Low Voltage Nation Wants to "Help You Carve Out A Fulfilling Career" Interviewed

Published Jul 06, 2020 15:03 PM
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It is difficult to make your way in this industry as there is little formal schooling. However, one person, Blake Urmos, the Founder of Low Voltage Nation (LVN), wants to "help you carve out a fulfilling career path in low voltage and technology".

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We interviewed Urmos to learn more about his approach and LVN's plans.

Low Voltage Nation Explained

Urmos founded LVN in June 2019 with the idea of building a group of structured cabling professionals who value community over competition. He initially did this by creating an active social media presence on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even TikTok where he and others could share best practices and lessons learned related to low voltage methods and materials.

Urmos Interview

Below is a ~23 minute interview with Urmos about Low Voltage Nation:

Membership Fees And Offerings

Access to the community was initially free with the plan to monetize it later. After a year or building the community access is charged on a monthly basis:

  • $29 per month for Gold Membership (for Integrators)
    • Access to Slack; Directors & Ambassadors support
    • Invites to the weekly Mastermind calls
    • Discounts from Gold Vendors
  • $97 per month or $997 per year for Vendor Gold Membership (for Manufacturers)
    • Exposure to the community
    • Tagged in posts that use their equipment

Gold Membership is mostly purchased by SMB Integrators and Managed Service Providers.

Organizational Structure

There is a top-down structure that supports the community with distinct roles:

  • Directors - The 13 Directors, which includes Urmos, provide direction and advisory services to LVN Gold Members
  • Ambassadors - There are 50 ambassadors that provide support on social media and in slack to Gold Members
  • Gold Members - At the time of this report, 30 days after announcing Gold Membership, there are ~50 Gold Members. They benefit from the advice, recommendations, and support from the Directors and Ambassadors.
  • Followers - Anyone that has joined the community for free with access to LVN's social media posts.

Active Community

They have a wide social media and online presence including ~13k followers on both Instagram and Facebook with followers growing on other platforms as well.

Low Voltage Nation has implemented Slack for their Gold Members. Gold Members are able to post questions or problems and get advice and recommendations from Directors and Ambassadors.

Beyond slack, Gold Members are able to participate in the Sunday night Mastermind Call with LVN Directors and Ambassadors. IPVM attended a mastermind call which focused on Ubiquiti equipment. The call was well organized. The next Mastermind call will have Directors (an Integrator and MSP) perform a demonstration of Meraki switches and highlight the positives and negatives that they have found while using the gear in their own businesses.

There are also plans to resume meetups once the pandemic has subsided. LVN was able to assemble ~50 people in Nashville for a group demonstration on how to build a best of breed 14U rack. They plan to visit cities with Directors and Ambassadors, and build upon the rack with several different systems and endpoints; surveillance, VoIP, etc. Next on the roadshow list is Atlanta, however, there is currently no date for that meetup

LVN Growth Plan

Urmos is currently working part-time and dedicating ~10 hours a day to growing and supporting Low Voltage Nation. He is hopeful that he will soon be able to leave his part-time position to focus on LVN.

Outlook

Starting something new is always hard but Urmos certainly has significant determination and passion. The industry certainly needs more ways to progress and better professionals so we are hopeful that LVN can succeed.

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