I only write about things I paid for.

I spent just under five years at Alarm.com as a product manager on the home automation team. We integrated Wi-Fi devices, whole-home audio, and universal remotes. We went to Philips Hue to try to get them to work with us. And the whole time, the analytics were telling me something uncomfortable: the dealers selling our system mostly weren't turning any of it on.

Not because the features were bad. Because the industry was still working the way it worked in 1995, and nobody on the install side had a reason to change. I could see the gap in a dashboard. I left to go find out whether I could close it from the other side.

Then I made most of the available mistakes

I undercut the local market to win work, and five years later I'm still stuck with the prices I set. I paid a magazine fifteen hundred dollars for an ad that never existed. I ran the numbers on a lead-generation platform after three months and found I was net negative. I mounted televisions for a hundred and fifty dollars because the other guy charged a hundred and ninety-nine.

None of that is unusual. What's unusual is writing it down.

The rule I actually operate by

Early on, a manufacturer's rep showed me a line card full of expensive, dealer-only brands. Customers couldn't shop the quote, so the incentives looked like they pointed the same direction as mine. They didn't. He was selling what paid him best. I specced that gear on his word, and some of it didn't hold up, and some of those manufacturers didn't honor what they said they would.

So now I only sell what I can personally demonstrate. When I spec a theater, I spec specific speakers, because I can sit a client down and let them hear exactly what they're buying. That rule cost me real money to learn and it is the single most useful thing on this site.

What this is for

I'm still running a company; I'm not writing from retirement. Some of these problems I haven't solved yet, and I'll say so when that's the case.