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How Technology Converts Space into Profit with Erin McDannald
37 Plays1 month ago
🔥 Episode Summary
In this episode, hosts Jason Shearer and Akram “AK” Khalis talk with Erin McDannald, multi-time CEO and founder of Elevated, about the intersection of human health, smart building design, and measurable environmental wellness.
Erin shares her personal journey from interior design to lighting to smart building technology—and how her experience as a mother navigating her daughter’s neuroinflammatory health challenges inspired a radical approach to workplace design.
She walks us through her company’s “living lab,” using CO₂ levels, light temperature, and even sound decibels as real-time indicators of wellness, productivity, and cognitive performance in the workplace.
This conversation is a masterclass in building smarter, healthier, and more human-centric environments.
🛠️ Topics Covered
- Erin’s path from lighting to founding a digital building company
- How her daughter’s health shaped her mission for wellness in built environments
- What happens to health metrics when people return to work in a poorly ventilated space
- Why CO₂, color temperature, and sound are the new pillars of workplace productivity
- How real-time environmental data led to a 40% drop in insurance claims and $140K decrease in premiums
- Tuning lighting for calm and critical thinking instead of productivity pressure
- The business case for de-densification and rethinking compressed office footprints
- Using data and automation to shape better collaboration, movement, and wellness
- Building a “healing building” and the vision of a workplace that improves human health
- The role of neuroinflammation and indoor environments in chronic conditions
- Insights on writing her upcoming book and connecting genetic science to smart infrastructure
💡 Favorite Insights
- “We were losing cognitive function at 800 ppm of CO₂. That’s lower than most classrooms.”
- “Decibel levels on a Tuesday tell me if we’re having a good sales week.”
- “We’ve been trying to prove that if you dial in the people and the tech, there’s ROI—and it’s lucrative.”
🥃 This Episode’s Drink
- Erin: Vodka Lemonade (the only thing in the fridge!)
- Jason & AK: Vodka Soda with Lime – perfect for a humid southern summer day
📅 Release Schedule
New episodes drop every other Monday, blending spirits, building science, and bold ideas.
🎧 Who Should Listen?
- CEOs, CIOs, and workplace strategists
- Smart building and wellness consultants
- Real estate developers and property managers
- HR leaders focused on employee experience
- Indoor air quality and sensor technology innovators
📣 Connect & Follow
- Elevated Website: poweredbyelevated.com
- Erin’s Email: erin@lightingenvironments.com
- Find Erin on LinkedIn – she’s actively sharing ideas and engaging with the community
- Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:20
Speaker
All right, everybody, welcome to the Distilled Buildings Technology Podcast. Where smart buildings are shaken, stirred, and data-driven. Awesome. I'm Jason Shearer, your host.
00:00:31
Speaker
I'm your host, AK.
Introduction of Guest: Erin
00:00:33
Speaker
And with us today, we have Erin. Erin, welcome to the Distilled Buildings Tech Podcast. Hi, thanks for having me, guys. It's good to be here. yeah Absolutely.
Erin's Career Journey
00:00:43
Speaker
So um you sent us over a bio and I was really, really impressed, like reading through it. But like, tell tell us like a little bit about yourself, like, you know, what got you to where you are in your ah multi CEO career today?
00:01:00
Speaker
Sure. i ah i i was I started my career as an interior designer um out of out of college. And i spent a couple years and in that field and then moved over to lighting.
00:01:14
Speaker
um I had an interest in lighting and electricity and how things went together. and I sold lighting for about 18 years. And you know obviously, things grew in the lighting field. And we took on controls and after a while you just kind of learn how to talk to things and get them to talk back to you.
00:01:38
Speaker
um and we wanted to take control of that conversation ah a little bit because we were having um trouble um controlling some things in that on job sites that we were working on. And it just kind of expanded from there. We started, you know, I took on a role my role as the CEO for the lighting representative.
00:02:03
Speaker
ah that that I own, now own. But um it was, yeah, it's been kind of a long road. We've, you know, moved to writing software and we expanded to ah everything digital buildings.
00:02:18
Speaker
So, um ah We have a group in the field that you know commissions digital buildings and we design them from the very
Focus on Health and Wellness
00:02:29
Speaker
beginning. So yeah so we've we've been involved in a lot of different things.
00:02:34
Speaker
I have a particular ah interest in health and wellness and alignment with nature. I've had just my own personal role as a mom, kind of navigating some difficult health problems with my daughter, me a 14-year journey.
00:02:55
Speaker
fourteen year journey of ah really coming to understand genetic and neuroinflammatory disorders and how our environments affect our brains.
00:03:08
Speaker
um so ah So for me, i have my passion is health, wellness and alignment. um But yeah, you need infrastructure to do that. So all is pretty much what I love.
00:03:26
Speaker
and That's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. And Aaron, tell us how do you take that to your to work?
Smart Building Metrics During COVID
00:03:34
Speaker
And I have been into your office and I've seen the metrics that you put together, even some of the facts and stats that you that you pulled out out of the office and even pre-pandemic, post-pandemic.
00:03:46
Speaker
If you could share some of that. I was fascinated when I heard all that. Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, we, ah you know, during the, ten at the the start of the pandemic, i I asked, you know, anyone who was willing to share their data if they would get aura rings and we could ah start watching our health. And at the time we had already outfitted our our building for, as a smart building. So we were monitoring and metering the space,
00:04:15
Speaker
um So I knew i had the opportunity at that time because i would not I don't think I would ever get a zero comma zero. i would like ah a point of access or reference without any people in the space again. So ah we got to monitor the space for a good six months with nobody in it to really understand what this, what the the The environment was without people. So when we came back, ah we could apply those metrics to people so we could understand how much CO2 a single person brought into a space and how your space clears CO2 and what effects it has on people.
00:04:57
Speaker
um And when we got back to the office, our health plummeted. And it was pretty fascinating and also ah pretty scary. um and we were also trying to mitigate COVID outbreaks.
00:05:12
Speaker
ah So ah we were able to, we had two COVID outbreaks and we were able to trace it down to the day of the outbreak really understand what was going on in the air at that time so that we could mitigate the outbreaks as a
Impact of Air Quality on Health
00:05:29
Speaker
as a result. and And also I have an interest in I just don't want to get the flu.
00:05:34
Speaker
i don't want i don't want to have to go through January's and February's where everybody is out with the flu and giving kind of giving each other viruses. And that ah had it been happening over the years. And it was really frustrating to me.
00:05:47
Speaker
so ah We've been doing research for the last five years, and we think we have it kind of dialed in on what kind of metrics you can ah gather from your air quality to keep it, you know, to keep everybody healthy and safe.
00:06:04
Speaker
And, you know, we've come up with a lot of different things. um So, yeah, we're we're having fun with that. And we it really kind of comes down to this the density of space.
00:06:17
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And we're, you know, we need to de-densify our real estate quite a bit. So we're getting, we have a lot of companies who are offloading a lot of real estate and what they're not realizing or really understanding of that in order to keep people healthy in those spaces and to keep them more sustainable so that we don't have to go home during the pandemics again, um is to de-densify. Yeah.
Economic Benefits of Smart Buildings
00:06:46
Speaker
That's, that's fascinating, because that that's almost contrary to like what, like you said, like what we're seeing in the market today to where a lot of companies are going through real estate compression versus de densification.
00:06:58
Speaker
how How do you have you gotten to where you can quantify the economic value of keeping people like healthy and safe in the environment?
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like it started with year. It takes it it takes a year to really prove any results. But once we started, we wrote a little CO2 mitigation into our ah elevated software. So if it detects high CO2 levels, it'll start turning your air because you can't open the windows in a lot of buildings.
00:07:30
Speaker
So we turn our air more. And our insurance rates the next year about $130,000 for company, was significant because we have 55 employees.
00:07:47
Speaker
ah fifty five employees and um and that And because there were 40% fewer claims on our insurance. And I thought, oh, that's an interesting study. you know we want to We want to see that over and over and over again, too.
00:08:04
Speaker
And we're only about a year and a half into that. um But it's... ah To me, people are healthier, and I think that's really important. But also really, i you know we we tune with the circadian rhythms, and we so we were tuning um to match the sun all day.
00:08:23
Speaker
and we were realizing that from a neurological aspect, it was like sometimes triggering migraines in people. Like that wasn't something that you should probably do. Like you have to really...
00:08:35
Speaker
kind of um change your environments. People get a little bit more stressed under 3 and 4,000 Kelvin lights where they say productivity is really important.
00:08:48
Speaker
um People get stressed under those circumstances. And ah we decided that we're more you know kind of working with the idea that so turning down the lights will allow our employees to be more critical thinkers um because their stress and their cortisol will be lowered and they'll be able to reach their prefrontal cortex for more analytical thinking, which is in our best interest.
00:09:21
Speaker
So driving productivity with... Like 4,000 Calvin lights is probably not the ideal thing to do anymore. I think we've got a it. So what I'm saying is we got it all wrong.
00:09:33
Speaker
We need to spread out. We need to chill out a little bit. And we need to provide better spaces for our employees if we want to get them back to work.
Integrating People and Technology
00:09:44
Speaker
That's fascinating. And and that's that's something that we, as as we know, we struggle with, right? So we show the value of smart building. And then where where you have proven that not only having the tools help, but having that feedback, it's even better because you can actually dial in and see what actually works and what doesn't.
00:10:04
Speaker
It's true. I mean, you can, and then you put that data into your, into your data lake and you can extract lots of things from that. So I know we're at 60 decibels on a Tuesday and a Wednesday, ah we're probably going to have a good week.
00:10:25
Speaker
You know, we're pro to, but you know, it's like I can't tuned into the amount of decibels and what it sounds like on my sales floor when we're having a good collaborative week.
00:10:36
Speaker
and when we're not. So um that's interesting to me too. So it's another metric and I'm, you know, I'm a CEO and I look at it from that perspective and, and we just built our system. And for us, and really, we've been trying to prove that if you kind of dial in on the people and the technology and connecting those two, that there's a return on that investment.
00:11:00
Speaker
um And those returns are, ah What's the best word? um Because I have a, it's distilled. So I've had a, what's the best word? that they're They're indirect, but ah but they're very they're very lucrative.
00:11:19
Speaker
Well, I mean, it sounds like some of them are indirect, Aaron, but like, I think we always struggle when we think about, you know well certifications and some of these frameworks that are out there to like quantify the value of,
00:11:31
Speaker
Number one, you know, putting in all of those, you know, those controls and metrics, but then like going through the process of ah certification, what does that actually get the customer from, you know, from a, from a bottom line perspective and just just hearing the story of $140,000 of direct insurance premium avoidance, like that's, that's massive, like that's a direct cost.
00:11:57
Speaker
But then if you start looking at all of those other indirect savings, like, you know, productivity or, you know, collaboration, and it seems like it's just upside from there.
00:12:09
Speaker
It is. It's really interesting. i'm you know like They measure the sound of... them They measure the decibels of the rainforest to understand the health of it. And you know you could probably... I love the idea of really understanding how busy my hive is, in a sense.
00:12:28
Speaker
um And whether ah whether that's your ah property manager or, you know, a developer or, you know, who's coming in my building, where are they going? um Those kind of those metrics are really important and can turn into to you know some really, you know, lucrative decisions that can come from that.
00:12:48
Speaker
It's the difference between you put a Starbucks or a Brooks Brother in your first floor. um So, you know, I mean, I think there's there's real there the there's there's a real return on that. um But obviously you need the infrastructure to be able to handle that too.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah. And as as the audience know us, obviously the podcast starts with a typical drink.
Casual Interlude: Hosts' Drink Choices
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah. Here goes ours. So what's what's in your cup?
00:13:19
Speaker
i I have vodka lemonade in my cup only because I only had lemonade in my house. so Love it. Jason, what about you? So I made i made a vodka soda with limes and I think it's just a good, it is, ah I live in the Southeast and it was 90 degrees today and 85% humidity.
00:13:41
Speaker
So it's just a really good, like refreshing summer drink. Yeah. Yeah. Typical fever tree, vodka, you know, rocking it with, with, with the brand and you know, a hot day like this, you're right.
00:13:55
Speaker
It is, it is just a vodka soda type of day. It is. It is. Yeah. Cheers. Cheers.
00:14:03
Speaker
okay
00:14:07
Speaker
So you were talking through like all of the you know the metrics in the environment and some of the um some of the direct cost benefits or or cost savings, does this typically help us like upsell into a customer's environment from you know non-tunable to tunable lights or you know kind of bringing some of those premium features you know around technology into a customer space?
Upselling Smart Building Features
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think it does. um I think that if we, well, first of all, if we would have um had the infrastructure ah before COVID, we would not have had to go home.
00:14:51
Speaker
And um And I do think that it it took me a long time to prove tunable, a return on investment. Actually, took me until this year, until I figured out I could calm people with it rather than keep them productive.
00:15:08
Speaker
um And then when I tuned into that and people were a lot calmer, there was, you know, there was some, because that there were there were a lot of, you know, it just seemed like a heightened moment.
00:15:21
Speaker
um And I think this was literally around the the election time when I just wanted everybody to calm and not have too much conversation.
00:15:31
Speaker
and and it seemed to work. And I thought, wow, that's really interesting. um But it also produced, you know, some more critical thinking. And I really love that. And, um you know, really tuning into or biohacking, if you will,
00:15:47
Speaker
Um, when it comes to, you know, having the healthiest workforce, I think that's a, I think that's a really cool thing to be able to do, but also save energy at the same time. And, you know, all of the other things.
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah. I think when it comes to, to smart buildings and the journey, who do you think Aaron is, is the persona, um, Is it the CIOs of the world? Is it the facility managers of the world?
00:16:15
Speaker
what whats Who's that buyin that buyer from your perspective? Yeah, i think I think it's the CIOs and the CEOs so from my perspective. That's what I designed it to be. and um i I really like that Steve Jobs designed for him and I designed for me. And I was at home trying to solve a problem 2020. I was like, okay, i can't see my people.
00:16:41
Speaker
um And i I just spent a lot of money on my real estate and it's there's nobody there and I can't see it and I don't know what's going on with it and I don't have a ah remote control for it.
00:16:55
Speaker
um and then And then I'd like to quantify what it's what it's generating for my business. um And because we we have a showroom and I want to know how many people come in and I want to know how much our business ah has increased since we've we opened that showroom, um you know, and we've been able to quantify that. So um i don't even remember what the question was.
00:17:24
Speaker
No, the buy-in persona, and I think yeah you answered really well. that This is what we're seeing you know You're talking about you know enterprise, Fortune 500. Their goal is they had this massive real estate. Now, what what do you do with it?
00:17:36
Speaker
If you can't touch it, feel it, quantify it, digitize it, how do you know what the next one should look like? is it Is it more of just ah pick a location and make the best bar tab or and hope for the best? Or is it really understanding where people live and want to be and how they behave throughout your space? And I think that's what but it's that's what a smart building brings forward.
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's like making it the engine of your business, which is which is so true. It's a vehicle for your brand. it's it's the you know and ah And it it can be an engine. It can generate or it can or it can take from you.
00:18:15
Speaker
And and you know with smart infrastructure, you can get it to generate income for you um in many, many different ways. It depends on how creative you want to get it.
00:18:26
Speaker
if you want to start harnessing energy from the sun and selling it to other buildings, there's always, you know, I have, you know, there's a million different ways you can capture commerce from your smart building, which is, which which is really important.
Challenges in Smart Building Tech
00:18:42
Speaker
Take us a little bit through your journey of building it. What was some of the difficulties you faced while implementing your smart building? ah over I think the first one was software.
00:18:56
Speaker
You know, we didn't really have a cohesive software, ah one pane of glass, which everybody seems to have a problem with. So we built our own. um API integrations, which just suck.
00:19:08
Speaker
I look forward to the day when that becomes an AI-driven super connection ah that we don't have to deal with anymore.
00:19:20
Speaker
um But we you know ah you know software was our first first foray into it. We started with Enlighted, actually. We we put that we put their software their sensors and software in our space, and we started to heat map and track. And then we, you know, ah started put thermostats and we just started connecting everything cameras, everything. And, you know, I sat with it for a long time, just looking at it like,
00:19:51
Speaker
Where's the value? How do I sell this? Is there value? i love it. I love seeing who's in my office when. i love seeing his book who's going to be booked to going going to be booked in my office for the day so I can decide whether I'm going to come in or I stay home.
00:20:10
Speaker
It's great for collaboration. i But we just kept on building it and um and working with, you know, all of the data. And as ChatTPT got smarter and smarter, we could really start to feed our data. And we got a little bit more savvy with ah our data ah on our back end with our company as we grew. So it's just been an interesting foray into that. And we're not done. i mean, you know, everybody's racing to AI, and so are we.
00:20:42
Speaker
um And we hope to have full automation, ai automation by next year. So a year later than I wanted it. But yeah.
00:20:54
Speaker
And nothing nothing in technology ever happens as fast as we want, it it seems. I know. and
00:21:03
Speaker
What did you find was, you know so you talked about like integrations and you know and APIs. What was something that was like surprising as you were going through that that you didn't that you didn't really expect to have a ah tangible like connection?
Surprising Metrics in Smart Buildings
00:21:22
Speaker
i was most surprised by air quality. Honestly, and I think it's one of the most interesting things. um I think it adds a dimension and also sound ah Something that's interesting to me is really understanding not that in decibels sound and what that means.
00:21:45
Speaker
um And what whether you're scaling it from a building to a city, i think sound means something and it's a dimensionally gives you ah more data than know what to do with right now. I think that'll come to us in time, but I think we're missing dimensions in our data, um, in smart buildings. And I think that, um, I think the sensors are getting better and better and I'm excited for the the future of that.
00:22:17
Speaker
Yeah, the three the three things that I wrote down, Aaron, that were fascinating you know from an employee experience and productivity were, like you mentioned, decibel level. So like you know the audio or the sound levels within a space.
00:22:33
Speaker
CO2, and then probably like other other gases, right? like you know We can measure formaldehyde and TVOC, but CO2 seems to be the one that's the most impacting for you know for for cognitive.
00:22:46
Speaker
And then ah third was like color temperature. and I haven't heard of like, I'm kind of like drawing out like a, you know, like either a Venn diagram with three circles or like a triangle and like how all three of those have, you know, are are connected and can have impact if they're dialed up or dialed down to the right to the right levels.
00:23:09
Speaker
the It's true. Yeah. ah We understood, we understood, we started, we looked for CO2 levels because we got sleepy in the afternoons and um we, we didn't understand that you know, and we've kind of all been, um,
00:23:26
Speaker
ah It's been interesting because you know we're all made to believe it's because the carbs we ate for lunch, but really it's the CO2 sitting in the room. It's all um all the el but airbags that have been in the office for six hours, right? Yeah. And it's funny because you know if you really understand how CO2 moves to the room, it just sits like a blob and it doesn't... you you almost And I was like, okay, so why don't we have this problem outside?
00:23:52
Speaker
And I'm like, well, I guess we have wind. So I'm like, well, let's can't we make wind? Like, we'll just have to make more wind. so ah So we started to turn the air a lot harder. You know, and our HVAC guy is not happy with us because they're like, are going to blow the engine? and I'm like, well, we were losing cognitive function at 800 parts per million. And the average classroom in America is somewhere around 1200 parts per million, which is amazing.
00:24:19
Speaker
ah unreal um and you know has a potential to cause ah neuroinflammatory effects. So um at that point, you know if we're just at 800 parts per million, where we were losing cognitive function, meaning we were getting sleepy or that you could see it every single time um we got to 800 parts per million, you can see the decibels crest and drop.
00:24:47
Speaker
Just because you people people stop talking or talking as loudly or engaging. Yeah, they stop engaging. That's fascinating, the correlation between CO2 and decibel levels. so and see and And you mentioned like education, k twelve space. likecar there but Are there programs out there to to help you know fund abatement of CO2 in classrooms?
00:25:12
Speaker
There's air quality grants available. Yes, there are. um and And so I think that you know the schools can capitalize on that if they if they so choose. But I think that that you know it's not enough to ah just put air quality sensors in their classrooms. You really need the infrastructure to be able to support ah you know mitigation of that.
00:25:40
Speaker
I feel like if every building would would whisper every morning and say, just get the CO2 out of here. Yeah. it it just it's I agree. It's one of the things that's probably causing most of its comfort, right?
00:25:56
Speaker
you know People are sleepy. That means they're not comfortable. The energy, it's up to the roof because, one, you're driving every single thing you could, whether it's AC, HVAC, et cetera. I think that combination, to your point, Jason, is it's unique, right?
00:26:09
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Lowering the energy by choosing which color temperature you can do and then adding comfort into it. And then of course having the data and the visualization to get the predictive maintenance or preventive maintenance rather to get that visualization to the building. I think it's key.
00:26:24
Speaker
Aaron, do you, um you talked a lot about like using your own, you know, facility, like you have, you have a big investment and in real estate and your offices and the showroom that you have.
00:26:35
Speaker
Is that, Is that kind of like a living lab for um for for you and your team?
Future of Smart Buildings and Health
00:26:41
Speaker
It is. It is. Yeah. I mean, I'm i testing a lot of different crazy things.
00:26:47
Speaker
I had a Rife machine in the other day because, and ah you know, like my... ah I mean, we're just we're doing all kinds of crazy things. I do think that someday of...
00:27:01
Speaker
the idea of ah A human being better ah and healthier because they came to a building and worked there every day ah would be a an amazing value proposition.
00:27:18
Speaker
um I think that we can build buildings that will heal people. um And I don't think we're too far away from that, um rather than we're kind of hurting people right now.
00:27:32
Speaker
and there's a lot of there There's a lot of conversation in the neuroimmune community about the flicker in the lights, right? um which has really been something that, that I've been passionate about too. And it's why, ah ah you know, digital infrastructure is, is absolutely important, you know, moving forward. And, um you know, so there's all kinds of things. I, you know, like I think I got us off track again, Jason, did I? No, I think, I think, I think you're right on track. Like, you know, using your office as a living lab, like you have, you have,
00:28:08
Speaker
quantifiable data around productivity and employee comfort that comes out of your space. And i have I have to imagine that that's like extremely powerful whenever you bring a customer to your showroom as a as a sales tool.
00:28:25
Speaker
It is. Yeah, we love having people visit. You know, another thing that was interesting that we learned from our data, since people came back to the office was, um you need to have space for people to move.
00:28:38
Speaker
People want to walk and talk. It's almost like you you know like if you built a walking track inside your office, but you can watch the heat maps and you see back and forth and back and forth in the places where nobody is sitting or whatever. So it's really interesting.
00:28:59
Speaker
you know Designing an office for movement that's interactive and ah fully automated with AV, cetera. I mean, What a dream it would be to be able to work in a place like that. So we're trying to we're trying to create that um as in interactive as possible.
00:29:19
Speaker
yeah We built a digital twin a few years ago and put it in the metaverse. And I look forward to bringing them back someday. yeah yeah very cool all right yeah our so our chicago cisco chicago office um it's in the the old post office building in in chicago and it has these pathfinding lines on the on you know painted on the concrete floors and one of the lines is like this loop around the office and one of my favorite things to do is like just to have like a walking meeting and do laps laps around the office
00:29:52
Speaker
That's what used to do during the pandemic. And we were so healthy then. So then we all sat down. so yeah. yeah So being able to move is key. Yeah. Yeah.
00:30:04
Speaker
Yeah. Sits, this as they're overrated. How about walking? That's the first time I heard this one. Yeah. Just keep walking. Yeah. Or maybe both like sit, stand, desk, and I'm a huge, I'm a huge proponent of sit, stand desk as, as AK knows.
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
Erin's Book on Health Journey
00:30:22
Speaker
Erin, the other thing you told us is um you're also you're also an author. is that is that right? I'm writing a book. I am writing a book right now.
00:30:32
Speaker
um You know, in my you know my journey with my daughter. um i had to I had to attend a lot of medical conferences and I studied genetics for the last 10 years and then neuroinflammation after that. So I kind of learned a lot about how um important it to that we pay attention to neuroinflammation in general.
00:31:00
Speaker
um It's the cause of everything from anxiety to depression to ah diabetes to obesity to autism, everything.
00:31:12
Speaker
and um and I was really struck a few years ago when I attended the Neuroimmune Conference where and they talked about the first slide said um this autism was the the root of autism was autoimmune disease.
00:31:31
Speaker
and um and i And I was struck by that because that means that our environments contribute to these things. um And, ah you know, in my studies, I just started doing a lot more study about that. And when you look at how the brain responds to our environments and how much load it can take, I'm going to apply it to smart buildings in a second.
00:31:59
Speaker
It becomes an existential need for humanity to, you know, to face this need to kind of shift to smart buildings because without it,
00:32:12
Speaker
um ah our buildings won't be able to protect us. ah from the changing climate or um all the stress that the world has around us, whether it's 98% of our time is spent indoors and we really need to be able to control our environments in a better way that protects us.
00:32:35
Speaker
ah whether it be our air quality or lights, you know, ah you know, or mitigation of that sort. All of these things are really important um for the future, I think, of humanity and also for being able to ah give electricity to other buildings when the power grid goes out from an existential perspective. this is so There's a real need to make the change.
00:33:04
Speaker
and um And just you know from a perspective of keeping people healthy. Yeah. And that's awesome that you have have a very personal story around, you know, around air quality and the environments that we're in.
00:33:20
Speaker
So I'm sure that drives you to get up every day and, you know, run your company and and make buildings better. Yeah. It gives us a meaning, doesn't it? Yeah. Absolutely.
Connect with Erin
00:33:32
Speaker
Erin, how people can find Elevated and engage with you and and through projects. Yeah, ah the website is poweredbyelevated.com. And um yeah, you can reach me. um And it's Erin at lightingenvironments.com. You can reach out directly to me. um And you can find me on the website. So I appreciate you guys having me on.
00:33:54
Speaker
Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for joining us, Aaron. Everybody out there, definitely find, find Aaron on, on LinkedIn as well. Like she's super active out there. um you know, follow, follow elevated and like, and subscribe to our show. And we'll see you guys in a few weeks.