Get A Grip On Lighting Podcast
461 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 days ago - ★★★★★ - 13 ratingsRecognizing a need in the lighting industry to forum together and discuss subjects & issues in our industry, the Get A Grip On Lighting Podcast was born. Get A Grip brings on industry experts to talk about real issues and focused on that subject matter. If there’s something to be said on the subject, Get A Grip will go there.
Get A Grip On Lighting Podcasts are hosted by Michael Colligan and Greg Ehrich, who have over 30 years of combined experience in the lighting industry. Michael Colligan is an entrepreneur and inventor. He’s a subject matter expert in commercial and industrial lighting supply, lighting retrofits, and finding recycling streams for hard-to-recycle waste. Greg Ehrich, LC is the former President of the National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors (NAILD) and owner of a progressive lighting distributorship.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
#147 - Our Own Phases for UVC Deployment
August 10, 2020 00:00 - 41 minutes - 28.8 MBBernie Erickson of Facilities Solutions Group is in the middle of expanding his company's offerings in UV disinfection options, so we had to ask him on the show to share what he’s been working on. He breaks down the differences between surface and air disinfection as he sells it, as well pointing out secondary gains from adding air purification. What he has noticed is that his customers seem to have their own phases for adoption of UV purification moving from portable units to more ...
#146 - Business Dynamics: Acquisitions, Agents & DLC
August 03, 2020 00:00 - 4 seconds - 24.2 MBAl Uszynski returns as a podcast guest to speak about his perspective on and his personal history in the lighting industry. Launching Inside.Lighting to keep track of rep agencies, but ended up writing news to keep the site relevant. Once agents are up for discussion we have to dig into the friction points between distributors and rep agents, and how our modes and models of business are changing in response to changes in the manufacturing business. Now that the classic big three ha...
#145 - The LRC Has Created a Monster
July 27, 2020 00:00 - 1 hour - 56.8 MBThe LRC has put together a very cool web-based tool for designing a space for healthier living (https://www.lrc.rpi.edu/healthyliving/), after playing around with it ourselves, we asked the minds behind it for an interview. Allison Thayer and Dr. Mariana Figueiro joined us to share how they created this site and how they plan to expand it. We discussed how hard it is to improve productivity in humans and that we should just stick to lighting occupants can work in enjoyably. Some t...
#144 - Ellis Yan Part 1: Half-Cooked Rice
July 20, 2020 00:00 - 48 minutes - 33.2 MBWe’ve always known that Ellis Yan has a story to tell. We take a break from lighting technology and delve into history, as Ellis explains his life under The Cultural Revolution under Mao. It starts with the day he was sent to school without lessons, moves through years of bullying teachers, and attacks on capitalists and intellectuals before being shipped out to the mountains. He lived with nine other teenagers in a two-room building in a remote farming village where he had to learn...
#143 - Work-Light Balance
July 13, 2020 00:00 - 44 minutes - 30.5 MBHenrik Clausen has thirty years of experience as an electrical engineer, educator, and a consultant. And when he wrote for LED Professional calling for brighter, more personalized light at work (read it here: https://www.led-professional.com/resources-1/articles/personal-lighting-profiles-might-be-the-key-to-creating-a-natural-work-light-balance), we knew we had to ask him about it. While it’s true that an aging workforce will need more light, we ended up debating how to implement th...
#142 - Sell Our Way Out
July 06, 2020 00:00 - 35 minutes - 24.6 MBAl Uszynski has trained salespeople at the university level and he joined us to share his insights on selling right now. He shares some adaptations to current restrictions as well as creative ideas for selling online that will be even more useful when we can get face-to-face. But the real question that comes out of this conversation is: Should we be asking sales staff to be marketers? Can we really learn new tricks? And what are we losing as we pass through the quarantine? We also...
#141 - A New Kind of Lighting Cue
June 30, 2020 00:00 - 45 minutes - 31.5 MBThe Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is moving past energy efficiency research and into researching better life indoors. One of their projects was looking into ‘realistic’ lighting in an Neonatal ICU. Andrea Wilkerson, senior lighting researcher, shared her findings for sun-like colour and brightness automation. Beyond what happened during the test we explore some of the broader implications of circadian entrainment and it’s ability to signal behaviour and mood in subtle ways. ...
Kevin Poyck, Signify Americas | Get A Grip Outbreak Update, June 25
June 25, 2020 00:00 - 31 minutes - 21.9 MBKevin Poyck just had his legs under him as CEO and President of Signify’s Americas Market Group when the outbreak threw his business into chaos. He shares his thoughts on virtual offices, managing at a distance, and the shape of post-pandemic normalcy. What really brought him to our show today was a recent study at Boston University that confirmed how effective a new Signify UVC lamp really is, which leads to a vintage Philips UV disinfection manual and the modern rush for germicidal...
#140 - 8 Plus 1 Equals Crisis
June 22, 2020 00:00 - 1 hour - 42.1 MBRay Molony edits Lux Review, and in one month into lockdown he wrote what he considered to be the eight effects the lighting sector will see coming out of the current health crisis. Read that here: https://www.luxreview.com/2020/04/14/8-effects-of-the-crisis-on-the-lighting-sector/. After seeing it we had to invite him to push back and expand on his ideas, we shared our thoughts on established brands losing footing, payment terms changing, calls for quality over savings, local prod...
#139 - Connected for a Mirrorworld
June 15, 2020 00:00 - 44 minutes - 30.7 MBSignify’s Robert Lee returns to the show to elaborate on an article he wrote for LEDs Magazine on what SSL lighting will look like in 2030 - you can read it here: https://www.ledsmagazine.com/smart-lighting-iot/article/14168528/picture-the-future-of-ssl-within-the-mirror-world-magazine We get into the technologies that will converge to make the next decade of lighting a mirrorworld of augmented reality. We also go over topics like consumer apathy in the face of new features, cost ...
#138 - Distributing UVC
June 08, 2020 00:00 - 1 hour - 29.1 MBJim Colantoni starts our conversation with him explaining the background of his company and how they’re working to create lighting tools for health and wellness. We get into the background and particulars of UVC technologies. Michael and Greg delve into discussions of safety concerns, future building codes, the lack of efficiency of LED in this case, confrontations with buzzwords, and the growing importance of listening to the customer.
#137 - Democratization of Lighting
June 01, 2020 00:00 - 37 minutes - 25.6 MBThe King of Lighting, Ellis Yan, returns to the main series and he brought Lesley Matt, Senior VP of Sales at TCP Along with him. They share their current virtual lunch and learn series, and the company’s own rebate and incentive program before diving into the real lighting dork content with us. We discussed offering more colors, building drivers, modularity and replaceable parts in outdoor lighting, the meaning of ‘Full Spectrum’, creating something will match the usefulness of MR1...
#136 - Starfish
May 25, 2020 00:00 - 37 minutes - 25.6 MBWe’re taking a short break from our usual lighting dork topics this week to chat with Tyler Gildin about his documentary The Starfish, which profiles his grandfather’s journey from Nazi Germany to Sweden, across the USSR, and over the pacific ocean to reunite with his parents. Chatting about Herb Gildin’s life in America and building Satco leads to discussions of overcoming adversity, building a business and personal brand, treating employees like family and the drives and motivatio...
#135 - Familiar Discussions Made Portable
May 18, 2020 00:00 - 46 minutes - 32 MBTom Beckett and some colleagues in his side of lighting spent three years setting up an ANSI certification for flashlights, and once they were done they turned that team into the Portable Lights American Trade Organization to maintain standards across seven metrics as the industry moved into LED. We talked over testing procedures, the issue of enforcement versus advising members, and learning to work with color-rendering as a relevant metrics in the world of portable and battery pow...
#134 - Dark Sky: Trade-offs from the Bottom-Up
May 11, 2020 13:22 - 4 minutes - 31.7 MBIn April, the Illuminating Engineering Society and the International Dark Sky Association released a joint statement on the five practices to best confront light pollution. We’re here to speak with IDA’s Ruskin Hartley and the IES’ Brian Liebel about that, and the broader implications of electric light at night. Light pollution is real pollution, it’s something we create that harms people and animals, and as much as we can raise awareness among consumers we may need to call on regul...
#133 - Harvesting the Golden Tail
May 04, 2020 00:00 - 55 minutes - 37.9 MB4-time guest Mark Lien returns to act as the lighting industry’s very own futurist. We discussed the ease of charting the direction of change as opposed to predicting its pace, the marking of epochs, where our particular businesses stand at the moment, lighting controls leaving lighting’s hands, and other long term trends for our field. Also on the discussion slate: contemporary geopolitics, macroeconomics, and the plague.
#132 - Disrupt or Die
April 27, 2020 00:00 - 1 hour - 26.1 MBWestlite’s Brenda Puckett knows that there’s no constant in our industry but change, and that if you can’t be an agent for change your company won’t thrive. We joined her at her office earlier this year to chat about doing more than selling bulbs to people, conservation in the era of throwaway tech, trying to keep things simple as SKUs pile up and we replace whole fixtures, as well as the question of state’s rights.
#131 - UV Disinfection: What You Need to Know Right Now
April 20, 2020 00:00 - 52 minutes - 36.3 MBWe’ve noticed a spike in requests for UV lamps and fixtures recently and aside from reading the side of the box over the phone, we don’t have a clue what to tell anyone. Fortunately, Karl Platzer and Fred van Lierop of UV Lamp Consulting were kind enough to share their considerable expertise on the subject with us all. The two of them talk through the nuts and bolts of the UV spectrum, it’s applications, and how technology gets tested and certified. Bringing it back to lighting dork...
#130 - Close Some Deals...Safely
April 13, 2020 00:00 - 9 minutes - 6.73 MBKeeping this one short and sweet this week. Michael and Greg share stories about selling while under quarantine orders. It’s a surprisingly good time to upgrade systems or relamp a facility. Get on the phone and let people know you’re essential and that you can keep the lights on, nevermind any presumptions.
Tim Taylor, Light Efficient Design | Get A Grip Outbreak Update, April 10
April 10, 2020 20:01 - 15 minutes - 10.8 MBLight Efficient Design's CEO Tim Taylor is our guest today. He talks about starting his company, his current supply chain issues, and his ideas about lobbying the US Congress for lighting infrastructure projects as a form of economic stimulus.
When in Crisis: Do Everything - Rebecca Costa | Get a Grip Outbreak Update, April 7
April 08, 2020 00:00 - 1 hour - 51.7 MBSociobioligist, futurist, and author of The Watchman's Rattle and On The Verge, Rebecca Costa is here to help us take a big step back to view the pandemic's effects on not just our jobs, but society. She and Michael delve into questions of leadership, confidence and shared morals as we get through this crisis and prepare for the next.
#129 - The Daily Learning Curve
April 06, 2020 00:00 - 43 minutes - 29.7 MB38 years ago, Steve Byrne started working in the warehouse of American Light. After a name change and a few promotions he’s the COO of Facility Solutions Group. He invited us to his offices to share his experiences and insights into the industry. He’s seen a number of disruptions and new learning curves emerge but believes we may be seeing a reconstruction of the distribution channel that puts partnerships ahead of brand name recognition. We also talked about the gaps between expert...
Jon Sayah, Saylite | Get A Grip Outbreak Update, April 3
April 03, 2020 00:00 - 21 minutes - 14.6 MBJon Sayah came prepared for this one. We spoke about the reduction in the scope of short-term planning, the new shift schedules at Saylite's production facilities, and boxing metaphors.
Mark Verheyen, Panasonic Lighting Americas | Get a Grip Outbreak Update, April 2
April 02, 2020 00:00 - 19 minutes - 13.4 MBMark Verheyen; President of Panasonic Lighting Americas, President and CEO of Universal Lighting Technologies, as well as President and CEO of Douglas Lighting Controls is our guest for this installment of our leadership under Covid-19 pandemic to discuss his particular circumstance of manufacturing in Mexico with a mix of international components and working to keep staff safe.
Jonathan Palmersten, Gripple | Get a Grip Outbreak Update, April 1
April 01, 2020 00:00 - 23 minutes - 15.9 MBJonathan Palmersten, CEO of Gripple shares his experiences in local manufacturing, revenue loss in an employee-owned company, and hanging plexiglass barriers for food service and grocery staff.
Peter Brown | Get a Grip Outbreak Update, March 31
March 31, 2020 00:00 - 36 minutes - 25.1 MBPeter Brown joins in on a roundtable discussion of best, worst and likely short-term scenarios as governmental response to this pandemic escalate.
#128 - You Have to Live with the Fixture
March 30, 2020 00:00 - 27 minutes - 18.9 MBFrank Guastella, Director of Operations at Revco Lighting invited us into his showroom to talk about working with residential clients. He gets an interesting mix of homeowners and contractors walking through his showroom every day. And what we learned is that while his target market is different from our commercial clients, he’s still dealing with the same questions of rebates, purpose-built fixtures, and keeping staff trained and aware of legacy light sources.
Special - Margaret Wong, McWong International
March 27, 2020 00:00 - 32 minutes - 22.1 MBMargaret Wong, Founder and CEO of McWong International has more experience working with Chinese manufacturers than anyone else, this series wouldn’t be complete without her take on this situation. She shares her insights into the current state of the supply chain and how this might change the IoT.
Special - Ira Greenberg, Keystone Tech
March 26, 2020 00:00 - 29 minutes - 20.4 MBIra Greenberg, CEO of Keystone Technologies joins our series of industry leaders as they respond to the corona virus outbreak and its effects on manufacturing and distribution. Beyond his work with Keystone's Virus Task Force he shares his thoughts on corporate bailouts and the strengths of family-owned businesses. Brought to you by The National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors: visit https://NAILD.org
Special - Ellis Yan, TCP Inc
March 25, 2020 00:00 - 18 minutes - 12.8 MBThis series of special releases is about profiling the leadership that is emerging in the face of this pandemic. In this episode the King of lighting and CEO of TCP, Ellis Yan rejoins us to share his experiences and thoughts from when it began to affect his business at the end of January through to today. Brought to you by The National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors: visit NAILD.org
Special - Antony Corrie, Fulham Co
March 24, 2020 00:00 - 32 minutes - 22.5 MBA Special Release from Get a Grip on Lighting, we'll be sharing our thoughts on how COVID-19 is affecting our industry as the situation develops. Today, we grabbed Fulham's Antony Corrie for his perspective on working in the current situation. Brought to you by The National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors: visit NAILD.org
#127 - The Right Fit
March 23, 2020 00:00 - 50 minutes - 34.4 MBSunset Lighting has been in the business for thirty years. And it’s current VP of operations and this week’s guest, Kyle Landig has been working there since he was in high school. Our friendly banter passes through working specifically in retail spaces - building a business to be a right fit for the client, staffing at all hours, working with people who care more about color quality than anything else, the retailer’s version of the IoT, and on-site challenges. Beyond that Michael a...
Special - What's Essential and what isn't?
March 23, 2020 00:00 - 12 minutes - 8.73 MBA Special Release from Get a Grip on Lighting, we'll be sharing our thoughts on how COVID-19 is affecting our industry as the situation develops. Today, we're talking about where lighting distributors fit into the 'essential services' label.
#126 - Living in the Plenum...Potentially
March 16, 2020 00:00 - 30 minutes - 20.6 MBWhen is a clock not a clock? When it’s acting as an analog display for network time. Mark Higgason of Encompass AV is on the show to discuss how changes in Power over Ethernet regulation is opening up more applications in this section of the Internet of Things. We speak with him about scalability, how businesses are adopting PoE applications, the granularity of control available for these systems, as well as how the industry’s excitement for new technologies always exceeds our knowl...
#125 - The Industry Doesn't Even Know They Need It
March 09, 2020 15:42 - 52 minutes - 35.7 MBA rare four person episode this week as we are joined by Sanjeev Thakkar and Steve Holman of Xeleum, an Eiko Company. We discuss their XiFi protocol, the functions it offers, and how interoperable their products are with other systems. After that we step back into talking about the previous booms in controls, moving beyond controls as a venue energy savings, and the heart of the Internet of Things. We also talk about whether or not it might be time for a standards body for cybersecu...
#124 - Following the Sun
March 02, 2020 00:00 - 35 minutes - 24.1 MBOur excursion into augmented reality and biophilic design with Cree Lighting’s Kory Liszt. He’s an inventor and the designer of the Cadient luminaire, because we can’t get this piece of hardware out of our heads. Our conversation with Kory starts with bringing bits of the outdoors in to make people feel better, using light as a dynamic element in how you experience a room. We do get into the specifics of the Cadient, including positioning, follow the sun mode versus the other customi...
#123 - Augmented Reality
February 24, 2020 00:00 - 50 minutes - 34.9 MBThis week we’re taking circadian research from the conference hall to the order desk with Cree Lighting’s Shirley Coyle. We chat about WELL building standards, better ways to light interiors, preferences getting in the way of doing people good, and moving past efficiency concerns. The real impetus for this conversation was CREE’s Cadient fixture, it’s a dynamic skylight alternative that replicates a day cycle - setting aise how we might be tricking people with it, we discuss building...
#122 - Kicking it Old School
February 17, 2020 00:00 - 43 minutes - 30.1 MBThis week we sit down with Brian Brandes, Senior VP of Product Development at Satco and this episode really is about the nuts and bolts of his job. We talk about end-to-end projects, market research, the creation of Nuvo, fashion in luminaires, the long-term future of legacy and poetry. In an industry where LED continues to find new ways to be a disruptor, the only real solution is to do the right thing.
#121 - Monetizing Complexity
February 10, 2020 00:00 - 42 minutes - 29.3 MBCBC Lighting’s Abraham Schnitzler visited Michael in-studio to talk about some good old fashioned lighting distribution. We get into the legacy marketplace, driver availability, California standards, trade wars, and municipal retrofits. Abraham, Greg, and Michael swap stories about condo applications, the detective work that goes into quoting, customer service, and the value of business associations and old friends.
#120 - Entering a New Era
February 03, 2020 00:00 - 1 hour - 43.8 MBWishing a warm welcome back and a heartfelt congratulations to Spencer and John; the first for returning to the show as guests, the second for gaining ownership of Pacific Lamp and Supply. In this chat we dig into how job title changes aren’t really changing their responsibilities or relationship with each other. After that we get into changing times, growing into online sales interactions and keeping up the human-to-human facets of business-to-business operations. Our chat get into...
Special - Randy Reid on the NAILD Convention, Tesla Awards, and the NLB's Trusted Warranty Program
January 30, 2020 00:00 - 25 minutes - 17.8 MBThis time around we have a quick bonus episode with Randy Reid, editor of The Edison Report and executive director of The National Lighting Bureau to discuss the upcoming NAILD Convention’s recently announced itinerary, the first ever Tesla Awards, and the NLB’s Trusted Warranty program.
#119 - Stay in your Lane
January 27, 2020 00:00 - 35 minutes - 24.6 MBJ Marshall Hunt is a man with a plan plan to reach contractors by being better than the ‘big guys.’ But in order to prove that fact, he has to be on their radar. J explains a few of his secrets in segmented marketing and narrowly targeted web campaigns, plus his youtube series Watt’s New with J. The conversation also spends a lot of time on the corporate culture he’s built on the power of gratitude, delegation with elevation, watching out for floaters and what it means to stay in yo...
#118 - Holding Down The Base
January 20, 2020 00:00 - 29 minutes - 20.1 MBAfter a tour of Satco’s warehouse we have concluded that they have everything. No really, everything a lighting dork could ask for is one of their many shelves. Beyond offering a tour, Bill Gildin did join us for a recording session to talk about the history of the company, how their share of the legacy support market has grown even as demand has fallen and how that support has become a value add for their buyers. The conversation also gets into some other aspects of the industry;...
#117 - Lighting the Anthropocene
January 13, 2020 00:00 - 58 minutes - 40.4 MBChristopher Preston is an environmental philosopher and author, we found him when an excerpt from his book The Synthetic Age about how animals are evolving to use the growing levels of electric light present at night, we had to get him on the show. We get into human scale versus geological scale problem, the case of interference in natural selection, the varying weights of obligation to do better to the planet across humanity, and failure of awareness-building. We also talk about g...
#116 - Looking for the Sun
January 06, 2020 00:00 - 51 minutes - 35.2 MBMargaret Wong got started in the business 36 years ago with a single extension cord. She got that Chinese-made cord listed by UL, a first in the field, and the rest is history. This episode features discussions of Hong Kong then and now, doing missionary work for capitalism, worker culture in China, and a potential paradigm shift global economics. We also delve into McWong’s future, advocating for Bluetooth mesh, lighting’s ubiquity as the driver for the IoT, and selling people on s...
#115 - Horticultural Rebates
December 30, 2019 00:00 - 20 minutes - 14.3 MBFrom the floor of Horticann in Denver, we met up with Rebate Guru, Juan Carlos Blacker to talk about lighting in horticulture space. The space is very different from the rest of the field because light isn’t a tool for sight it’s a means of production; which makes it simple to tackle - sell bulbs that generate the most crop. We also get into how indoor growing facilities are created, their particular service issues, boom and bust cycles particular to lighting grow-ops and where the ...
#114 - Lighting is an Appliance
December 23, 2019 00:00 - 32 minutes - 22.5 MBThe showroom at City Lights in San Francisco has changed a fair bit over the last decade - the shelf space for replacement bulbs has steadily shrunk, while the number of fixtures on display has grown by leaps and bounds. There’s a lot of tradeoffs between purpose-built LED luminaires and something more modular. Michael, Greg, and our guests this episode get into the tradeoffs between treating lighting like an appliance going into the future. They also learn about the ever shrinking...
#113 - 2019 Year in Review
December 16, 2019 00:00 - 47 minutes - 32.4 MB2019 was a great year for us. We have learned so much and met so many interesting people from all corners of our industry. We’re just going to take a few minutes to reflect on all that. Thank you for watching, listening, leaving comments, writing emails, and telling other people about all this. There’s still a pair of short episodes ready for 2019, but we’ve got big things coming in 2020 (name pending), so look forward to it.
#112 - In the Age of Digital; Relationships Matter More
December 09, 2019 00:00 - 38 minutes - 26.1 MBCalifornia is leading the way, not only as an economic powerhouse, but for energy regulations as well. In our Discussion with MJ Paul at Omega Pacific we got into the end of rebates, how to get out of electrical supply by focusing on lighting distribution, and keeping the start-up mentality 30 years into a company’s life cycle. As we continued our chat we got into the particulars of working the bay area, the regional nature of the business, and building strong customer relationships...
#111 - The Lighting Wizard
December 02, 2019 00:00 - 46 minutes - 31.8 MBThe fact of the matter is that controls aren’t guaranteed to generate savings. There’s a number of reasons for this; the space is always occupied, the control mechanisms themselves draw too much energy, or people who might flip a switch end up letting the sensor do the work and lamps run for 5 minutes longer than they have to. But that’s okay (mostly), because Lighting Wizard, Stan Walerczyk is back to talk about the non-energy benefits to a set of controls. He along with Greg and Mi...