11.06.2008 — The famous Greek philosopher Aristotle once said, "the educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead."

In their own way, Jeff Beyers, president, and Brian Christman, vice president, of Lakeland, Fla.-based Soundwaves Audio Video Interiors Inc. are following the advice of that famed Greek philosophy.

The two partners formed their company back in 2003. Offering a range of products and services (from home theater and whole-home entertainment to security and home automation), the company has swelled dramatically over the course of its five-year existence.

More importantly, the company has been able to sail (at least, in part) away from the choppy waters of the troubled new-home industry to the smoother seas of the commercial and residential retrofit markets.

Those successful developments occurred, the principals believe, due to the company's commitment to education.

Because Soundwaves is fortified with a set of highly trained and specialized professionals, the company has been attractive to partners on several fronts.

Relationships with luxury-class homebuilders as well as well-heeled consumers have made Soundwaves a stable integration force in the Central Florida region.

How Employee Education Follows Moore's Law

Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore may be no Aristotle, but he did contribute a theory of thought that continues to hold true.

In 1965, Moore contributed what many have dubbed "Moore's Law" -- the notion that as transistors become more affordable to add to an integrated circuit, technology's capacity increases. That increased capacity lends to affordable increases in circuitry, perpetuating a cyclical pattern.

According to Soundwaves, employee education programs can be related to this theory. The company believes that as an installer's ability grows, so too increases the resources of the company.

As the company's resources increase, so too does its power to grow the abilities of those installers. Again, it's cyclical.

The other reason for employee education, of course, is survival. "The technology in this business changes so often that if you are not continuously training you will soon be history," Christman explains.

Turn Training Into New Revenue Streams

Nevertheless, whether through necessity or perpetual dynamics, Soundwaves is proud to talk about its training. In fact, it's a bit of a marketing gimmick for the company.

"When we started to frame all the certificates and hang them on the wall here at the office," Christman says, "we realized two things: Just how much education and training we had been through to date, and that it could be used as a huge differentiating factor if we could market it."

Indeed, by leveraging the skills of its staff, Soundwaves has been able to diversify its offerings to clients -- a message it touts to prospective clients.

"We now have many more retrofits and use all of our resources to get any commercial work going on in the area," Christman says.

"Several years ago, we also added security and account monitoring to help create new revenue streams."