Join us at Lighting with Lisa: The Lighting Podcast! This is the original podcast for the lighting industry (formerly known as Light Files) welcoming all lighting nerds working at lighting showrooms, as sales agents, for manufacturers to join the conversation! Independent lighting showroom owner and industry advocate Lisa Bartlett hosts a regular discussion of the latest industry news, information, challenges, and trends, always with an eye to the continued success of lighting showroom and the residential lighting industry as a whole.
Closing a Chapter, Beginning a New: Exciting Changes
•Lisa Bartlett•Season 2•Episode 1
Audio Player
00:00
00:00 | 19:50
As the Lighting Showroom Association chapter draws to a close, there is much to celebrate. We've had an enriching six-year journey, creating a legacy with our interactive 3D model and augmented reality program, which is set to expand even further in the coming months. We've built this unique platform thanks to countless members and volunteers, and as we close one chapter, we look forward to our future endeavors. This episode gives you an insider view of our industry's shifting landscape, marking the achievements and milestones we've made along the way.
As the Light Files podcast re-launches under the new branding, I'm thrilled to welcome you to a community centered around positivity, idea-sharing, and mutual growth. Picture a space where all things related to the residential lighting industry are up for discussion, from illuminating interviews to bright ideas. Our goal is to cultivate a constructive, positive environment through this podcast, a new private Facebook group, and more to come. So gear up and join this enlightening journey, where every question, suggestion, and innovative thought is welcomed and appreciated. Stay tuned! Let's shine a light on our industry together!
Hello, hello, hello and welcome back. I'm so happy to be back behind the podcast microphone again, believe it or not, surprising myself even by saying that. So welcome back, fellow lighting nerds and friends. We are in the new era of my podcasting life, as you well know. The name of the podcast has changed from light files to Lighting with Lisa, the podcast. This is all a part of a professional shift in some of the things that I'm working on via just life, lessons learned, things that will work better for my family, for me, professionally, for the community at large. It's all part and parcel of what's happening here and I'm super excited to be back and really, really kind of amped for things that are percolating and going on. So this episode is going to be just a little bit of an explanation of things that have recently been announced and it's going to also be a little bit of, well, a pitch for how I want this podcast to be able to support itself, moving forward and so that I can continue bringing this great content to the industry, even if it's just, well, my own opinion of great content, but after hearing from several of y'all when the Light Files podcast went away, I know there's value for many of you in this content, even if it just gets you thinking or send your mind on a tangent of something going on in your own professional space. So and I listened to plenty of podcasts for that same reason some like 75% of the time. I like the content. 25% of the time I'm just rolling my eyes. If that's how and why you listen to Lighting with Lisa the podcast, be my guest. I totally understand I'm not going to get it all right all the time, but it is my mission to help get these conversations going, still to always speak from a place of positivity and how we work to succeed and improve. I don't want to get dragged down in any negativeness or complaints. I'm sure they're going to sneak in from time to time. I'm human, just like everybody else. But the re-energized focus of this podcast and this platform is to focus on the positive, focus on our strengths, focus on areas where we can succeed and learn from one another and grow and support the entire residential lighting and fan community.
Speaker 1:
So if you're listening to this episode, you might have heard because you're a member or been forwarded, let's be honest an announcement email that went out this week announcing the winding down of the Lighting Showroom Association. It's been a journey. It's been a journey with some amazing people, first and foremost, kirsten Reese of Black Whale Home I could not have done any of this remotely without her Zelle Duda, our other current board member, and all the other board members and volunteers that engaged in this association over the past six years. We did so many remarkable things. I am so proud of the movement this association started in our industry and I think it continues and I think it is just a real kind of humbling experience to have been a part of this association from start to finish and watched its growth and watched the changes that have happened in the industry because of it. But so officially, if you haven't heard, on December 31st of 2023, the Lighting Showroom Association is going to close its doors.
Speaker 1:
We have done many, many things, including 107 podcast episodes of the Light Files. Our biggest and ongoing legacy will be the interactive 3D model and augmented reality program, which is going to expand in the very near future. We've saved our showroom members like thousands upon thousands of dollars by tracking holiday sales, promo codes, the restocking fees. We've saved with the LSA initiative. We've had all of our networking and just been a resource to one another. It has truly been, as I said in the email announcing this, that the LSA has always wanted to be the tide that lifts all ships. We really are firmly committed, and have always been committed, to the growth and success as the industry as a whole. We all need one another in different ways. It was really really significant to us to have that.
Speaker 1:
As I just mentioned, the AR program is actually going to carry on, I expect in January 2024, you will see some expansion of it. I don't want to step on anybody's toes by saying any more than that, but you will hear about it soon enough. I just think it's a really exciting development and legacy that we've been able to leave. Also, as we close out our accounting and the financials of the LSA, whatever funds we have left over we are going to make a donation to the ALA PAC to support the entire industry moving forward. We felt like that was the best thing we could do to really continue to give our entire industry a boost, even on the way out the door. That's the major news. If you have any questions about it, please feel free to reach out to me.
Speaker 1:
It's been a journey it's been just a joy to be a part of. I wouldn't change a minute of it, but for all of us involved on a day-to-day basis, it is time to move on to other things in our lives and in our worlds. I think it's just been just truly I think I've said this like five times already an honor to be a part of that association and work for and with our industry. The way we are able to do it truly will always be one of the things I'm most proud of professionally. Again, I could not have done this without Zelle and Kirsten especially. She has just been more impactful than most anybody would know and I appreciate her. So so much for it. Anyway, so that's the LSA rundown.
Speaker 1:
What are we doing here? What is lighting with Lisa at the podcast? Well, it is a space where I want to be able to have discussions, I want to do interviews, I want to have a community for all members of the residential lighting showroom industry and I want this to be the audio space where I recap, retell, share ideas, comments, suggestions, anything and everything that might come across my desk, through my DMs, through my email, whatever it is. But it is, first and foremost, a community built on trust, positive ideas and support. I want it to be safe and respectful. I want it to be encouraging, I want it to be idea sharing. I want it to be strengthening of the entire industry.
Speaker 1:
This podcast and the associated Facebook groups is not going to be a place for complaining. No arguing, no negative energy. We are here to move things forward. If there's a problem or concern you're having, for sure, like, let's talk about those things, but in no way, shape or form will there be any like name calling harming another business of any kind. It's just not what we're doing here. So if you want to complain about this person, that brand, whatever it is, that needs to happen somewhere else. But in this world we're positive, we're forward thinking, we're problem solving and we're sharing ideas and that's just what I want this to be and hopefully for a very long time we can keep that engagement up.
Speaker 1:
So there is a private Facebook group. It is Facebookcom, it's LWL-LightingShowrooms, but the direct URL is Facebookcom slash groups slash lighting showrooms. Please join us there. That's where a lot of the everyday conversations will be going on and then this podcast will exist, hopefully weekly. It might be every other week to start. We're just going to see what kind of momentum we can get going. I would love to be able to have one episode a month be an interview with another lighting industry professional and another shift in this podcast is going to be ads. So the rest of this little how we got here episode is my own sort of pitch to manufacturers and if anybody out there thinks this is a great idea and let me get this in front of my closest manufacturer friends please feel free to share this episode with them.
Speaker 1:
But how I would love for this podcast to work going forward is for there to be an ad every week and the ad is maybe by a manufacturer, maybe by a service provider to the industry, something, and I would love for those ads to come with some sort of promotion. That's probably only good for the duration of the life of this podcast episode. So for a week or two weeks or whatever. It is a promo code that would entitle the. Whoever listens to the podcast all the way through gets the podcast, gets the promo code from the podcast itself, not from like the show notes or whatever. It wouldn't be there. The whatever, the promo would come through the podcast itself and that would entitle whoever uses that promo code or whatever the, the rule agreed upon and set in places to either like an inside discount for the term of that podcast or the ability like, if there's overstock of some sort of giveaway item that a showroom might want, or a sales agent could also maybe use the same promo code to get giveaways for their, their portion of the business. I don't know.
Speaker 1:
I really would love, as with everything I've always tried to do, I would love for us to think outside the box of our industry. There's a lot of boxes and lighting, and so my favorite joke about the boxes you know, walk out of the warehouse with a big box and, with the exception of some ceiling fans, you know the customers will be like oh my gosh, it's so big. I said no, no, no, it's a big, it's bulky, but it's light. And this, this, in some way, shape or form, is a metaphor for our entire industry. We are substantial, we're important, but we get kind of constrained by these boxes that we're in. And it has always been my mission and my personal belief that part of why our industry has hit so many speed bumps and hasn't fully been able to like, coalesce and grow together is because we keep ourselves in these boxes or, as I've said before, and our like individual silos, then there's not a lot of commingling, there's not a lot of sharing of ideas and communication between the boxes. So I'm really really still on this path of encouraging those, that open communication, that dialogue, that sharing of ideas, all of that.
Speaker 1:
So the sponsored portion of this podcast, I want it to be a value to the sponsor by getting their name out and whatever promotion or program or fixture or fan or what platform whatever they're trying to promote. I want that for sure to get airtime and get in front of this very targeted niche audience that this podcast has a good amount of listeners in. So that would be like the benefit to them. I would be incentivized to continue to do this podcast by getting that sponsorship. And then I want the listeners of this podcast to also get some sort of benefit by committing to listening, by listening through the end, getting their promo code for whatever discount, free product savings on, you know, their subscription for the month, like just whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1:
I really want, as with everything I'm going to try to create under this lighting with Lisa brand, I want it to be something that really is a positive for everyone, not just a positive for me personally, in like a check or just a positive for the whoever's, you know, doing the ad to get their name out, but also the person receiving the ad content. I want it to be worth their while for them to listen to it, as opposed to just, you know, like skipping forward 30 seconds till I'm done talking. So I listened to plenty of podcasts. I skip plenty of ads and that is not the kind of ad I want to have in this space. So that's sort of the big picture of where we've come from, where I hope to go.
Speaker 1:
You know, there's a world in which I put this episode out and everyone says you know what, lisa, we're just done with you not going to happen and this whole platform sort of goes away. And that would be sad. I wouldn't love it. But I would also recognize that maybe my time has gone, come and gone, but I'm hopeful that we can find a way to continue to build on this energy in our industry. If there's one thing that LSA has really shown me time and time and time again, it's that there is an absolute need for communication, networking, sharing of ideas on a regular basis in our lighting industry, not just when we go to Lightavation, not just when we go to the ALA conference, but on an ongoing, regular basis. It's one of the biggest things we have missing.
Speaker 1:
So that's the whole idea behind this new private Facebook group, between this revamped podcast, between whatever else is going to come from the social media or other networking programs we're able to put together. That is the entire baseline of this thing is to keep us all engaged as an industry on a very, very regular basis and the people from whatever companies that are choosing to engage in this content that they can take it back to their home office, to their co-managers, to the owners, whoever it is, and share these ideas, share these thoughts, put your own twist on it, so that we can all grow better, stronger, more successful together, and maybe in our own unique ways that we haven't even heard of yet, and we're just going to be stunned by this great concept somebody came up with and we're all going to want to copy it or whatever. I just want us to get to this place where we're much more open, sharing of ideas. Everyone still gets to do their own thing. Of course, we're not giving away anybody state secrets, but if there's a great case study of somebody who's just really thriving, let's all take a look at it, talk about it. I want this to be such a positive and encouraging space, sharing ideas, even just business 101 basics.
Speaker 1:
I am doing a database re-implementation, I'm getting a new database program at my store and I'm sometimes annoyed at my own self at the amount of Googling I have to do of like business 101, because I didn't get a degree in business in college or accounting or any of that. But we're making our way, we're doing just fine. But it's just even just stuff like that that is so under your radar screen but actually can be really important into the structure of your business. So all kinds of things are percolating in the mind. So that's where we are, that's where we're going.
Speaker 1:
If you think this is a great idea, let me know. If you think it's a great idea and know somebody you would love to have featured on the podcast as a sponsor or an interview, send this on to them, send it on to me. I'll definitely follow up on every lead that comes my way. The new Facebook community again, it's a private Facebook group, it's LWL-LightingShowrooms. That's what to search for, or the URL direct facebookcom slash groups, slash lighting showrooms. Come join us there and we'll get the conversations going and keep them going, and I look forward to it very, very much. All right, everyone.
Speaker 1:
Thanks so much for listening to this return to podcasting. I really, really appreciate all the messages I received when the Light Files podcast went away. So thank you all so much for your encouragement and letting me know that you appreciated the podcast, and so when I bring it back, now that I am bringing it back, I want to make it bigger, better than it was before, take in those lessons learned and hopefully create a platform that's even more interesting and engaging for even more listeners. So thank you all so much. Please do reach out. Send me a DM. I'll be checking them frequently. Join the Facebook group, send me a message there. However you prefer to contact me, reach out to me and we will talk to you again very soon. Keep an eye on all the social media for the programming announcements, when this next episode is going to come out, all the scheduling information. I will definitely be posting it on social media regularly. Alright, everyone, until next time, take care.
.jpg)
