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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
to the next latest episode of
Wired in Contact Conversations.
I have with me as always my
illustrious guest, Marcus Manning.
And we are gonna be talking today
about why complex AV projects
fail and how we can prevent that.
So Marcus, you have been doing this work
for a long time, doing a a lot of amazing.
Multi a hundred thousand multimillion
dollar AV projects for very large
institutions, organizations,
healthcare, uh, operations.
And there are a lot of things that can
go wrong in a project of that size.
And so when you have this kind of
complexity, you have this kind of
scale, so many things can go wrong.
So I, what I wanna do is I want to hear
from you, what is it that goes wrong?
Where does it start?
Where should people start thinking
about some of these problems upfront?
And then what do you think, uh, maybe
advice or implementation or, you know,
insights that you've had because of
your experience that listeners can take
away knowing this is the way that you
should actually go through these kind
of projects and do this kind of work.
So I'll start at the very top, what
goes wrong in a project of that size?
Like where do we get it wrong
and where should we start?
What do you say?
Marques Manning: All right.
Uh, that is pretty easy.
So I'll chime in with first and foremost,
uh, you don't call us right away.
I'm just, I'm just kidding.
That's, uh, we'll get there.
But, um.
No, honestly, one of the first areas where
we see a project go off track is actually
in getting stakeholder buy-in, right?
You gotta be dreaming with
the right people, bringing
the right people to the table.
Um, it's mission critical for getting
to the end of the project and making
sure you develop the space that
people actually are interested in.
And so with that.
Architects do it.
Great.
They have a programming session
and they're really great on
bringing in everyone involved.
So if you're done with the university
level, maybe they're bringing in the
student government, they're bringing
in professors, they're bringing in
deans, you know, everyone that's
involved that may go through a space.
Um, you know, in our world, in the
AV side of things, we may call it the
needs analysis, but really we refer
to it as a dreaming session, right?
We wanna sit down and we just
wanna hear from everyone.
Who is using the room?
How do you want to use it?
What should it look like?
How should it function?
You know, do you use a Mac?
Do you primarily, are you Windows based?
You know, all these things.
They seem like, you know, the
minutiae of what may be happening, but
they're mission critical and so on.
To kind of lay the foundation
of, okay, what is this space?
What is it gonna look like?
How is it gonna function?
Who needs to use it?
Um, that's really the, the beginning
of everything, you know, if you miss
out on these key stakeholders, and
we've seen it happen occasionally
where you get to the end of a project.
The folks that are actually using the
room were never consulted in the process.
And they walk in day one
and say, well, where's this?
Well, where's that?
Well, this is how I
actually work every day.
And so their workflows impacted,
or you just, you end up having
some users that just aren't really
thrilled about the space, and
that can be extremely deflating.
You know, there are situations we get
into where, say it's a bid environment.
Where, you know, someone may have
driven the whole spec and they talked
to, you know, one person, but then
that person didn't do due diligence
to bring everyone to the table.
And that's how you kind of end up there.
So that's, that's one of
the more painful areas.
And it's really the human part
of where you can get off track,
because without that human input,
you know you're gonna be lost.
You're just dealing with, you know,
boxes and computers and cabling.
Anyone can do that, right?
We can just fall out of bed
and design a conference room.
That doesn't mean it's the right
conference room for every single user.
And when you see a lot of folks
talking about return to office.
You know, how do you bring people
back and make them feel heard
about, you know, their workspace?
And some of that just goes into
that, that same mindset of, Hey,
let's bring 'em to the table.
Let's sit down, let's talk about,
you know, how do you need to work?
When I walk into a conference room,
maybe I only have my phone with me.
I just wanna be able to join
from my phone, throw it to
the room, and I'm good to go.
Maybe I'm a laptop person, right?
I always have my laptop.
I don't leave home without it.
I never do, honestly, this in my
personal, in my personal life, I
don't go anywhere without my laptop.
But, um, you know, maybe I wanna come
in and connect with the cable, right?
Or maybe I wanna cast, or maybe I don't
wanna come into the room with anything.
Maybe I just wanna walk in.
There should already be
a keyboard, mouse there.
And, you know, we have
what we call host PCs.
They're always in the room.
I just wanna come in and show up
and start typing away and log in
and do what I need to do, right?
These are all very different
experiences in the grand scheme
of how a room should function.
But if you haven't had a conversation,
how do you know which one is right?
You know,
someone once told me.
Hey Marcus, you guys are experts.
Just go ahead and give 'em a conference
room and you know, just show 'em something
like, well, that's not what we do.
That's not how we approach it.
'cause our goal is to really
wow and delight clients.
We want 'em to come in and
we want to be very happy,
right?
And we want the system to be easy to use.
It should be very intuitive to make
a ton of sense, and that we solve
all their communication issues.
Because at the end of the day,
that's why we're doing this.
We're helping people communicate.
Brandon Giella: So what I'm hearing is
if you are thinking about a, a large
AV project for, you know, a space that
you're, you're designing, thinking
about, you've got, you know, maybe
architecture plans, whatever it might be.
As soon as you can bring in
the AV experts into that, what
you call like dreaming phase.
Like let's start at the very beginning.
Let's get all the right people in
the room and all the things that
we will need from the big vision,
the big dream, down to the details.
Like I, I imagine you
could say something like.
Okay, so you're gonna walk in the room
and what are you gonna have with you and
where are you gonna sit and what are you,
kind of media, are you gonna be streaming
or how are you gonna be using it?
And so you're walking through these
details, but the details matter.
And I know you're, you're, you're
very technical and your team's very
technical, but those details really
impact how you're gonna design things
and what you're dreaming about.
Is that fair?
Is that my assessment of that?
Is that how you guys think about it?
Marques Manning: 100%.
100%.
Because you know someone's
dream of the space.
Is what drives us to the technical
drawing, the technical concept.
And that's how you start to get into
the weeds of, okay, I need cabling
here, I need infrastructure here.
So, you know, but primarily it
starts at that dreaming phase because
without that, you know, how do you
know what you're actually designing?
And that
is correct.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
You mentioned something before
that if you don't do that very,
very first step correctly, the
problems just compound from there.
Can you e expound on that a
little bit because I, I find
that kind of interesting.
Marques Manning: Oh yeah, absolutely.
So, you know, I may have a client and I
say, okay, they want a conference room.
Gotcha.
We have a conference room.
All right, so we'll have a
display up, camera, microphone.
Well no one, you know, spoke to
the client and they said, well, we
actually come in with a laptop and
we need to connect at the table.
Okay, well if you've finished construction
now, how exactly do you expect to get
that cable from the laptop to the display?
And people think, well, it's just a cable.
You just No, no, no, no, no.
When you're doing it commercial av, you
know, our big thing is aesthetically
we want the room to look Awesome.
So, you know from that just one statement
of, oh no, I always come in with my
laptop and I wanna connect to the table.
Well, the, the behind the scenes work
there is, okay, well now I have a cable.
It's going through a box and a table.
Someone has to cut out.
Well, now I'm going down into the floor.
I need a floor box.
Well, now I'm going through
conduit over to the wall.
Now I'm
going up the wall.
Get to this.
So there's all this stuff
happening in the background.
Just because someone said, no, I
want to come in with my laptop.
I don't wanna do it wirelessly.
I wanna connect just that one statement.
Drives all of the rest of
that to happen in that room.
And if you missed it, 'cause you didn't
know users came in and they wanna
always have a physical connection.
Some folks, they don't love
wifi for whatever reason.
They don't wanna, they don't want to
cast, they don't wanna do any of that.
And sometimes, you know, it
could be because their IT
environment may be challenging
and they just, they don't do it.
You know, or if a guest
is coming in, they don't
have a, the capacity to be on
the wifi and you know, wirelessly
share or something like that.
So there's lots of reasons
for it, but just by missing
that part of the conversation.
You would leave out that key detail
and what people then start to miss
is now your budget is gonna escalate.
Because to go back
in, we're talking about cord drilling,
a floor and pulling conduit there's
all these things that have to happen.
So yeah, that's, uh, it's, we've
seen it happen where, you know,
the question just didn't get asked.
And when you're sitting down really
thinking your way through something,
or you just just walks in, it's like,
oh, well, well how do I connect this?
Oh, well, you know, we were under the
assumption that you were doing wireless.
They said, Nope, I actually
do, I do physical connections.
Okay.
And we go from there.
Brandon Giella: that's terrifying.
Uh,
Marques Manning: It
Brandon Giella: but, but, it also
reminds me, I, I had an electrician
out, uh, recently and I was thinking of
moving my office under the stairs, this
little closet in there and I was like,
but I really love ethernet 'cause it's
about four times faster than my wifi.
So I was like, can we get the ethernet
that's in my office over there?
And I'm thinking.
Well, it's only like 20 feet.
That shouldn't be a big deal.
And he was like, yeah, we can't do that.
'cause, 'cause it's gotta go through the
ceiling, it's gotta go through insulation.
All these joists that are across the
ceiling into the crawl space of the
attic that you can't actually access.
And it was like a nightmare when he was
explaining to me and I was like, okay,
well I guess I'll use wifi in the office.
So I get I get what you're saying.
It's,
Marques Manning: It is
very, very real man.
It is very real.
And depending on what you're doing,
right, if you're doing a lot of
streaming, a lot of content, a lot
of, or I'd say especially high-end
video, like video editing, you
really do need that, and it has to
be thought out because, you know, trying
to do that or move files wirelessly.
They're just, I'm not getting
into a whole diatribe about
wireless and understanding it.
Yes, that's in my background as well,
but it's just like, Hey, if I can
get a cable, please gimme the cable.
Brandon Giella: Yes, yes.
I, I realize that when you download
and upload like four gig files, I,
I can't do it on 30 megs a second.
It's not gonna happen.
So, uh, so I get that.
Okay.
So, um, so talk to us a little bit
about, um, I, I, I do, we have some other
episodes, uh, planned in the future.
One that I, I can't wait to get to where
you say stop buying things on Amazon.
And so I want to get to that.
But before, uh, I really
wanna set the table of.
Uh, the kind of like dreaming discussions
that you have with folks and, um, and
kind of the what's at stake when you're
having these kind of conversations.
And so if you could walk us through
your process of when you're working
with a client and somebody's dreaming,
how you go from that dreaming
stage down into the implementation.
So let's say somebody is like, okay,
here's what I actually need out of
the space and I bring my laptop,
I wanna sit at the table and I.
I plug in my, you know, I like to plug
in my, my cord, and so we need, you
know, holes here and do this and that.
How does that get down to the
implementation phase and like how,
how do you bring in all of these very,
very detailed technical insights that
you need in that very beginning stage
brought down into the design team, the
implementation team and support, because
I know you've got this really great, um,
proven process over decades of doing this.
So walk me through like,
okay, we got that meeting.
And then now we need to like actually
execute and implement this space.
What does that look like, that process?
Marques Manning: Absolutely.
It's, um, one of the keys and the
foundation of our, our process
is actually being slow, right?
Because being slow up front and taking
our time up front, it actually yields
dividends by the time we get to the end.
And I'll get there for that part.
But, you know, you end up
speeding up at the end because
you catch so many things early on.
So first
and foremost, when we start dreaming.
We're just listening.
You know, at that point in time, no
matter what someone is telling me, I'm
just listening, making sure I understand
what they're trying to achieve, what
they hope, uh, the room will do.
And then also what are
the must haves, right?
Because you have your needs and
you have your wants, and oftentimes
the budget's gonna dictate how much
of both things you're gonna get.
But at that point in time,
we're just listening.
That's it.
We wanna see the space.
And now behind the scenes, not only
did we listen, we're documenting,
we're taking tons of measurements.
Um, taking photos.
We're gathering all this information
because, you know, once we've had that
dream session and really talked through
what you want this to be, well, our next
step is really to get back to our team and
say, Hey, you know, here's what we have.
Here's what they're talking about.
Let's come up with, you know, a,
a budget and a concept, right?
We call it our innovate phase, but
we're really gonna sit down and
take all these assets that we've
gathered, all this information, and
we work with our technical team.
So we're divided up.
We have account managers, we
have, uh, design team members,
and support team members, and
finance and all these folks, right?
So at different stages in our process,
they're all gonna be involved.
But early on it's primarily our account
managers and our design team members.
And it's really just taking
all of that feedback.
Then the design team just gets to work,
sketching it out, saying like, okay.
And when I say sketch it
out, it's quite literal.
Some hand sketch, you know, some will
do it all computer based, but we're just
doing some rough things to say, okay,
let's drop this here, drop this box here.
We need cabling.
Because that visual also helps
the team really understand how
does this connectivity look?
How is this really needing to happen?
And then from there, what we end
up doing is kind of getting the
budget ready and making sure we
can get that to the client to say,
okay.
Here's what we heard you say, here's
how we understood the project.
Here's kinda what we put together.
Is this directionally correct?
Is this what you had in mind?
You know, is this what
you're thinking about?
They say yes.
Then we go full bore into designing.
Right?
And that's really the bells and whistles
of it because early on, you know, we
never wanna crush someone's dream.
I'm not a fan of dream
crushing if I can help it.
Um, and everyone tells someone we
just can't do something until we
really get into the weeds and see
like, okay, what needs to happen?
Because.
I'll tell people, you
know, no is not the answer.
There can be a no but, or I can't
do this but I can do something else.
'cause we're still trying to get
to this end result for the client.
And so, you know, once we're aligned
on, you know, we understand the
concept, we're aligned budgetarily,
and we really start designing, that's
where we kind of take off on things.
Because again, when you see a
room, is the wall, is it drywall?
Does it have steel studs?
Is it brick?
All of that affects how we're gonna
need to connect things to the wall.
How are we gonna run cab?
Can we go through the wall
to get up to the ceiling?
Do we have to surface mount?
Can we go through the floor?
That's really where our design team
starts really putting together a lot of
these details and our account managers
would've caught it in the room anyway.
That's part of our site survey.
We're really picking up details
about what is the physical structure
that we're going into, what are
the, the little nooks and crannies
and things we have to think about.
It's never necessarily perfect because
sometimes even clients don't know they
can't get you an architectural package.
We once had a situation where we
were at a table, we saw a floor box.
There was a display on a wall.
It was only maybe 15 feet away.
Okay, this should be straightforward.
Everyone said, yeah, we have conduit.
We're good to go.
Once our guys got involved, they
realized the conduit routed back out
of the room, down the hall looped
around, and it came all the way back.
So what we thought was 15 to
20 feet was more like 90 feet.
So it's
Brandon Giella: Geez.
Marques Manning: okay, that's the
importance of, you know, we can't always
calculate everything if we don't know
and if the client can't tell us, but
if you can give us architectural sets.
Electrical drawings and all the
schematics of your building, we'll
discover all that information.
All that is, is laid out and
we can kind of cover all that.
So once we get to that part of
it and we're good to go and the
client activates with us, well
then our operations team steps in.
That's our project management
team, our installation team.
So here's where I say we
save some time, right?
Because on the front end, if we've really
talked through everything, if we've
gathered all the details, Hey, I know the
display is going to be on the west wall.
I know they also want
one on the east wall.
I know that there's gonna be a camera
at this height on the front wall.
You know, by gathering all that
information and really taking our
time to work through it up front.
We now save a lot of time on the
backend because when our operations
team receives the final packages
we put together internally, they
know exactly what's happening.
There shouldn't be too many changes.
Will there always be changes?
Absolutely.
Right.
It's just the nature of
people and how things work.
But for the most part, you know,
our job is to make sure that we've
captured, you know, 85 to 90% of
everything that's gonna be going on,
and that speeds up our installation.
So now we can be very, very efficient.
We actually had a client recently
that said, man, you guys are awesome.
They, they finished that much
faster than we thought they would.
All of that really comes from the fact
that we spent all this time up front.
And again, it's a slow process on the
front end, but it really helps us be as
efficient as possible on the back end.
And we're, we're, we try to be
a no change order team, right?
We wanna make sure that when
we give you a price, when we
give you a cost, it's correct.
So that's also what drives some of
that, you know, time that we're taking
up front to make sure we have it right.
Because, I mean, we don't, we
don't do a lot of change orders.
We just generally don't
issue many of them.
Um, unless a client just.
Had some, some turnover maybe, or
someone new was involved in the project
and it was like, oh, you know what?
I absolutely have to have this added.
Okay.
Yeah, we'll change order to make sure
that's correct, but generally that's
our policy is, you know, we're
doing our due diligence upfront
to try to capture all these things
because no one wants to do that.
You know, if you're spending this
kind of money, and honestly, if
you're spending any money, right?
I don't care if it's 5,000 or
$500,000, you don't want someone to
come in all of a sudden and say, oh,
by the way, it's gonna be 10% more.
No one likes that.
I don't
like that in my life, if I think
I'm paying one price, the next
thing you know it's something else.
I may just shut down.
Brandon Giella: Yep.
Same, same.
You know, it remind what you're
saying reminds me of that quote.
Uh, it's attributed to the Navy
Seals, but they say that slow
is smooth, and smooth is fast.
And I love that quote because that,
that's kind of what you're talking about.
Like do your, do your due diligence
upfront, get all the details right.
Take your time, because then that
smooths everything else in the back
end, makes it ultimately faster in,
in the long term of the project.
I
Marques Manning: Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's, um, to us it's worth the time.
Right?
It is a hundred percent worth it.
And we've even been told before,
like, man, you guys are really slow.
But that same client, once they saw us get
into the project, they're like, oh, wow.
That was, that was really fast.
Like, yeah, that's, that's
why we spent the time plus.
It is actually cheaper, right?
To spend
that time upfront than to all of a sudden
do all this discovery as you're on site
trying to figure out what you're gonna do.
Now you're ordering parts, you're
overnighting things, you're, you're
spending all this money and all this
time, and you can avoid all that.
Just buy a little bit
more time spent upfront.
Brandon Giella: Yeah.
Yeah.
That, that old adage
measure twice, cut once.
You know that kind of idea.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's smart.
Okay.
I want, I want to, um, pause or,
or emphasize maybe that one point
you made about the budget where
you present this kind of package
or this budget to a client.
I'm sure sometimes it might seem
like, wow, that's sticker shock.
Uh, that's, that's way more
expensive than I thought.
Do you have conversations like
that and have you, how do you work
through a process of what this
budget comes to be based on what
the dreaming session was like?
What is the dream that
we're trying to achieve?
And then, well, this is
what it takes to pull off.
How do you have that conversation
if there's pushback on the budget
or, or, and as it relates to
like a failure of a project.
So what I'm, what I'm thinking of
here is like, okay, so let's say
this is gonna be $300,000 or $500,000
for this project, and that was more
than they were anticipating, but.
Maybe you have this conversation of like,
well, in order for us to do that, it's
gonna be, it's gonna require this and,
but, but requiring this is actually how
this is actually going to like, save
you money long term, down the future.
Do you have conversations like that?
Like how do you sort through that?
I,
Marques Manning: Yeah, absolutely.
And honestly I have
them on a regular basis,
Brandon Giella: Okay.
I'm sure.
Marques Manning: yeah, and, and I get it.
You know, I always tell our team.
You know the client's job, especially
if you're dealing with a procurement
team, they're trying to save money and
be as efficient with dollars as possible.
We are no different than what we
do now, on the flip side, we wanna
make sure we keep everything fair.
You know, we
don't wanna price gouge and
we don't wanna lose money.
We just wanna make sure we deliver
really first and foremost, that
we deliver on the expectations and
make sure we do it at a fair price.
So what always encourage folks is
if I'm just doing an initial visit,
we're just sitting down listening.
At this point, we've done so many
projects and different types of projects.
We kind of have an idea anyway
about where the project will land.
And so it's easy to just in that
initial conversation, we don't wanna
harp on it because we also don't
want to get someone too far off
pace of what they're hoping to have.
So I may just say, Hey, just
FYI, but you're describing, eh,
we've seen something similar.
It's about $150,000 that you budget,
that you know, are you expecting that?
Because they say, oh no,
I've only budgeted $35,000.
Let's take a quick pause to say,
okay, let's, let's really drill in
to understand what do you have to
have and what would you like to have?
Because when you hit that point,
if there's that big of a gap,
you're completely misaligned
and you have to kind of really
understand where everyone is at.
It doesn't happen very often.
Um, and oftentimes, again, you can
kind of curtail some of this just
by having a quick conversation.
It's not meant to be accurate.
It's not meant to be the gospel.
It's just, Hey, from what we've
seen, you're gonna be in this range.
But then as you talk
through things with folks.
You know, we do get asked
quite a bit about our pricing.
I always say this, I I don't hide it.
We are never ever the cheapest option.
Never.
It's never happened.
Uh, not that I'm aware of every once in a
while.
Okay.
Maybe, maybe 5% of the time,
but we also don't try to be,
um, what we've seen is when that happens,
you know, we're trying to make sure
we've captured everything to do the
project correctly so that again, what
we show you in our final proposal.
That's what you're gonna pay.
Right?
We
don't want any surprises, any changes.
We try to be as upfront and
capture everything that we can.
There's also, unfortunately, and this is
in any industry, so you know, there's,
there's different manufacturers, right?
And they operate at
different price points.
They have a different focus.
And so for us, we partner with
manufacturers that we can trust.
They're gonna be there
for the long haul, right?
If we install something, we
actually have systems right now
that they're still running and
they're probably 12 to 15 years old.
And that's because we partnered
with the right manufacturers
that provide the hardware.
We know how to configure it.
You know, there, there are
cheaper options out there.
A client once asked me like, Hey,
would you be willing to change this
out because I saw the manufacturers you
all usually use, but there's some other
manufacturers that I know are cheaper.
Would you be willing to change?
And it was a
no said, Hey, we're, we're not
gonna be able to have alignment
when it comes to that because
again, you know, it's, we're
not here to sell you boxes.
Right?
We're not here
to just sell you computers.
We're here to bring our expertise
into the conversation and what
we've experienced, and part of that
expertise comes from our support team.
Our support team has been doing it
for a really long time, and they
can tell you right away what fails,
what doesn't fail, what works great,
what they feel is terrible, right?
And that is very valuable feedback
that actually loops back into our
design team so we can sit down and
understand, hey, you know that video
switcher, it failed three times.
Just in the first month,
there's a problem.
Because then we wanna have
conversations with manufacturers
and we do all these things.
So with that happening kind of
behind the scenes, that's kind
of what drives our pricing.
Right?
And then on the, uh, the other component
of that is just what we charge in labor.
You know, we have a full-time staff.
Um, we're big on training.
I'm a big fan of education.
Uh, retaining staff is
very challenging, right?
I tell, uh, people all the time,
the more skilled folks get.
In our industry, everyone's
after the same people.
Right?
We
all do the same thing.
For the most part.
Our process may be different, some
of our manufacturers are different.
But yeah, we're big on training and
that just to retain staff, send out
the trainings, bring people in to
do more training, you know, that
just kind of drives the expense.
And so by us being all full-time
employees, it's a little bit different.
There's different models out there,
businesses, some folks do all contracting.
Um, and you know, I don't
judge any other company.
We just have seen for us.
They primarily drive what we're
doing and have it in-house.
Our collaboration is much better,
you know, and our design team, at
any point in time, someone kind of
spin around in their chair and say,
Hey, have you used X, Y, Z before?
And does this work?
Someone that used to work with us even
said like, that was pretty amazing
because he rarely ever had to call
the manufacturer to ask the question.
We could just throw it out into the
air in between our design team or our
support team, they know it, right?
And then if we go over to install,
they can tell us, oh yeah, that
actually takes, you know, two hours
because of whatever reason to do that.
Versus, you know, someone
may think it's 30 minutes.
So.
Pricing wise, all of that
goes into who we are, right?
And that's something that we're
not looking to really change.
Um, and we know it's
also not for everyone.
And that's okay too.
I tell folks,
Hey, Toyota makes Lexus for a reason.
Right?
They're not all the same.
They're different demographics.
They're still, they make cars.
They're all cars.
But it's really what do you want
and what's the experience you want?
And that's where we're, we try to separate
ourselves and really differentiate.
No matter who shows up at your
site, you're gonna love them.
They're gonna be great.
They're gonna be highly skilled.
I've actually had one of our larger
clients say that to me once where he
said, Hey, you know, it was our first
project of that magnitude for them.
Um, it was probably, you know, over a
million dollars in that neighborhood.
And, uh, it was one room
and it was highly complex.
And he gave me a call and
said, Marcus, I gotta tell you.
Everyone out here knows
exactly what they're doing.
They know how it should be happening.
They're personable.
It's like, Hey, that's great news.
I'd love to hear that, because
that's, that's who we want
to have on our team, right?
And we are a team.
You know, we, we work on so many things
together, all across the organization.
So, and again, that goes from the
first time you meet someone on
the account team to, if you close,
you're closing out with our finance
team, it's all about a complete wow
and delight across the entirety.
Of our interactions.
And you know, by no means are we perfect,
but that's what we're going for, right?
So when you put all that together, that's
kind of how you get to that pricing.
So that's really the story when
people say right away like, Hey,
well that's, you seem more expensive.
That it's not that we seem more
expensive, it's that we are, I
want to clear that up right now.
We are definitely more expensive,
but the return on your investment
and the value we're bringing to the
table is again, from top to bottom.
The expertise we're gonna come in with
how we're gonna make sure we're, we're
holding your hand through the process.
You'll know exactly what's going on.
If there's a bump in the road, hey,
we'll, pulling the right people to
make sure that by time this thing
is done, you're gonna be happy and
your space is gonna work as expected.
Brandon Giella: That feedback from
that client you were talking about,
that's gotta be one of the most
gratifying things as a business owner
is like, Hey, your team is amazing.
It's
Marques Manning: It makes you feel
Brandon Giella: Nailed it.
I love that.
Now, what you're saying, uh,
it reminds me of two things.
One is it's kind of like when you
hire, uh, you know, an expert in any
industry, you know, you have an expert
plumber or you know, anybody coming
and, and, and doing a service for
you, they could seem more expensive.
But you know that they're gonna
do it right the first time.
And, uh, and that value, like you're
saying, like the real ROI, when you look
at like, okay, they did it right the
first time and it, and it just works,
and then all the training that you have
in your team and you keep them full
time and they, they have that better
collaboration, that expertise like that
really adds up that compounds over and
over and over again over the years.
Marques Manning: And there's
there's a quick example of
that, what you're mentioning.
Um, and that'll be really
quick, a quick aside to it.
Uh, there's a client we met.
They, they reached out to us, um,
was a project management firm.
They had hired someone to go do
a project up in Washington, DC
and it was a, a military project.
And you know, they were,
they were in a bad spot.
You know, they had hired a another company
and they couldn't finish the project.
Right.
They couldn't make it all work.
So
in our industry, and we'll talk
about it in later podcast, it was a
system that's known as AV over ip.
One of our partner manufacturers
work with all the time.
We do them all the time.
So we said, okay.
I said, Hey, tell me what's going on.
You know, shoot me a list of your bill of
materials so I can see what's happening.
So I see it and I'm talking to one of
my teammates, uh, Connell Smallwood.
So shout to him.
He's also awesome, but we're
talking about it and he said,
yeah, I feel pretty good about it.
I can probably fix whatever's happening
and, you know, maybe three days tops.
Okay.
So it's complex system
and we've never seen it.
Never seen it.
So he kind of gets a feel for it.
He starts working on the code, so
he drives up on a Sunday and, uh.
He's pretty much done by Monday, so it's,
and I didn't even know what all had
happened until the client called me.
He sent me this really long email.
This was great email, and he was just
saying, you know, the experience was
so off from the other team that he
didn't have confidence in us coming in.
He just thought we'd be another
fly by night style company
Brandon Giella: Wow.
Yeah.
Marques Manning: it'd be
more of the same headache.
This person had been fighting this battle
to get this room working for almost
18 months, which I could not believe.
I was like, I can't
believe this.
They were about to cancel the contract.
All these things were about to happen.
So I said, you know, canal, myself
and Mike Warner, we said, Hey, if you
need something, just call us remotely.
We can support you and just
let us know how it's going.
So the client ends up telling me,
he said, Hey man, we were so amazed.
He's so professional.
He knew exactly what to do.
You know, when he showed up, he
had already had the program written
and no one was expecting that.
So they said he was able to get in there.
He called the contractor back to
fix the things that were incorrect.
And then from there, he just got all
the programming done, got everything
configured, everything was working.
So we kinda estimated maybe three days.
It was about a day and a half,
right?
And the client just could not believe.
And to this day, the room is working
perfectly and it's one of those
things where we talk to the project
manager who's overseeing all this and
we said, Hey listen, I get it right.
I really do understand like a lot of
times there are these terms get thrown
about best value determination, the lowest
responsible bidder and all these terms.
All that means is you're
typically in a race to the bottom.
Someone's gonna try to do
this as cheap as possible.
And we have photos of this room.
We saw how it was installed
and we couldn't believe it.
It, it just blew us away about
how poorly it was actually installed
in terms of like, they had just
gone to the store, I guess, to buy
some internet cables and Proud Milk.
Amazon.
No, no offense to Amazon.
Amazon at all.
Don't sue me please.
But, um, yeah, it's, it's just, it
was really substandard work and we
have some competitors out there that
we're really, we call 'em frenemies.
We're really close.
We're all the same trainings.
We see each other all the time.
So we, we know, we all
have similar skills.
Just our processes are different.
That experience was a quick
reminder of like, this matters,
our experience matters.
Us knowing what we're doing, it matters.
Because again, they saved money
by bringing in this company, but
their room set for 18 months.
So what was the real cost of that?
right.
What was the cost and the loss of
belief in your internal stakeholders?
The cost of the room being down and
not being functional, and having to
find other places to do your events.
You know, all of that is kind of what
gets hidden behind the scenes that
people don't think about it, but there's
a real cost there and there's really.
Time, energy and just kind of
trust like the capital of trust
being lost because you brought a
team in that couldn't do the job
Brandon Giella: So that's why you
invest in your team, which I love.
Um, the second thing I was, I was gonna
bring up, uh, 'cause I love that point
about, um, the real cost of things.
And so what you were saying earlier
and then that story, I was, I
was, I've been seeing this, uh.
This lamp by Dyson, it's
like a thousand dollars lamp.
And I'm like, who in the world would
spend a thousand dollars on a lamp?
But as I age, I'm 35, so I'm relatively
young, but as I get older, I'm finding
that I just want stuff that just works
and I'm, I'm willing to pay, like.
A lot more money than I ever
thought I would on lots of different
things, whether it's a computer,
a car, you know, a cookware, just
anything around the house, a couch.
Um, I'm just, I, I just want
things that work well and I'm, I'm
willing to like, spend that money.
So anyway, that's what makes me think
of when you talk about, you know,
doing things the right way, having a
solid team, even though yes, it's a
little bit premium, but when you think
about the total cost, what you just
said, like maybe that room sitting.
Vacant for 18 months.
Like there's a huge cost to that that
may not show up on a p and l, but you
see it in having to do other things.
The distraction that it causes, the
headache that it causes, the communication
and collaboration, you know, issues that
show up later on, like the trust that's
lost, all that stuff is very costly.
That that can't be quite quantified
in a, in a, you know, financial terms.
But it does show up.
And so yeah, I love that emphasis.
I think it's great.
So in the last, uh, little bit here
on this episode, last question for
you is, if you were talking directly
now to a decision maker, let's say,
at, uh, a large health core healthcare
organization, a dean at a university,
you know, the head of a, a large, you
know, corporate organization that is
like, okay, I, I think I have this.
This project that I know is gonna be
important over the next, let's say, eight
to 12 months, you know, end of 2026.
And I need to be thinking about
this the right way upfront,
and I want to avoid the kind of
problems that you're talking about.
And I wanna, um, uh, make sure I have
my ducks in a row at the very beginning.
What would you say to them?
What advice or what takeaway or insight
would you share after doing this for so
long with so many different projects?
Marques Manning: Yeah,
the the most important.
Piece of advice I can think of would
be bring in the right people early.
Right?
Bring them in, get them a seat at the
table, bring 'em into the conversation.
You know, you want, whoever's
gonna be your, your technology, uh,
technology implementation specialist,
bring them in early on, right?
Just to talk about what
it is you're trying to do.
They should be there as the architect
is working through their, you
know, their drawings and putting
together, and I mean, early phase.
Schematic design programming, like
the early phases of the architectural
process, your technologists should be
there also because they work together.
We have several architects
we work with very closely.
You know, we're working early
on, oh, can we move this wall?
Can we add this?
Can we add this electrical here?
Oh, the client said, you
know, the X, Y, or Z.
All those conversations are happening
before we ever get into construction
documentation, and that's really.
That's really the most
important part there.
So if you're a key decision maker,
any kind of leader, make sure
you're having that discussion as
early as possible because that
way you're prepared for it, right?
So there's the one issue of you don't
want a project to close out and you
didn't get what you want, but you also
don't want to be in the middle of a
project and see your construction costs
going up by 10 to 15, 20% because no
one thought about the infrastructure
that has to be in place to
support what your dream is,
right?
I wanna, I want to display this, gonna
be 20 feet tall and 40 feet wide.
Awesome.
So do I.
They look great.
But on the flip side, how
are you supporting it?
What is the structural, you
know, integrity of the wall?
Is everything there?
That probably needs, you
know, 15 independent circuits.
There's all these other things
that have to happen, and that
conversation needs to happen early.
So it gets documented correctly.
It gets, you know,
included with drawing set.
Everyone's on the same page.
That's, that's the most important
piece of advice, you know, is bring
everyone to the table early, you
know, your technology specialist.
Opinion, uh, key opinion leaders,
your users of the space, and
everyone should just be in there
collaborating, talking, working
through, you know, what is the space?
It could be a room, it could be
a building, it could be a campus.
What are we trying to achieve?
What our goals?
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
That's great.
I love that.
So, to summarize this whole conversation
and talking about why AV complex
AV projects fail and to, to prevent
that, to mitigate that, bring in key
people early, dream big, but do think
about the tiniest little detail.
And go slow so that you
can go faster later.
Go slow in the beginning, do that measure
twice, cut once kind of idea in the
beginning, and that way you can have a
lot more velocity and value later on.
Is that a fair summary?
That's
Marques Manning: Yeah, That's great.
That's directly on point.
You can
come work with us anytime.
Brandon Giella: All right.
I'm hired.
I love it.
No, this is great.
I am, I am not technical at all
and I could never work with you
guys 'cause you guys are amazing.
So, uh, but I, I love
everything that you said.
I thought it was fantastic and I
hope that there's a lot of value,
uh, to our listeners and people
thinking about these, these large
projects that they have coming up.
And if you have any more, uh, questions
or if you wanna see more of our material.
Go to contech.com,
K-O-N-T-E k.com,
and you'll find all kinds of info there.
And reach out to the team and
try to prevent the problems that
arise from complex AV projects.
We will see you next time.
Thanks, Marcus.
Marques Manning: See.