Exploration into Evolving ICT Industry with Brady

We're connecting at the human level so that we can connect the world . If you're watching this show on YouTube , would you mind hitting the subscribe button and the bell button to be notified when new content is being created ?

If you're listening to us on one of the audio podcast platforms , like Apple Google Play Stitcher , would you mind leaving us a five star rating ? Those two simple little steps helps us take on the algorithm which helps us get the message out to educate , encourage and enrich the lives of people in the ICT industry . Thursday night , 6 pm , eastern Standard Time .

What are you doing ? I do a live stream on YouTube , linkedin , tiktok a bunch of social media platforms where you get to ask your favorite RCDD questions on installation , design , certification , estimation , project management , even career path questions . But I can hear you now , chuck , I'm going to go over my truck at 6 pm .

I don't want to get into an accident and crash it . I don't care , it's okay , I got you . They're recorded and you can find them on our website at letstalkcabelingcom . Finally , while this show is free and will always remain free , if you would like to support this show , would you click on this QR code right here , where you can buy me a cup of coffee .

You can even schedule a 15-minute one-on-one call with me . After hours , of course , you can go to the web page and visit our Amazon link page and buy stuff where you won't pay extra but we will make a small stipend off of it , and also you can sign up on the Patreon page . I'm always looking for corporate sponsorship as well .

So if you are a company who realizes that this is an agnostic platform and your message is to educate , encourage and enrich as well , and you will be part of this successful journey , reach out to me on social media platforms and let's talk about it . You've heard me say many times there is a generational shift in our industry , the gray tsunami wave .

People like me are retiring and we're not doing a good job at setting up people for success in the future . Because of that , the manufacturers have found tough to make equipment that can both work for both the old boomers like me , who do the old two-finger type and the young generational people who literally grew up with smartphones in their hands .

How do we address that challenges ? And then also , how do we become more efficient so we make more money off of projects or have cheaper projects so we can win more projects ? So I'm bringing on Brady to talk about this and make sure you listen to the end of the show to find out a way that you could win a free Brady label machine .

Welcome to the show , dusty Stump . How are you doing , my friend ? Not too bad . Appreciate you having me today . My pleasure . So , before we get into the content of the show , why don't you tell the audience who are you and why we should listen to you ?

Myself I've been in the product management business for about six years , all with Brady Corporation . Prior to that I worked in so much less exciting world of life insurance .

But there's still a lot of people out there . You label the generation boomers Gen X , whatever that they struggle with technology , right . What are you seeing ? And working for a label manager , what are you seeing about that kind of a shift ?

They've been using them for a while . They don't want them to change . And then you have now an influx of new employees into the trades that have a vastly different technology expectation . And it's that technology expectation that we're really monitoring when we look at that generational shift . How they work and the tools that they want to work with is different .

And in order to Again , I mentioned that workforce is aging out and you got to make a product that's going to work for both the older generation and the newer generation , right ? How do you tackle that kind of a challenge ? Because , let's be honest , there's a lot of boomers out there that still have the flashing noon thing on their VCRs .

We need to make sure that we , for both of those audiences whether they want to interact with a device through your traditional keypad because they grew up with manual tools Think of car windows that you manually have to crank up , manual stick shift , manual rotary phones that we need to continue to serve that group with products and great products , and then those

that grew up with the cell phones that have no idea how to drive a clutch , because they didn't even know that they existed . We need to be able to serve both of those . So it's important to have a product offering that serves both . Got you .

What are you guys doing to help that ?

So , for example , I spoke with a lot of CEOs , leaders at cabling contracting companies , whether they be Datacom , telcom , audiovisual , electrical , and you hear this over and over from them of we need to be more efficient in order to bring our cost per job down , so we can be more competitive when we bid on projects and , once we win the bid , to be more

profitable on that project .

And so one of the key complaints that these leaders talk about is , hey , our cabling professionals are highly paid , highly skilled and very , very good at what they do , and we want them focused on those things that they are highly educated on , not some of the remedial tasks that are time consuming but not as great of a value at , and oftentimes identification of

cabling and cabling equipment is one of those that is necessary , it has to be done , but it can be time intensive , so we want to focus on making that process more efficient .

You turned them on If you got a red light not something was bad got a green light good to go , rock on . Something has gotten a little bit more challenging or a little more involved than it was from 40 years ago . So tell me about how , how you because you got the old , you know the old labor machines we do type like that .

Then you mentioned the desktop printers and stuff like that . Let's talk a little bit about how you can , how you can , tailor the tools for those two generations that we were just talking about , the older generation and the younger generation .

The M211 was unique in the marketplace because it allows customers to , or users to , design , preview and print labels all from their mobile phone . There is no touchscreen or keypad , right , everything's phone driven . So how they're used to interacting with their phones . Now we bring that to the labeling world . A lot of benefits to software driven design .

You have a lot more features than you would typically have on a keyboard label printer , but it's mostly they're using their native keyboard that they're used to . Now , on the same side , we have a printer that uses the exact same label cartridges as this M211 that comes with the keypad .

So now we have a product , the same high performance labels , but a different printer depending on the technology expectation of that customer .

. I sort of seems like there's a new one coming out every six months , and I am one of those people . I'm not a Luddite , but I refuse to go out and buy the latest and greatest phone just because the new one came out . So obviously they're putting in new chipsets and software stuff . Is there a point at some ?

Is there some point where a phone won't work with an M211 ?

That actually be a good companion for that labeling machine , right .

Now our cabling professionals might be tracking some of the time on projects or communicating on their phone Email text , Facebook Messenger , who knows and so that's common practice . And then you have software companies that are targeting cabling professionals with productivity solutions . So they're just , they're all over the place on job sites and manufacturing floors .

Now I do want to hit a couple more things on this printer , if you don't mind , Because we talked about those technology expectations . And not only is the M211 mobile app driven , but it has some additional technology that's desired .

So a lot of people that have been using products for 23 years , they love AA batteries and being able to swap those out Younger generation or a more technology advanced user . They don't want to have to mess with it . So this comes with an internal lithium ion battery and then Bluetooth , the latest simple to technology .

It's a fast connection with your phone three to five seconds and you're good to go . And then it comes with an auto cutter so you're able to send a label print job . Maybe you have to print 30 wrap around labels for some ethernet cables . You just hit print , once you walk away , do your job and it just cuts in for you .

And then what I'm really excited about is we're just launching an upgraded version , or a larger version , of the M211 color M511 . And so this is double the size of the label , so inch and a half wide labels . Double the print speed , higher print quality , and then you can connect up to five different devices to this M511 .

So you can share it amongst a team of contractors . So some exciting products that we're trying to again address that technology expectation difference , and we have a slew of efficiency improvements . We'd love to talk to you about those .

How am I going to charge that thing ?

My second follow-up question to that lithium ion battery is do you foresee because a lot of the people that I deal with technicians and stuff they travel , they travel all day either by van or by plane because they're going to the job sites out of the state or whatever Is there any potential problem with checking a bag on with that label machine in it that's got

a lithium ion battery in it ?

Personally , I've traveled to dozens of trade shows , visited customers all across the United States . I bring my M211 with me everywhere I go , the M511 thrown in the backpack as well . It's really not a big deal .

M211 . This is our three-quarter inch wide label printer . It's about the size of a large tape measure . It weighs 1.2 pounds . It's very light . It comes with you can . You can buy the kit that comes with a belt Clip so you can literally wear it on your hip . It also comes with a magnet adapter so you can attach it to metal surfaces .

The M511 is about twice the size . It's about 2.6 pounds and I'd say it's both the size of a large power drill . It comes with a magnet adapter as well and a utility hook so you could put it on your hip . It's probably a little big , but the utility hooks nice . You can put it on a metal rack or a work cart .

So we were talking about efficiency a little bit , a little bit ago , and one of the one of the problems that I used to hate with some of the Some of the older generation labelers is you know that the office would , would create a spreadsheet , they would go , they print off , you know the label things or whatever , and then you go out to the job site , they

give you one copy and you know what always happens , right , inevitably one or two of them get messed up , and of course I'm being sarcastic it's usually more than one or two . Well , now you got to drive all the way back to the office to go get another labeling sheet , right .

So Is there something you have something like that that can help drive that efficiency ? For that , for the cable tech , make the job a little bit easier .

So Imagine a scenario rather than that contractor having to drive to the back to the shop to pick up a bunch of labels that were created , or Having to create a bunch of them on the fly at the work site , imagine a world where at the shop , you maybe have someone in more of an office clerical role , less technically skilled , maybe a lower pay , is designing

all of the labels Using our free desktop software and then they just email them Out to the technician out at the field job site . And because I'm using a mobile driven label printer Now I can just open up the label file , hit print and it prints 50 hundred labels , whatever the quantity needed , without me having to create any of them .

That is some efficiency savings . The other example could be well , maybe they don't need to print all those labels for the job . Well , the office person can create the spreadsheet and maybe the spreadsheet has a full week's worth of jobs on it and all the Cable identifiers needed .

Well , I can , from my phone , as soon as that spreadsheet shared with me , whether they emailed it to me or whether they put it on , you know , a Google Drive I can now import that data to my labels as I need them and I can print just those label files Again without having to drive back to the office .

Now if you lose that half a dozen labels or you need to do some rework or create some more on the fly , now you can just quickly reprint those files or , you know , right from your mobile phone designing new one quickly .

And let's be honest , I mean , you don't need to be a big C certified technician to type letters on a keyboard into a spreadsheet and and they're obviously not gonna be making the same hourly rate as a big C technician , and that's gonna .

That's gonna take away one administrative task that a tech or an installer in a field has to do , so they can focus more on Maybe fixing the issues they found during the testing phase or pulling more cable or stuff like that , right ? So let's talk about the . Let's talk about specifically about Brady products , right , because you mentioned Brady and I run it .

I run an agnostic show . I talk about everybody's products , right ? So what kind of products do you have that that are gonna address both the generation and the ? That are gonna address both the generational shift and the efficiency that we were just talking about ?

Then you have our M511 , brand new to the market , printing up to an inch and a half labels . That retails at $400 or 399 , and then all the way up to two inch wide label with our M611 , which retails at 749 . And depending on which of those printers you go after , you're all . You're still getting the power of the mobile app .

So 30 different barcode symbologies , you have 85 different font options , you have 1400 different symbols you can select from . So a lot of that power that you're gonna get with the mobile app . For each of those Software driven printers , we have your traditional keypad driven printer .

So the M211's counterpart is the M210 , the M511 counterpart is our BMP 51 and the counterpart to the M611 is the M610 . So they're the . They use the same labels and you just choose how you want to design and print Keep , add or software .

What do you think is the from the time that you hand this , this brand new labeling machine , to a tech out in the field who's never , never touched that particular brand or model before , what do you think is the , the amount of time it's gonna take before they become proficient and use ?

Because you mentioned a lot of different fonts and a lot of different Symbols and stuff . How , how easy is it to navigate around and get up to speed to be using it ?

In about three to four seconds it'll pop up and say hey , your printer is available . Do I want to connect ? Yep , I hit connect . Three to four seconds it's going to pair and connect and you're there . And now you just go into your label design guide .

We have a blank editor for just general purpose labeling , or we have design wizards , if you will , if you want to create a wire wrap or a cable wrap or a heat shrink sleeve or a flag label , and it's so . It's very , very simple visual designs . You can see exactly what the label is going to look like before you even hit print .

One of the hardest things to do as a technician that used to frustrate the daylights out of me was to sit there and burn up a cartridge of tape trying to get my numbers to line up under each one of those ports .

Right , yes , is there a template built within the machine so that way I can say , oh , I'm doing an XYZ patch panel , 24 port patch mail , and then that way it automatically space them for me , or is that ? Is it still to that process where I got to kind of figure it out ?

We have a label wizard that you'll say all right , what's the number of ports needed and then what's the spacing between the center of one port to the center of the next port , and we know what the typical standard defaults are and we'll default right to those .

We are looking at some neat technology improvements in the future , such as being able to optically right , using your phone's camera , take a picture of a patch panel port and then have it automatically size it . We're not there quite yet , but it's one of those things we're excited about exploring . We're close to it with our label design wizard .

What's nice is you can see that label again on your phone before you hit print , which is going to help you eliminate a lot of label waste .

And what always seemed to me to happen to me is when you look at the first three or four ports it looked okay , but then when it got further down to it , so I would start kind of like drifting , because you're just off like one space and then you just go back and then delete one space out of each one of those . Oh , so frustrating .

So you can define if you want to follow the ANSI standard for cabling identification , you can do that with our serialization .

We don't follow any industry , which is unfortunate , because if you follow the labeling standard , it's going to make your job easier as a technician as bad as makes the company's job easier because everybody's labeling the exact same way and it's going to save the customer money because you can get them back up and running quicker because you know the labeling sequence

. There's a lot of advantages to following the standards , but you hit the nail on the head that it is one of the most ignored standards we have . On 4J .

12 different material options , really , on the M211 and M511 , and then we have over 60 label material options for the M611 . So , just again , we have a whole team of chemists that are much more intelligent about label chemistry than I am but that really pump out some quality , quality labels .

You know , cables are round and I could see a potential problem down the road if somebody is using a label that's designed for cabling on a patchman , because it's going to want to naturally try to come up with more coil , and ends up falling , because I always joke because half the labels fall off anyway .

So , yeah , make sure you use good quality labels so that way they don't fall off . Yeah , so what's new coming down the pike for Brady ? Anything . What are you guys working on ?

So we came out with a aggressive adhesive version of our popular self-laminating label and really again already a solid product with our self-laminating wrap , but now it's an even stronger adhesive version of that . Another innovative product we came out with we partnered with Velcro , and Velcro has what they call as their one wrap , and so now we have a label .

It's our Brady Grip print-on-hook material , so you can literally print on this label that then applies to Velcro . So think of a bundle of cables that you have . That's cool . And you want to identify . Yes , it's really really neat . We're the only person , the only company in the market that offers that solution right now . Really really neat concept .

Now let's get to the thing that you're probably at the end of this episode for how can I win that label machine ? All you got to do is click on this QR code right here and sign up for our newsletter and that newsletter . One week from the published date of this episode , I will announce a winner on my live stream .

So the live stream following the publishing of this video , you'll find out who actually won that label machine . So until next time , remember knowledge is power .