Episode 101 - Losers are Winners: Building Smarter Homes One Circuit at a Time with Reina Smyth
Episode #101 | Losers are Winners | Building Smarter Homes One Circuit at a Time with Reina Smyth
SPAN is the smart electrical panel that tells you exactly which circuit is draining your wallet, can charge your car only on solar power, and somehow also looks cool enough that homeowners show it off to their friends. Reina Smyth and Mark cover the origin story behind the product, the wrong QR code that caused two weeks of frustration, and Mark's very ambitious idea to turn his wellness home into a Faraday cage for family quiet time. The idea did not pan out, but it did lead to one of the better rabbit holes in recent podcast history.
About The Curious Builder
The host of the Curious Builder Posdast is Mark D. Williams, the founder of Mark D. Williams Custom Homes Inc. They are an award-winning Twin Cities-based home builder, creating quality custom homes and remodels — one-of-a-kind dream homes of all styles and scopes. Whether you’re looking to reimagine your current space or start fresh with a new construction, we build homes that reflect how you live your everyday life.
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Reina Smyth 00:04
So our founder, his name is Arch Rao. He was the head of product at Tesla Energy. His team was responsible for the Tesla solar roof, the first iterations of the Powerwall, and he kept seeing these really high-tech projects going into people's homes with solar and battery backup, and that was his first light bulb moment to say, I bet we can figure out a way where we can see what's going on in the house as well.
Mark D. Williams 00:32
Welcome to Curious Better Podcast. I'm Mark Romero, your host, straight live from Misahoos. We had an industry party here, and we've got Reyna Smith from Span. Welcome to the new studio, Raina. Not a bad studio, huh?
Reina Smyth 00:44
Yeah, thank you. I look forward to moving in next week.
Mark D. Williams 00:47
Hey, it's for sale. So thank you for flying in. First, where'd you fly in from?
Reina Smyth 00:50
New Orleans. New
Mark D. Williams 00:51
Orleans. Oh man, we had we had New Orleans. We had Texas. We had Seattle, Delaware, Iowa. I know it's amazing. So we met out at the Builder Show, I think a couple years ago. That's
Reina Smyth 01:01
correct. Yeah, in Las Vegas, I believe. I
Mark D. Williams 01:04
think it was Vegas first, and then saw you guys down at Orlando as well. But for those that aren't aware of Span, maybe just give us a quick. Today will be losers or winners. We'll talk about the kind of the failures and what we've learned. But I think I think your product is so amazing. It's I call it the iPhone panel. I mean, it's so beautiful at how it looks, but what it can do is equally impressive. Maybe just give us the two-minute elevator pitch of what span is. I know there's a lot, but yeah, two minutes is not very much time.
Reina Smyth 01:30
There's a lot. It's it's hard to get our pitch down to the 30-second elevator pitch. I'll tell you that much. So I'll give you the the overview. So what span is is a smart electrical panel. It gives a homeowner access to see exactly what they're pulling for each individual circuit, so they know what their refrigerator is drawing, they know what their HVAC system is doing, and then they also have the app that goes with it that allows them to control those circuits. So if let's say you leave the house and you see, you know, why is my space heater on and the and the boys' room, nobody's there. That's just wasting money. They can go ahead and turn that off, or even for safety reasons. We just spoke with a firefighter, so you know definitely want to make sure you're not leaving circuits on that don't need to be on when there's heat elements involved. What the exciting thing about the ability of we have the technology to turn on and off circuits, and we have revenue-grade accuracy for each individual circuit, means that the panel is also listed as an energy management system and a power control system, which is a lot of fancy words that basically means it makes code happy to allow you to add more electrical loads onto your home without having to do a necessarily larger service size from your utility. So in this house, it was a perfect example because you've got probably no gas in the house or minimal gas. If I think the only gas
Mark D. Williams 02:47
thing we have, you know, just this home is based on wellness, and so I almost everything is electric. However, I made sure because we are in Minnesota and there's a lot of trees here. I know they get power outages, and we decided not to do with like the you know the span power walls or the Tesla battery power batteries things like that, and we ended up not going solar. We'll talk about that in a minute. But I wanted redundancy, so I do have gas for my boiler for in floor heat. And because this home is so incredibly insulated, I mean this thing could probably go weeks, months with just in floor heat in it, no problem.
Reina Smyth 03:19
Oh, that's fantastic! Yeah, I love the in-floor heat. Don't use it a lot where I live at the moment, but I'm from Southern California, and my my mom had that in our bathroom when I was in high school. She added it, and it was fantastic.
Mark D. Williams 03:32
Fantastic. I'm a marketer who happens to build. I often say, and so I'm very attracted to products that are beautiful. I think there's also good design. There's something about it, you know. Both of us have our iPhones sitting out here, and like Jony Ives is a world famous designer, right? He did most of the iPods and the iPads and all the things that we enjoy if you like design. But the first time I saw a span panel, I was like, "What is that?
Speaker 1 03:55
Oh,
Mark D. Williams 03:56
it's so beautifully done. And there's a lot of cool, and it's in. It's not. It's not expected. Like no one thinks that their electrical panel is going to be like a sexy feature, but it is really cool. Do you get that a lot, where people are attracted to it because of how it's designed?
Reina Smyth 04:13
Absolutely. We like to joke that, especially with my installers, say no. Not going to get any referrals because you put in a boring gray box that nobody looks at again until there's a problem, but you put in a span panel, and you better believe those homeowners are going to be showing their friends because it's the prettiest thing they've seen.
Mark D. Williams 04:31
I imagine just because we talked about load management, like it works really well with solar. Obviously, now pretty much every home we do will at least rough in an electrical an EV port in our Misuhu spec home. We actually have a span power port for I think. Did we put a stage two in there?
Reina Smyth 04:48
Yes, you have a stage two EV charger in there.
Mark D. Williams 04:51
Yeah, and I just feel like it just makes sense to do that on a regular basis. What are the advantages? Because like for instance, I have a panel at my. Existing home. I have a 1919 house, so it's not the cool span panels. But we have an EV charger. What would be if I lived here? What would be some of the noticeable differences that I would have access to with let's use this example of let's say an EV car and or solar in terms of how it integrates with like a span panel. One
Reina Smyth 05:19
of the nice things with our EV charger, which is unique to us. Maybe there's a few other out there, but you can choose with solar. You can choose to select only to charge your car when you're producing excess solar. So that way, instead of sending it back to the grid, you can choose to say, "Hey, I don't need to charge my car at the fastest speed available, so don't use any grid power to charge my car. Pay and don't have to pay that money to your utility bill, but you can say, you know what, sun's shining. I'm not using that much in my house, so whatever solar I'm producing that's not going directly to my other consumption, charge my car with that, so you know you're not going to be paying a higher utility bill for charging your car in the middle of the day.
Mark D. Williams 06:02
So it's it's really more about the manipulation of not data but energy. I mean that's it's allowing you to get much more accurate.
Reina Smyth 06:11
Absolutely, yeah. So you the homeowner can see, you know, in these days a lot of people are putting solar on the roof because it just makes a lot of sense. It gives them resiliency, but they still don't know what their consumption is in the house. They don't know where they're possibly losing a lot of energy out. Maybe the house is not sealed as tight as this one. So you know, if they knew, oh, my heating element is using a lot more. Maybe if I put in new windows or new doors, I could save money. With solar, the panels are so cheap. You're making more energy, and that's great. That we can now add solar onto the house at a lower cost, but you still don't know where the energy is going that you're making. And Span will tell you exactly where your where that energy is going that you've made.
Mark D. Williams 06:55
What are so in spirit of the you know this episode, which is the losers or winners. That was kind of the the brief overview for just those that aren't aware of it. What are how long has the span product been around? And go ahead.
Reina Smyth 07:09
Yeah, I was gonna say the company's been around since 2018
Mark D. Williams 07:13
Okay, so
Reina Smyth 07:13
products a little bit shorter than that. So
Mark D. Williams 07:17
and I have to imagine there's got to be some amazing stories during because you know, none of this stuff. We're just laughing because it took us an hour to figure out two cameras and two microphones for this remote podcast setup, and I was so frustrated with just simple cords. I can't imagine the complexity of creating that panel and things during the the you know the R and D phase. We're like you know you beta test. We we recently were beta testing, you know, for another company, and that's not this episode. We'll try it for that episode. They can do their own losers or winners, but you know, I mean, there is a lot of failure that happens with R and D that honestly is super important. That's the whole point is to expose kind of the failures, and I, you know, usually we talk about business operations. So, what are either business failures that you've seen in your career that like you've learned from, whether it's communication or whether it's you know kind of like making sure we set up companies to succeed versus failure, and or literal like I have to imagine a lot of electricians when they first get their hands on one, what does that process look like? Like I have a few even from here, but I'm curious your take on it. You've do them all over the country.
Reina Smyth 08:22
Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, for the product, this is kind of our third iteration of it. So the the gen, the first generation came out, and it looks completely different than the panel that does today. We made some technical. We I'm not an engineer. Should our company made some technical advancements to make it a smarter, better product that has a lot more value offerings to it. I think the what can actually tie back to you specifically is the QR code. I as I walked away and I was thinking about it, I think I remembered or figured out exactly what was going on with the QR code about what it is, and it's some of these things are so silly, but there are different. When we first started this new product line that we just started shipping, we were one of the first to get it and install it. We quickly learned that we had too many QR codes on our panel. One is for one part of it, another is for another part of it, and we've since realized that oh, people don't know what QR code to scan to get this panel online and set up for the homeowner, and so I think that you fell into that trap of scanning the wrong QR code. We'll get you the right QR code so you can do that. But I'm pretty sure that's what it is. So that's one of those examples of something as silly as a sticker that goes on there that we use in the factory, but the homeowner doesn't need it. Yeah, to frame
Mark D. Williams 09:45
that up for the the client, like you know we're doing brand partnership with Span, and so I want to do a bunch of video content. In the last two weeks during the tour, I would scan the QR code to try to get it to upload in my app, and it said like Span is not available at this time or whatever it was telling me. I'm like. How Raina's gonna when she comes here? I'm I'm still not gonna be set up, and then that's so funny that it's just the wrong QR code.
Reina Smyth 10:06
I'm I'm pretty sure that's what it is. I will definitely follow up with you.
Mark D. Williams 10:09
Well, no, I mean just it it is funny how I mean all these different technological worlds. Sometimes it's the simplest things. Like honestly, we couldn't get the podcast working, you know, three four episodes ago while you've been patiently you know waiting over here, and it was because I needed to update Google Chrome, and it wasn't compatible with this new mixer I have. I mean, just it's super simple, right? But like, I was so frustrated. I'm like, why doesn't this work? Yeah. And so I'm a simple man. I just want it to work. This episode is brought to you by Pella Windows and Doors. I've used Pella for 21 years as the exclusive window company on every one of my builds. When people ask me who I trust for Windows and Doors, it's Pella every time. Their craftsmanship, their innovation, the top-tier service make them a no-brainer for any custom home builder or designer who demand the best. Whether you're designing something bold or building something with timeless elegance, Pella has you covered. They're also the only window company that has a lifetime warranty on all of their windows. I've gotten to know all their people at Pella Corporate as well as locally here at Pella Northland. I'm proud to call them our partners and our friends. Visit Pella.com to learn more and connect with your local reps today. Also, for more information, you can listen to episode one where I interview their founders, as well as episode 109 where we talk about the innovation at Pella.
Reina Smyth 11:32
Now we've learned our lesson, and we don't have that problem calling. I mean,
Mark D. Williams 11:36
that's simple. I mean, it's trial and error. I always say, like you know, my buddy Brad Robinson, he always says, "Fail fast, you know, so you can pivot really quickly,
Reina Smyth 11:43
yeah,
Mark D. Williams 11:44
and you know, communicate. I think we had another one with this band, mainly because we weren't from this. Our first time, a lot of it is just also educating like our electricians and our team. And I still want to do this. Actually, we could almost do this live. I'm kind of curious. So one of the things, and we didn't do it for this house because I was too late to the party, but I really, this home is based on wellness. So we're at Misa Hu is here in Cottagewood, and I, I really a lot of the products and the things that we're putting in here, we want to be health and wellness based. And I think wellness means different things to different people. But for me, as someone who likely has undiagnosed ADHD, I like calming spaces or places that calm me down. And so I was talking to our AV team about is there a way that I could have like a kill switch on the Wi-Fi and shut off the whole house and for it to be quiet, like your phones won't work, you can just have quiet time, read a book, things, and it sounds great. And we're going to work on that for the next house, but the problem that we came up with was like the conceptually we never tested it was like well if we shut off all the internet, by the way, span communicates to everything or a lot of things through Wi-Fi. Is that correct?
Reina Smyth 12:45
It is connected to the cloud. So, however, we do have what's called home on premise, which is intended for when there's a power outage and the grid is down. That will and the cell towers and Wi-Fi is out, which could happen. It allows the homeowners just have a local network for that control. So in that sense, you're not. You're still going to be. You're still going to have electricity to your house, but you're just not going to be able to go into the to app.
Mark D. Williams 13:14
That's it was explained. I mean, it was mainly conceptual. We never went through this, but someone had mentioned either someone had reached out to someone on your team, or had you know verified it? Because I think the concept was like, if we because in our mind when we thought like, well, wait a minute, if the system is dependent on Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi goes out all the time. Like that, they have to have thought about that because that seems like a crazy flaw. And it was like, no, there's still hardwired things to like your furnace, your refrigerator, things that like it's not going to take the power out. It's just going to take the communication of understanding. It was like, okay, well, that's fine. We don't care about that as long as the house is heating and the fridge stays cool. Like, we're good.
Reina Smyth 13:46
Theoretically, they're not looking at their phone anyway. Agreed.
Mark D. Williams 13:49
Well, what I was going after was less about that. Was more about reducing the Wi-Fi signals in the house.
Reina Smyth 13:55
Yes. And so it was
Mark D. Williams 13:56
like, if I could create like, so actually, what led to this crazy idea was, do you know what a Faraday cage
Reina Smyth 14:02
is, so
Mark D. Williams 14:02
it's like the metal. So if like you had a metal cage over your phone and then you electrified it, it won't let any signals in or out. So like there's a whole thing you can do with this, like you know like like all you know security systems. Like let's say you had like a you know the Pentagon probably has security protocols. I don't know if they have a Faraday cage. It was a little ridiculous. Like I'm not going to electrify my house, but it was the concept of a quiet home. Like I was thinking about someone that lived in this home. Let's say you have teenagers and you want family time. You could shut off your Wi-Fi, but you know their phones could still connect to the cellular network, or it might jump to your neighbor's Wi-Fi. But how do you truly shut down your house? With the whole thing that I was chasing was, I like it when I go to a cabin that's off the grid and no one can get a hold of me? My phone is not in my pocket, buzzing all the time. Like I'm just I'm just quiet. Like you can physically feel yourself relax. That's what I wanted for this home, even though it's an urban environment. I wanted to create that. So anyway, that was me trying to like think, and that. So it led us down this whole rabbit hole of like, well, if we shut off Wi-Fi, does span work? Does it not work? Does anyway? So
Reina Smyth 15:05
yeah. Well, I'm glad you got the answer. So
Mark D. Williams 15:08
anyway, giving you the context behind it, what as you guys have innovated, are there things that you've tried that have not worked? And do you have any stories like that where you're like, oh, we tried to do this, but it wasn't? I know. Basically, I'm looking for like a fail story where you learn something from it, and it led to innovation.
Reina Smyth 15:25
Oh gosh, I can't think of anything off the top of my head. I would. It actually would be really fun to take you out to our R and D facility. I'm sure that there are things we've tried and that have failed, but you know, me as a salesperson, they don't bother to tell me. I mean, we. It's really interesting to see how they. I mean, they put them into showers that they have created, and then they just douse the panels with water to make sure that. Yeah, because we say you can put it outside. It's got to be weatherproof, so we test that with heat, with elevation, and like pressure chambers, things like that. So I know that there
Mark D. Williams 16:00
is. What would be the reason for wanting to put it outside?
Reina Smyth 16:02
Some homes, or I should say, some regions. That's where they put their panels, and that's just how they do that. California is a great example. They have a what's called a meter combo panel, and they're all outside. They might have a sub panel inside as well, but that are
Mark D. Williams 16:17
they locked? I'm just thinking about like kid plants. Okay, I was like, man, this seems like a really dessert. This sounds like a great way to prank. Forget ding dong door ditch or like you know teepee. I'm just gonna go shut off all the power to everyone's house
Speaker 2 16:30
as a
Mark D. Williams 16:30
kid.
Reina Smyth 16:30
Yeah, usually they are locked. Sometimes they're locked by utility just for the part for the main shut off, which also goes back to you know certain firefighter requirements. You have to have a way to disconnect the power quickly on a house.
Mark D. Williams 16:44
What was sorry? This interview is all over the place, but I can't help my natural curiosity. What was the initial problem they were trying to solve? Like why? What I was intrigued by what failed in the system or what failed in the products that were out there that said we need to create this. Ah,
Reina Smyth 17:00
so our founder, his name is Arch Rao. He was the head of product at Tesla Energy. So he his team was responsible for the Tesla solar roof, the first iterations of the Powerwall, and he kept seeing these really high tech, really also expensive because they're still new projects going into people's homes with solar and battery backup, and they were having to upgrade the panel to support the increased electrical that's being created and going through the house to make sure it's safe. And so they were taking out an old gray box and putting in a new gray box, and he thought it's just replacing something that's old with a bigger something that's old. Like there's you're still not learning anything about the home. You're creating more energy, but you still don't know where it's going, and that was his first brain, you know, light bulb moment to say, I bet we can figure out a way where we can see what's going on in the house as well as just what's being created and sending to it. So that was how Span was was born, and our so our first customers were really the solar and storage installers, because we, you know, made certain engineering decisions to make their jobs easier, so that when they are doing in a panel, this one's ready to go, so that it's solar ready, whole home backup ready right out of the box.
Mark D. Williams 18:15
That's amazing! Wow, thank you for coming to Misa, who's all the way from Louisiana. So
Reina Smyth 18:20
yeah, this was great. It's a lot cooler here than is back home. So I'm enjoying it. I know.
Mark D. Williams 18:26
Yeah, it's hot for us. It must be brutal for you down south.
Reina Smyth 18:29
Not quite yet. We've had a cool summer, but yeah, it's it's only June.
Mark D. Williams 18:33
Yeah. What did you, the people that were here today? What were did you have any takeaways? I mean, is this a common event that you see around the country when you go to kind of activations or events like
Reina Smyth 18:43
absolutely, yeah, I actually I really enjoy going to kind of the Prada homes or the innovation homes because it's really fun to just see what's out there. You know, I go to the builder show every year, but I don't have much time to walk around and see everything. So it's great to talk to like interior designers and people who are building saunas and that are custom made, and the the gym is that is, you know what I want for my own home now. So it was great to see how all of the pieces come together, and in a way, I look at building a new house from the ground up, or even the heavy demo as kind of tearing down into chaos and then creating order from that chaos, which is really kind of ballet in and of itself. So it's nice to see all those pieces come together.
Mark D. Williams 19:28
As you introduced yourself to you know the architects, builders, designers, what percent of them knew of span versus you showing them?
Reina Smyth 19:36
Ooh, probably 10% knew of it.
Mark D. Williams 19:39
That's it.
Reina Smyth 19:39
Yeah, I would. I only think I talked to two people that were familiar with spam.
Mark D. Williams 19:44
Wow!
Reina Smyth 19:45
So it's one of those things that people don't think about their electrical panel until they have to, and then once you start talking about it, the you see the the connection of oh that's really cool and really useful, and I can see why people like that. We. Our company is still small, yet we're growing rapidly, and I think a lot more people will be familiar with the brand in about six months' time.
Mark D. Williams 20:08
Yeah, what makes you say that?
Reina Smyth 20:10
Oh, we've launched a couple of, or made a different, a couple different announcements, I should say, with some partnerships that going into many data centers. That's still just proof of concept, but that's gotten a lot of buzz in the industry. We've been bombarded by emails. We've also decided to partner with Eaton, which is you know
Mark D. Williams 20:32
they're in Minnesota here.
Reina Smyth 20:33
Yeah, one of the big companies that make electrical load centers who decided that they were going to partner with us, and that's been a big stamp of approval for someone who's been doing this type of product for a lot longer than we have.
Mark D. Williams 20:47
Listen, I always see their water tower. I don't even know they're. I don't even know. Is it right off? I mean, they're literally like 10 minutes from here.
Reina Smyth 20:52
Okay, I'll swing by. Yeah,
Mark D. Williams 20:53
yeah, that's funny. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for coming to Minnesota, and thank you for the listeners for tuning into another episode of the Gears Builder Podcast. Thanks for tuning in to Curious Builder Podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor: share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends, like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in.
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