parents and other folks and they just stopped, you know, kind of learning and I just don’t do that. But, but honestly, you know, that’s, I think that’s a good trait. But I think my most favorite thing, though, I think is my sense of humor. Oh, there’s love to laugh, you know, and like to make people laugh. And, you know, I don’t know if that’s frivolous or not, but I think if we’re not, if we can’t laugh at it, you know, at the end of the day, you know, what’s it all about? Anyway, so,
Damon Pistulka 30:44
yeah, yeah, that’s a good one. As you get on here, I
Andrew Cross 30:48
don’t know if I’m funny or not, but my kids don’t think
Damon Pistulka 30:52
that’s normal dad stuff, though. Yeah. You’re funny in our minds way more than they think we are. Or they don’t show.
Andrew Cross 31:00
session one of these days.
Damon Pistulka 31:01
Yeah. Yeah. There you go.
31:05
Bring your best.
Damon Pistulka 31:06
Yeah, there’s just something about that. It just makes you laugh. Alright, so I’m down with the question today. What What do I My favorite thing about myself? I think that comes to two things. I did wasn’t even thinking about this before I brought the question down I think heart I think nasty or resilience, you look at those things because and grant said some two that really, entirely redeemable came to mind is because I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it I was inspired by my father.
Throughout my life, him being a handicap and we know one leg and watching him farm for my whole life growing up and being able just put his mind and doing something and overcoming odds, not even thinking about them. Really, and just going through it that gave me the tenacity to be able to just, you know, get it get punched really hard and get back up and just go What are we doing now? I mean, we just got punched this time to figure out what we’re gonna do and move forward.
And I like that and, and when Jacob said hard I, I I’ve learned to get better at that. And I do like that. I’m getting better at that. Because I you know, honestly, if you don’t know me, you know, 25 years ago, I couldn’t I’m an asshole. I’m gonna be real honest. Running a business. I was I was in it young and I and it was and I was I did it and I apologize for people that I was helping in those days. And hopefully that my my tenacity and being being being nice when it when it wasn’t in North situations helped outweigh that.
But that’s that’s my voice. rays good. I’m getting better. I’m a recovering person. Oh, that. Yeah. So anyway, we are gonna start now with with my even Clayton’s talking about IoT industry 4.0 these guys do stuff. That’s really cool. And I think that we want to let them talk a little bit about how they help people. And then I’ve got some questions, too, that I want to see. Because IoT is, is basically coming into everything we do. But and that’s one of the things on cover bio, I’ll let you guys talk about all the stuff that you help companies do right now because it’s super cool. So take it away, take it away, guys.
Majid Zafer 33:33
Yeah, so thanks for having us on your platform, David, we really appreciate it. You know, when it comes to IoT, guys, it’s really, really simple. You know, there’s more devices today on the planet than there are people, right. And a lot of these devices are connected. You know, so like your, your nest thermostat at home, you know, like, you can start thinking about all the devices, like when you press your garage door, you know, there’s a lot of different access points, but there’s a lot of data there, right, there’s a lot of data, there’s a lot of information there. And being able to take that data and make it useful is really where IoT is.
It’s not just here, but it’s it’s here to stay. And it’s going to make major improvements on multiple different levels. Obviously, we don’t do as much on the residential or the people side we work mostly in the manufacturing industrial space and what we’ve been able to do they’re really kind of hits a lot of my hot buttons, you know, which are, you know, when we’re talking about saving the planet, we start talking about climate change, you start talking about, you know, all those hot discussion points now that weren’t discussion points five years ago when we jumped into it, you know, it’s it’s not just something that is That’s on the horizon,
it’s already in play on a larger level, which is where we play with some of the bigger enterprise level companies out there. But we are going to start seeing a trickle down effect here, you know, over the next couple of years, and it’s really exciting to see the adoption of this technology, you know, not just now it’s kind of pocketed. But as it starts getting mass scale, I really believe that we’re going to be able to make a huge turn, you know, I think there’s a lot of people that say, hey, there’s a problem, you know, and we don’t know what the solution is, but technology usually has a way of creeping up and fixing those issues, you know, you know, as, as generations go by,
I got two little ones, you know, I want to make sure that when I leave the planets there for them and, and that they’re doing, you know, good things. So I really believe that this technology is going to be able to not just help us today, not just help the companies of today, but really kind of set the landscape for tomorrow, I played me want to add anything to what basic AI IoT might be.
Clayton Brust 36:13
You covered that very well, because it can get a little nitty gritty, you can get into some some weeds, as we say, but, you know, in our experience, there is not a company out there that we have spoken to, that is not currently investigating it, trying to learn about it, trying testing it, and also implementing it in some way, shape, or form. They all recognize the power of the data and the information, and they’re all trying to figure out what that means to their business and how to apply it as such.
So it’s a very exciting time, it is the wild, wild west in many, many ways, reminds me of, you know, VHS or beta, looking at different platforms and standard and what’s really going to take off and, you know, we’re really starting to see the market shake out and some big ways and really moving towards an approach of system of systems, right? Yeah, where every machine manufacturer, every equipment manufacturer might have a web enabled platform that gets you into their HBC unit or whatever the piece of equipment is. But how do we then make all those things talk together? How do we aggregate data?
How do we distribute it in a timely manner to the right people at the right time to prevent things like unplanned downtime, things of that nature. So it is a it is a very exciting time, these pieces are starting to come together companies work with some of the larger enterprise ones are actually giving us a front front row seat with their internal development of how they’re aggregating these systems and how they’re writing their own custom software to bring in all the different IoT pieces and devices into their enterprise. So it’s just been a ton of fun, honestly. Yeah, I did good places. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 38:04
I mean, I know you guys are working with large manufacturers, but I think to even for us in a personal manner. I mean, like, when you look at things that we have now in our homes, just like that the nest or ring doorbells, like you have when someone comes to your door, you can talk to them no matter where you are, you know, I’m scared the hell out of people because they’ve dropped out and we’ve been someplace else and you talk to them that hey, you’re not supposed to be here. Yeah, right. But you know, those kinds of things or even just like the thermostats that we have in our home and and being able to adjust the temperature of your home based on a notice if you’re home or not.
And and the energy savings you can see from those kinds of things just really it all the way into the lighting now and the lighting in your homes and other things you control with your internal systems and I know those are really simple versions of what you guys are doing because you have a lot more data points to be monitoring and telling the right people but I think this is as we move forward as you said my head this is gonna trickle down into cars talking to each other when we’re on the road I think and and more things like that that help us be safer and and save more energy because I
39:23
go ahead but there’s
Majid Zafer 39:24
actually talking about check out the whole package are talking about haul cars, you know, the baby ahead of thing if you think where there’s issues in a home right when they’re there when did you start? Oh, why? Because things Yep. But the big thing that I blocked us out of those you know, saying hey, you know what, your your dryer fans you know about to blow out and that could Call the fire you know you have you have 15 days to replace it before there’s a fire.
Right? Yeah. Now, it’s about being proactive, and you actually have your home communicating with you competitively, do you have to figure out what’s happening? And that’s really going to be the main. It’s not just going to be about, you know, cool little niceties. These are things that are going to actually save Why?
Damon Pistulka 40:28
Yeah, that’s a great point. And Clayton, you’re gonna say some?
40:31
Yeah, no,
40:32
just in a simple, simple
Clayton Brust 40:33
terms to add to imagine is saying is we’re getting into things like your personal safety, where your house is lighting, when you come into a geo fence, when we come close to your home, right? It might turn on the outside lights, turn on your living room lights, open your garage door for you, when I tell Siri Good night, she’s programmed in my house to turn off all the lights and make sure the garage doors closed and the locks are locked, you know.
So we’re talking about our modern day conveniences or safety. And then obviously, the proactive things imagined was touching on that might actually save you money or save a life potentially. These are great advances. And if they’re embraced, which they are deploying, it will really reshape our relationship with the technology and our things. It it’s fun.
Damon Pistulka 41:22
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. And what you guys are doing working with the the larger manufacturing clients and and other clients like that, that have significant facilities and things that they’re taking care of? What are some of the things that that they see from you’re doing, like in terms of energy usage, reduction, and just simplification of things as you tie the tie pieces together with IoT? What are some of the things that the benefits that they see?
Majid Zafer 41:55
Yeah, I’ll start off your play. So the big, the biggest thing is getting access to information, right? Because right now, most companies are flying blind, when it comes to their operations. And, you know, that’s why it’s such a cluster, when it comes to decision making at companies because, you know, everyone does that. Nobody wants to put their job in their life by making a decision where they could be wrong, right? Yeah.
But they had actual data to say, Hey, here’s the data, here’s why I made that decision. You know, now, you basically eliminate a lot of that bureaucracy in corporate America, right? So and you just get to make quicker decisions, more accurate decisions. And the way that we do that is we basically digitize the facility, now we’re able to take a we’re able to take IoT intelligence. And right now, the way that we’re doing it is we’re putting it into the lighting fixtures themselves, to where all the lighting basically communicates with each other, and could measure monitor any person process entity within the facility.
So basically, what you’ve done is you’ve created a digital blueprint of your facility, that now you take in your facility that used to have one function like flip phone, right? And you’ve made it into an iPhone, which has like now 1000s of functionalities, tons of apps, and scalable. So it’s it’s really future proofing the business for not just what’s here, but what’s up 4414 for things that are to come.
Damon Pistulka 43:39
Nice night. So how does this How does this specifically help? So you’re working with the lighting, you’re working with the other systems in that in these facilities? How does this help with things like predictive maintenance, you talked about future proofing the company and and then you know, the other thing that comes to mind is automating processes. So I’ll let you guys talk about those. Those Just a moment.
Majid Zafer 44:05
Yeah, I’ll let I’ll take a clean take this one.
44:09
Thank you, manager. Thank you.
Clayton Brust 44:11
So predictive and preventative maintenance is big. Predictive is I think, one of the biggest buzzwords in the business now. So what we’re currently doing with our customers is, you imagine touched on the fact that we’re deploying wireless communication systems through the lightning, we’re building infrastructure. off of that infrastructure. We’re then piggybacking any kind of IoT device or sensor you can think of that’s made by any third party out there to solve any problem that customer may have.
So when we start looking at predictive maintenance, what our customers are currently doing is they’re deploying power meters, vibration sensors, right and temperature sensors and think of a think of a building that have hundreds or 1000s of motors in it, they all could all they’re all the different lifecycle stage.
So when we look at that, and we start putting these sensors on them, and baselining, each one of these pieces of equipment understand its unique signature, whether it’s amperage current draw, whether it’s a vibration signature, a temperature output, or the bearings that are running, where the exhaust air coming out of an hv AC unit to determine its health, whatever that case is, once we analyzed and baseline and trend that data over time, we can then plug that into what is probably the most powerful part of IoT, which is alarm architecture.
So if you start thinking about you walking into a building a plant, whatever every piece of equipment has what we call a point system, it has a light or an alarm telling you something’s wrong, but they’re not tied together. Right. And the day that something’s going wrong, that that first domino has fallen, the person who’s in charge of that is in a meeting, they’re on vacation, they’re out sick, they’re at a trade show, right?
So the potential for disaster is high. So imagine taking that health information and that data and being able to distribute that information to the right people at the right time through SMS notifications, email notifications, being able to say, hey, if my setpoint for vibration, or temperature varies by two degrees, one person needs to know about it, if it goes up another five degrees, five people need to know about it, or regional or corporate or quality control, or whoever the case is. It’s about aggregation of all of that information.
So it can get to the people that can actually do something about it before it becomes a problem. And that is really, probably the most exciting thing for our customers is getting this baseline information from their facilities, and listening to the machines listening to what the systems are telling them, and then developing that architecture so that they are able to respond to things before they happen. Make sense? Yeah. Yep.
Damon Pistulka 47:04
I’m writing this down too. Because it’s, you know, back ICER, run molding plant and molding machines will set their they will literally run for months at a time without stopping. And you can, we used to do things like oil sample analysis, that would tell us if the pumps were getting bad, and we would replace the pumps, not based on a pump failing, but based on the fact that there was this the test homeless that was failing.
And, and then I’ve done work in processing plants before to where, you know, like you’re saying they used to have PLC systems that were connected to things, but oftentimes, they just turn pumps on and off, they didn’t really read that a pump was experiencing higher amperage load, like you’re talking about, or that vibration was getting bad if that’s a way to measure how that’s working.
And, and what you’re saying is, is I think is really relevant for a lot of people. And it’s, and when we talk about this, this kind of stuff is going to translate into more into automotive and everything else is as we look at our lives, too, because our car can tell us their problems. It already does a lot more than it ever did. But oh yeah, Dennis brings up the tire pressure monitors on the car.
That’s a great example. You know, yeah, that’s a great example. But in a minimum in a manufacturing facility, it can mean 10s of 1000s of dollars. If you in downtime, or hundreds of 1000s of dollars in downtime, if if a critical pump goes out or or if something goes out of goes out of smelling ation. Like you said, if someone doesn’t take care of it really quickly.
48:43
Yeah, something.
Majid Zafer 48:44
I know that you also brought up process automation, Damon, and you know, one of the things with Process Automation is really the next steps that we’re taking right now. And I played him a while I’m talking, if you have a heat map or something that you could show, I will kind of show you some of the software that we’re utilizing. We can’t show too much data. But yeah, some of its, you know, a client sensitive.
But you know, once you once you have an over arching viewpoint of you know, your facility, you could really see the occupancy in the area, and you could tie your processes in to that occupancy. So like, for example, john deere, was not a client of ours, you know, but they just did a study with their dust collectors. Clayton, do you want to? Well, while you’re showing this you want to kind of go further into it. Yeah,
Clayton Brust 49:41
so we imagine is talking about is what what’s the next step once you have all this data and what can you do with this data? So what you’re looking at on the screen is a four production floor, playing back in real time our kids occupancy trend data throughout a day. Within this building, and what we can do what john deere did, and Damon talked about it, they went back to their PLCs their runtime data.
And they were able to determine through this occupancy information comparing this occupancy data that the lighting is collecting in the facility through their sensors, comparing that to the PLC runtime data on the dust collectors and determined that like 60% of the time, people were not actually running the production lines when the dust collectors were operating, which have high horsepower, fan motors and compressed air, which are very, very expensive.
So what we can actually do now, which is kind of incredible, is we can go into load control capabilities, and we can tie the actual occupancy data from a lighting system, for example, what I’m doing is I’m setting a sample, what we call trigger nodes, let’s say a dust collector is in this area, well, I can just go select the sensors in that area, and tie their occupancy to a relay to turn something on and off, and its most simple form.
So john deere brought this to digital lumens, which is the technology platform that we are implementing, and simply said, Hey, we would like to use your occupancy data to control our dust collectors, and they’re saving a quarter of a million dollars. Now by simply identifying occupancy based trends to control motors within their facility. It’s a couple clicks of a button, set some timeouts and some and you know, and settings and hit save, and now they’ve automated a really simple piece of equipment. Wow, that’s cool.
Damon Pistulka 51:45
That’s cool, because it might talk about those kinds of savings. Those are direct savings on energy costs, and other things that when we tie that back into dollars and everything, but yeah, and that is, and that’s important. But But when we look at the overall globe, and trying to, to, you know, be better citizens of the earth, really, reducing energy use consumption, will get us a lot farther than really anything else. You know, we’d look at increasing efficiencies of cars and all this other stuff with this kind of energy use. This is where you make the biggest difference.
Majid Zafer 52:26
Yeah, this a small piece of his energy consumption, energy reduction is obviously huge. But you know, the things when it comes to, for companies, they don’t want to pollute, right, companies don’t want to pollute, they don’t want to have harmful chemicals going into their waterways, they don’t want, you know, harmful gases getting out, you know, out of their facility.
So if you had measurement devices, within, you know, the, you could literally put alarms in letting you know, that he there’s, you know, X amount of parts per million is, you know, going into the waterway, you could shut down things and avoid those hefty EPA fines.
And yeah, so you’re really starting to now control what’s our you actually have a visual as to what’s actually happening, what, where you’re actually polluting, and then be able to be proactive and get ahead of it, you know, so when we talk about, you know, saving the planet, it’s not just energy consumption, the energy reduction, honestly, what that does, it makes a project move forward, because there’s an ROI attached to it, right.
But all the other nuances is really where you hit home when it comes to, you know, helping the environment because you’re you when you can start monitoring the harmful things that are getting out, you know, and be able to get ahead of it. Now you’re truly making an impact.
Damon Pistulka 53:59
Yeah, yeah. And Clayton, you’re gonna say something as well? Well, I
Clayton Brust 54:05
was gonna add some real life examples. When we talk to our customers, anything from air scrubbers to wastewater plants, you know, magid touched on, you know, the pH, water temperature discharge, parts per million discharge. These are all bad things, right? We want to control that a it costs the company money, but be more importantly, we need to focus on sustainability and being better stewards of our planet. And these are technologies that can really get a handle on that air scrubbers, making sure that we’re not releasing dirty air. I was talking to a customer last year. And unfortunately, in some cases, we’re only as good as our people.
And unfortunately, sometimes we don’t have good people. And we knew that we see that with companies that have multiple sites that have some scale. And this particular plant manager the steel facility, pickling line, knew that the sky verb was not working correctly did nothing about it, and the company got hit with a $600,000 fine. Well, why did they do nothing about it, I can’t get in the psychology of that person that had they had the the infrastructure and the systems and the alarm architecture in place a, we could have prevented, you know, harmful chemicals being released into the local community and to our earth.
And we could save the company a ton of money. So we see these as examples time after time after time. And when we sit down with a customer and literally ask them a very simple question, what pains you when something goes wrong? What is it? And is there a sensor made that can monitor and measure whatever led up to that problem that we can implement or integrate into our solution? And therefore total? So it’s very powerful?
Damon Pistulka 55:51
Yeah.
Clayton Brust 55:52
And one more thing to add to that about you’re touching on energy savings? Well, now that you have a wireless infrastructure throughout your facility, think of think of an average building, how many pieces of electrical equipment are there, how many machines out there? How many motors are operating?
Well, you can have a new wireless power meters around the world we’re doing for Kohler Kitchen and Bath right now and one of their major manufacturing facilities, their corporate headquarters here in Wisconsin, as we’re moving meters, and we’re studying use patterns of equipment, instead of someone having to manually walk up to a PLC, pull the data out, go put it into spreadsheets, somehow correlate that information with other PLC data on a spreadsheet, we can actually pull that real time data.
And it’s a lot of fun when I get to call the energy team up there and tell them, Hey, your guys are misbehave. And again, you’re not turning anything off, I see it running at 100% 100% of the time. And I go back, I look at the charts and for a week are turning off all the dust collectors. And then the next week, everything is on for two weeks. And I say something and then that, you know, the pattern repeats. But that’s how we find the use cases by studying those patterns with the devices to implement psychological and behavioral changes within facilities.
But now the next step prior to COVID was automating that process for cooling, they’d be able to go in and put in these industrial relays, just like john deere did and turn these things on and off based on real time production occupancy data. So the customers have these incredible tools now without infrastructure to go seek out and study and find energy savings opportunities that they did not know about. That particular facility is over 10 million square feet of buildings. So how do you possibly get a handle on every house in that building?
Damon Pistulka 57:42
Yeah.
Clayton Brust 57:43
Funny story about it, we actually landed that account, because they had a pipe burst, and went outside of all in a basement as steam pipe burst that froze, right? And they said, Wait a second, you guys can can warn us. So the VIP box failed in a dark corner of a building on a 10 million square foot campus. And we could have prevented all of that damage and downtime. Yeah, it’s a $50 sensor.
58:10
Yeah,
Clayton Brust 58:11
we’re now monitoring that throughout the sensitive areas of the building, you know, to make sure something like that never happens again. Yeah. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 58:20
that’s awesome. Well, I you know, I guess a funny, funny example of that, too, I know, someone that was monitoring was responsible for building maintenance in large corporation. In California, in one of their headquarters, and they had this is the simplest thing, each for each area had these automatic coffee makers. And they had an automatic coffeemaker and they moved and broke the water line on Thursday or Friday, and it ran all weekend. Like, you know, $200,000 for the damage because obviously, you know, through floor You’ve ruined everything.
And they they made a simple sensor that that just hooked up and it would turn on a light and are some darn thing and light in the room at the water ran freely. And so you think of these little things and what you’re doing with the lighting that allows you to pick that sensor up and and then that signal up and send it to somebody that’s even more powerful and so cool. And there’s so many applications like you’re saying in industrial settings and office setting, honestly. So good stuff, guys. This is awesome.
Well, I want to first of all we were Dan and I can see Andrew has given me the eye we’re getting close to nine o’clock. We wanted to thank you guys, mitten Majid Excuse me. He and Clayton for stopping your day and helping us with understanding IoT and showing you some of the cool stuff you guys do. It’s absolutely fascinating to me, I get it super excited about it because it is It’s so cool to see how simple technology can be deployed, and then use to really make big difference. So, thank you so much.
Majid Zafer 1:00:12
Thanks for having us.
Damon Pistulka 1:00:15
Andrew, take us
Andrew Cross 1:00:17
on another thing, hey, Clayton, my heat, that was fantastic. But you know, you guys have a great, you know, ROI for your clients. I mean, you you’re doing things for them, that help them save money. But I think I wanted to add another point to it that comes from our experience.
You know, you’re not only you know, are you looking at, you know, potential savings for the kind of things that you do with the company, this is one of the things we do that’s integral to exit your way is that people don’t realize this too, but this increases the value of the business. Yeah, when we do this at an exit to you may have been, you know, if you’ve reduced just for a simple example, if you reduce your costs your expenses by 50%.
Yeah, that is lost money in the past. But at that point in time in the future, you know, I’m putting my valuation hat on now to the buyers adjust for that right now ongoing. So we go back and adjust all the way down to now what is the actual budgeted level for that expense, if you take that if you save just $10,000 a year, on that, which it goes to the bottom line, the value of the company, you know, it’s going to get sold for six times that, you know, you just added $60,000 of value here your business that this is all side, right?
Just want to know, you know, I mean, the ROI is bigger than sometimes they even if they look a little closer at it, then they even know this great stuff. And you know, I think again, like then that’s what we want with exit your way is to bring folks like us to help these business owners like get the most out of their, their business, and we got to watch to know your value and watch that values. Yeah, guys. Thanks.
Damon Pistulka 1:01:59
Appreciate, everyone. Thanks so much. We’re on LinkedIn live, man. We had tons of comments. Thank you, everyone. There. We have people from literally all over the globe watching us today. We always appreciate that. appreciate the comments. Well, we’re going to end the broadcast on LinkedIn live. And then if you want to stick around and talk to these guys for a couple minutes after the event on remote, we’ll be here. Thanks, everyone. All right. He can
Majid Zafer 1:02:26
get this also I think then, let’s see.
