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Overcoming Procrastination: Start Your Day with the Most Important Task

Procrastination is a common challenge that many of us face, often leading to a cycle of stress, guilt, and decreased productivity.... Read More

Comparison of Roku/Apple TV vs. Sonos for Playing Music in Residential Systems

When considering the use of Roku or Apple TV compared to a Sonos system for playing music in a residential setup, several key factors come into play.... Read More

Elevating Success: The Power of Goal Setting for Low-Voltage Integrators

Last month in our blog post "Year-End and Holiday Downtime: A Guide for Integrators”, offered guidance for professionals in managing year-end responsibilities and optimizing holiday downtime.... Read More

Year-End and Holiday Downtime: A Guide for Integrators

As the year draws to a close, you may find yourself at a critical juncture, balancing year-end responsibilities while preparing for the holiday downtime. As you may have read in our newsletter, Pulse Group is powering down for next several weeks too.... Read More

Staying Connected: How You Can Foster Client Relationships During the Holidays

The holiday season marks a time of fun, goodwill, activities, and if you are in construction - chaos. Amidst the celebrations, businesses often find themselves at a crossroads—balancing the need to embrace the holiday spirit while maintaining connections with their clients.... Read More

Checks and Measures

Pulse Group is now in its thirteenth year of operation, marking a significant milestone in our journey. Over the years, we have gained invaluable insights into our industry through collaborations with a diverse array of B2B partners, ranging from large-scale casinos and luxurious yachts to grand mansions and countless projects in between.... Read More

Unveiling Your Business Vision: A Guide to Finding Purpose and Direction

In the vast landscape of entrepreneurship, the cornerstone of a successful business lies in having a clear and compelling vision.... Read More

Keep Your Company Vision

For several years I ran a Brand and Strategy company that helped business owners navigate the complexities around building and scaling their brand.... Read More

Ask Better Questions By Realizing You Are Not In The Know

My version of this conversation started with the seller, project manager, or salesperson’s perspective, rather than the buyer's. Many of you are Pulse Group’s customers, so don’t take this wrong, but it is essential to ask better questions. ... Read More

The Art of Asking Questions

Asking good questions is an essential skill that can help you learn, gain insight, and build stronger relationships with others.... Read More

Getting and Staying Organized - Part I

If you work in the low-voltage industry, you know that more often than not that the months leading up to December get remarkably busy. The schedule is slammed with people trying to get work done before the holidays.... Read More

Mach 10

Have you seen the new Top Gun, "Maverick"? Before you continue, this blog has a minor spoiler about the movie's beginning, so beware!... Read More

Company Scapegoats and Culture Killers: Part 2

What is a company scapegoat? When things are going wrong it’s common to blame the culture killers for lack of productivity, stalled progress, and inefficiencies.... Read More

Company Scapegoats and Culture Killers: Part 1

We’ve all done it. No one likes to talk about it. Hiring is tough, especially today.... Read More

In the Spirit of Team Culture

We have been watching Ted Lasso (if you have not already, you have to check it out) and in reference to team culture - it is incredible.... Read More

Finding Security

There is no doubt that during times of significant uncertainty, companies trim back resources, stop planning, and feel uneasy making big decisions. Today, we are in a place of severe uncertainty.... Read More

Be The Presence

Pulse recently finished up the deployment of a rather large project that involved a lot of late nights and a ton of manpower. This blog isn’t about the job itself, but rather a comment that came out of a conversation between Chad and me.... Read More

5 Skills for Managing a Large Project

We have a few really large casino jobs we manage that vary in size. The other day, I was on a job site and my daughter texted to ask how my day was going. I sent her a picture of the media rack I was working on - it was giant. She said, “wow - that looks expensive!” To which I wrote back… "30 million" ... Read More

Time, Talent, and Energy

These three words have come up quite a bit for me recently. In fact, most of your day goes to allocating your time, leveraging your talent, and spending energy. Why are these three things so important? I think they are a huge part of what makes up your potential. Your... Read More

Chew on This

I am going to come right out there and say it… this is sort of a plug for Chewy.com. If you have a pet, I highly recommend this site for all your furry friend’s needs because of the amazing experience I had with them this week.... Read More

When the Best Isn't Good Enough

I heard someone say the other day that sometimes as a leader you have to realize your best isn’t what your team needs. It took me a few hours to process as I replayed the sentence over and over again. I couldn’t decide at first if I agreed but after some time, I realized I couldn’t agree more. ... Read More

The Intangibles

What we don’t market and advertise are the intangibles. The experience and service that takes your business to the next level.... Read More

Number 1 and Number 2... Duh.

The hardest learned lesson I share from my previous adventures is a conversation around billing.... Read More

Every Little Detail Counts

As you know, we are slowly working on our house and in November we started out redoing our garage. Chad and I made a deal that any work that we could do ourselves, we would.... Read More

Pressing Buttons

Pulse Group is all about client relationships. And if there’s one golden rule of relationships, it’s that first impressions matter.... Read More

Managing Business Expectations

You've heard the phrase, “Always get it in writing,” right? It’s an important concept in the legal world, the business world, the world world, or any world where you’re dealing with people looking to fulfill a promise.... Read More

The Final 10%

Last week, Chad was interviewed for an article about leading Pulse Group. One question that he was asked was, “Who is your ideal client and what should they know before hiring you.”... Read More

The Future of the Smart Home

The smart home is said to be “the home of the future”, but for integrators, engineers, and the technology industry as a whole, it is a project for the now.... Read More

We're Masters

When we formed Pulse Group 6+ years ago, one of the first core values we created was “fight conformity”.... Read More

Follow the signs

I started this month by intending to write about how rhythms are way more critical than resolutions, an idea which when realized, is the simplest step to following through on those New Year’s promises that you make to yourself. Simplest step, but not necessarily the easiest.... Read More

His Remains Are Next to My Whiskey

15 years ago, I brought Grizzly home for my then newborn daughter, Sage. Grizzly was our family’s faithful companion for many years and we learned to love his many quirks, including his entitled attitude and constant lookout for food.... Read More

To plan or not to plan?

I had a call with a vendor I work with today who said his least favorite word is STRATEGY…... Read More

Customers Beware

This one is just for fun. I’ve been getting a lot of good feedback on the blog lately, and my wife recommended that when I get ideas for blogs, I jot down reminders.... Read More

Sell me more

Just hearing the words “salesperson” or “sales” in general kind of stirs up a negative connotation, doesn’t it?... Read More

Grit

We had a really cool experience last week and wanted to share it in the form of a blog.... Read More

Being on Brand

This weekend I was working with my step-daughter on applying for her first job.... Read More

Spreading the Holiday Cheer Throughout the Year

How were your work holiday-related parties? Better than last year? Were they a lot of fun? How was the food?... Read More

You’ve got mail

Why It’s Not Okay to Send Work Emails Over the Weekend (Except When It Is)... Read More

Chain of Command

So, there’s the topic of chain of command in a company structure, in regards to having middle men, employees, delegates, or otherwise that you entrust to carry out operations on your behalf.... Read More

Your employees are your lifeblood – Part II

This is the sequel to the last blog we did, where we described the unfortunate situation where a business owner or manager may become too dependent on one department, why it’s detrimental to the company as a whole, and ways to recognize such a thing when it is happening.... Read More

Your employees are your lifeblood – Part I

An important thing to realize early is that without them, you’d be nothing. You wouldn’t have a team, you wouldn’t have a company, and above all else, you wouldn’t be a leader.... Read More

The Control Illusion In Business

The illusion of control exists to remind us all we’re human. Business owners not only need to be in control, they love it.... Read More

“Heart String”: The Product of a New Generation – Part 2 of 2

Last month in our blog, “Heart String”: You’re not Selling automation, we let you in on our secret to close big opportunities and secure permanent clients by playing to their desires.... Read More

“Heart String”: You’re not selling automation – Part 1 of 2

I always find it interesting when an integrator is struggling with a client that tells them about some product they want used in the design of their home automation solutions.... Read More

Why bother…?

One of the healthiest and most auspicious things anyone can do is to ask questions.... Read More

Buy Nice or Buy Twice

I recently had an end-user ask me the most efficient way for a consumer to choose a quality integrator in today’s day and age. My answer was simple: bid it out and go with the most expensive option.... Read More

Guide to Picking Products

Have you ever heard of the saying “Buy Nice or Buy Twice”?... Read More

A Perfect Partnership

Recently, Crestron announced a new partnership with Sonos– a reliable leader in the home sound system. Why is this merge significant for home automation? ... Read More

What’s in your backpack?

All summer- or maybe in the last couple of days, we’ve prepped for this week. It’s back to school week.... Read More

Dangerous Phrases

Like Pavlov’s dog, people are often conditioned with a few dangerous phrases. When confronted with a difficult question, many people use a response they have grown accustomed to using without thinking their answer through, or even worse, they lie.... Read More

Are you at the end of your rope?

When you sell a system, do you provide clients with 24-7 access to you and your team? How long are you on the hook for one sale? If the end product a client receives is a working home automation system, when is your job “done”?... Read More

Release your inner diva

At some point, there was a breakdown in communication between you and the customer.... Read More

Partnerships & Strategic Alliances

One way to expand your business network is to develop partnerships or strategic alliances with companies that you nurture a relationship with over time.... Read More

Decide.

Do you know people who are quitting smoking? How about people vowing to stop eating junk food? Or people who swear this is the year they stop going into debt?... Read More

Navigate conflict with ease

As a business owner, you are faced with the challenging job of keeping everyone happy and sometimes that may mean at your own expense.... Read More

Are you on the right path?

Back in the beginning of the year, we wrote a blog called “Resolutions and Rhythms”. It was all about how we can work to make our New Year’s resolutions achievable and something to be excited about. Well, here we are, about to enter August and I have one question for you… How are those resolutions coming along?... Read More

East Coast Vs. West Coast

CNBC recently released article about East Coast versus West Coast corporate culture in the financial and IT industry.... Read More

Staying Connected

There are not many dealers we come into contact with who don’t have their time maxed out. In fact, most wish they just had more hours in a day to get work done.... Read More

Defining your Programming Brand

You may hear Group Member’s from Pulse Group talk about “defining your brand”, but what does that mean? A person’s individual brand is something different for everyone.... Read More

Avoid the Sales Curve – Part 1

This blog is about creating a healthy company pipeline for you and your team.... Read More

Are you outsourcing?

As a business owner, are you waking up every day and doing what you’re good at? Is your staff? This is an important question especially for your bottom line.... Read More

Documentation vs. Quick View

There is no “I” in Pulse Group

If you have spent time working with us or poking around our website, you have most likely seen us refer to our milkshake quite a bit.... Read More

Moving The automation Industry Forward