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Wired In: Kontek Conversations is for leaders who want to get technology right. From universities and healthcare systems to corporate enterprises, each episode delivers practical insights to help you navigate complex projects, avoid costly missteps, and design environments that truly connect people.
Through candid conversations with Kontek executives and industry experts, you’ll discover why projects succeed or fail, how to balance innovation with usability, and how bold ideas become reality. Along the way, we share perspectives on the evolution of AV technology, the impact of employee ownership, and the culture of accountability that drives lasting results.
With almost four decades of expertise, Kontek invites you to think bigger, dream bolder, and imagine what’s possible when technology and vision come together.
Brandon Giella: Hello, and
welcome back to another episode
of Wired in Presented by Contech.
Today we are talking
again with Marcus Manning.
Thank you for joining, Marcus.
We are talking today about speaking human,
how to bridge the a v tech business gap.
And what we mean by this is.
AV is a very technical skillset.
It's a technical discipline.
There are a lot of
details you must master.
And Conec being a master of all
these details, uh, can do the work.
And there are many companies
that can do a good job on av.
But what makes you guys so different
and so special is that you are a true
partner with a lot of these executives
that are making the decisions and you're
able to communicate effectively these.
Technical details that they must
understand to make good decisions,
but in a way that is very human
and relatable and makes them feel
empowered to make those decisions.
It's not a, it's not like a, a nerd
off in technical expertise where
you're making them feel like they're
talked down to, or intimidated or
overwhelmed or condescended You really.
Uh, bring in your partners to help them
understand what you guys are doing and
talk to them in a very relatable way.
So, I thought this would be a great
episode to talk about your, uh,
principles of communication, if you will.
So, what we want to get across is
why is it so difficult for, uh, a lot
of folks in your position to explain
these complex concepts very simply.
And how do you go about your approach
to explaining more, uh, simply and
making people feel at ease when
they're working with you and, and
dreaming big for their AV projects.
So with that, Marcus, uh, what,
why, why is it so difficult for the
technical chops to make it their way
up to the executive boardroom level?
What's, what's the challenge there?
Marques Manning: Well, yeah, Brandon,
it, it starts, I'd say early on.
So what happens in, I'd say multiple
industries, but anytime you're in a
technology sector, you know, there is
a lot of learning that has to happen.
A lot of deep diving, very,
very technical concepts.
But what ends up, you know, really
happening in our industry is you can't
forget that we're here to serve people.
Right.
We're here to help people bring
their communication vision to
life, make all these things happen.
And so at some point along that journey
of really trying to enhance your skills,
do you lose sight of who are you actually
talking to and what are you doing?
You know, who are you here to help?
Who are you advising?
What are you doing?
And so people almost get stuck because,
you know, I'll throw out something
that's, you know, we don't have to get
into it, but it's a reality, right?
As HDMI changes.
Everyone knows HDMI.
Well, everyone may not
know that there's HDMI 2.2
or there's HDMI 3.8,
or just made up numbers.
Well, within HDMI, there's HT CP.
Well, what's HDCP?
Well, it's a protocol that
deals with encryption.
Oh, you can only have
seven devices, right?
So you just go off on
this rabbit hole of a
Brandon Giella: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marques Manning: and is it important?
Extremely important for
making things work, right?
If all of a sudden you've
hooked up some devices via HDMI
and you get a green screen.
You didn't, you know,
handle the HDCP correctly.
However, you know, if you're
sitting, listening to someone's
dream about how their room's gonna
work, how they're gonna communicate
to others, that doesn't matter.
Right?
It matters for myself or my team, or
anyone technical that has to design it,
that has to work on it and support it.
But when you're out here, you know,
just talking to other human beings.
Oh, okay, so you want
a display, oh, awesome.
You use PowerPoint.
Great.
You know, you just want easy connectivity.
You want something wireless.
Right.
Those are the things when you're trying
to think about the scope and you're
trying to translate what is that vision,
and now translate that into a written
document so a person can easily read
it and lay language and understand
like, oh yeah, this sounds great.
Yep.
I'm gonna have a giant
bright LED panel on the wall.
Yes you will.
Now it's on us on the technical side to
go back and say, okay, how do you actually
make this work and what has to happen?
And you really have to be able to flip
that switch and kind of go back and forth
between just talking to normal users.
Um, and then in the same conversation,
maybe you jump from users to IT staff to
other AV and multimedia professionals,
and then you're back to users and
you really need to be able to flow in
and outta those conversations fairly
seamlessly so that everyone gets what
they need out of the conversation
to help advance the project forward.
Brandon Giella: That's great.
Okay, so if I'm understanding you right,
uh, you've got what, uh, some people
call the knowledge problem, which is
to say once you start to learn, uh,
or, or become an expert in a topic.
You forget what it's like not to know
about that expertise that you have.
So it's hard to translate back
down, uh, to where you used to
be, you know, as a, as an expert.
And so you've got this senior decision
maker who's dreaming about a big project.
You know, they're, they're
wanting to spend half a million,
a million, $2 million on a big AV
project at an organization or a
hospital or university setting.
And they're thinking like, I
just, I just needed to work.
Here's my vision.
Here's what I, I, I need, and I know,
you know, they know the stakeholders and
the challenges and the opportunities in
front of them and what they need to do.
Whether it needs to be HDMI 2.2,
or HTM I 3.0
or whatever.
They don't really care.
They just need to work.
Um, but there comes a.
Point in the conversation where I'm
sure you've had this conversation a
thousand times where a dreamer will say,
yeah, I, I want it to look like this.
And you go, well, that's great,
but technically the way that we
can do that, it's going to, you
know, add 30% to your budget.
Or if we're gonna do that, that means
we gotta make these decisions over
here, which is not what you expected.
How do you handle that conversation?
'cause I, I bet that's tricky.
Marques Manning: It is very tricky
because, you know, it's, you always
wanna respect people's areas,
area of expertise, just like you
wanna be respected for your own.
So it's one of those things, I
always try to catch it early.
Um, I don't want anyone to
ever have a surprise, right as
you go through the process, no
matter who you're working with.
They have a fundamental idea of a, you
know, a cost, what something's gonna do.
So the second someone's
taking you down a path.
And again, I'm never a fan
of telling someone no early.
I don't wanna crush any dreams.
I'm like, Hey, you know what?
Every dream can become a reality
if, if you have the budget for it.
Um.
Brandon Giella: that.
Yeah.
Marques Manning: yeah,
you can do anything.
But there's a reality that you
have to kind of just bring it
into the conversation quickly and
say, Hey, that sounds awesome.
And usually it does sound awesome.
Like, man, these things all sound awesome.
You know, driving a Ferrari
sounds really, really awesome.
It's highly expensive.
Um, and this is the same kind of
concept where someone wants something
that's a 30 foot tall LED wall
that's going to cover, you know, 80
feet and it's really for eye candy.
Awesome.
We can totally do it.
However, do you know that the cost on
that is, you know, $200,000 plus you have
an impact to your construction budget?
Because now we have to reinforce a wall.
We need more electrical.
So the best advice I always give
folks is, you know, ask for that
budgetary number right away and
weave it into the conversation.
As you're hearing some
of these things diverge.
If there's an add-on or it diverges
from the core of the project.
'cause you can still make it happen.
But is everyone aware early on?
'cause you never want someone to get stick
or shocked when all of a sudden they see
something on paper and they, they're like,
oh, I had no idea it was gonna cost this.
That's why we're having
these conversations.
Right.
We're we're talking about being a partner.
Being an advocate where you can,
and just helping people, you know,
become educated on, you know, what's
it like in the commercial AV space?
This is not, you know, this is not a big
box store, so I just go out to the store
and I spend 1500 bucks and buy something.
You could, and it'll fail in like
90 days or what have you, because
it's not designed to run, you
know, like commercial products.
So that's the best thing, is really
having a channel of open conversation
for folks so that way there's
no, you know, hidden surprises.
'cause a project will just natively
have hidden costs and can you expose
as much of that as possible so everyone
goes in with the same point of reference
about what a project's gonna cost.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Okay.
So we've got listeners here that
are, you know, executives at at,
at big companies, universities, you
know, Dean, something to that effect.
And.
They're, let's say they're entering
into discussions of like, okay, we
want to have this big AV project
lined up for, you know, Q1, Q2, 2026.
Uh, what do you wish they would know,
or what would you, what, what is your
advice to them If you're going to engage
a, a, you know, an AV supplier, vendor
implementation specialists like you guys.
But ahead of those conversations so
that when you get into them, you can
have a more productive conversation.
You touched on some of those
things, but what advice would
you have for folks listening?
Marques Manning: It is always
get active early, right?
Get in contact with folks.
And again, you don't need to do
deep financial planning early on.
You can just say, Hey, let's
bring in someone that designs
that understands this.
If you have an architect on board,
have them in the conversation, right?
Have every, all the parties come
together really early on and just
listen to you hear it, brainstorm it.
You know, we have some technical things
we call, you know, a rough order of
magnitude budget, or you can do a, a,
a, design analysis, anything like that,
just to start getting the ideas on paper.
And then that gives you a
framework of where we're going.
But you also need to coordinate that
with, you know, an architect or a project
manager or a general contractor so that
as they hear it in real time and they're
interacting with what information we're
giving, they can say, oh wait, well now
I need to reinforce that wall because
that thing is gonna weigh 800 pounds.
We have to come up with this idea.
Or, oh wait, we need to add more
circuits because, you know, we
need to power up 3000 watts.
Or, you know, something of that nature.
And that's the best advice
I can give to anyone.
You know, get your, your technology
folks in there early in that discussion
and invite others, invite it, invite
the architect, invite whoever it is
that could be a stakeholder in making
this thing come to life so that
everyone's on the same page really early.
Um, some of the tougher conversations
happen, you know, if you, in my
case, I've actually received.
Permitted set of drawings before, right?
So it's basically a building has been
completely designed, it's already
gone out, it's been approved and
signed off on by the city or whatever
municipality is responsible for it.
Then we get involved designing and we say,
Hey, we need to make all these additions
for things like conduit or floor boxes
to really get into the nitty gritty
of how things communicate and connect.
And all of a sudden you see the
project costs start going up,
or you see someone saying, oh.
Well, now we have to core the floor, or
now we have to, you know, put this behind
this wall or we didn't account for this.
So the best advice I can give anyone
is just get someone that you know
is knowledgeable about that area.
Get 'em all to the table really
early, and just you share your vision
and let those others kind of run
with making it become a reality.
Brandon Giella: that's helpful.
Last episode, I think we talked about
how you've got, uh, you know, in a, in a
presentation space, you've got a desk and
somebody wants to hook up their laptop.
When they sit down at the desk to
like, you know, handle the, the,
the AV setup that they might have,
and you're like, well, that's great,
but now we need to drill a hole in
the floor that we didn't talk about.
Marques Manning: Ray.
Brandon Giella: of thing.
I know that, that, that is,
uh, is tough when you're
building these kind of projects.
Okay, so I want to dive into this
a little bit further, uh, to just
give a, a, a little bit further
lay of the land on the next step.
Say, so we've talked a little bit
about the contact process, but.
I'm curious how you handle this.
Uh, what I've been calling is a, a
phrase I've been coming up with lately,
which is like a coordination problem,
which is you are having, you and your,
your, your leadership team are having
these kind of high level conversations
with the leadership team at, uh, at
Prospect Con, uh, client, um, and
they got this dream, you guys kind of.
Put this vision together.
You have this kind of conversation
that you're talking about now,
but now there's a lot more
people that need to be involved.
Once you start executing this project
from design down to implementation to
support where you have to go further and
further into those technical details,
the nitty gritty and coordinate between
a lot of different people, your team.
You know, the customer's team,
the architects, the designers, uh,
interior decorators, I'm sure you
know how they're gonna think about
putting different spaces together.
How do you, what's the process?
Uh, you would take, uh,
somebody through that?
Okay.
Now that you've got this high level
initial brainstorming session, and now
it's becoming more real, you're putting
designs together, you're putting budgets
in place, how do you handle that process
of communication, of coordinating
all those different stakeholders?
Marques Manning: Yeah, so one
of the most powerful partners
is the project architect.
Right.
The architect, they natively
are connected to everyone
that's going to touch a project.
And so the best thing you can
make sure that happens is, is my
technology consultant, designer,
whatever term you want to use, are
they linked up with the project
architect and are they in lockstep?
Because that way they're also
gonna be talking to electrical.
They're gonna be talking
to, you know, the MEP firm.
They're talking to everyone that's
going to design this building and
help it come out of the ground.
And then are you open with your
communications sharing documents?
Some of the best architects I work
with, you know, that's all cloud based.
They're calling coordination meetings and
you know, making sure they get you into
the owner's space to make sure that the
owner has communicated directly with you
because you know how they may hear a need.
It is not gonna be the same interpretation
of how I heard it, how I feel, you know,
is what's needed, what things look like.
So I think that's the strongest
partnership, um, any owner can really
have is direct tier technology person,
but also with your architect, bring
them together and that helps push this
coordination and this process downstream.
'cause behind the scenes, you know,
we're consulting or if you're dealing
with any kind of designer, well
they've got their own internal team,
so they're getting all the notes and
everything from the architect and.
Pulling it all apart and then you're
dropping everything in there and
then you put it all back together and
that's how you actually create your
final, you know, architectural package
for whatever's gonna be happening.
If you have, especially in the case
of a large building, um, a major
renovation, anything like that.
Mission critical that everyone is
partnered up through the architect.
Brandon Giella: Hmm, I, I'm fascinated
by this, this concept because, uh, you
know, you've, like you said, you've
got internal, external, you've got
suppliers, you've got manufacturers,
designers, architects, all these
different people that all need to
know the same information, have the
same kind of visibility and context
on the objective of the project.
Um, and you've got cloud
services and you've got.
Email and phone and Zoom calls and
in-person meetings and that game of
telephone can get lost in translation.
It's very, very difficult to do this.
Well, and I know you guys are, are
specialists in making this kind of a
white glove type feel with, uh, you
know, being a good partner in this
process with all the people involved.
Um, you've talked before about a like
front office, back office approach
to, you know, maybe some of the
technical, you know, implementation
team doesn't need to know.
Every detail of the initial conversations,
but they've gotta know what they need
to do on a very, very detailed basis.
How do you internally, what kind of
teams or process in place do you have
when somebody's, you know, talking to
you, you get this thing in place, you
start coordinating all this, and then
you've got this like kind of back office
approach where they've got the details
they need to know to go implement.
Marques Manning: Yeah, that's, that's
actually a great way of putting
it, because you know, we have your
folks that may be out front, right?
They're just interfacing,
talking to clients, listening,
getting everything together.
But then you have to have a process
for everyone to be on the same page.
So internally, you know.
Any company worth their salt?
You know, we do it one way, so
we do it a different way, but
it's the same concept, right?
So we're, I'm not a fan of email.
Always tell folks, Hey, if we work in the
same company, why are you emailing me?
There's gotta be a, a
Brandon Giella: What's
the, what's the other way?
Marques Manning: Uh, I don't want to be,
you know, advocate for one specifically,
but you have your slacks or your teams.
Brandon Giella: yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Marques Manning: some other platform
where you set up a project and
you're just communicating within that
project, versus I'm getting a hundred
emails from people that I work with.
Like, you're in the office
with me, don't email me.
Brandon Giella: That's fair.
Okay.
This is, this is the problem
of office workers everywhere.
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
I
Marques Manning: right, right.
You don't want a a thousand emails that
are internal and then you're trying
to fish for the two client emails.
So we try to avoid that.
But um, yeah, basically it's, it's
setting up platforms and some of
that I give credit to, you know.
Project managers.
Project managers are like the
lifeblood of really almost anything
that's gonna be happening, but just
coming up with tools so that, I'll
say teams, I'm not advocating for
teams, but say you use teams, right?
Do you set up a project?
Do you have all your resources there?
And now you can easily share drawings.
So as soon as the architect set comes out,
push it out to your team, or you get them
tied in directly to the cloud instance.
It's really.
know, how do you bring people on the
team forward into the discussion?
Because I don't see any value in, you
know, keeping our, our technical assets
at arms length from the client in some
cases, because they need the information.
So I may say, Hey, I need a secondary
account set up for this person.
That way they can go in, in real
time, see all the drawings, see
all the notes, um, so you bring
'em forward to the discussion.
And then internally we
just talk about things.
You know, sometimes a technical resource
may say, no, you absolutely can't do that.
Well then if you're the front facing
resource, you make sure you say,
okay, well there's no such thing
as you can't, so what can we do?
You know, we're not telling someone
just, no, you can't do that.
It's, or maybe a no, but, well,
no, we can't do it this way, but
here's another solution for you.
Um, and that's the key there, is
allowing folks to have that access
to the documentation, allowing
them to access the project.
And again, it's, I don't want to get
into a game and no one should ever get
into a game of interpretation or the
old school, uh, telephone game where,
you know, it gets translated so many
times and then it's misconstrued.
Just bring everybody forward as much
as you can in the process and really
relying heavily on just project
management process to move things
along, make sure the right folks have
what they need, um, and then have that
communication always flow back to client,
architect, partner, whoever it is.
Uh, and that's the key to that
is, you know, you don't want.
Everyone just siloed off and so that
they're missing some of the key key
details that they could easily get if
they're just sitting in the meeting
or they're directly into some cloud
instance of some drawing software.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Do you, everybody's talking about ai
and I'm curious from your perspective on
the communication between technical to.
Let's call it more simple language
across a huge swath of stakeholders.
Do you find a, a place for AI to help
teams like yours or help a client, uh,
you know, understand things better?
Or do you guys use AI in the
way that you communicate?
I'm just fascinated by the way that you
could, you know, simplify communication
nowadays with, with some of these tools.
Marques Manning: We honestly don't use too
much of it yet in, in our specific space.
Right.
And so a lot of that has to
do with, if you know the inner
workings of ai, it would have to
be trained on what we're doing.
And there's not too many models
right now that are really trained
well and have guardrails in place.
To make sure that you're getting back, you
know, factual and accurate information.
There's some stuff that we are
kind of experimenting right
now 'cause we are saying, Hey,
can we build our own AI agent?
Can we specifically train it on, you
know, the EVICTUS standards, which
is the governing body for, you know,
audio visual, um, can we train it?
And then can we set up some kind of
framework to navigate through that?
There's some guys that, uh, I met,
they have a great podcast and that's
one of their topics is, Hey, this
isn't really helpful for us now.
But it could be.
Um, and the biggest thing is there's so
much math involved, it's always tested
out, but then verify your outputs.
So I'd say we don't see a ton of it.
Now, there's also the, the hardware
side of this, right, where I feel
like, honestly, everything is ai.
Now I think I have an AI
toothbrush coming out or something.
But, um,
Brandon Giella: Right?
Yes.
Yes.
Marques Manning: and like
everything is ai, right?
But you're seeing more implementations,
whether it's automation or ai, and you
can have that debate all day long, but.
Say camera tracking, um,
tuning of microphones.
There are just, we'll say technologies.
I won't call 'em all ai, but we'll just
say these technologies that are rapidly
evolving that do help with executing.
You have cameras now that can
track a person across the stage
in real time, and they're almost
as effective as a human operator.
Will they completely replace one?
Maybe not in your largest settings because
you know there's some real time decisions
that have to be made, and that's when you
really want that, that human operator.
And we're in the same boat
as far as designing systems.
We're, you know, building out some
little agents and saying like,
okay, well if I have a room, and
this is just doing something really
quickly with a client, I have a room.
It's 50 feet to the farthest viewer.
The height is 12 feet.
What size display should I use?
There's math we go through
every day to solve that.
So now we're just looking and say,
okay, well can we build an AI.
Based on, you know, the education of our
industry so that it could answer that
question for me, you know, really quickly.
So if I'm just walking with a client,
maybe I go into my specific, you
know, tool, type it in, and it kind of
spits it out to me and gives you the
equation because, you know, if I'm with
a client side, how do you know, right?
I can say all day long, Hey, that room
really needs a 98 inch display as a
client or anyone, any owner of a building
or space that's gonna invest in this.
Well, how do you know that?
And a person should be able
to tell you, well, here's,
here's why I say it's the size.
So we're hoping that AI can really
get there to help with some of that.
Um, some of that conver that conversation
and just some of the, you know, the
odds and ends and the tasks that you do
repetitively all the time, because I do
think there's definitely a space for that.
Um, as it gets further and further
along where some of that, that.
Some of those things that are really
repetitive, we can kind of take that
off the human plate and maybe move
that into an AI instance so we can just
kind of type up what we want to ask it.
Not bother with doing the calculations,
but I'd say for right now, don't do that.
Right now
Brandon Giella: Okay.
Marques Manning: you can check it out,
but make sure you go back and verify it
and make sure your output is actually
Brandon Giella: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Good to know.
So, working with contact, uh,
we are very human forward that
we are doing these calculations.
We are checking our facts.
We are doing this right.
Uh, you know, I've found a lot of
use in, uh, Claude's AI agents.
You can upload a lot of files now and kind
of train in that way and connected to a
bunch of different tools that you've got.
And I know Chat, GBT and
others have have rolled that
Marques Manning: Perplexity I've done.
That's, yeah,
Brandon Giella: Perplexity is great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I, I find that stuff really
helpful, at least for a first draft.
But you definitely need somebody
who knows what they're talking
about to read that and understand
it and make recommendations.
Marques Manning: absolutely,
you gotta verify.
You've got to verify
before you send it out.
Brandon Giella: That's right.
So, uh, for any, uh, uh,
principles that you have developed
over the years and how you.
Uh, hold meetings, create communication
assets, say, you know, documents, briefs,
project proposals, either you or your team
that you think other people should know.
Maybe you know, the top three things
I've learned over doing this for, you
know, decades and, and kind of figured
out along the way to do it better.
Marques Manning: Top three.
Oh man.
It feels like it should be a top 300,
but they'll say, if we say top three, um,
first and foremost, I always tell folks,
you know, yes, this is for us, but really
for, we're not here selling widgets.
I'm not knocking on the sales widgets,
but that's not what we're here to do.
Yes, we're a technology firm.
We're working in a technology space.
I am not here because I want to
sell someone a camera or a display.
I'm here to really listen and
understand what they're trying to do.
So a lot of times meeting with clients,
there's no need to talk about any
specific products, and that's no
knock to any of our manufacturers.
We love all of our partners.
They're, you know, we
couldn't do it without 'em.
But when we're trying to hear and
listen and understand, you know, I
don't want to inject my own thoughts
about, oh, it should be this particular
manufacturer, or it should be, Nope,
I'm just listing understanding.
Make sure I get the gist of where they're
trying to go, and then let that go to
a designer or the appropriate person.
And now that's a guide for them.
And they'll select, you know, whatever
manufacturer is best for the project.
I always tell folks we are primarily
manufacturer agnostic, right?
We're, we're only interested
in what's the right solution
to bring this dream to reality.
Like, that's it.
No more, no less.
Um, so I'd say that's one of the
most important lessons I've learned.
I'm not, again, I'm not here as a reseller
for a manufacturer or anything like that.
We're only here to help.
How can we advise?
How can we help?
You know, how can we serve these folks
and really make this vision a reality?
That's number one, first and foremost.
Um, you know, that's why we're
there to really be advisors
Brandon Giella: so said another way is,
is don't get into the sausage making.
You know, like don't, nobody wants
to know how the sausage is made.
Just gimme the sausage that I
ordered, that kind of thing.
Marques Manning: There you go.
Brandon Giella: Okay?
Okay.
Sounds good.
Marques Manning: There you go.
also, you know, trust other teams, right?
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Marques Manning: I am not an army of one.
Right?
It's not what we are here.
And so we have other teams and other
folks that have all these skills.
That's why you assemble
your teams the way you do.
Every company, every organization
out there, they have folks that
perform very specific tasks.
No point in me sitting here trying
to open up Revit and model something.
That's not my skillset.
So make sure you can trust the work,
have people you can trust to do the
work, but make sure you can break
these projects down and then share
that load across the team so that
you know everything works better.
Um, they're sayings, you know,
that the more eyes on a problem,
the better the solution.
Same kind of concept.
Make sure you're breaking that work
apart, uh, bringing the technical
resources you have forward.
That's why they're on the team.
You know, if, if you don't need
them and lean on them, why do
you have them on your team?
Brandon Giella: That's right.
There's a principle of, uh,
subsidiarity, which is the person at
the lowest level closest to the work.
They should be the ones that
are making the decisions.
'cause they know how it works.
They know, they know the details.
Marques Manning: Yep.
Uh, sometimes I may ask questions, but I
can't tell the project management team the
best way to project manage every project
because I don't project manage every day.
So why would I attempt
to do that if anything?
Hey, what are some
tools that can help you?
Because now those tools.
Put in front of the client,
they become client facing.
And now it streamline that,
uh, it streamlines the
entire communication process.
So that's really a lot of trust in the
feedback that's coming in from the teams.
Um, that's an important one because
a lot of what we have, just speaking
on us specifically, we have several
tools now that were rolled out.
They're the direct result of just
feedback coming in from teams saying,
Hey, this needs to work better.
This isn't, this takes me too long.
There's too much time spent doing this.
Okay, well, is there something
out here that can make this
process better for everyone?
And if it's better for everyone
internally, well that makes us
more efficient for our clients.
That makes us, you know, have a better
paperwork deployment, be able to turn
over things faster, they're more accurate.
Um, they kind of cut down the
roadblocks in communication.
So that's a huge one, is making sure you
trust your teams internally and let them
do their work and take that feet back in.
Um, that's, and this one is most
important probably also in terms of.
You have to train forever.
Right?
And, and what we are doing, you need to
be a avid and constant learner of things.
Um, and this isn't just
in terms of technology.
It could be process, it could
be architectural developments.
Anything, you know, in our sphere of what
we're gonna need to deal with, we have
to constantly learn, okay, well here's
something new that came out this month.
And technology is very rapid.
You know, you have some things
that come and go within 90 days.
So in the technology space,
yes, there's a lot of learning.
But as we see the need to bring
in more external teams, right?
We, we say av, but now AV is mostly it.
So if you haven't learned it and IT skills
and networking and all these other things,
how are you going to go out and have a
conversation with an IT department to
help bring them in on what needs to happen
to bring the leader's vision to life?
So let's say, you know, just
plan on being a learner forever.
Like you're gonna have to
constantly learn things.
Be able to apply new techniques,
uh, new standards, whatever it is.
So that's a, a big thing, that
learning journey never ends.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Okay.
So to summarize, your, your three
principles would be serve the client.
Don't, don't get too much into
the, the weeds just yet, you
know, serve the client first.
What, understand what they're, maybe
listen to the client first would be
Marques Manning: Exactly.
Brandon Giella: Number
two, trust your team.
And number three, learn
something new every day.
Marques Manning: Every day.
Every day.
Brandon Giella: love that.
I love that.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
Okay.
Any final words of advice for people
thinking about, uh, large AV projects
and, and what they might need to know
regarding the communication and, and kind
of how to, to navigate that project space?
'cause it's quite a lot.
Marques Manning: It is a lot.
It's, you know, never
feel overwhelmed by it.
But the most important thing that I will
harp on every chance I get, activate
the right people early and often bring
people forward to the conversation.
It's never too early, but there's
definitely a point in time when it's
too late and it's gonna cost you more
money on your project, or it's gonna
limit what's possible, you know?
So it's never too early to reach out
and just have a, a quick conversation.
Hey, I have this thought in mind.
What should I worry about?
Or what should I look at?
I wouldn't even say worry.
What should I know?
Right?
I am thinking about doing X, Y, and z.
What do I need to know
that I may not know?
And just have a conversation.
Just start it really, really early and
then that will flow through and you'll
end up with a much smoother project.
Brandon Giella: I love that.
Love that.
So start early, listen to everybody.
Trust your team and learn
something new every day.
Marques Manning: Absolutely.
Brandon Giella: It's beautiful.
Beautiful.
Well, Marcus, thank you.
I hope this is, uh, uh, helpful to
our listeners and, uh, I'm excited to
keep going on some of these episodes.
We've got a fun one next week,
and so we will see you then.
Thanks so much.