Let’s get it out of the way real quick. This was always going to be a strange yet enjoyable, fun yet sentimental recap to write for me. For those that don’t know, I was a part of the Nationwide Marketing Group team as of about eight or nine weeks ago. Much of what happened last week in Indianapolis I actively helped plan, market, and prepare for in the weeks leading up to my departure. And it’s a team that I spent over five years with. So, yea, this one was a little different. If anything, it felt like a little family reunion.
Something I can hear you saying under your breath is that there’s absolutely got to be some bias coming out the words that’ll follow. And you’d be right, but not in the way you think. I’m biased about this industry, biased in that I want to see all integrators succeed, and biased in believing that you’d all benefit from being a part of any buying organization—the resources extend so far beyond just the access to product, as was heavily evident here in Indy this week.
Enough about that, though. Let’s get into what went down in Indy.
This week was the first attempt to bring together all three of Nationwide Marketing Group’s custom integration organizations—Azione Unlimited, Ellipsys Commercial Technology Group, and Oasys Residential Technology Group—under one roof. Azione and Ellipsys took over the meeting space at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indy for the first half of the week, then the line change happened and Oasys moved in for the back half.
The strategy, selfishly, worked well in allowing me to connect with members from all of the groups, the entire NMG CI team, and vendor partners without having to hop on different flights and traveling to different cities. Vendor partners here for the bulk of the week would likely tell you the same thing. It also provided a really unique look into how the three groups stand apart from one another while also bringing together a shared vision for how they want to support their members and the broader residential and commercial integration industries.
In addition, the result was a hotel filled with exceptional experience rooms, engaging sessions, and very real conversations around the challenges the industry faces and how to begin tackling them.
“We know that there’s a ton of outside noise right now,” Patrick McCarty, executive director of Azione, told me. “But those are things that we and our members can’t control. We wanted to spend our time together this week focusing on the things that we could control and looking to improve in those areas.”
Shared Themes & Mission
To that end, it’s clear that the groups wanted to make this week all about actionable advice and getting members’ hands dirty working on their businesses.
Multiple sessions throughout the week were geared towards spending time reflecting on challenges they face as integrators and sharing tips and tricks that could result in those incremental—yet highly impactful—efficiencies in one’s business. The groups were able to get members out of their comfort zones by asking dealers to actually discuss their challenges with their peers in the room and work to solve them. That was especially apparent during sessions lead by established business coaches Jason Sayen (founder of iamsayen) and Matt Bernath (president of VITAL), both of whom were on site in Indy the entire week. It’s always incredible to sit through their sessions and learn from what they’ve seen coaching businesses. But what’s even more impactful is to see how dealers respond to their collaborative prompts and interactive components. Dealers—the engaged ones—always seem to have that ‘Aha!’ moment right there during the show.
A shared keynote speaker was also an advantageous opportunity for the groups. Ryan McCarty, a leadership and culture champion, spoke to the Azione and Oasys communities in a traditional keynote format while still tailoring his message to each organization. The Ellipsys team, still new and growing within the commercial space, was able to have Ryan lead a more intimate working session.
McCarty’s message, boiled down, was all about self-reflection. In his words, the most effective leaders—no matter the business or industry—are those who know how to lead themselves first. If you are unable to pause, reflect, and work on self-improvement, then how can you expect to impart any knowledge, build any trust, or effectively lead anyone? And, beyond simply speaking words and pontificating on that point, McCarty turned the keynote into an engaging discussion among members, and he followed that up with a deeper-dive working session that allowed attendees to explore the Lead From Within model of self-leadership.
And then there was the session during Azione’s Indiana Inculcation event on practical applications for AI, driven by Sonance CEO Ari Supran. The presentation included demos of over half-a-dozen different AI tools that could do everything from craft content leveraging your actual brand voice to produce AI-generated talking-head video content.
“It’s a massive deal for our members to make the decision to step away from their businesses for a few days to spend time with us,” says Oasys Director Hank Alexander. “It’s our responsibility to make sure that their time with us is not only impactful, but that they can truly take something away from here, bring it back home, and implement it tomorrow.”
Tariff Talks
Of course, any meeting these days is going to, at some point, attempt to address the enormous elephant that’s in the room—that being tariffs. There remains a ton of uncertainty around what’s going to happen with the Trump administration’s approach to tariff negotiations from one country to the next, but everyone in each forum agreed that sitting still wasn’t an option.
Financial impacts are already being felt as product hits the water, and manufacturers are being forced to either change pricing, or, in some cases, pause shipments out of the manufacturing country altogether. And much like other tariff talks I’ve sat through, the biggest area of emphasis was maintaining open lines of communication throughout the entire “chain of command.” And, as was shared prior, CEDIA has developed language that integrators can use in their contracts to help protect their business from potential price fluctuations as the situation remains fluid.
All in all, a major kudos to Greg Simmons of ADI/SnapOne for moderating a lively panel on the topic that included Dennis Holzer of Powerhouse Alliance, Mitch Klein of CEDIA, and Jeff Costello of Nice North America during the Oasys portion of the week.
Ultimately, what stands out about these events to me is the opportunity for integrators to simply step back from the day-to-day and reflect on their businesses and themselves. It’s a chance to identify areas of opportunity, areas where they can improve, and actually spend some time talking with one another to come up with solutions.
