Fast Break: The Future of Work

Matt Cranney

Welcome to the Fast Break. Today, we’re diving into the world of audio/visual or AV technology and its growing impact on small and growing businesses. In fact, according to a recent report by Avixa, the global Pro AV market is projected to reach $325 billion by 2025.

With small and medium businesses playing a significant role in this growth, I’m so excited today to welcome Shaun Trudell, President at Automation Arts, a leading provider of AV solutions based in Madison, Wisconsin. Shawn has been in the AV industry since 2004. He has owned his own business in addition to working for both large and small companies.

His focus is on growing teams and building talent, developing strategic planning and participating in leadership training for executives. Having started in the industry as an installer, he has so much respect for workers in the trades and understands the importance of fostering their growth.

Automation Arts is a company that specializes in designing and implementing custom AV solutions that enhance communication, collaboration, and customer experiences, ultimately helping businesses thrive in today’s competitive landscape.

Shaun, welcome to the Fast Break.

01:22 Shaun Trudell

Thank you so much for having.

01:24 Matt Cranney

To kick things off, I I’m hoping maybe you could share with our audience who’s listening today, how you define AV services and maybe give us an overview of the types of AV services Automation Arts provides.

01:36 Shaun Trudell

Absolutely. AV Services I think have changed a lot over the years from, you know, new technology. Obviously, we saw a huge change in the landscape from COVID and hybrid workforces and all of those things where we’ve seen audio conferencing, AVC.

And now it’s really video conferencing. It’s how people are collaborating, how they’re getting together and doing a lot of those things so. You know, I think the services specifically that Automation Arts provides, and every integrator could be a little bit different, but we really focus on that design build, right. We want to be a long-term partner with you. So, we want to come in, understand your needs, figuring out you know what your pain points are, what are you struggling with? How can we provide some technology that’s going to improve the efficiency of your workforce, the collaboration, the interactions with your clients and then are really going to drive the day-to-day work activities that are happening within your office and or remote offices and anywhere else really.

So it’s coming up with those ideas coming up with those solutions. Figure out ways that we can implement them into your building and then putting that design together, working with your team to get them implemented and then training your team and your staff so that everybody can use them efficiently and effectively.

02:49 Matt Cranney

It’s sort of taking how we work and amplifying the connectivity and the connectedness of it through technology solutions. That’s incredible. I to build on that a little bit so.

And can you share a little bit about the story of Automation Arts? You know, what inspired the company’s creation and how has it evolved that you mentioned the industry and the customer base has evolved, how has that changed over time to meet the growing demand that you referenced for those AV solutions?

03:18 Shaun Trudell

I’m going to start kind of at the beginning of where Automation Arts started, which was primarily a residential Audio/Video company so formed in 1993 in Madison, where its headquarters and primarily focused on that residential site. In 2012 that changed ownership, you know, through the ups and downs of the housing market and whatnot.

And there was an ownership change there. And from that point on, it was really, you know focusing on how we can bridge the gap between residential and commercial on the residential side of the business, I think bread a lot of really good habits that Automation Arts formed, and it was customer service. It was a white glove. It was really understanding the needs. Putting together quality systems.

I think the one thing that we do that’s unique that a lot of other AV companies downs all of our sales team is a non-commission based sales team and we want that really so that we can focus on the actual needs that the client needs for those specific spaces. And it’s not about selling boxes and the commissions driving that, it’s really about being that partner and understanding the needs and the functionality and then putting together the very best system we can with the very best service to go along with that.

So, 2012 changed ownership. There was four employees at that point. I came on to be the fifth employee and we really just started building out. You know that that reputation again of what we do and how we do it and it became more commercial AV focused and that was the driver of our business over the next, you know 10-12 years.

So, we went from one location, five employees to you know 2024 which we have five locations, 70 employees. 90% of our business was commercial and, in the beginning of 2024, we actually sold that residential division to our residential team that was at Automation Arts, and they’ve essentially broken off now and have their own kind of residential, so let’s just focus on that.

So, our focus now is strictly that commercial audio, video integration and really focusing on that is, is a key to what we do, and we felt like we wanted to do that so that we could keep that laser focus, really make sure we’re taking care of our clients, building a really good customer experience and strategy. And we’ve really done that over the last couple of years of refining. You know, our processes, how we do things, how we interact, how we get our clients in and then how we service them and how we make their interactions with technology and how they feel moving forward and down the road.

So, we want to always be that first call when they go, we have a struggle, or we have a room we need to do, or something’s going on, who do we need to call? It’s got to be Automation Arts.

06:07 Matt Cranney

What a great story. And Shaun, I think it resonates so much with hopefully our audience today, who were, you know, a lot of small and growing businesses thinking about you know how they scale their growth and you know, one of the lessons that I’m picking up from your story is just continue to listen to the voice of the customer and where that customer is taking your business and being able to be nimble and agile enough to respond. So, I love that.

And then I also love how you sort of talked about you want to be the person when your customers have a problem that they’re trying to solve and they’re bringing you into that solve process not hey, our conference room tech doesn’t work right? It’s more like, hey, we’re just trying to think about how we stay more connected to our regional based employees or we’re remote workforce and we’re trying to you know, continue to build a culture. How do we do that?

I love that approach to it. It feels so much more holistic and engaging than sort of to your point, how many boxes can we sell?

07:09 Shaun Trudell

Absolutely. And that’s when we really thrive off that right? It’s building those partnerships and it’s understanding it takes a long time to understand the specific struggles with the technology in itself and everything is now connected to the network. And so being able to really integrate with you know a company and understand how they do things from an IT side. How they do things from the facility side to allow us to be that resource and that partner to really drive that and that that last portion

You could have this beautiful boardroom or training room, and if we don’t get all the audio video done right and understand the needs of how we’re going to use it, that room is going to be lackluster to anybody that’s using it because that’s what they’re interacting for. They’re not there to just look at each other, look out the window, right, it’s right. How do you communicate with that client on the other end who you’re trying to do a huge proposal for? And maybe they’re on vacation and they can’t be there. So where is their experience? How are they going to interact with your team if the technology is failing or struggling.

08:09 Matt Cranney

Shaun, you know obviously at M3 Elevate, we believe technology can be a powerful tool for growth as we often talk about in our business, how can we be advisor LED but Tech supported. Can you share a story maybe of how you’ve seen with your client-based AV technology make a significant impact on small business helping them achieve a goal or overcome the challenge.

08:31 Shaun Trudell

The one that sticks off the top of my mind right away is, you know, just that the impact that the pandemic had on everybody. Right. Everybody was working from home, and you get people that you know, they’re they want to. There are certain people that that look at it at a big benefit.

They can work from home. They’re very comfortable. That’s great. They can be productive. They can do those things. There’s also, people that thrive to be in the office, right? So how do you bridge that gap of getting that feeling of, you know, say it’s you and me and two other people are in the office. And that’s where we feel comfortable. And we’re going to get together in a conference room. And Jason is at home. And he’s working and we’re trying to dial him in. How do we have him feel like he’s just a part of the team, right. And bridge that gap and really get his connectedness to that meeting.

So it’s the audio video conferencing, which is pretty much in every conference that you see now. How do we get the content to share so that Jason can see it and he can, you know, be a part of that and really interact with that team?

We saw a lot of different products come out, you know, right out of the gate. And it was just a camera and it was this. But even there, what is the audio quality? What is the video quality?

We’re seeing enhancements in Microsoft Teams where they, you know they have front row where everybody that’s in that meeting feels like it’s very direct to your you’re having communications back and forth.  We’re seeing cameras now that have built in, you know, AI that are making adjustments to camera views or zooms so that that person feels very connected as to who’s talking, right?

So dialing in all of those technologies and those functionalities and figuring out how we get that to be included in all of those conference rooms and have a very good seamless thought is going to drive you know the productivity of your employees, the clients interaction, you know people feeling connected, you know and then maybe there is a larger drive to maybe want to come back to the office or no because we have this technology, we have such a hybrid workforce in our team morale is up and our efficiencies are up and our companies are growing and we’re scaling because all of the things we’re doing and investing to make sure that everybody has the best experience as possible, this being carried through.

10:50 Matt Cranney

You know, if I’m listening in today and I’m a small and growing business and you know, maybe, you know, my budget is not significant yet.

As I continue to be nimble and trying to scale my business and maybe investing in AC Tech might seem like a luxury for some of those businesses. How do does Automation Arts help clients understand the return on investment? And maybe and like you just talked about some of those tangible benefits that making that investment in AV  can bring even when you know, look at every dollar matters to all of us. But when you’re small and there’s less of those dollars, even at those times where it would still seem to make a lot of sense to make that investment in AV.

11:29 Shaun Trudell

You could always start small, right? And it’s what’s the one room that maybe you go. Hey, let’s try this. Let’s see how it works for our team and our company. Maybe we don’t need to do everything right off the bat, but what’s the one room that we can focus on that we need some return on investment.

And then there are tools and different things that we can even dial into from. I mean, I said it before, like Microsoft Teams or AI or you can start driving some of that data and that’s we’re seeing a lot of things in technology, in the AV industry be driven off of data and it is specifically to go back and go what is our return on investment.

It can be as simple as room scheduling, right, like. Hey, we have 3 or 4 rooms that are, you know, constantly scheduled. Can we get some sort of report of how many people are in those rooms? What technology are they using? Are they using any of the technology? Is it just a reoccurring, you know, meeting that nobody’s showing up to, so you could have ox sensors tied into and start generating some of that data and go boy, I see Matt has a reoccurring revenue in the Monona Lakes Conference room and we noticed that there’s nobody in that conference room every Tuesday at 9:00 to 10:00, and it’s empty. Well, after the 3rd or 4th time you could have a notification kind of kick back and go. Hey, there’s a meeting here, but we’re not sensing any presence. What’s going on? And you could be like, oh, man, I totally forgot I had we scheduled that a month ago and we got through that project and now we’re not doing and it didn’t come off the calendar. Now you’ve got you know resources and rooms that aren’t being utilized, that we can then generate data and ideas behind to understand how we can drive that.

Then you can start seeing how is the technology making an impact in those rooms as well. From there you can build out your use cases of, well, how much capital expenditure do we need for this stuff? What is just an expense, or you know what’s something that we can look at.

And there’s a lot of other ways that companies are starting to look at it too from a leasing side, and its hardware has a service or software as a service. People that are used to IT printers and a lot of those things. That’s the model that we’ve seen. We see a little bit of. that in the industry, but not a ton, but there are those opportunities then where we can lease some of the equipment for that person who goes, you know what I can’t afford $50,000 for this room, but I see the value of it, but I could do it if I can chip away at it right at the course of time and really drive my ROI and get my team to buy in and use it that it’s easier for them to go back to their CFO or to their boss or whoever they need to kind of generate that that business case as to this is the ROI we’re seeing in this and when we do this, these rooms are being used and that are being used. We’re seeing this efficiencies happen.

 So, it’s tying all of that in and there’s a ton of that and I mean we’re seeing it a little bit more with AI and it’s just scratching the surface, but we’re going to continue to see that grow within the industry.

14:30 Matt Cranney

I love what you’re saying there Shaun because what you’re essentially bringing it back to is again kind of like we talked about in our previous answer. It’s not tech for tech-sake, or AV for AV-sake right?  To say like, all of our rooms need to have. It’s really about how do you amplify the employee experience to then help amplify the client experience. And it doesn’t matter if you’re 50 employees, 5 employees, 500 employees that need is the same to make sure you’re providing that.

And your point is hey there for anyone who’s listening today and has not sort of taken this up in earnest, they should reach out to you or somebody in your space, because let’s at least have the conversation and understand there might be a small jumping off point, right, a place to sort of get into the game with maybe big plans over a period of time to make it bigger and better and more. But in today’s day and age if you’re going to compete for the right talent, if you’re going to compete for the right clients, this is now becoming, maybe it’s the transition.

If you agree with this, it feels like it’s moving from a, in the past it was nice to have, now it’s really a “need to have”.

15:38 Shaun Trudell

Absolutely, the younger workforce, and I can remember getting my first computer and it was in 1998, right? And that’s, you know, that’s a long time ago. The workforce that’s graduating now is, you know, they’ve had tablets in their hands. They’ve had phones in their hands. They’ve had instant access to information their entire lives, right.

So, to go into a workplace that doesn’t have that technology and doesn’t feed their ability to be successful within their career is going to hamper you know, their wants and drive to stay in an organization like that. So, it’s definitely one of those where if you surveyed a company that’s going to be probably pretty high on their needs of what is the technology I get to work with within my company. Where do I feel like I’m stuck in the basement and it’s dark and dingy and I’m struggling?

16:29 Matt Cranney  

For sure. So, Shaun, let’s I want to keep going on this topic because I think we’ve, you’ve referenced a number of times. But the world’s different since COVID and you know one of the phrases that I’ve used around M3 a lot is I learned once from a much smarter person than me that you have to have three data points to make something a trend, right? And then if we take it year as the data points to the post COVID you know maybe you know 22/23/24 is kind of like OK, we’ve got some data points here and I am really curious because you and Automation Arts are really, I think, on the leading edge of seeing how people are working in the future of work, whatever term people want to use.

How are you at Automation Arts helping adapt to that sort of hybrid work environment? The remote collaboration? We’ve talked a little bit about it, but I really want to go deeper on sort of what you think you’re seeing in terms of trends there, Shaun, and how Automation Arts is responding to those trends.

17:24 Shaun Trudell

Yeah, it’s. And I think it’s really defining to that hybrid workforce is right. And then figuring out their needs and how you’re going to continue to include them in the workforce, and make them feel included, right? So, it’s dialing all that technology back to meeting that experience and I think you know you had brought up Avixa earlier and that’s one of the things you know it’s one of our largest trade groups within our industry and they focus heavily on experience.

And we’ve been seeing and hearing that now you know for the past five to seven years. It’s really about experience, right? It’s about how you feel. It’s how about how the technology engages you. You’re seeing that across the board and that’s what people want to from a work standpoint, right? They want to love what they do, they want to be passionate about it. They want to work well with their teams. They want to be collaborative, and so how do we inject all of that technology to make their jobs? You know, more exciting or build that passion and grow from it, you know?

So to answer some of those questions is of how we’re doing. That is a lot of and it kind of touched on it through some of your questions throughout, but it’s starting small, it’s understanding what can we get in their hands quickly?

And it’s little things of, you know, if I’m bringing a laptop in, how do I present to the TV? before it was a million chords and you have to plug this in and hit buttons. And now it’s you jump in and you jump into a Teams meeting or maybe you don’t even need your laptop anymore. Because the video conferencing unit that’s in there has teams built in and you want it to auto populate. You come in and you hit one button on the touch screen and it joins the meeting, everybody’s there, say you’re in your office and you’re presenting that that information that documents up on the screen, we can see it, we can share it.

And then it’s day out. Like, do you want to take it to another level? And let’s put an Interactive Whiteboard in and now let’s make that document where we can all collaborate on it and annotate and start sharing notes and doing a lot of those things,

And then again, I’ve hit on this a couple of times, but AI, you know to where we start seeing AI being plugged into, you know, teams or audio or the video conferencing and all of the different things that you’re seeing.

You know, how is it taking notes? How is it generating ideas for you transcribing and then following up? And then allowing you to be that much more efficient, we used to sit there and go around the room like, OK, who’s going to take notes? Is it going to be you, you know? And I was like, alright, fine. I’ll take the notes. So and so we’ll take the notes on a piece of paper and then they have to go back to their office and then I’d have to type it out in an e-mail. And these are the notes and now it’s like if everybody’s on a Microsoft Teams account where we have CoPilot, you can have transcribing, well enacted, and now all of those notes are being generated in live time and your notes are in everybody’s inbox a minute after the meeting ends.

So then what are the takeaways? Who needs to do what, you know, so dialing all of those things to the technology I think is really important as to how people interact and really get a positive experience from the technology.

20:31 Matt Cranney

The future of work is changing. I love Shaun, that response in terms of, hey, it’s not just about, you know, we’ve spent so much time, I think as a countries industries talking about where people work in the last few years and what I love about your answer is I think the conversation maybe is going to start to shift to how people work, right and how do we have people through technology being able to serve at their highest and best use of their time.

To your point about taking notes. If there’s a technology platform that can instantly do that and send it out, great, because that means a more engaged meeting. It means people are leaning in, thinking about being creative and problem solving, and all the things that you would want your best resources at your organizations to be able to do. Not necessarily having to, you know, write down the notes and then go and type them up and then send them out.

And it’s crazy to think that, you know, we’re again, like you. I remember my first computer. How big it was and you know to where we’re at now from a technology standpoint and to somebody who has always had a not a great touch apparently with AV in the past where you walk into a room and you’re, you know, with cables and it’s a different time now.

And I think one of the big takeaways that I’m taking from our conversation is how do we migrate? Look, we still need to have that conversation about where people are working and productivity and all those things but, but let’s maybe as businesses start to change that conversation to how people work and like you mentioned in one of your first answers, having partners like Automation Arts come in at the early part of that conversation about how people work. So that you can figure out where the right technology can apply where maybe it’s too much, where it’s not enough to really enable those experiences, right?

22:24 Shaun Trudell

I think too another thing that companies should focus on it they’re not doing it already, is a lot of times these decisions are driving by IT people or Facilities or it’s, you know, hey, we’ve got a room and it’s 20 by 30 and it’s going to do this. And this is what we think, right. Engage your employees or even your clients and get a focus group of how do you want technology to help you on a day-to-day basis within your work life.  Like what have you struggled with in the past, what would be what shoot for the moon, if you could have it all, what would you want to do?

And engaging your employees and getting that feedback is going to help you drive the ROI, for the decisions you’re making on those rooms, right? So if we’re, if we’re talking about a hybrid workforce that maybe it’s, you know, people come in the office three days a week and two days they’re still at home. You know you’re going to see more spaces that are collaborative and maybe there’s less offices and there’s still more of those drop spaces that people are having. How do you utilize those spaces if you’re not gaining the information or the feedback from the people that are using them.

If you’re focusing just on one specific department to hopefully make the right answers for loan, you’re going to miss out on a lot of and, there may be things you don’t garner from the employees that you never even thought of. And then you’re driving their engagement and you’re driving their buy in and then your ROI is right there in front of you.

The employees will then use it versus well, they made the decision and they put this in and no one knows how to use the technology and we’re terrified by it, so we just don’t go to that room. I’ve heard that story a million times.

And you’re like, how do we get over that? And it’s really understanding how the end users are using that that system not what maybe you and I think would be cool, but it’s how do they really drive it, how do they really need to use it?

24:19 Matt Cranney

This whole conversation has been incredible, but I think for our audience listening, if they’re in their special places and they’re listening now like, bring your ears back to that part of the conversation because. You know the idea of making collaborative employee involved decisions around the tech, and you’re absolutely right. So often it can be a, hey, we had a problem. We needed this room to be better. So we built it. And now here it is, everybody. And let’s do training versus what do you need it to do. How do you want to feel when you use it? Are you doing hybrid meetings in here or is it all in person meetings? Or is it all remote meetings with one person here?

What a great call to action to finish and round out that part of our conversation. So thank you. Thank you so much for sharing it, Shaun. So OK, as always, Shaun, we’re going to move now into our last set of questions for you, which is our fastest break set and so we’ll do this rapid fire. Alright, man. Here we go. Shaun. Favorite book that you’ve read in the last 12 months.

25:20  Shaun Trudell

Motives by Patrick Lencioni.

25:22 Matt Cranney

Love that book, the most impactful business advice that you’ve ever received.

25:26 Shaun Trudell

Fail forward.

25:27 Matt Cranney

Love it? Your favorite podcast that you would recommend to our audience.

25:31 Shaun Trudell

The One Thing.

25:32 Matt Cranney

Your can’t live without it app on your phone.

25:35 Shaun Trudell

Apple music.

25:38 Matt Cranney

The last time you were truly impressed by a piece of technology.

25:40 Shaun Trudell

That’s gonna be AI copilot.

25:42 Matt Cranney

It kind of blew your mind?

25:43 Shaun Trudell

Yeah, it’s insane. Some of the things that it can do in, in the algorithms and the building. It’s truly like watching the Terminator right in front of your eyes, right? That’s Skynet is we’re building Skynet as we speak.

25:55 Matt Cranney

With hopefully a better outcome, right?

25:58 Shaun Trudell

Yep, Yep. Let’s hope so.

25:59 Matt Cranney

Yeah, it’s funny how I’ve said that to, you know, number of people recently about AI and I go like, yeah with a happier ending, right? And everyone’s like, yeah, and I’m like, let’s be more sure of that.

So anyway, OK. Shaun, if you were to give a Ted talk what would be it’s title?

26:13 Shaun Trudell

Rise and Grind.

26:15 Matt Cranney

I love it. OK, Shaun, that’s the end of our fastest break set. And before we wrap up, can you share with our audience where they can find out more About you where they can learn more about Automation Arts and what’s the best way to connect if they’ve been listening to this conversation?

And then like I want to engage with Shaun in Automation Arts to begin that conversation that we talked about, what’s the best way for people to do that?

26:37 Shaun Trudell

A lot of our team is on LinkedIn and you’ll see a lot of. I mean, they’re great. Just follow anybody from Automation Arts. You’re going to see a lot of posts, just different things were working on, our technologies.

Our team does an amazing job from being interactive on LinkedIn that’s going to be huge. So if you just kind of want to watch in the background and learn more about us and see what going on, I would say that would be your your go to spot start there.

You can always go to our website www.automationarts.com. Otherwise you know you can reach out to me personally on LinkedIn my e-mail as well Shaun@automationarts.com there’s info on sales@automationarts.com as well.

Any of those will go to our main team and we’ll get back to you. We do have offices in Madison, Milwaukee, Fox Valley and Wausau that are typically out where we would call like a design center. We have technology on display if anybody wants to make an appointment and stop in and kind of see more of what we do and just talk about technology or some of their needs or wants, we’re happy to do that as well.

27:41 Matt Cranney  

Shaun, that’s it. Thank you so much for joining me today for sharing your wisdom and expertise on the impact of AV tech. We really have appreciated your time and this has been incredible conversation.

27:52 Shaun Trudell

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate being here.