If you noticed there was no LWL episode last week, it is because I was mid-implementation of NetSuite with not an ounce of energy to spare. Listen now for an update on our process PLUS a great listener tip that I elaborate on to drive add-on services (and a much needed margin boost and competitive advantage) for your showroom. What add-ons does your showroom provide? Let me know!
Thank you to Zastro for sponsoring this episode of Lighting with Lisa!
If you noticed there was no LWL episode last week, it is because I was mid-implementation of NetSuite with not an ounce of energy to spare. Listen now for an update on our process PLUS a great listener tip that I elaborate on to drive add-on services (and a much needed margin boost and competitive advantage) for your showroom. What add-ons does your showroom provide? Let me know!
Thank you to Zastro for sponsoring this episode of Lighting with Lisa!
Hello and welcome fellow lighting nerds and friends to another episode of Lighting with Lisa, the Lighting Industries podcast, sponsored this week again by Zastro. Stay tuned for the middle of the episode for more on Zastro and the solutions that they can offer for your lighting business. Welcome again. So if you were paying attention, you might have noticed that there was no episode last week. I even had every intention in the world of making a post that there wasn't going to be an episode when I realized I had flat run out of time to do it. But I didn't even have time for that. So if you did notice there was no podcast last week, I apologize for not making it clear. I wasn't quite expecting that outcome, but it happened. So here's the reason for it. On December 1st we had our NetSuite implementation. You know, light switch off on one platform, light switch on on the other, and that's a lot of work. So I had told everyone listening to the podcast that this was coming. Just full disclosure. Our implementation partner on NetSuite is Zastro, the sponsor of this podcast. We had already planned for them to be the sponsor of this podcast before I even knew I was going to be talking about this, just timing being what it is. So it was a big change. We're still learning, we're still tweaking.
Speaker 1:It's been, overall, a, as one might expect, a challenging experience. I only almost cried once, maybe twice, but I did almost cry and it has been just such a learning experience, or, and you know what? Let me rephrase that I knew it was going to be tough, but what I realized is yet again and I've talked about it on this podcast before and here, just full disclosure we're all apt to do these same things. You have been potentially using your operating system for many years and it just becomes like second nature to you, like, even when there's flaws in the system, you know what the flaws are and you know how to work around them, you know how to fix them, you learn to live with it. And then you get on a new system and it's all shiny and glossy and has all this fun bells and whistles and it's all amazing. But then you realize, like very frustratingly, that you don't actually know how to fix anything, or you don't know even how to do some basic processes, and it's like incredibly frustrating. So, yeah, that's probably been like my biggest takeaway from this whole experience.
Speaker 1:I anticipated the work, I anticipated the discomfort. I anticipated a lot about this. What I didn't anticipate, I think, was my own shortcomings in how ingrained our operations in the old system have become to me and how hard it is to stop thinking that way and to start thinking a new way. And to be clear, the process is still very similar to what we were doing. There have been a lot of customizations made to the NetSuite platform to work the way my business works. So it's not that everything is brand new, like, yeah, paperwork looks different, just some of the linear ABC steps of creating an order and shipping an order. Some of that is slightly different but it gets you to the same end result as what we had before.
Speaker 1:But I just truly underestimated how ingrained our routines had become and I was almost shocked at how difficult that was. Not even day one. Like day one was fine because, well, it was very stressful, but day one it was like I expected all the new but it was like by day seven, like a week in, where I kind of got in the hang of things. But then it really hit me how used to the old system I was. And, of course, like I said, I think this was even a topic on the podcast even just a couple weeks ago, and I'm almost ashamed that I didn't listen to my own self, but it is a thing when I was talking about social media and how we do the same things over and over for no result and like why do we keep doing that?
Speaker 1:Like it in and you need to like take a step back and look at things. This is all just like a big reminder of you can seriously get in a rut of doing the same thing day in, day out, the same way. You've always done it and there's comfort in that, there's reliability in that. But as business owners and business managers, it's really worth a step back to say am I just doing this because it's comfortable and easy or am I doing it because it is the best thing for my business? So this has been a true experience in broadening horizons, stepping outside the comfort zone, trying to just power through and know that what I'm doing is the best choice for my business long term, dragging my staff along with me.
Speaker 1:They have all been amazing in this. We've had definitely some challenging moments together, but by and large, I really could not be more proud of how they're adapting and learning and just adjusting as quickly as they possibly can. So that's been like a huge benefit that they're doing everything they can to get on board and be supportive. So that's been awesome. But yeah, it's been real, real strenuous. But all that said, at the end of the day, if you want my like top level, take on making a big business change like this.
Speaker 1:If you've evaluated your options and you know what you're currently doing in terms of XYZ like this could be any business process or operation you have going on. If you've evaluated the options and you know that what you're doing right now isn't quite working for you, if it's not really serving you as the owner or manager, if it's not really serving your staff, if it's not really providing the information and everything that you need, but you've become comfortable with it, I would really encourage you to take a harder look at that and consider pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. I will again have to report back on this thought and I definitely will. What I expect I'm going to find is that in about six months, I will have become fully adjusted to the system. All of the little tweaks that we're making now and the tweaks that we're gonna continue to make over the next few months to make sure everything is like the way my business needs it to be.
Speaker 1:I think by the time that's done and I'm getting some real intelligent reporting out of my system, I'm gonna be so, so happy for this week of discomfort I lived through, for the end result, and that was really the reason we did this. It's been a great process in a lot of ways. It's been so uncomfortable I can't even tell you how many times it was just like I don't really have like restless leg whatever, but I cannot tell you how many times I caught my foot bouncing on the floor out of just like pure anxiety. You know, I definitely I own up to it everywhere. I definitely have a type A personality. I definitely liked for things to be in their place and to everything to be working properly or I don't know, control, right, let's just call it as I like to have like control or be able to, you know, follow something through. So living through this week of like not really being able to do that and like tweaking every day and making things a little bit better every day, it has been eye-opening. I'm super glad I lived through it. I'm super happy with the result. As of now Again, I think in like six months I'll be even happier with the result. But yeah, this has been an experience.
Speaker 1:So that's why there was no podcast last week. I was anticipating last weekend to have a little bit of time to record, but with all of our training and trying to make sure everybody was comfortable, I just ran out of hours. In the day there was a big football game I had to watch, you know. So not that the outcome of that football game was so amazing, but it just was. Like I needed a mental break. Kind of got to be the bottom line, and I know everyone listening to this can appreciate that need for like I just need to shut my brain off because I'm so overwhelmed. So that's why there was no episode last week. But just to give you a brief recap of my experience it's going well. I really am proud of where we are, even just after a week, and I know it's going to get better and better from here. So, yeah, so there's that.
Speaker 1:So let me move on to talk directly about our sponsor. And then the back half of this episode is a suggestion from a listener. I'm super excited to talk about it as it relates to margins and having an installer on your staff for the lighting showroom. So stay tuned after this ad break for that, because we have some really good insights, I think so. As I mentioned, this episode is sponsored by Zastro, which is the firm that I hired to help me with my Oracle NetSuite implementation and development and production whatever the right word is. Apologies to Dean and team for whatever I might be saying wrong on that.
Speaker 1:So moving to NetSuite, as I just talked about, has been a process. All of you lighting showrooms start looking at the email address your order acknowledgments are coming from. You're going to be stunned if you start paying attention how many of them are from NetSuite. And I can tell you there's really good reasons for that the ability to have a huge picture of your business, the ability even a small business right Like you could have a huge picture of a small business. Like you don't have to be a major company. Like you don't have to be selling tens of millions of dollars a year in product for this platform to be beneficial to you. The NetSuite platform gives you so much ability to link things together and therefore do like reverse tracking and look up and finding out truly what is impacting your business and it's almost I'm not going to say infinitely customizable, but it's extremely customizable to trigger the things that mean the most to you and your business. So for every business that might be different. One of the biggest things for me was to have a absolute do not pass go trigger on new customer records of how did you land in my lighting showroom where you were referred by a builder, a friend. Did you just happen by on the street, but how did you end up in my business? Because we have historically had a hard time allocating our marketing dollars appropriately. So getting an answer to this question on every customer record that we can go back and track over time and find out how people are finding us, it's there, it's built in and any other customization almost that you can dream of it can be built.
Speaker 1:It's the net suite is fully automated integration with lights America via Zastro's Illuminate program. Zastro has already done the work to build out this integration with lights America. It works beautifully. All they had to do was turn it on for us done so. It's definitely worth checking out. You can be so much more efficient.
Speaker 1:Net suite is the market leading cloud ERP software. There's just no bones about it. It is what it is Inventory management, job management, e-commerce, integration, dashboards of metrics, of almost anything you want. It truly is a all encompassing system. You add your payroll in. I mean you have your delivery calendars, anything that your business required to operate. You can make this happen and it's all in one place. It's all in the cloud.
Speaker 1:So if you have any interest, there's a few ways to reach out to Zastro. First of all, they're going to be at light ofation in January in the spectrum area. So if you're up on I think it's the fourth floor in the spectrum, look for the Zastro booth of Dean and his team. If you want to reach out to them before then, please do. They can demo the product for you at light ofation or you can get a demo set up before then. So if you live west of the Mississippi River, your contact is Gail and you can reach her at gail at Zastrocom, gail at Zastrocom. And if you're east of the Mississippi, you want to reach out to Thomas Thomas at Zastrocom. And if you let them know that you're a lighting with Lisa listener, you get $500 off your purchase If you sign up for a demo. If you proceed with the program, you're going to get $500 off your purchase just for being a lighting with Lisa listener. So please do that and thank you, zastro. Okay, here's the install bit.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I got this email from a listener and I thought it was super interesting. We talked, we had a discourse about several things, but the thing that popped up to the top of my radar screen was her question about how many other lighting showrooms are offering installation as a component of what you do, as a service provided to your customers. Some lighting showrooms, I believe, that have a stronger electrical tie have probably been doing this for a very long time. I know some lighting showrooms do a lot of business in like fixture repairs or lamp repairs or doing some like custom work in that field, in that part of the business, but the idea of hiring an installer or having an installer on staff could be a bit overwhelming. I know it would be for me if I didn't happen to be married to an electrician, so I asked said electrician what his thoughts were on this.
Speaker 1:Again, at my lighting showroom in the ION originally started over 25 years ago as a division of an electrical contracting company, and having installs has always been kind of a part of what we do. We've like, we've done it, we've not done it, we've done it, we've not done it. It's always been kind of a challenge of not wanting to compete with electricians like we want them to. We want electricians to feel comfortable in shopping with us and referring customers to us and we don't want them to feel like we're taking any of their business. But many times electrical contractors are not terribly interested in the quick, like one off jobs of like just going to a home and what we call in my business fixture swap. They would be more interested in like a bigger all day project or half a day project.
Speaker 1:Just doing a quick fixture swap isn't necessarily that exciting to most electricians. But of course if you have a great relationship with an electrician who loves to do that kind of work, I would definitely encourage keeping that and not stepping on any toes. But in some market areas, kind of like my own right now, there's so much construction going on in this part of the world, even with like things slowing down. There's so much industrial development in Savannah Georgia right now that electricians are basically full time consumed with these bigger commercial, industrial, residential product projects that getting a great service electrician in our part of the world is really hard right now they're just not out there. Or if you do have one that you have a relationship with, you might have to wait a really long time till they can come out to your home to do an install. So there is a place for lighting showrooms to have an installer on staff to be able to handle this kind of service work. So it's just definitely something to consider. Now, of course, I do have to give a big asterisk here for legal ease, but remember that electrical codes are national but also have local regulations. So I am speaking, I'm about to give some insight on what you need to look for with an installer and what they should and shouldn't do, but remember you need to check your own local regulations first. Okay, so this is just just my disclaimer right here.
Speaker 1:So I did ask Frank, my husband, about what, when he was thinking about bringing one of his electricians on staff at pace lighting, and when he set up our kind of rules of what we will and will not do, what was he thinking? What? What code did he have in mind? You know like, because then you get into whole like permitting thing. So the way we operate is just, with fixture swaps, what we call a fixture swap. We have a ceiling height restriction. We won't do anything on ceilings taller than 12 feet for a variety of safety reasons with ladders, and you're just getting into a whole other world when you're on the like much higher ceilings.
Speaker 1:So your installer can do fixture swaps when there is no load being added to a circuit. So if you're taking down a fixture with two so Frank didn't do a lot much electrical in LED world so when he explained it he said if you're taking down a fixture with two 60 watt lamps and replacing it with another fixture that is 120 watts or less, that can be done by an installer with no permits required. So that's really sort of like the key there. As long as you're not upgrading the usage of the circuit, then you're really good to go with doing like an installer and fixture swaps. If it's anything past that, anything else would need to be done by a fully licensed electrician or or you know, potentially would need some sort of permit. And that's kind of the thing where local regulations can be much different, like my electrical inspections department might have totally different requirements about some things than yours. So Frank's advice to all of us and it's what we follow and have never had any issue is that Doing these easy fixture swaps or moving replace with you know nothing. That's expanding the load on a circuit is pretty easy for any Um lighting showroom to be able to do and is really where there's an opportunity to potentially hire somebody to offer that service.
Speaker 1:So we do have an installer on staff. He's kind of does a bunch of stuff for us. He does all of our installs in our showroom, he does some warehouse work, he does some deliveries and he also does installs for us. So we don't have enough installation work for that to be his sole job, but he does do a lot of other task force for us around the store and it really works out very well.
Speaker 1:Um, he's gotten to be so adept at hanging residential light fixtures because of our showroom that he has no problem in customers homes. He was an electrician before he came to work for us as well, um, but I would say that's also a key if you're looking to hire an installer, um, definitely somebody that is an electrician, has electrical experience, um, but one that's really comfortable working in residences and is really comfortable with the sometimes fussy nature of um like a lighting, so, like our installer, is very, very used to hanging a chandelier and then you know draping, you know 500, what appears bead strands or crystal strands, like he just has that touch needed for dressing out a chandelier and making it look perfect. Um, so he's very focused on the details of residential lighting and that makes our installs go much better because he's not just trying to Like a typical electrical contractor you might hire to come do a job like this in your home. They're probably just trying to like get in and out so quick so they can get on to the next job. Um, that they're not as focused on the details. But our installer he wants to get in there, get that fixture hung and make sure it looks as perfect as he knows it can, because he does so much hanging in our showroom and we fuss in the showroom to make all the displays look perfect and he carries that same mindset into our customers homes and it works very well. He gets so many compliments. It's ridiculous. It's truly great as a business owner, but it's like, oh yeah, they love him yet again. Of course they do, but he's really good at this fine touch in residential lighting and so that for us has been a key to having a great installer and just like some food for thought as to why you might consider taking this on Like, because it does sound like liability and insurance and another, another salary to pay. But if you can work it where you can like, mix the job in with other things and then, of course, pretty heavily promote that you have an installer on staff, um, it really can work great.
Speaker 1:And then here's the other food for thought. Right, like it is hard as a lighting showroom, given all of the ins and outs of our industry, it's hard to make up margin. Right Like it's hard to make margin appear out of nowhere when we are limited by so many other XYZ factors. But having an installation component or a fixture repair component has really an opportunity to make margin and is something that, like, the internet can't offer. But you can because you are a local business of, I was going to say, real people, but the internet is all, like, powered by real people. Well, I don't know AI now, but but like the internet, these are businesses that have real human being employees. The point being, you have a local business with a face and staff, like right there, in the same town and place these customers are living in. So this is really an extra benefit you can offer. So if the installer thing doesn't like jive with you, there's also like you could also take like a designer a component to this and like Kind of develop a similar concept around having like a designer on staff that really can be hired out to go to homes to do a bunch of design work. There's just again, you do need to be careful not to compete with people that you also want to be your customers, and I just kind of threw that designer thing off the top of my head. But there is a way to have add on services like this, like an installer, design, whatever the case may be that bring additional income to your business that customers are not going to be able to get off the internet. You have the advantage of a local presence with your brick and mortar business and rather than just try to compete on price because the price is what it is, I do really think it's leveraging these opportunities of expertise, of installers, of local, your local presence. That is really where you're going to get extra benefit.
Speaker 1:So one other thing that came through in this email that I wanted to just share because it it it just really resonated with me. So she said. I'm just going to read directly from the email. A very smart business person told me the best thing from his perspective, a vertical integration model for business is the best option when you are competing on price for products, add on service and you can do more with each client. So and then she said and I don't have this statistic independently verified, but it doesn't, you know, doesn't raise any red flags to me she said this is especially important to think about, based on the fact that people only buy lighting on average about every seven years or so.
Speaker 1:So getting as much business as possible with each client is vital. I would almost say every seven years is like that's a lot. Have you made me pick? I'd say every 10 years, maybe, but you understand, like it's not, like it's not clothing. People usually buy clothing multiple times a year. There's, there's just so many other consumable products in our world that we buy more frequently. Hardwired lighting and fans are not things that we all typically buy that often.
Speaker 1:You know you think about yourself. Even if you own or manage a lighting business, probably at first, when you move into a new home or space, you, you add new lighting, you add new fans, but do you often go back and change them out. Maybe some of us do, but you know I have some places in my home where the ceilings are obnoxiously high and vaulted because it's an A frame house. So whatever I picked to go up there when we moved in, it's probably going to stay there for a while unless it breaks. And that's me who loves this and would probably swap out every light fixture in my home on a yearly basis if I could manage to do so. So people that aren't lighting nerds like myself or you, listening, you know they're not buying nearest frequently. So this vertical integration component, it really does have some benefit for lighting showrooms and you could really take that off in any number of directions.
Speaker 1:I know like I don't want to compete with our vendors either on like supplying our own product, but there are different ways this vertical integration piece can look for your business. You know there isn't like a carbon copy model to follow here, but there is a lot of, I think, interesting concepts and things to think about in that, in thinking about how can you make your business more vertically integrated, because competing on price is it's really just kind of a non starter in our industry and it's not really needed in a lot of cases, like the pricing of the products we sell is very competitive, there's just not a lot you can do there, right. So we need to think about other ways to boost our bottom lines and you know we've talked about some of them before on this podcast with, like, making key partnerships and inside discounts and volume pricing and rebates, like that's all very, very important. But also maybe think about other ways using your brick and mortar that you can also achieve, like similar goals with an installer, some sort of design service, lighting layout service, a you know the of a recess lighting, whatever, a task lighting, whatever some sort of add on service that you can generate income off of. That adds dollars to your bottom line and capitalizes on the things you already know how to do.
Speaker 1:And this is where things might get a little different based on each different business, right. So maybe you have a staff that is just outstanding with task lighting or tape lighting layouts or getting the recess lighting just right in a home. Well, you should be monetizing that, not just in the sales of the recess lighting or the accent lighting, but but in the design service itself. If you have somebody that, like, just loves electrical devices and knows all the ins and outs of what to put in what location and use an occupancy sensor in the closet or the bathroom or what you know like whatever that person kind of geeks out on. That's a great thing to be able to like, monetize and sell and upsell your customers on and brings in additional margin and revenue for you as the business owner. So again, this thing is going to look different for everybody.
Speaker 1:The installer idea was just a conversation that this business owner and I had, because we both have businesses that kind of are structured in a similar way with the electrical background. But however your lighting showroom came to be whether it became from more of a like a home goods type store, or if you came from a designer place or whatever it is whatever serves the like core profile of your business I would really encourage you to think about how you might move to a more vertical integration there and monetize some of the things that you might already be doing. But you might also look to expand upon and charge some sort of fee, whether it's the install fee or a design fee or a layout fee. If you know what you're doing and you're an expert at it, you can quickly get this part of your business going and growing. Word of mouth and things like this is just really tremendous. And you know, for like our customers that do opt to do the installation service, I I'm not going to say we're definitely not the cheapest installer in town. I'm not trying to undercut any of my electrician customers but we are pretty responsive and quick to be able to come out and get an install done, and sometimes that just makes all the difference in the world. I already have the installer on staff so we deploy him whenever he is requested and it works out really, really well for us. So just some food for thought there. What ideas do you have for boosting the bottom line of your lighting showroom? I would love to hear about them. I can credit you or not.
Speaker 1:Most of the listeners opt to send me messages and want to remain anonymous, and that is totally fine, but I love hearing from you. I love all your input. I love all of your questions, no matter how large or small they are. They help inform things that I can talk about on this podcast and hopefully they help make us all better business owners in our beloved lighting and fan industry. So email me, lisa, at lighting with Lisa dot com.
Speaker 1:I'm always on the lookout for new sponsors and partners in the podcast. I've promised in 2024 that we're going to do interviews, so I'm looking forward to bringing that to to the podcast. So please reach out to me anytime. Lisa at lighting with Lisa dot com. Don't forget to reach out to our sponsor, zastro. You can find them online Zastro dot com. If you want to learn more about the Illuminat program, it's Zastro dot com. Slash Illuminat. It's definitely worth taking a look. And don't forget, they'll be at light ofation in January and you can visit them then in person. Alright, everyone. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, take care.