It’s safe to say that Daryl Friedman has had his share of challenges since he stepped into the role of CEDIA global president and CEO in the fall of 2021. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the supply chain to inflationary economic conditions, CEDIA has weathered the storm and steadied the ship under Friedman’s guidance.  

Recently as a guest on the CE Pro Podcast, Friedman shared thoughts about overcoming these challenge, enough to earn him a three-year contract extension. Hear all about it from Friedman’s perspective in this Q&A. 

CE Pro: I think the first place to start is the recent news that your contract with CEDIA has been extended through 2027. What does that mean to you? And what do you think it says about the leadership that you brought to the association over the last few years? 

FRIEDMAN: I’ll start with the personal feelings about it. Then I’ll move into the CEDIA professional side of it. Personally, I’m so excited to be able to continue this work, and it’s just such an honor to serve this community. I’ve really just come to know it and love it, and so the fact that the board had the confidence to extend me is just personally something I’m just very happy about and excited to look forward to those next at least three-and-a-half years. 

For CEDIA, I think it just means continuity and continuing on this path, and having some leadership that is going to be a North Star — we’ve had a lot of changes in leadership at CEDIA over the years. And I think this Board wanted to try somebody who didn’t come from the industry, and I admit that I came from a related industry in music but not from the smart home industry. So they wanted to try somebody who had experience as an association professional. 

CE Pro: How do you think that your perspective as someone who is a relative outsider? I know you said that obviously music is a tangential category to it, but as an outsider to the custom integration and smart home industry, how do you think that has shaped your influence in this role? 

FRIEDMAN: Well, it’s interesting. I really learned so much by talking to our members, especially in the first 90 days. I traveled all over the world and talked to members from every market, and they taught me a lot about this industry.  

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One of the things I learned about was how multifaceted it is, just the various sectors of this industry and the growth opportunities. I also was coming on Board toward the end of the pandemic, so it was very eye opening to see how important this industry is. It’s not a luxury. I mean, this industry is an essential business.  

The other thing that I noticed, and it was a stark contradiction to the music industry, was the collegiality of this. This is an industry and a community. Really, I would use the word community more than industry or channel, because I think they all want to help each other. They all want to help the sector grow. They all will share tips and tricks even with their competitors. And there’s just an interest here in elevating and leveling up this industry, so the education is higher and the service is higher, and that we just become a bigger and better industry. It’s great to get that sense of community among the people.

CE Pro: You mentioned when you came in at kind of the tail end of COVID, and some integrators were really booming because of the networking and outdoor entertainment upgrades that people wanted. But COVID aside, what have been the biggest challenges that you faced during your tenure? 

FRIEDMAN: I think in the early days, it was really trying getting the talent of this team working in a way that was logical and functional, because individually we have this amazing staff of people. They are talented, they’re dedicated. They want to serve our members. But over the years, the organizational structure had changed, and I think getting that into a logical semblance and logical verticals was important. To get the team working in concert, and I think that’s happening now.  

The other challenge was the financials. COVID was a big part of that, but it wasn’t the only factor. But I think over the years, CEDIA has just not really managed the financials that well, and there’s also been a lot of investment in it. So, coming in on the tail end of at least five years of fiscal years in the red, turning that around was key so we can grow the organization and continue to serve our members. I’m happy to say 2023 was the first break-even year in many and ’24 is expected to be a good, profitable year for us — and then we can turn that and invest that money back into our community. 

CE Pro: Another big thing that you’ve really spearheaded since your time in this position is the advocacy role that CEDIA plays, that. Why is CEDIA investing so much more time in this? 

FRIEDMAN: I’ve been involved in this part of the business for about 20 years. I’m actually based just outside Washington, D.C., and it was a part of my portfolio at the GRAMMY organization. One saying I learned from a congressman, and I repeated it often: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Essentially it means you’ve got to be in Washington. You’ve got to have your industry showing its face, making its case, and being out there, out front. 

When I came on board, I asked about advocacy and was told, ‘Oh, yeah, you know, advocacy is so important here, it’s our best kept secret.’ And I chuckled and cried at the same time, because we don’t want advocacy to be a secret. We want it to be champion on top, you know, from the from the mountaintop.  

The first CEDIA Expo, I enlisted my colleague Darren Reaman, who is [CEDIA’s] director of Government Relations, and we held a town hall so the industry can really see what we had been doing — and what we had been doing was incredibly important. State-by-state work, making sure that the licensing regime was friendly to our integrators, that the electrical industry didn’t push us out of the states because they thought low voltage wires was something electrician should handle.  

That work had been ongoing for many years. It wasn’t properly championed and touted the way it should have been. But that work was incredibly important, I would say, essential in some ways, to some integrators in certain states that may not be in business today had it not been for the work that CEDIA had been doing for the past 20 years.  

What I wanted to do is take that work and, of course, make it more known, but also expand that into some federal activities. And as you said, we sort of put flesh on the bones on the state work by going to Lansing in person and having meetings in the State Capitol in Michigan.

We also wanted to show the federal government that our industry is important, that we’re here. So earlier this year, we filed comments with the FCC about their new Cyber Trust Mark. That’s a new government initiative to put a symbol on device boxes that say these are compliant with cybersecurity. We wanted to make sure that the federal government knew that the way to really guarantee cybersecurity is to have a professional integrator put that network in your home and install those devices. That was the first time that’s that the integrator was actually on the record with the United States federal government.  

Then to expand on that, in March we had our first CEDIA Day on the Hill, which was a great success. We had about 25 industry professionals, including our Board, and we went to the Hill and sat down with members of Congress in the Capitol and told them what we do as a business and how important it is. It started to plant the seeds for the next occupational code change, which we want to see integrators be part of that and really be established as its own industry, not part of electrician trade; and also lobby for a workforce development bill that I think would bring in more talent in the industry, which is certainly something that every integrator knows they need very much to increase that talent pool. 

CE Pro: For the for the rest of 2024, is there anything you could share about the association’s roadmap, or some more important focuses that you’re going to have heading into 2025? 

FRIEDMAN: There’s some critical things I think we’ll be doing both internally, in our own community, as well as externally. Internally, we really want to create that sense of community that we see at Expo and other in person gatherings like our Tech + Business Summits, we want to create that year-round.  

We want to create that digitally, so we will be launching the CEDIA app this year, and that’s going to be an important game changer for us and our community. You can really be involved, stay in touch with each other, have the channels for special interests and specific topics, get content, even get education. And we’re looking at all sorts of features that will be useful for an integrator who’s on the job and may need some information at their fingertips.  

In terms of the external-facing piece, I think CEDIA’s job is to make this industry and this profession known to the outside world. We’ve done a good job of that with our programs for designers and architects and builders, we’re going to do better on that. I think where we really have opportunity is the homeowner, and it’s something I wanted to do since I started. I think we now have the infrastructure and the website in place now to make this successful.  

We really want when the homeowner is searching for smart home, they don’t know that much at the time. We don’t want them to go to a big-box store and say, ‘Oh, if I buy this device or these two devices, I have a smart home.’ We want them to understand the important role that an integrator plays in creating their smart home. If you’re going to be putting a plumbing system in, you hire professional. You’re going to be putting an electrical system in, you hire a professional. And these days, the smart home technology is so complex and so necessary to the infrastructure, you need a professional.  

So, the consumer campaign is going to be launched this year. I’m very excited about that. We think we can intercept these folks as they’re searching for knowledge about home technology, and direct them to CEDIA members and help them help explain to them why it’s important to use a professional to make sure that their home is operating as it should be. 

CE Pro: You said you’ve had opportunities to meet with dealers all over the world, which must have been amazing. Are there any lessons that you learned, or any feedback you got when you were on that global tour that could be takeaways for integrators in the U.S.? 

FRIEDMAN: I got a lot of feedback about CEDIA — CEDIA went through a major transition when it sold the trade show, and I think that since that time, dealers and vendors and manufacturers were kind of wondering how CEDIA can serve them. And what was really informed in those conversations is the non-transactional things that we can do for the industry.  

Everybody knows they can join CEDIA and get a discount to CEDIA Expo. They can get discount to tech summits, free admission to our events, and a lot of great member benefits, but there are those intangible benefits, what I call non-transactional benefits, that were clearly so important to these integrators around the world… it didn’t matter what market, everybody was facing a labor shortage, it was clearly like a priority. It was the No. 1 takeaway I took from all my meetings. As a result of that, we launched CEDIA Next Gen, which is our program to bring in more talent to the industry.  

The workforce breakfast and the other bills we’re supporting on Capitol Hill are all a result of what I heard from the integrators. CEDIA has that opportunity to be responsive to the community and to see what their needs are and help them. These are things that we don’t make money on, but they benefit everybody, whether you’re a member or not. We bring in more people into the workforce, it benefits the industry as a whole.

If we lobby for a bill that helps us, it benefits the industry. But we believe, and I believe, after meeting this community, that people will want to support CEDIA for doing these things and will want to be in the family and have access to the app and all those other benefits and know that they’re supporting the good work that elevates this entire industry. 

CE Pro: Last year at CEDIA Expo, my favorite panel, which kicked off the Smart Stage, was having you and all the leaders of the buying groups give a state of the industry. The first question I asked was if you had a 1-to-10 scale, how would you rate the health of the industry? Heading into this year’s Expo, what would you say about the number you would give it today?  

FRIEDMAN: I remember that question very specifically, because you called on me first, so I had to go out with my number before the buying group heads, and I said 8. And I based that on what I was hearing from the membership.  

When we do our survey, we don’t just survey the financials, and we don’t just survey the sectors. We ask them about their insights into the future, and how optimistic than they’re and how much growth they see. What do they see in the pipeline? Even though at the time there was talk of, still talk of a recession and economic factors, the industry was very optimistic. And as you went through that panel, everybody else kind of echoed that same higher end of the scale, like a seven or eight.  

I think everyone’s feeling that. I think this industry has nothing but growth ahead of it, so I’m still where I was then [at 8]. I’m optimistic about the growth sector, because people are understanding the need for technology in their homes, and every day they understand this more. This is going to be a great boon for our industry, and I just feel good about the growth to come. 

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