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On Episode 30 of the Hustle & Heat Podcast, we’re joined by Mike Morales of Quality TV for a conversation that goes far beyond television systems.
We dive into the latest in business technology, commercial and residential security, smart home solutions, artificial intelligence, and how rapidly evolving tech is changing the way businesses operate. Mike also shares insights from years in the industry, discusses where security technology is headed, and explains why staying ahead of the curve matters more than ever.
Whether you’re a business owner looking to leverage technology or simply curious about the future of AI and security, this episode is packed with practical insights and engaging conversation.
👍 Like, subscribe, and leave a comment if you enjoyed the episode!
Automatic transcript from Buzzsprout. It may contain errors.
0:00 What’s up, guys, and welcome back to another episode of Hustle and Heat Podcast. I am George, your host, and today is episode 30. Episode 30, we’re sitting down with Mike Morales, owner of Quality TV Sales and Service, a family-owned Northport business that has been serving Southwest Florida for more than five decades. Mike shares a story of growing a family business in an ever-changing industry, navigating the shift from analog technology to today’s connected homes and maintaining relevance in a world dominated by big box retailers and online shopping. He discusses the importance of customer service, community involvement, and why local businesses still play a vital role in the success of Northport and surrounding areas. From entrepreneurship and leadership to technology trends and community impact, this episode offers valuable insights for business owners, aspiring entrepreneurs, and anyone interested in the growth of Southwest Florida. So without further ado, well, Mike, welcome to a podcast. I appreciate you coming on. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do and why you do it.
1:05 Oh gosh, well, been uh pretty much uh here all my life, but was born in Jersey. But parents moved down here in the 70s and uh opened up a um pizzeria uh where War Mineral Springs is over there a restaurant um next to Gator Water. So my grandparents built that building uh back in the 70s, and um my grandfather uh wanted to have his sons have you know work in a business, and my father was in the electronic field with TVs, and the other two brothers were in the uh restaurant business, and that’s how we kind of moved to Florida back in the general development days. Um since then um one of the brothers had broke off uh and wanted to get into the alarm and security business and did that on the uh east coast of Florida, and the uh other brother stayed in the pizzeria, but then he broke off from here and went to the same place as other brother did on the East Coast and opened up uh Gigolo’s Pizza and uh stayed in that kind of business, and then uh my dad stayed in the electronic business and we stayed here. So most of the family stayed here, but one of the two brothers went to the other coast over there, and then they each built their own businesses to you know continue on.
2:15 Very nice. So, uh uh, what are the main offerings you offer at Quality TV?
2:21 Well, we back then it was it was just TV repairs, TV sales, and uh, you know, putting up antennas back then you only had 17 channels to watch. You know, at midnight TV went off and you see color bars on the screen and they play the national anthem, that was it. There was no more TV. Uh but today obviously it’s crazy. The technology is I often say if you’re out of this business for six months, now you’re lost. I mean, that’s how fast and rapidly it changes. So we constantly stay on top of the latest technology. Um we’re dealers for pretty much every uh manufacturer out there or company, whether it has to do with you know cell phone communications, internet communications, TV communications, uh security, um, anything to do with uh cameras or alarm systems or monitoring, uh multi-room audio. Um we pretty much cover the entire basis of anything electronic in your house or in your business, uh including access control. Uh so anything that makes uh electronics work or the electronics themselves, we pretty much handle now.
3:20 Very nice. So this is a multi-generational uh business. Who who started this business?
3:26 So my father started it back in 1970. So he was in electronics, he worked in uh uh in Jersey in a at a TV store from there. And uh when he moved down here, he obviously just jumped into that same business uh with his father helping him, you know, build a building and everything, and that’s where it took off from.
3:43 And then you took over after that?
3:45 Yes, yeah. He died in 1990. I was pretty young, I was only uh 18 years old. So I had to learn uh how to grow up real quick and how to do sales tax and balance a checkbook and do all the things. I wasn’t out partying and like all my friends were at that age, I was learning how to run a business till two, three o’clock in the morning every day. Um so it was uh a real learning experience. I grew up real quick. Um, but with him looking over me and everything, it came very successful, and I I built it to a much, much bigger business than what it was back then. Um so so back then were when he passed, were you already working with him or you you Yeah, at the at the age of 15 uh I was mostly hanging out with him a lot of times or helping him with uh put up outdoor antennas and you know carry things, so I had a little gist of uh most of it. Um didn’t have a real uh solid background in the theories you know of electronics when you’re getting down the shoot uh troubleshooting things to a component level where you know you would have to find a bad transistor or or shorted you know MOSFET or something like that. That’s when I spent a lot more time learning, you know, all those kind of things to where we fix them at component level. Now it’s become really much modular now where a lot of components are on boards and you’re changing boards, but we still go through and do um level component repair where we’re actually replacing some parts on some boards when it’s economical to do that. Um so it’s changed rapidly from what it used to be, um, but it’s still uh a viable business. A lot of people think uh who fixes TVs anymore, right? Or who does that kind of stuff? We fix still the old, you know, um stereo uh equipment people used to have because a lot of people still like that vintage stuff, so we’ll still fix those things like I did back, you know, when I first started. Um but now we see a lot of the new stuff come in that’s it’s a lot of it’s modular, and depending on what it costs to fix it, sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not. But we know because being dealers for all of the manufacturers, like when people buy these products at like a big box retailer, we’re the factory service center for them. So they come to us for the repair. So we know, okay, we’re seeing so many of this model, so many of that model, so many of this model, and we know which ones are good or bad, which ones are having problems, which ones aren’t. So we try to keep our customers away from them, you know, when they’re looking to purchase a new product. We give them that knowledge and background that we have from the service side to say, hey, you know, this is a better way to go, you know, if you’re looking for that. And we sell all those products as well, and we can match any of the big box retailers. Uh years ago, that was a little harder to do.
6:14 So for those of you that don’t know, Mike and his team did built out dubs for me. So they did all the TVs, all my networking, all the speaker uh audio. They did a great job and best community customer service I’ve I’ve seen in a very long time. With that being said, how do you get customers to come buy TVs from you instead of these big big retailers?
6:34 I believe a lot, a lot of it’s word of mouth. Um people look us up online and they they see our reviews and they read them. I mean, uh I’m blessed to have a great team. Um a lot of my family works in it and we’ve had some really long-term employees, so we really have a great team. Um, they know what to do. Um, they have the customers’ you know thought in mind and and what they would do if it was their house. We we kind of you know portray that forward as far as our suggestion and then work out what’s best based on what the customer needs are. But we’re very customer service oriented. Uh we want to make sure they’re happy, that’s the most important part, and that just really shows and then word of mouth just travels. So um we do a lot of uh a lot of work just from word of mouth and uh been very successful at it.
7:17 Very nice. What does your ideal customer look like?
7:22 Um my ideal customer and a lot of them that we do get is uh helping them with their billing. A lot of people are paying ridiculous prices for TV services, internet services, security services. The average customer we see that are that have that bundled, you know, they’re paying $250 or some of them over three, four hundred dollars a month. It’s just ridiculous. So we get a lot of customers from lowering their bill. In other words, we can go in and say, okay, you’re paying this much to this company for internet, this much for you know uh TV service or streaming service, this much for your cell services. We can knock all that down, you know, and save you $100, $150 a month. And people are like, wow, how do you do that? Well, because being dealers for all of them, we kind of know what we can get from each one and who’s gonna give you the best offer based on what your needs are. You know, if you need really, really fast internet, there’s ways of doing that, and we can do it cheaper. Some people don’t have access to fast internet, and we can do that through uh 5G services wirelessly. So there’s a lot of options we do, but our best customers come from there because the reaction you get from those customers when you’re saving them fifteen hundred dollars a year is like, wow. I mean, you know, I wish I’d have came to you sooner. And then people just start telling people, and that’s where we get that our our really joy from is helping a lot of customers, you know, save money and just showing them there’s weather other ways of doing things um than the way you’re doing it. And we don’t force anybody, we just show them and say, hey, look, you this is what you’re doing. You could pay more and continue to get what you’ve got, or you can pay less and get more. And people go, well, yeah, that’s kind of ridiculous to pay more and get less. Switch, you know, take care of that for me, please. We’d have like we get a lot of customers that would come in to us years ago just from our service. I remember even when I was back to my when my dad was served, and so they would go to my dad and say, Mike, you know, I’m gonna buy this TV from you instead of Walmart, you know, because I know if I have a problem, you’re gonna be there, you know, and you can fix it. You know, in Walmart, you know, I’m just uh another number, and they’ll and I’ll pay more for that. You know, people want customer service. And customer service has gone dramatically backwards, in my opinion, in what we see, you know, every time you call up, you’re speaking to a computer or you’re you know, pushing two to three, speaking to someone in another country, and that is what people can’t stand.
9:34 Do you think that’s gonna correct itself? Um I think humans are gonna win in the end, like not win, but like are we gonna go back to what we were?
9:43 I think there’s gonna be a combination of both, but I think the ones that will benefit the most as generations change, now the new generation coming up, uh they’re gonna be more used to that because they’re not used to what we were customer service, direct face-to-face, right? But there’s still gonna be c companies that capitalize, I feel, on the ones that break away from the new technology and still have that face-to-face technology. A lot of customers come to us because they don’t want to sit on a phone with a 800 number speaking to someone in another country. They want us to handle the account for them. So we we become their rep or their you know their counselor basically. They so they still have the same service, but because they’re through us and they’re under our umbrella, now we have contacts to be able to help them go around those problems that they deal with and get something fixed very quickly. So that’s where we you know we we shine with those those situations.
10:36 Do you have any AI implementation at your establishment?
10:39 Um we have access to it. Um I haven’t implemented it yet. Um I’m still looking at it. It’s not 100%, I don’t think, yet. Um so I’m not comfortable with that. If we do do it, it may be on a small scale just to like give information like, you know, what’s our address or our store hours or you know, things like that. The system is um, in my opinion, not there a hundred percent yet. It’s getting close.
11:03 What does 100% look like to you?
11:05 I mean 100% would be me talking to you. When you when you can react to me with what a question that’s not like what’s your hours, and I ask you something else and you can still answer that. Um but that that takes a lot of input, right? Almost like Johnny Five, you have to have a lot of input to be able to output that, which means on an AI platform you have to answer all these potential questions so it knows what to respond to. When it comes to the point of where it can just do it that dramatic to where you’re actually talking to a human being, I think that’ll be a another step that would change things dramatically.
11:36 I agree. Um, what are some things you guys offer at Quality TV that not many people would know that you offer?
11:43 That’s a good question. A lot of people, a lot of people say they go by this highway and they drive and they go, I wouldn’t believe all that stuff they do out of that building. So we do quite a bit.
11:52 Um, that’s why I asked that.
11:53 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it’s a good point. Um and it’s something I’ve struggled with. How do we get that word out more, you know, about all the things we do? But basically, um, you know, we do anything electronic that has to do with uh anything you do in life, pretty much. And it’s the simplest way to do it, whether it’s cell phones, you know, um or problem that you’re having with a particular company, or it could be um smart home stuff, you know. We do uh automatic door locks and doorbells and automatic shades, you know, that go up and down. And and it’s so pretty much anything. Uh a popular one is you know, people have seven remote controls on their coffee table, you know, and we can take all of them, put them into one remote, and you push one button and it’ll turn your TV on, turn your lights to a certain you know level, put your stereo receiver on, switch your TV input, and turn your DVD player on all with one button. You don’t have to grab six remotes to do that. So a lot of people like that. So pretty much anything electronic, you know. Um, I mean smart homes are becoming you know pretty much the standard now. You know, we try to tell people, you know, what do you do when you get in the morning? Or when you get up, what do you do? Well, I go over to the kitchen, you know, I turn on the light, you know, uh, I go over to the coffee pot, I turn the coffee pot on, I go to my phone and I turn on the music, and or maybe I grab the TV remote and I put on, you know, whatever channel I want to watch. Well, we go to them and say, How would you like that to all happen? But you just get up in the morning and just say, Good morning. And all that happens automatically.
13:19 Even the coffee?
13:20 Yep.
13:21 How?
13:22 Smart smart home products. So we can put adapters and things on to make things turn on, um, or there’s smart coffee pots, you know, that you can, you know, integrate into you know a smart home system like that. So it’s endless what you can do with that technology. Um it’s just making people think, you know, how do you make your life easier, right? Um that’s what we do. So we we if people want to do those things, we can go to them and say, okay, tell us what you want to do, and then we can try to design that system, you know, to be able to do those kind of things for customers. And that’s my guys like doing that because it’s cool, especially something that’s new or it’s a challenge. They like doing that.
13:59 What’s the craziest project you’ve done?
14:01 Craziest project? Um they all have their unique things, so I don’t know about any of them has been crazy. I mean, we’ve we’ve done that maybe not crazy.
14:10 What’s the most like what’s the project that made someone’s life the most easiest?
14:18 It depends because each one’s different, you know. So it it really depends on the on the individual. Some of them could be the simplest thing like a doorbell, you know, that they can watch, you know, when someone comes on their phone. That some people that just like blows them away. You know, to us it’s like been around forever now. Um But I I think the newest things that are that are going to be coming out is is the things that you would normally do, like I was just talking about, but you could just do with your voice. So I think the more that you can do, just like cars, right? I mean, you know, I I used to love Knight Rider, the series, right? Or Michael Knight and the car that drove, and it’s like, wow, could you ever imagine that? And now the cars do that. So just as technology keeps advancing, it’s like what’s gonna be the next wow factor. So that customer that you know just did the simplest doorbell, you know, the next thing for them could be a smart thermostat, you know. To us, it’s like we do them all the time, but to one customer, it could be such an amazing thing that, you know, while they’re gone, they can monitor their air condition, make sure it’s not you know broken or you know, the heat’s going up and they’re gonna get mold or somebody can take care of that right away for them. So those are a lot of the advantages, just make life simple with smart home products that we we enjoy doing because it’s always a challenge depending on what the customer wants and what you’re trying to bring to them and what you can do, and that’s what we like doing.
15:34 Nice. What do you think? Um do you think that in the future all our homes are going to be automated?
15:41 Yes. I think it’s just gonna become a standard. They are now. I mean I’m in a lot of the To what extent though? Um mostly it’s thermostats, doorbells, you know, kind of the basic things. They, you know, like builders that we we do work for, we we pre-wire the homes or you know, uh customers that are building a home come to us and say, hey, you know, we want security, you know, we want cameras, we want an alarm system, and we want, you know, these things. We’ll give them the ideas of what they’re want, but most of their needs are mostly security cameras, alarm systems, and then they want, you know, like a video doorbell, smart thermostat, you know, those kind of things. And then uh networking in the house. So those are the kind of the main things that we see now. As things go more and more, and door locks, a lot of them want automatic door locks, right? Um, but as things continue to go and you know, homes become more efficient, you know, with everything with LED lighting and everything, I think the whole home will just be voice controlled. You know, it’ll it’ll be like you know, Jarvis, basically, and you’ll just talk to it and it’ll happen.
16:41 What what advice would you give someone looking to start a business in Northport today?
16:47 Well, starting a business is is not easy, as you know. Um it’s dedication. You have to have an attitude that I’m not gonna fail, and you only fail when you quit, right? So you can keep trying for years and years and years. You never fail unless you quit. So you you have that I won’t quit attitude and and you’ll be successful. Um as far as starting a business, you know, and and what you’re doing, I guess I would have to know what what the field is that you would start it, you should be looking to start it in. But um there’s so many challenges out there. I would say anything that’s customer service oriented, where you’re providing something, or you can do something uh differently than what’s being done with the same thing and provide an additional service. Just for instance, like you know, any company that delivers food, right? You know, if food was already there, you could have got it, but you just provided a service that wasn’t happening because that local chain isn’t doesn’t deliver, right? So someone found a way to do that and fill the need. So if you could find a way to fill a need that someone’s not doing, that’s a great business opportunity. So that’s what I would focus on.
17:59 Talk to us a little bit about your uh community involvement and why you do it.
18:03 Um well, we love helping the community. Um my dad was a big community supporter. Um he started the Northport Business Association with some other businesses, and that turned into the Chamber of Commerce, which we know is now today. Um he was involved with a lot of sports, helped start the Little League. Um he was a volunteer firefighter. Um they have a firehouse out off of uh Haberlin named after him. Um so we’ve always been involved with that. I when I took over, I kind of did the same thing, um, supported the police department, um, always would you know give them whatever they would need. I often would stay out, you know, late at night on the midnight shift because back then there wasn’t a lot of restaurants open where the guys could get food. I would go out of the county in the Charlotte County to like a Denny’s or something and pick up fruit for them and bring it back into the city. So we’ve always loved supporting the community and uh we we we still do today, um, you know, sponsoring soccer and uh my family’s involved and coaching it and you know we just always involved in the community, love doing things and giving back to the community.
19:05 Very nice. Um with quality TV, are you gonna pass it on to the next generation of the analysis?
19:11 Yep, I think that’s definitely gonna happen. Um two of my sons already here are working in it. One uh does the TV side and does the repairs and stuff, and the other one’s doing the AV and uh installation of all the smart home products and stuff that we’re talking about. So yeah, I I can kind of see that happening, uh continuing it on for another generation. Um so I have three. Um I think the the youngest one’s probably gonna go a different way, not sure yet what he’s gonna do, but we’ll see uh we’ll see what happens.
19:38 Who’s your favorite kid?
19:41 They’re all loved in their own unique way. Um no favorites. Uh George’s trying to pin me down. Oh try, man.
20:02 Looking ahead ten years, what do you think um the world’s gonna look like?
20:08 Looking out ten years from now. Um I think we’re gonna learn a lot of things that you know we were against. Um we tried and found out that, yeah, that’s not what we wanted. And you know, as a result, we’ll look back and say, yeah, I’ve been there, done that, and we’re not gonna do that again. Um I’d like to see a lot of the you know the div the division and and hate come, you know, go go away. It seems like you know, our country um comes together in tragedies, right? And they forget about all the other stuff. And you we shouldn’t have to have a tragedy happen to have everybody, you know, come together. Um But I think uh in the future, I think we’re gonna learn a lot more. I think with all the technology and AI, um I think life’s gonna change probably dramatically in the next 10 years.
20:58 In what way?
20:59 Um just technology-wise, and things that uh AI is gonna do that hasn’t happened in the last 40 years, I think, in solving uh, you know, illnesses and uh a lot of things that, you know, um they’re just can be done so easily now with like technology that it’s gonna solve a lot of those issues, I think. Uh including, you know, stuff we’re already talking about with your homes, you know, that um it’s gonna change dramatically. And I think it’s gonna give a open up a lot of opportunities, open up a lot of things that you know I I think about you know the technology and what’s gonna happen in AI and the and the the thing that that can do, you can’t even the the the the puzzling thing to me about it is you can’t even think right now of what it’s actually gonna do. That’s how sophisticated it is to me, is that it’s just so endless as to the possibilities of what it can do that I can’t even think that far ahead as to what it can do and what would be the next boom from that, you know, uh that technology. Technology advancement. So I think it’s an exciting time, you know, of things that are coming, but also concerning because you have to maintain control of that because it can be very dangerous. So I’m also concerned about that. So hopefully, you know, we’ll everyone will do the right thing and control it and make it, you know, something better for for everyone. But that’s by one of my main concerns is the control of that as well.
22:24 Do you think we’re gonna see another tragedy in our lifetime?
22:29 Um I’d like to think not um and hope that technology, you know, helps us to uh not come into that situation, but it is a possibility.
22:42 Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you’d like to cover?
22:46 Yeah, a little bit about security. So one of the things we see um the most um when someone’s wanting to do a like a camera system or security system, whether it’s for their home or their business, a lot of customers will start out with, well, I like to have you know one or two cameras or three cameras, and and uh you know that’s all I really need. So when we come in, we look at it, we’re we’re looking at it from and we try to think of it like, you know, okay, if I was a criminal, you know, what would I do? And you know, when you start thinking of it that point, the the worst thing you can do on any kind of security system is not cover all your basis. You know, you’re you’re spending money to secure it, and the worst thing that you can do is spend money on something, have the need for it, something happened, and then it do you no good, right? That’s more aggravating than anything because you spent all this money to do something to protect you or provide you evidence of something and it did you no good. When you’re doing two or three cameras in a lot of situations, that can happen because you’re not covering the property fully. So when we go out, we’re we fully assess the system as to what you would do so that we know we have every angle covered because if something happens and you have to file a report, um they’re gonna want the most amount of evidence. They’re gonna want to see their face, they’re gonna want to see obviously identificational things that are gonna help prosecute that you know that person. And if you don’t have the right coverage or the right angles or cameras placed in the right place, um then it becomes a useless tool. Um so we try to educate customers, you know, make sure, you know, if you want to do this, you know, do it the right way, you know, do it once, forget about it. And this way you won’t be upset later, god forbid something happens and you’re like, d***, I wish I would have put a camera there, or I wish I would have done this. You could have caught something that you would have missed otherwise. So that’s one of the things that we try to point out to people the most. And um, a lot of times, you know, customers have called us back and said, Yeah, well, I’m really thankful that you talked me into doing that. You know, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have seen that, you know. So those are one of the things we we we pride ourselves in trying to help customers make those decisions from other mistakes we’ve seen other customers make or ways that we’ve found to do things better and push that advice onto our customers, and that’s why customers, you know, love us and you know come back to us and recommend us.
24:59 And do you think that’s what separates you from the big big companies like ADT and all those companies doing DMs?
25:04 Yeah, I mean well a lot of those companies, you know, they’re they’re all about you know monitoring or or just getting that monthly residual from, you know, it could be an alarm account or whatever. You know, we more look at, you know, okay, what’s your need, and then obviously we we try to do it cheaper and better, you know, and and that’s where you know we point that out to a customer, you know, if you’re paying $60 a month for this and we can do it for $34.95 and give you a better response time and local service and everything, that’s what people oh, okay, okay, why would I want to pay more and then not have local service, right? And I can just deal with a local company here. So a lot of people like to come to us because they can come to one spot and have their security alarm monitoring taken care of, their cell phone service taken care of, their internet service taken care of, you know, their all their services in one spot where we handle everything. And it just becomes a lot easier for the customers, you know, they could say, hey Mike, we got a problem with this and we’re just taking care of it. They’re not on a phone calling 800 number, you know, waiting on hold, getting hung up on, never get the same person back on the line. Those are the complaints we hear all the time. And those are one of the things where I talk about our customer service. If you can do that and and provide that service in your business, you know, um, to where other people don’t in their companies, that sets you apart. And to me, that’s that’s just icing on the cake, and customers love that.
26:26 I agree, customer service is very important. Yeah, everyone wants to feel like special or you know, like they have a voice or something.
26:34 Yeah, like the purpose, yeah. And yeah, if you give them great service, they come back to you.
26:39 Any last words for the people?
26:42 Uh appreciate all the support they’ve always given us for the you know fifty-six years, you know, that we’ve been here and uh uh we’ll continue always to support you. And um anything that you need in the future, please reach out to us and we we’ll be glad to help and and give you the best advice we can.
26:58 Cool. Well if you guys like this video, please comment, like and subscribe. We appreciate you and we’ll see you on the next one.
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