Lighting for Profits - Episode #176

This week on the show we welcome, Tom Garber, with over 35 years of experience in the lighting industry specializing in developing innovative products across all lighting channels. A dedicated member of the American Lighting Association (ALA), contributing to engineering subcommittees, and an active participant in the UL Technical Committee, shaping standards such as UL 1838, 1598, and 153.

Listen to Episode Here

Watch the episode

Episode Transcript

We discussed everything you need to know to start and grow a successful landscape lighting business

Welcome to Lighting for Profits.

All Light. All Light. All Light.

Powered by Emery Allen.

Get rid of your excuses.

Your number one source for all things landscape lighting.

That's where the magic can happen. You can really scale a business.

We really had to show up for each other from lighting design, install sales and marketing.

You're a scaredy cat salesman, Kurt.

We discussed everything you need to know to start and grow a successful landscape lighting business.

What do you think a hippo has.

To do with your business, Ryan? Usually it's some weird childhood thing.

So bully kicked your butt. I think the key factor here is trust.

Landscape Lighting Secrets is the number one landscape lighting show in Charleston

Here is your host, Ryan Lee.

Oh, light.

All light. All light. Welcome guys. I love doing this show. Welcome to the show. It's the number one landscape lighting show in Charleston, South Carolina. And, super excited to do this. By the way, guys, if you didn't know, if you, if you listen to this podcast, every week we, we actually go live onto Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, lots of different ways to, not just listen, but view the podcast. And today's one of those episodes where we're going to be doing some screen share and stuff like that. And it's something that we're going to incorporate moving forward. So don't, forget to, check us out on YouTube as well. it's Landscape Lighting Secrets is the channel. And it's important because, you know, if you watch the show, you know, we, Emory Allen has been a supporter of ours for a long time and I got this nice Emory Allen mug and I got this new camera and new lighting and everything's awesome. But there's one downside is when I show the camera the Emory Allen mug, there's like some weird glare and you just can't see it. So that's the one downside of my new epic setup. But, I want to thank Emory Allen for, this awesome mug and it keeps me hydrated. So thank you guys. We, got an awesome show. If you're looking to start or grow a landscape lighting business, you're definitely in the right place. We're here to educate, here to motivate, to help you dominate in your area.

Tom Garber with Emery Allen coming on in a couple minutes

So, Today we've got Mr. Tom Garber, the one, the only Tom Garber with Emory Allen. So, we're going to talk lamps, we're going to talk quality, we're going to talk about, how to have a wonderful client experience. So make sure you guys stick around. They've got some, new products that we're going to talk about and, stuff like that. So just a couple minutes, we're going to have Tom on. And by the way, I just want to remind you if you have not. I'm still trying to get to 100 five star reviews, you guys. And it's not as easy like in a home service business. In your landscape lighting business, you can just send someone a link and it's easy. And I keep sending reminders like I don't have that technology for, podcasts. So go on to Apple, hit the five stars, write something nice as long as you got value, which I think you did because we've had some amazing guests on here. So give me that five star review. And as a reminder, we've got Lighted Up Expo, coming up here. It's going to come up quick, guys. And right now we're doing our pre, show special, if you will. It's our, early bird pricing. So you go to lightitupexpo. com if you're looking to expand in the landscape lighting business, the permanent lighting or the holiday lighting industry, this is the show to be at. There's gonna be vendors, there's gonna be speakers, there's gonna be networking, there's gonna be panel discussions. lunches are included in your ticket. If you want to upgrade to vip. Dinners will be included along with dinner, with myself and the other VIPs. So, make sure you check that out. Light It Up Expo. This is your chance to get the lowest ticket possible. Okay, again, in just a couple minutes we got Tom Garber with Emery Allen coming on.

How much of your business relies on word of mouth

And, before we have him come on, I want to talk about something. you know, I meet with business owners every single week, both inside Landscape lighting secrets and kind of prospectus clients, if you will. People that are like, on the outside, like, do I might do I want to join? Am I ready to join? Am I ready to level up my business? And there's a common denominator that happens amongst everybody and I've talked about a couple of them on here before. But the one that I've really noticed lately is I pull up people's websites before I meet with them and I want to kind of get to know a feel for like, who they are, how long they've been in the industry, where they're located and stuff like that. What does their brand look like? And, you know, it's crazy is I don't, I don't. I'm about to help you guys make potentially, potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in the next, like, four minutes. Okay? And I'm not even kidding, because what's the average landscape lighting deal worth to you? If the average landscape lighting deal is worth $10,000 to you, and I help you close like 10 more deals over the next year because of these few tips I'm going to give you, that's a hundred thousand dollars a year that you're going to make by just paying attention. Okay? If, your average deal is five times that, like, it could be five times that. Okay? So, and here's the thing. So it's all about your resume. And you probably don't have a resume because you started a business because you didn't want to do resumes anymore and work for other people. But I'm telling you, resumes matter. So what does your resume look like? Your business resume is worth way more than you think it is. So ask yourself this question. How much of your business relies on word of mouth? Like, truly, how many of your jobs in the past 12 months, let's say, or how much of your revenue comes from word of mouth? and I think for most of you, the answer is a lot. Because most people are not investing like tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into advertising like you probably should. So you rely on a lot on word of mouth. And here's the problem. It's working. So because it's working because you're getting leads, you don't know about the problem because you have a good company, but you want to get a great company. So here's something for you to consider when you get a referral. How many people, like, let's say they're like, yeah, who did your lights? Oh, it was ABC Company. Right? Well, how many people actually just call you directly? They get your phone number and they call you directly and they don't look you up online. They don't do a Google search. They literally just call you, you answer the phone, you go out there, you give them the bid, and that's that, right? If you think that 100% of the people that you get that get referred to you don't look you up and just, they just call you, and they never do any research and they never look you up online, then you don't have to keep paying attention right now. You can move on. But if you do think that there are some people that look you up and do their research, pay attention. So check this out.

This is something that if you want to do today, Google yourself

This is something that if you want to do today, and you should, you should do this right now, Google yourself. Well, wait like 45 minutes. Wait till after the show. But Google yourself right now, okay? And do new incognito window. Okay. New incognito window and look and see what shows up. Okay? So for me, I put in landscape, lighting, secrets. You put in whatever the name of your business is. Okay. And see what shows up. Is it ads to another company? Is your competitor showing up? is your ad showing up? Are you number one? When it, when it's there, it should be. You're, you're, you're literally the exact search, right? Is it your website? Is it, a Google profile? Are there reviews? How many reviews do you have? 10 reviews? Do you have 162 reviews? when was the last review you got? What's your average star rating? This is your resume. Do you see social media posts? Do they see you're, active on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube? Like, are you dominating that page so that no matter what they click on, there's a good representation of you and your brand and the quality that you want to convey? are you on directory listings like Houzz, Yelp and Facebook? again, like, on your reviews, how many do you have? Because if you don't have over a hundred reviews, or I would say like five to six times your nearest competitor, like, if you're, if your nearest competitor has 10 and you have 12, then it's kind of the same thing. Or if you have 12 and your nearest competitor has 52, someone might search for you and be like, oh, wait, this company has better reviews. I'm going to call them instead. Like, this happens. Okay, on, on your reviews, when was the last one? Was it 11 months ago? Was it two years ago? Does it look like you maybe used to get good business, but now you don't? do you have pictures in your reviews? Are your clients posting pictures of their projects in the reviews? And that matters because that's going to help with your local SEO. They're going to see, Google's going to see that that picture was taken in that specific neighborhood. So when someone is else in their neighborhood, searches for landscape lighting, installer, near mirror, M near me. They're going to see that you've done work in that area. Like, these things matter, okay? And respond to those reviews. Make sure you're responding and use keywords as well. Now that's just the first part of your resume. Like, when someone does a search, like, what does that look like? Is that really what you want to convey? Does it show a real history of, like, who you are? And who you want to be.

You can improve your website by just building your website better

Now you got to click on your website. So you click on your website and now we get into some more stuff, right? What do you see when you click on the website? And this is where, when I get on calls with people, I, I see all this stuff and I'm like, man, they say they've been in business 16 years. It looks like they kind of like, it's like a part time, side gig, side hustle. I'm not really sure. It's like, no, I've been, I've been doing this hard for 16 years or 10 years or 7 years or whatever. And then you go to the website, it doesn't say anything crazy. It doesn't have any awesome hero images. It doesn't say the location. Like, why doesn't it say something like, clearly state what you do. Professional landscape lighting in Charleston, South Carolina, wherever it is, right? You need to show people as soon as they hit that page that they're in the right spot and they found what they're looking for. If it's just a blanket statement like best landscape lighting company. Okay, well, are you even in our area? Do you service our area? Like, does that, does that resonate with them? And a major, major thing that is so easy to fix, you guys, is the phone number and the form. If you can't instantly see a phone number and a form like above the fold, meaning you don't have to scroll down. Like, it's just in your face. Call today. And the phone number. So many people don't even have this. You have to click on something to even find how to contact. It says contact us and you click that. That's too many clicks. We have to make it easy for people. And this is just data and statistics that are out there. The more time it find it takes them to find, the more times they're jumping around. And no matter what you think you want, we all want people to use our website a certain way. Like, yeah, they're going to go here and then they're going to learn about us and they're going to be in our process. Like, they're not using your website like you want them to. They're going to your website and they're either calling you, filling out the form or they're bouncing out within like five seconds. Okay, so make sure that phone number and that form is there. And this is not a big long form of like, tell me your address and tell me when you were born and what your Social Security. Like this is literally like, I just need Your email and your phone number. I don't even care about your address right now because you're just trying to make it easy. This is top of funnel stuff. Okay? So I'm being nice, guys. there. And here's the deal. Your website probably sucks. And it does matter because you have referrals and leads right now that are not making it to you. Even if you're growing your business by 100% word of mouth, you can improve on these small things. And even if you don't want to invest in advertising and take my advice, with all this other stuff, you can make huge gains, huge improvements by just building your website better. And you're going to capture more leads. I guarantee. You guys are getting referrals right now that are not making it to you. Someone said, hey, you should call this guy, you should call this company, you should do this. And they never made it to you because you made it difficult for them to reach out. So hopefully you took some notes. Hopefully you go and implement. If not, that was a pointless 10 minutes. But if it, if it, if you will implement, I promise you guys, you're going to capture more leads, you're going to capture more sales, you're going to grow your business. And this is just one of the things. These are like you filling in the cracks of your foundation. You'll have like a good foundation. You have these cracks. We're just trying to fill it in. So how easy are you making it for people to contact you? I think that's it. That's like, this stuff drives me crazy, guys. And I, and I have to like, get it out. This is my therapy session. But I want, I want to help you. Like, I can't help you if you don't implement, if you don't take notes and actually do this stuff. So if you do this and you implement and you get more leads and you grow your business, shoot me a message. Share. Share that five star review on Apple.

All right, guys, I think it's time. I think I'm ready if Tom's ready. Tom, are you ready? Just kidding

All right, guys, I think it's time. I think I'm ready if Tom's ready. Tom, are you ready? Just kidding. I know you're ready. I'm just trying to stall so I can find the button. All right, let's go, guys.

You're frozen. Ryan, what'd you do?

Welcome to the show, Mr. Tom Garber.

Hey, Ryan, how you doing?

Hey, we made it. I don't know if it's me. It probably is. I don't know what's going on. How are you guys doing?

We're doing well. We're Doing well, Better than we deserve, that's for sure.

Jackson Lebrecht is Emory Allen's new sales manager

I wanted to take, a minute, we get started here and introduce everybody to, our new sales manager, Jackson Lebrecht. Jackson is, not from the lighting industry, so he doesn't have a lot of, misconstrued notions of how lighting should work or whatever. we get to teach them, you know, the Emory Allen way. Right. Wrong or indifferent.

I love it. Welcome. Welcome to the industry, Jackson.

I appreciate it. I appreciate it.

It's been great so far and lots of learning and more than I've ever thought I would know about a light bulb. But it's been great.

I think, I think it actually only makes sense because when you, when you look at most people, literally probably 99% of the people that get into landscape lighting, it definitely was not part of the plan. It was a, it was a discovery moment of like, wait, what is this? And then you kind of fall in love with it and you're stuck forever.

Yeah, I mean, I, I catch myself looking at light bulbs anywhere I go now, so I'm looking at applications. So it's, it's, it's a crazy world, but it's, it's been great.

A true lighting nerd.

That's right.

That's right.

We've done our best to turn them into one. You know, I have to comment back on, you know, your intro and some of the things that you were saying about, you know, getting your name out there, word of mouth and all of that. That's a lot to. What we can attribute our growth to over the years is the amount of organic growth that we have. Organic in the terms of people reaching out to you of one thing or another and, you know, make it well known who you are, where you are, how the people can contact you. We just had our, end, of the year, our seasonal, meeting this past weekend and we, we talked about that and the amount of organic growth that has come from, you know, producing, you know, good products, good people, responsiveness and all of that. So I agree what you're saying, 100%.

I love it. The only caveat is I do tell people all the time, don't go to Emory Allen's website. Even though I just talked about websites. Just email tom gary allen. com because you're going to get the best price mention you heard about him here on Lighting for Profits. Because people are like, wait, how much is it? And I was like, just email Tom G. Don't go to their website unless you want to pay more.

And we get most of our contacts, our new customers and all of that not through our website, but through emails or phone calls. They'll call up and say, we heard about you here or we saw this or so and so has your product. So you just got to make sure that all of that information is out there.

Absolutely. Because people ultimately do call. Like someone gave you, gave them the email, the phone call. But they always, they always stalk you. They go to the website, they want to see what you're about.

Sure.

and all of a sudden if they see something else who's like, wait a minute, what's this competitor? They seem like they've been in business longer, they have more reviews, they have a better portfolio, maybe I'll just call them.

That never happened.

No, not with you guys.

Emory Allen is a solution provider to the lighting industry

Well, welcome to the show again and thank you as always. I mean you, your family. The Emory Allen team has always been super supportive of landscape lighting secrets. We do events. You guys are the platinum, sponsor of Light it Up Expo, which is awesome. So we can talk about that in a bit. But I guess just do a quick intro for those of people, that don't know you and Emory Allen, like, what are you, what are you all about?

I mean, Emory Allen, were a lot of things, but we are a solution provider to the lighting industry. we started off with just making small little miniature lamps that solve problems for interiors and exteriors out in the state of California and all that. We're coming up to our 10 year anniversary and I look at, you know, the, you know, our first year we didn't have 40 SKUs. And you know, by the end of January we're gonna have probably pushing 550 SKUs.

Dang. Do you want to go back to 40?

We've grown up a little bit and you know, but it's all based on high performance. It's not a race to the bottom for us. If you want that 98 cent, whatever bulb, you know, go to Amazon or whatever. But if you want a quality bulb that you have somebody standing behind it that's a UL listed product and you know it will dim, it will do all of these things, you need to hook up with us because you know we're going to be there for you. And we even work people through all different types of technical issues as well. you know, people that aren't that familiar with, you know, LEDs or different voltages and things like that. We try to make our products as transparent as possible. Moving from incandescent to LEDs. But there are still some things that we have to do and we, we talk people through all that. So it's been a lot of fun.

You know, it's one question I have for you and I and we're going to get into some of the details on what separates Emory Allen from just a, like you said, a 99 cent bulb or something like that.

Emory Allen loves landscape lighting. What is it about landscape lighting that you love

But I'm, I still am surprised because I know you've had a lot of success outside of the landscape lighting industry, the commercial projects, interior. I feel like there's an easier path to profits and wealth. But what is it about the landscape lighting industry, the 12 volt low voltage landscape lighting industry that you love?

You know, it's a great question and you're right. We landscape lighting is actually a small part of our overall business. it was, you know, it was a deep down goal of mine to somehow get back into landscape lighting. And I say that because I cut my teeth in the lighting industry working for Kichler Lighting and I was their product development engineer, that introduced all of Kichler's products. We developed it, we introduced it in the late 80s, early 90s. You know, it was myself and Melissa K. And David Porter and Nelson Bl that we also hired, Jack Miller and a few other people and put that whole program together. And that was a lot of fun. It was challenging. You know, it wasn't the type of thing where you can go over and buy this widget or this component. You wanted it, you have to design it, develop it and all of that. And that's what we did. And so I really enjoyed that. And it's, you know, I love getting back into landscape lighting and being able to help solve, you know, different types of issues that people have with it.

Nice. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I, Not all the time, but, you know, when I think about Emory Allen and your future and what your plans are, I'm like, I'm always kind of surprised because I know it's not like it's, it's kind of the harder way for you to make money, I think. But it just seems like you guys are super passionate about it and you're looking to make a difference in the community, which I, I think a lot of people appreciate for sure.

Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

Well, cool.

It's what's on the inside that counts in landscape lighting

So, I guess let's get into it. You know, one of the things when we started working together, I don't. You told me, you said, you know, it's, it's. What's the message I want to get out to people is it's what's on the inside that counts. Talk, to me a little bit about that, how you came up with that, and what does that mean?

I mean, you know, going back to landscape lighting, let's just say you can go out and buy, you know, $500, Aurora up light, or you can buy a, very inexpensive, Mr. 16 fixture. Whereas you put the wrong product on the inside of either of those, or you put the right product on the inside of either of those, and you're going to get those types of results. And it's, it's all about, it's all about the light engine. It's all about the performance of the LEDs and the drivers and all that. So it doesn't matter what that exterior fixture looks like. You're selling in landscape lighting. You're doing it right. You're selling the results you're not showing. You're not selling the pretty fixtures or anything like that. You want those fixtures to kind of be hidden within the landscape. You don't want to see the light source and all that. So you're selling the, the effect. So it's whatever you put inside of those products that will give you that quality effect.

Nice.

Yeah.

And you know, you, you know me, I'm always preaching like, hey, raise your price. You know, provide a premium experience to your client. Red carpet white glove experience. So it always baffles me when people are like, asking questions like, well, you know, where do I, where do I find a cheaper fixture or a cheaper bulb or cheaper this or that? And I'm like, yeah, I get it. Like, as a business, like, you have a kind, ah, of a responsibility to control your costs and things like that. But at the same time, like, if you're gonna deliver that red carpet white glove experience, I mean, your, your, your lamps, your bulbs are not, it's not like they're hundreds of dollars. You know what I mean? Like someone, someone complaining about a price is like, man, you're gonna, like, risk your business, name and reputation on a few dollars. That's really what it comes down to.

No, you're absolutely, you're absolutely right.

It's all based on performance. You want inexpensive, expect inexpensive results

Now a lot of sometimes what I do and we start talking about different things, like this is, I'll compare lamps with, you know, the tires that you put on your car or the shingles you put on your house. It's all based on performance. You know, you have a brand new Corvette and everything. You need a new set of tires. You're not going to go out and buy some very inexpensive tires from Walmart. You know, you're going to put, you know, the best on it. You, because you want that high performance and so, and then it's everything in between. So I mean you get what you pay for. You want inexpensive, expect inexpensive results, whether that's in the performance of the lumens or the photometrics of it or if it's in the performance of the electronics that you have electromagnetic interference knocking out garage door openers or bad VA values or anything like that.

So let's, let's get into that because I think, I think most people would agree that they'd rather deliver, they'd rather give someone a higher quality, but they're afraid to because you know, they're like, well the last bid I lost and I couldn't even charge, you know, 250A light or whatever, you know. And so I think if we can give them some tools, some knowledge, some, some confidence, they'll be like heck, yeah, like I'm, I'm installing superior product here, that, that will affect their sales ability. So can we, can you guys go through some of your, your data, some of your stuff on your products and do that?

Yeah, we'll show some some pictures here of some things that we've seen here.

we want to start it up.

Yeah, go ahead and start that up.

EMI, electromagnetic interference, is basically noise. So what winds up happening

And while you're doing that, Tom, you mentioned casually because you know, you're an engineer, like, yeah, electromagnetic interference. But talk to us what EMI is and why that matters.

So emi, electromagnetic interference is basically noise. When you have a product that you're testing for emi, they're actually putting it in a chamber and they're trying to listen for this type of noise and you have to stay at different levels and whatnot. So what winds up happening? If your product produces X amount of noise, it will be canceling out the radio frequency that's going from a garage door remote, control to the receiver. It winds up canceling that type, type of thing out. And the crazy thing about EMI is it's cumulative where you know, the more products that you have that don't meet this, this threshold that the Federal Communications, Commission has put on, products like this. You're, you're canceling out ah, garage door openers, gates, you're even canceling out WI FI signals. People ask why they're color changing. Remotes don't work. Well, it's maybe there's a lot of other reasons. And, you know, EMI can be the cause. But the crazy thing about EMI is you can't see it, you can't smell it, can't taste it, but, it's there. you just have to make sure that you're m. Buying a product that is certified to meet these requirements.

That's crazy because I thought you could smell it. I thought if Tom Garber walked up to a property, you could be like, there's EMI all over this place. And that's. You mentioned, like, the most, common culprits are. And this happened to me. You know, it didn't happen when there was allergen, but then all of a sudden we had LED and the customer said, yeah, it's crazy. You know, our garage door, we can't. We can't get our. We can't get out of our house. And during the day it's fine, but at night it doesn't work. I'm like, you guys are crazy. Like, what kind of drugs are you guys doing?

And what's really interesting, after dealing with this for many, many years and talking to, a lot of different, installers, it relates back probably 99.5% of the time to a Chamberlain Liftmaster garage door opener that's somewhere older than, you know, five to eight years old that has really, really sensitive receiver built in it. And there's equipment that you can buy, to help these Chamberlain garage door openers. But the best thing to do is just buy the right products.

Right. Okay, so let's just. So am I hearing you right, though, that there are, like, the newer garage doors probably won't have that interference as well?

Yeah. Ah, everything that we have seen has been with the older garage door opener.

And then, you know, you mentioned gates too. You know, those, those front gates won't open or close, when the lights are on if they're not emi. Ah, protected.

Correct. Cool. Kind of crazy.

One of the hardest things to achieve with LEDs is a good R9

Okay, so I'll just start this thing up here. and, you know, as I said, we like to say that we're trying to be a solution provider to the lighting industry. Well, you know, this weekend we had our annual company outing, at probably one of the nice, nicest places, in, certainly in South Carolina, if not on the east coast, at Kiawah Island Resort. And this is a, hotel called the Sanctuary. It was built in 2004. That have just, you know, beautiful decorations. And, you know, they just. Everything they did is just absolutely, absolutely Stunning, with the exception of the light bulbs that they used. I mean, I walked, going into the main lobby, walking down the hall, the picture on the left, and it just made me feel dark and cloudy and, and just miserable feeling and it just like something wasn't right. And then I walked into this other room off to the, right and obviously the picture on the right and it's just like this is kind of weird looking color and it's kind of red, rosy and, and whatnot. And just like. And I looked at some of the lamps that they were using and it's a lot of real old technology and all that. And just, you know, one place that, you know, you walk into and you can see, you know, the, the quality of, you know, the, the lighting products, the light engines and whatever would make so much difference in the overall appearance of, you know, the colors and everything. It's just walking in here, I mean, you see the poinsettias on the left in the hallway and it just kind of looked dead. you know, and, and all that. And it's, It was very, very depressing being in this room for two days. Honestly, it was, So anyway, so what we did is, we borrowed a couple of bulbs that they had and they were much older, B10s and A15s. They were, probably one of the original bulbs from 2004, who knows? But this is a typical spectrometer, spectrograph reading and whatnot. And it measures a lot of different things with power factors and VA ratings and all that. But one of the most important things that it does, and I don't know if you can see. Can you see my pointer?

Yeah.

Okay. So one of the hardest things to achieve with LEDs is a good R9. R9 is this red color. And everybody, a lot of people's products are down, you know, 10, 12. They might even get as high as 20. But even if you look at the overall color of this, this is like all over this stinking map. But then, so this helps measure CRI. And out of the 15 values here, I believe they only use 8 of the 15 to come up with the CRI of 82.6. But what is up and coming is this new, thing. And we might have talked about it in the past, this is a test, measurement TM30, where they actually take 99 different colors and they're measuring them. The black circle is the reference circle of what, you know, a true perfect color should be. If you measure a halogen lamp, it's right on there. And so what you see by the red lines is either an, over or under saturation of color that this, particular product is, is producing. So in, you know, many cases, that's what's happening here is There's. It's. These LEDs are lacking that color to help the colors in the room pop. And then the A15 that's in some of the other wall sconces, and all of that are similar. The R9. Oops. The R9 is a little bit better at, 29.9, but the overall saturation is a little bit better, but it's still not what it should be. So that's what we see on the inside of, you know, of, buildings and, and commercial properties, hospitalities and all of that. So then we look at outdoor landscape lighting, and this is a particular customer of ours that was complaining that their landscape lighting was producing some strange colors. And we helped them out. But you can certainly see here the color difference between, you know, the white, the yellow in the center white, and then whatever the heck is going on out here.

There's like four different colors there.

Yeah, it's pretty. It's. It's pretty strange. and then if you back up and look at this house, you can see that.

Yeah.

On there. And so this is the difference again, between buying a good quality product and, you know, one. Not so much. You know, that, you know, it's all about, you know, the bottom line, the eco version of a bulb or something like that. But this is. Oh, my gosh, if this was my house, I think I threw this guy out of there.

Ryan Lee: Lighting can totally take away from that experience

Let's, let's pause for a second because you talked about some really important things. was it called the TM30?

yes, this is called the TM30.

Okay. And I'm, I'm. The TM30 is new for me. I understand CRI, but basically, I want to break it down kind of in layman's terms. That hotel, that place that you went, I'll bet you 99 of the population would go in there that doesn't have a lighting background and be like, wow, this place is beautiful. And here's where you get into trouble because, like, people just don't know what they don't know. And so. But then what you said was interesting is you felt. I can't remember, what word you said, but you were, like, depressed or. It just. It didn't feel good. And that's what, that's what lighting will do. It will invoke Emotion. So while the initial reaction like, wow, this is beautiful. And whoever the architect was and the interior designer, they clearly are talented, but they forgot about the lighting design. And so someone's initial reaction might be like, wow, this place is awesome. Isn't it cool? And then after you stay there a little while, it's like, wait, why don't, why don't I feel magnificent? Like you should feel magnificent in a place like that. And lighting can totally take away from that. So I think if, especially if you're newer in the lighting industry, you don't care about CRI TM 30s, you're just like, okay, well why is your bulb twice as much as this one? And this is just a great example why. And why it matters long term. Because we're trying to make our clients feel that emotion every single night. And not even though they might go night one like, this is beautiful. Because most people think that even about a, poor, poor quality lamps, poor quality design, bad placement, they still tell them it looks good. And so the problem is the install or the designer believes them. Sure. And that's the problem.

Yeah. And honestly, we've been members of the American Lighting association for over 30 years, and we sit on a lot of different committees and listen to people and all of that and the amount of studies that have been done on good lighting versus poor lighting and, you know, high, light bulbs or light fixtures that produce, you know, different blue, areas of, of color within it really affect somebody's, you know, psyche, the way they feel and, and whatnot. Almost like, I guess if you were to have like a hangover or something, you just wouldn't feel right. And so it, it's, it's cool learning about that stuff and studying it. And it's also cool being able to produce products that fix this.

I love it. Well, if you take an average contractor lighting designer and they are now armed with those tools to, to when they're, when they're talking to that homeowner like, hey, here's why it matters. Like night one, it doesn't matter what we use. You guys are gonna be like, that looks so cool. But at some point you're gonna come back and say, why, why does our house, what, every light kind of looks a little bit different, and why does this one have three different colors and this one looks more natural? And sure, until you point that out, you got to educate the client too, educate the homeowners. So this is good stuff.

And, you know, that's the point that we try to make with our customers. And everybody that we talk to is like, listen, you want to set yourself apart from your competition, you know, you need to take Ryan Lee's courses, you need to go to aolp, you need to do ILI and all of this other stuff, because you know what? Your competition isn't doing that. And you have got the credentials and you've got the experience and all of that to put yourself above your competition.

So awesome. Very cool stuff.

There is a color difference between single optic cob and multi chip LED lighting

So we, we get back into here with, you know, the way this house looks and you can see the yellow and everything, you know, on, on the bricks, on, on all of this. And it's not Photoshopped or anything. This is, this is what it's producing. and here's. What's that?

It's not photoshopped. I wish, I wish it was, but.

I'm not that good. And I'm not that good. and this is what, you know, the quality of different products just look like on a blank wall. And it's just like, okay, forget, you know, there is a color difference between all three of these and all of that and one and three. there's an intentional color difference in between the two. But the one in the, in the center is just like, what in the heck is going on here? I mean, it's just. But guys, I'm telling you, if you're not paying attention, you're putting your reputation on this. And the stuff that I'm showing you, I guarantee that probably 80 or 100 of the people out there have used and have tried. Guaranteed. It is, it is crazy.

So, you're saying this isn't just stuff that you, you found the cheapest bulb on Amazon, is what you're saying?

No, absolutely not. This is, this is the stuff that people are buying day in and day out.

That's wild. You know what I did when I had my lighting company, we bought the stuff on Amazon and we did something similar. I just said, hey, look, we bought this 20 pack and I, and I had a picture and I would show them. Here's, here's what they all look like out of one batch. Like there's, they're all supposed to be the same. Do they all look the same to you? And, that's what you're doing here. But you're, you know, you're obviously comparing yourself to other brands out there.

So anyway, so. And then this is also the difference between a single optic cob or a multi chip product. So you can see with the multi chip product, the one in the center you can see various shadows or striations or whatever. And then the COB products on both ends are very smooth and uniform. And people ask me all the time, what's the difference between COB and. And you know, the multi chip led. And here it is, you know, again, I'm not making this stuff up. This is a three LED product. it's in the center with with the lens. And this is what, what you're getting.

So just, we'll just talk. Chip on board is Cobb. And I say like single source led. So you're going to get a clear. As you can see by this photo, you're just going to get a clearer presentation of light instead of 3Ds potentially competing against each other.

Right. And so people say, well you know, you're lighting up landscape lighting and bushes and shrubs and you know, you're doing it outside and it really doesn't make a difference. So really it doesn't make a difference.

So anyway, yeah, especially on, you know, I say landscape lighting, but I don't know what percentage. I think a lot of landscape lighting is architectural lighting. And you know, we can get caught in the weeds on terminology or whatever, but a lot of people when they call and they want lighting, they want their house lit. Not, not in all regions of the country, I understand, but a lot of people want their house just like you showed that picture. They want to show off their masterpiece and they have some trees and stuff like that, but they want to light the house. And it's not as noticeable when you have bad optics or bad CRI and stuff, on plants, but it's still noticeable. Like especially cri, that's highly noticeable because that pulls out the wrong colors or whatever. But on architecture especially, you really start to see those V patterns. You see the discoloration, multicolors in one beam spread stuff that's like. It actually is pretty impressive how they're able to create multiple colors in one light.

Yeah. And you know, we have very good customers that do very large jobs and all they do is light up the foliage. And we have customers of the same size that all they do is light up the architecture.

Right.

So you can't have two different products. You have to have one product that does everything well.

And it's wild too. I mean this is the architecture here obviously. But if you, if you get a low quality and a high quality lamp and put it on a, on an oak tree, I mean it's pretty crazy. The difference on that, you can experiment with on that as well. You'll see it looks like alive versus dead. Pretty much.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So, and then moving on and just being able to see the differences in some of the colors of, you know, what's going on here is the under and over saturation of some of those colors. And then obviously there's something really serious going on with the product to produce, you know, those multiple colors and everything. So anyway, that was that. And then know here's something a little bit different, but you can still tell the difference between single optic and multiple optic mr, 16s. The triple optic Mr. 16 on the far left is not bad. you know, it does a nice, good job. Nice and smooth and all of that. The one on the far right, there's still a lot of junk going on, on, on that one. So it just. And you gotta figure, you know, if you've got multiple light sources on the same product, you've got to be able to deal with all of them equally. And so it's not like you're just trying to tune one prod or one, you know, led. You're trying to tune all of these working together. So, anyway, so then here's what ultimately that Mr. M16 should look like. I mean when we have. Look at the TM30 and how close the red and black circle is to each other. Notice the very high cri and how consistent the colors are. You don't see these things jumping up and down all over the place. You see a very high R9, value here as well. And it's, you know, it's indicated in, in the TM M30. So that's, that's ultimately what you want to,

Is that an Emory? Emory Allen, Mr. 16.

Of course it is.

What is. let's, let's stay super nerdy here.

A perfect power factor means that for every watt, there's no wasted energy

tell us about power factor.

So I saw it on the chart.

0.92.

So a perfect power factor means that for every watt, every, that you're putting in that you're actually using, there's no wasted energy. If your power factor is one, like a halogen lamp, you know, you've got you know, a filament that you're firing up and you're burning at a certain current and all of that, that power factor is, if it's not one, it's 0.99998. So with with LEDs, you have a tendency to have some wasted energy. And that wasted energy is due to circuit design. The components that you use the drivers and everything else, and you, want to get that power factor as high as possible because the power factor is directly related to your VA. So this happens to be a 7.34 watt bulb, and it is drawing totally 7.97. So the amount wasted energy here is, let's call it 6, 10 of a watt. and so we have seen other people's products for the same, probably an additional 50% of the wattage. So if you have a 7 watt bulb, you could have, you know, 9 to 12 VA. And that's just, you know, wasted energy.

I think, yeah, this is important. That's why I asked you about it because, a lot of people, you know, they're like, oh, I don't need to do voltage calculations anymore, voltage drop, whatever. But they're. And they do in some cases, I mean, they think, oh, I'm getting a seven watt lamp here. So I'm, you know, I'm going to get 52 of those and be fine on this transformer or whatever it is. When in reality the power factor comes into play and it's like you need to be using VA anytime you use your. Those, calculations. VA is really what matters. But the nice thing about Emory Allen is it really is close. I mean, just like you said on this one, it's 7.3, Watts and 7.8 VA. That's, quite a bit different.

Right. This one here is, I know whose this is too. This is pretty doggone close as well. their power factor is up there, as well. probably one of the few people that, you know, can do that. but, you know, here's where you want to be. There's where you want to be with your TM30. Nice, clean, consistent color.

Yeah, Looks awesome. And then I guess the only other thing I'll pull out, just because it's what I recognize. Some of those other ones I'm not even dare ask you about. Otherwise we're going to. For people to sleep. the luminous flux. That sounds cool. Luminous flux, lumens. You know, a lot of people say, oh, I want to. I want to get this, I want to get this light. And I want to. I want a 4 watt. I want a 7 watt. And they, they don't even know what manufacturer they're using, but they know that they need a 4 watt. And I'm like, but that, that doesn't tell you anything. Like you could get a 4 watt that has 700 lumens and a 4 watt. That has 100 lumens. I think maybe talk about what? Like what? Yeah, why does that matter here?

I mean, you know, people are buying, you know, consistency. They're buying wattage. We try to get the most amount out of our product as we possibly can. That's why on this particular product we have 98 lumens per watt multiplied by the wattage. And that's why you get 721 lumens with this particular product. Now, it's not the case with all of our products. there are some products that we purposely under drive because, you know that they, the customer wants something, they want a certain effect. And so let's just say a 1 watt Mr. 16, you know, will want to drive that. So it only produces 75 lumens or something like that. so we get to pick and choose. and it all has to do with how you, your, your circuit is designed and everything like that. But for the most part, on these other ones, on the three five sevens, eights, whatever, we, tried to get as many lumens per watt out of the product as possible.

Yeah. So, you know, pay attention to those labels. In this case, like, you know, the one we're looking at says the luminous efficacy is 98. So it's, it's, you know, it's almost 100 where you're like, okay, it's a, it's a, where's the VA? Yeah. 7.7.97. You know, you're going to get around that. 700 lumens. So, yeah, it's how all of these variables relate to each other and understanding that makes it really easy to come up with a design, makes it easy to communicate value to the client. Know what you're going to get and, make sure you understand like the difference between quality and cost.

Right, Absolutely. And so, you know, that's why we really push for people. The thing that you don't want to skimp on for landscape lighting, you don't want to skimp on the light source. and I, believe me, I believe that our products are more fairly priced than a lot others. But the performance just blows everybody away. and that's all designed, that's, that's done intentionally. So, this is, this is what, this is the neighborhood you need to be playing in.

Yeah, I mean it's, it's a very good value. I, when I talk about raising my price, I'm only talking to lighting designers and contractors, not manufacturers. Tom. So let's, I'm representing the people Here. Yeah, no, let's keep those prices, good. They're. They're really good, if you know what I'm saying.

You guys have some new products, um, that we. Give away

What about. You guys have some new products, that we. We gave away. You guys gave some, products away? For our secret summit, which was cool. We did a big raffle and stuff. can you talk about those?

Sure. And I know we're running on short time here. I want to give these products equal opportunity. But, earlier in, it was about August, I think, we introduced the, Ranger and the Scout. And so, you know, people are always asking, were you getting in the fixture business now? And it's like, no. But there are things that people complain about over and over and over again is, how do you like this? How do you like that? And, you know, we want this to do this, and it's got to be waterproof and this, that and everything. I got tired of hearing it about it after a couple of years, so I says, oh, what the heck, let's just see what we can. We can cobble together. So, the Ranger and the Scout, both solid brass forge. They're not. They're not diecast, but they're forged materials. Both of these are IP68 rated. So they have been rated so that, you know, if somebody puts them in, the test is up to 3ft of water, 1 meter, so that the pressure doesn't, you know, force the water into the product. But, the Ranger is a very small utility fixture. You can't tell here, but this fixture is the same size as an Mr. 16. It's 2 inches in diameter, 2 inches long. It currently has a cowl on it. I have it mounted to a stake. The base is. Is threaded, but what it was originally designed for was to go up and light up a dormer. It was. It was designed because people were complaining that, you know, how do I light up a dormer? And it's like they have to take an Mr. 16 fixture and put it in a gutter mount that you got this big, you know, thing that looks like a cannon that's hanging from the gutter, lighting up their dormer. So we made this thing very, very small, low price profile and all of that. we can hold it up in.

The camera here as well just to.

Can you see that, Ryan?

Yeah, it looks tiny.

Can you see what Jackson is showing you? Yeah, he can. Okay.

Yeah, I can. well, actually, what I'd probably do is this.

Well, we can come back to it after.

Yeah, we can come back. But anyway, it's it's designed to be either mounted on a, our stainless steel, gutter mount or what we have here is a real cool shingle mount that you, this Ranger just mounts to. The shingle mount slides underneath. You can remove the the top cover plate on the Ranger, change optics on it. we have 18, 24, 36, 60 and 120 degrees on the on the optics and then underneath the optic that we threw in there so that you can adjust the lumens from 30 to 300 lumens. It comes preset from the factory at 300 lumens, but you can tune it all the way down to 30. And if you've seen us at AOLP or at GIE, we had our little display and it kind of shows how this whole thing works. so that's one of the things that we came out with, the Ranger. It's great utility fixture. You can hang it upside down from an eve. I mean all the versatility that you have in this thing is pretty incredible. And we've gotten some great, great results. Comments back about it. everything is 90 cri, you know, typical, you know, Emory Allen, you know, power factors and all of that. It's a great little, it's a great little light. It's, it's small with a, with a big punch. Okay, so that was, that was one of the things that we did. And then the other product that we came out with was this little Scout. The Scout is again, it's a forged piece of brass, has IP68 on it as well. And it's just so that you can, you know, drop it in a flower pot. It's got some good weight to it where it's not going to be blown away or anything like that. So it's a nice heavy duty little piece that works out real well. And then we're playing around with some other things with it.

Let's get off of this really quickly.

We'll just go over here. Okay.

Ryan, you've seen the Scout light fixture. It has interchangeable optics

So we've got some other things going on. We've got a different type of a cowl that we're coming out with that shields the light either on a shingles or, I think it was Woody Kerwin over at Night Owl recommended that, you know, we use this as a, you know, tree light and all that. So, you know, we could do that as well. We've we've come out with an, a neat little cowl for the Scout where it mounts to it so that if you were to put it in a flower pot or something. You're not going to get your eyes glared upon or anything like that. And then we've got these hypodermic needle spikes that are going to be mounted, can be mounted out of these things so you can shove them in a flower pot and hold it in place and all that. So you know, it's just problem solving is just trying to figure out a better way and you know, if somebody's got to do it, you know, we are half inch pipe nipple. Yeah, I mean half inch pipe nipple mounts to a steak. I guess, you know, people asked us to come out with the steak and so we are. And it comes with this neat packaging. Ryan, you've seen it.

Yeah.

it's a lot different than you know, the cheap, you know, brown paper boxes. This is a map of upstate New York. This happens to be a favorite spot of my son and daughter in laws. There's a QR code on the bottom. You scan the QR code, it will give you the instruction sheets and everything about that. And then the same thing with the scout. It's got another map on it. It's actually of Tybee island right around Charleston. It also has a QR code on the bottom of it. Each product comes with 15ft of SPT wire and I don't know, I think. Did I miss anything?

I mean it comes with one lens for the, the ranger here. So you know, when it comes to you, it's with a 60 degree lens. It has interchangeable optics like Tom talked about earlier. You got, I believe it's 18, 24, 36 degrees that you could remember. Replace those lenses with if you want, you can take the lens completely out. It'll be 120 degree or 120 degree beam spread on it. every single box we ship out of these. We'll put a little Allen wrench in there and it makes it nice and easy. You know, we, our whole goal is to put it to where you don't have to. You, the contractor doesn't have to bring a lot of tools up on the roof with you. Try and avoid as much as possible. So little Allen wrench can fit into the hole here and you can tighten this down. it doesn't come with a little screwdriver but you can see, I think I showed it earlier, the little potentiometer in here.

It's the little.

Is it yellow or blue?

It's a yellow.

Little yellow and blue. Oops, sorry. Button up here. So that's where the adjustments are.

I mean, just a real cool light fixture. I mean, if anything else, I've got a bunch of these laying around my house that does a great job lighting up my plants and the trees around my place, so.

Love it. Yeah. Great option for, you know, upsells. Like, a lot of people don't know. If you go to someone's house and they say, we want lighting, and you ask questions, and then they're like, we don't know. And you just do the 12 lights because they want the house lit, like, that's what they're gonna buy. But if you show them what's possible and do these little accent things, not everyone's gonna bite, but a lot of people will. That's why they hired. That's why they hired a designer. They don't want just, their ideas. They want someone to give them some ideas. So great little niche fixtures that you can supplement just your regular stuff. I love it.

And I think another question you get a lot is with the shingle mount, it's like, you know, there's holes in it. Like, how do I put it on a roof? But, well, you know, you don't have to think that the first option is. Is putting. Putting, holes in a roof, putting nails in a roof. You know, if we put it. We put. What is it? Adhesive glue. Some sort of really strong adhesive glue, asphalt glue, something like that on the roof under a shingle. I mean, you know, if you don't want to ruin any. Any of the integrity of a roof. Not that you really would be, but there's other ways of doing it too.

Yeah, the shingle mount is cool. I mean, honestly, just some adhesive, and you slide that up under there, it's not going anywhere.

That's it.

Jackson says Emerald lighting makes contractor selling projects a lot easier

We talked a lot in the last 45 minutes. It went by quick.

That was good. yeah. Thanks for, Jackson. I knew you could do it. I was like, when is Jackson gonna do something? And he did it. Good job, Jackson.

I'm always sitting back and learning as much as I can. But, I mean, I will tell you, like, even being new to it and, you know, hearing y'all talk, I mean, you want. You look at these products and you look at the pictures that we started with and go in, and once you see what good, strong products look like and really see that difference, it makes your life as, a contractor selling projects a lot easier. I mean, it makes my life easy. I mean, I'm a sales Sales manager here. And it makes my life easy knowing these products are something that you can back. And I have confidence in selling. And once you get it out to the person, they. They love it, it makes your life easy.

So th. This.

This brand and Emerald and the lights, like you said, I mean, it could be, you know, whatever fixture you want to put it in.

It's.

It's going to make it look good.

So Jackson's going to be at, AOLP with us. They are coming, he is coming to your event the week after in Orlando and, just kind of emerging Jackson into lighting, you know, especially landscape lighting right now.

Nice.

Anyone who buys a ticket to Light It Up Expo is entered into a raffle

Well, so I want to talk about Light It Up Expo and I want to put you on the spot. I didn't want to put you on the spot, but I forgot to ask you before. So we're going to do it. We're going to do a raffle. Okay. And this is for anyone who buys a ticket, like right now in December. This is our early bird pricing. anyone who buys a ticket to Light It Up Expo is going to be entered into a raffle. And we're going to give away, you know, we'll do a raffle. And so is there something that Emory Allen would. Is there something you guys would be willing to raffle for the. The early bird, ticket?

So you didn't get my email?

Well, we probably did, but I forgot. Listen, if there's any weakness in my business, it's me. So probably have the information. Darcy has it and she probably sent it and I didn't read it.

You know, we're gonna do, Rangers, we're gonna do Scouts, we're gonna do light bulbs.

Oh, sweet.

What else, what else would you like?

Okay. I love it. So, guys, get your ticket now. Emory Allen is stepping up big time. They're the platinum sponsor for Light It Up Expo. If you want information, lightitup expo. com. but anyone who gets their ticket now is going to be entered into this raffle. And Tom's basically giving away the company. they can get one of those.

Nice cups like you had at the beginning of the show, right?

Yes. I love this thing. well, and it's. It's, I'm grateful and glad that you guys are with us on Light It Up Expo. It's going to be an awesome opportunity for people. when I got the. You shipped us the Ranger and the Scout for our giveaway here at Secret Summit, I was like, the packaging is so different. I was like, what did Tom send me Underwear. Why is he sending me Emory Allen underwear? And then I picked the box up. I'm like, this is some heavy underwear. Those. I mean, those are heavy duty. I mean, they could be a, weapon for sure, so.

Sure.

Quality, and Emory Allen go together for sure. I know. I've. I didn't even know who Emory Allen was when I had my lighting business, but now, you know, all my clients are using it. Everyone comes back with great things to say. They love the product, they love the company, and it's just. It's just been a lot of fun to work with you guys. So thanks for. Thanks for everything.

Our pleasure. A lot of fun.

All right, well, is there anything else that we need to discuss

All right, well, is there anything else that we. Are we good? Do we need to wrap up with anything? Did I forget to ask you anything. Questions?

Oh, thanks for the, plug there, James. I appreciate what you said. You know, I figure if I can get past James Selecki for real.

That'S like, we just. We just accomplished something big.

Do you still give anything away at this podcast or are you too busy

No, my only question is, is, do you, Do you still give anything away at this, on these podcasts, or are you too busy to do that?

I forget. I. I used to, you know, do it every week, and then I, I had questions lined up, and then I get in these conversations. I'm like, oh, crap, I forgot. And then the show ends. So. No, we don't, but we can.

That's okay. We're running out of time.

Well, if. If you guys want to win whatever Tom's going to give away, and you're going to come to Light It Up Expo, just get your ticket now. And the reason why, by the way, you guys, why. Why we promote it early and we try to do early birds and stuff like that, is because we make some big commitments with these hotels, and we think we know how many people are coming, but we don't know at all. So it gives us a lot of confidence and stuff like that. So we're willing to give you guys, like, smoking deals early on. and, luckily, Tom and other vendors are willing to step up with some cool prizes and products and stuff like that, giveaways. So if you're going to come, just get your ticket now and, and you'll be entered to win that. That raffle. So. And I think in the future, I will do a better job. Tom, what I'm trying to do is do, like, a bigger giveaway where it's not just the live listeners, because most people are listening and watching later. So what I'm trying to do is do something where, like, hey, go in, go to this page, enter here, and that way we can capture more, you know, give. Give people a greater opportunity. So, yes, save some inventory, Save some giveaway stuff for our future. Gift card giveaways will do. All right, well, thanks for coming on, you guys. Really appreciate it. if people want to get in, get a hold of Emory Allen or you. How do they do that?

Tom Gary Allen. com or Jackson B. Jackson L. Jackson L.

Jackson L, Emery Allen dot com.

All right, well, in the spirit of trying to replace Tom, let's get

All right, well, in there, in the spirit of trying to replace Tom, let's, you know, let's get. Get Jackson some leads here.

Well, I appreciate.

Thanks for coming on, guys. And if you guys were, paying attention today, go, implement some of this stuff. Go try some Emery Allen product out, report back, avoid the EMI and get the cri.

There you go.

See you guys next time.

All right, man. Thanks, Ryan.