In this special edition of Coffee Break With Jake, Jake Voll sits down with Rebekah Johnson, co-founder and executive director of Embers of Hope.

Rebekah's story starts in May 2002, when an electrical spark from the outlet behind her headboard set her mattress, and her, on fire. She woke up engulfed, ran out the front door, dropped, and rolled in the grass. Then she ran back inside for her roommates and her pets. She was treated at Shands Burn Unit in Gainesville. What followed is the part most people never hear: years of revisions and skin grafts that don't grow with a child, the social and emotional weight burn-injured kids carry back into a school of 400 classmates, and the life she has since built advocating for arc-fault protectors, working smoke detectors, and residential fire sprinklers. She and her husband, a Florida firefighter, founded Embers of Hope to run a Florida burn camp where kids don't have to wear a hoodie in 85-degree weather to hide their scars.

In this episode, we talk about...

✅ The night Rebekah woke up on fire, what stop-drop-and-roll actually looked like in the moment, and why a practiced plan beats any single product on the wall
✅ The recovery story most people never hear: the social and emotional aftermath, including what life is like for a kid going back to school covered in scars
✅ How a 30-minute transformation happens at Embers of Hope camp, including the boy who took off the do-rag he had worn since his injury and never put it back on
✅ The sixth-grade boy who begged Rebekah to help him get back to school after his district denied medical transport, and how she made it happen
✅ Why the low-battery smoke detector signal central station keeps reporting is a bigger deal than dealers sometimes treat it (Jake includes a confession of his own)
✅ The advocacy fight for arc-fault protectors, residential fire sprinklers, and code changes that prevent these injuries in the first place
✅ The Kidde Commercial partnership: 10% of gross profit on Kidde Commercial sales through SS&Si this year, up to $10,000, matched dollar for dollar by Kidde, all going to Embers of Hope

Learn more about Embers of Hope: https://www.embersofhopefl.org/

Coffee Break With Jake is recorded live every Friday at 11am ET. Join us live or register to attend at https://go.ssandsi.com/coffeebreak

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In this special edition of Coffee Break With Jake, Jake Voll sits down with Manish Dalal, Founder and President of ZKTeco USA, to dig into where biometrics fits in the modern access control stack and why the physical credential is quietly becoming the weakest link on your customer's door.

Manish has been working in biometrics since 1998, starting with the first biometric time and attendance systems in India and building ZKTeco into a global operation with presence in more than 50 countries, 3,500 employees, three manufacturing plants, and a U.S. factory coming online within six months. In this conversation, he and Jake walk through fingerprint, face, and palm vein recognition, unpack the privacy misconceptions that still slow adoption here in the States, and talk honestly about what it actually costs a dealer to bring biometrics to a customer site.

In this episode, we talk about...

✅ Why physical credentials (even encrypted ones) have become a real security risk and the bank-badge-in-the-parking-lot story that makes it obvious
✅ How palm vein works, why it's inherently private, and why you can't spoof it with a photo (or a severed hand)
✅ Why the Amazon One rollout quietly moved palm biometrics into the mainstream
✅ The privacy misconception that's keeping U.S. adoption behind Asia and the Middle East
✅ The TSA PreCheck and Clear analogy Manish uses when enterprise customers push back
✅ What the Houston customer actually did when they replaced 650 card readers with biometric readers across 13,000 employees
✅ Why the cost of a biometric reader is basically the same as a card reader once you look at total cost of ownership
✅ The hidden cost of mobile credentials nobody is calculating (hint: every time an employee gets a new phone)
✅ Why a single password reset costs healthcare $80 to $100 and what that means for the biometrics pitch
✅ Where the door reader is headed: multifunctional devices that handle credential, intercom, visitor QR, and face in one box
✅ Manish's advice to integrators leaning into biometrics: sell on value and total cost of ownership, not price

Coffee Break With Jake is recorded live every Friday at 11am ET. Join us live or register to attend at https://go.ssandsi.com/coffeebreak

Join Jake Voll as he sits down with Lee Odess, globally recognized access control industry analyst, author of The Six Phase Changes Shaping Access Control, and founder of PhySec Collective, to talk about where access control is really headed and what that means for every dealer and integrator selling into this market today.

In this episode, Jake and Lee break down the thesis that has defined Lee's work: the access control industry isn't a $10B security market. It's a $100B enterprise software opportunity hiding inside one. They unpack why that gap exists, where it shows up in real dealer conversations, and what the shift from "security industry" to "enterprise software industry" actually means for how you sell, what you carry, and who you partner with.

In this episode, we talk about...

✅ Why the $10B vs. $100B framing should change how every dealer thinks about their market
✅ The "utility plus" shift — access control isn't just keeping bad people out anymore
✅ Why COVID broke the legacy trust model and what enterprise buyers expect now
✅ The identity shift: from controlling the door to managing who people are and what they can access
✅ Why the value of pure system configuration is going down (and what takes its place)
✅ The "access care" concept — a different lens for thinking about what you sell
✅ Where AI and operational intelligence are creating real value (and where it's still noisy)
✅ Why open platform might be the most overrated buzzword in access control right now
✅ The locksmith opportunity: physical expertise in a software-dominated world
✅ One old truth Lee says the industry needs to stop believing

Coffee Break With Jake is recorded live every Friday at 11am ET. Join us live or register to attend at https://go.ssandsi.com/coffeebreak