 Casing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Hey there everyone, welcome to Data Movers where we sit down with the most influential men and women of today. I am your host, Jamie Scott-Okataya, founder and CEO of JSA, along with my fabulous co-host, top B2B social influencer and friend, Mr. Evan Christel. Hey everyone, welcome to Data Movers where we sit down with the most influential men and women of today's leading data center and telco innovation, supporting the amazing network infrastructure requirements of this modern world. Jamie, we were just chatting a moment ago about your little one. You're a mother and you have a lovely family. I'm curious, how do you keep everyone safe and healthy at home, particularly with a toddler? What's your advice to new mothers and really everyone for making a safe household? Yeah, it takes a village. As you know, I'm Italian American and so thankfully I was born into a village that appreciates that it takes a village. So my mother and my mother-in-law thankfully always there with wisdom. But I will tell you, we just recently moved because the house that we lived in, really I broke out and head to tow hives. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I honestly, we didn't get it properly tested. I had to break through walls, etc. So I was like, maybe it's easier to just move. But I think it had mold. So you have to listen to your body. You have to listen to your parental intuition and think about your little ones. They're crawling on the rugs and floors. They're in it. They're in it. So if your body's being sensitive to it, for sure, that little toddler is even more sensitive to it. So I didn't take any precautions. I just went on to Zillow and got out of there. So many dangers. I mean, we moved last summer and there's radon. It's like a visible gas. You have to be worried about mold, asbestos. There's all kinds of toxins and crazy stuff to be aware, particularly with like youngsters. So yeah, it's a minefield. Luckily, there's a lot of tech that can help with that. We have like IoT sensors that can detect any leaks or floods. We have air quality sensors that can detect anything from gas leaks to like CO2 leaks to probably scaring everyone right now. It's something to talk about, especially in the fall. We're more indoors and we need to make sure that we're providing healthy environments. And by the way, air quality, as our next guest will illustrate, can actually mean overall performance enhancements. It can give you a leading, cutting, competitive edge. So with that, I am going here on Data Movers, bringing our guests where we dive into their background stories, a little bit of their careers, highs and lows, and unique perspectives on the future of our industry. And I'm so, so thrilled to welcome Mr. Jason Diffuchio. He's a CMO and Product Leader at K&N Global Filtration. Jason, welcome, welcome, my friend. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you, Evan. Thank you, Jamie. Appreciate being here. Yeah, appreciate having you and welcome, Jason. So I was just learning a little bit about K&N on this episode. You go, go way back, right, to like the 50s, which, you know, some of us weren't even around then. But, you know, advancements in filtration technology and the automotive industry have been your forte. Everyone who is a car person will kind of know of your brand. But talk a little bit about the pain points you saw and how they're relevant in our industry, the data center industry, something you don't talk a lot about. You know, it's more speeds and feeds and power and other things, but evidently air quality is a big deal. Well, you know, air quality, your air handler, all of that topic tends to be the type of thing you don't think about until it becomes a problem, right, Jamie? If that's really what caused you to move, then you probably don't spend much time thinking about it until there's a reason to be thinking about it. And that's really where K&N takes its story and turns it into this data center topic. But Evan, like you say, we go back a long, long ways. If you go all the way back more than 50 years, we've been in the filtration game since the very beginning. K&N are actually the initials of our founders, Ken and Norm, who a long time ago were looking, they were motorcycle enthusiasts. They were racers. They raced on dust tracks and dirt tracks off road. And everything else, they just wanted their motorcycle to go faster. Their air cooled motorcycle go faster. And they were looking around for ways they could coax a bit more horsepower out of that air cooled engine. And they arrived at the air filter. And they thought it or they found a media that would both capably filter out the dust because an engine's got to run and breathe and run clean, but a lot more air flow and air flow equals horsepower. And so that's what they did from way, way, way back when is produce an air filter that was capable at filtering out the dust while letting more of the good stuff, that good clean air in and they were very successful as racers. And then they developed a business around it. They then developed a filter that could be reused and washed rather than thrown away, especially, and that was another big boon inside that off road dusty dirt tracky environment. That happened a long, long time ago. And ever since then, the business that they formed K&N is now been in various ways and for various applications in and around the performance automotive market in cars and trucks and SUVs, muscle cars, hyper trucks, power sports, motor sports, been helping out with that exact issue, allowing people to help their engines breathe better with this sort of three forward formula, filter the dust, allow the air to pass through and be washable and reusable. And that's really K&N story up until about three or four years ago. About that time, one of the major hyperscalers in our industry here, data centers, they had a need that was much the same, sounded much the same. They wanted to filter the dust. They wanted better air flow and they wanted something that was washable and reusable. And they actually found their way to K&N if the true story was being told. And with their help to their spec, we built what we now have as a line of industrial and data center air filters. Because the same formula turns out, it works great in an engine and it works really, really well in a data center. And so that's what we sell. We have a washable reusable series of panel and v-bank filters for data centers and other industries. And it provides those same three benefits, just as simple, because again, nobody thinks about their air filters. So we keep it real, real simple, more air, less dust. It's washable and it's reusable. And there's lots of ways that that formula goes together to benefit a business, most especially data center. I just love that. I love that story. And oh, I should tell you guys, if you are watching, not just listening over my shoulder, there is a QR code, go ahead and scan it and you will get right to the K&N site that we're talking about. And on there, there are so many amazing black and white photos of the founders racing their motorcycles all the way up to the present day. You are so known in the automotive world. The race tracks, every race track has K&N all over it. You are the competitive edge to that industry. But whatever data center it was that found you, we are sending them love and kudos, thanks, because every data center needs you guys, especially as we are on this quest to get way more sustainable in our data center, digital infrastructure industry. So tell us a little bit more there. How do your ear filtration solutions really help us get greener? Yeah, sustainability, obviously a major topic for any business and particularly amongst data centers. We would say there's two major ways we contribute to the sustainability or an ESG movement inside a company. First and the largest would simply be the waste stream that a data center contributes to. If we think about the waste stream out of a data center, just even in pounds, their air filters are going to play a very big percentage of the waste stream that makes it to a landfill. A v-bank air filter, maybe three feet by three feet by one foot deep, these are big cubes that have nowhere to go but a landfill. Some may be recycled, but most of them end up in a landfill and they don't go there by the singles or the doubles or even the dozens, they go there by the many thousands. And so when you have a washable and reusable air filter, that waste stream pretty much comes to an end. Nothing's thrown away for 15 years, nothing is thrown away. That major hyperscaler that I alluded to at the beginning, they have successfully been using more than 30,000 of our air filters for over three years and so that's about 90,000 air filters that have not been thrown into a landfill. So your waste stream audit, that's the first and best place to start. That's the most obvious place when you're not throwing something away and you're simply washing it and reusing it. There's a lot of landfill waste that's set aside. That's number one. Number two would be simply the power consumption that's used along the way. So again, three years in use at this hyperscaler, we haven't thrown anything into a landfill number one and each and every day that those filters have been in use, they're more efficient. So less power being consumed is good for the environment. It allows the data center to use that power obviously where they would want it to in a less wasteful way and more towards the service of the center itself. And that contributes two ways. Less power being consumed for the same amount of air being delivered can use less power, number one. And then number two, it's less wear and tear on the air handler itself. You'll simply get more life out of the air handle that you have. We've seen this come through in spades for people in their homes. We sell these filters to residences as well. And so you get more life out of the equipment that you have. And so it's another big, big way we contribute to the sustainability or ESG movement inside of a data center or other company. Just love that. I love that. Fantastic. So sustainability, efficiency, a lot of benefits over single use disposable filters. What about customization? Every data center seems to want something different or unique. Do you do that as well? Absolutely. The magic is really in the filter media and the way that that's constructed and the way that the specs of a particular air handler or data center would want to see that come through, whether they're looking for a free flowing MIRV-8 or they've got a higher standard MIRV-13 or MIRV-14 and really need to filter out the smallest of the particles. We can handle all those various types of applications and requirements. And then, of course, every different air handler has a little bit different size and everything else. But changing the dimension, changing the depth, changing the clip in, drop in nature of them, that's really, really simple. The hardest part is getting that media to be free flowing and yet be capable at filtering out the dirt that they need, they're required. So everything else after that, the customization or tailoring, piece of cake. I just love this. I mean, you're such a storyteller in general. You really put it in layman's terms, but for us non-techies, I get it. I get why this is good for our industry. I get why this is good for our environment. And now it's really a matter of shedding light on this story and educating. Now you and your team are definitely taken to the road. It's a very business conference season, as we all know, crazy fall time. You guys are attending events around the world just to spread the word. Can you tell us where you may be heading next and some sense that you're hearing? Absolutely. So we are sort of rookies yet in this data center space. We've been doing this a long, long time in the automotive world, but we're still getting our feet underneath us on the data center side. And so we enjoy going to these data center shows. Been to a couple this fall here in North America and looking to go around, literally around the globe here in the next coming months. We'll be in Singapore. We'll be in London. We'll be in lots of other places, including China and other spots around the globe. It's been very interesting. I'm also very new to the business. I've only been with K&N for a few months. And so I'm learning by leaps and bounds and getting to see the shows, meet the people, hear the topics of the day and how this particular topic may be a benefit has been a wonderful learning experience for me in a very, very short period of time. You mentioned what topics are we hearing about? I mean, this will come as no surprise. Sustainability and major, major topic, power consumption and carbon offsets also a gigantic topic. And so as I just described, I think our filters have a lot to play in the current world at the current moment. I know there's a lot of work being done around the future of cooling for data centers, immersion, and lots of other really transformational technologies that are out ahead of us. And I'd say I'm excited for those as well. But to all the data center operators that have existing equipment now, as they wait for that technology to both become available and then become frankly usable in their current infrastructure, we have a solution that can help you tomorrow and every day between tomorrow and when these new transformational technologies can come through. So I think there's a lot of very interesting ways for us to take our story to the data center community. And I'm looking forward to meeting more and getting to know the data center community even more and make our story even easier to understand and quicker to pick up. Because I think there is a lot, a lot of ways that our product benefits the data centers of now, in addition to the data centers of the future. Unbelievable. And again, if you guys want to scan there and go right to the filtration site, you'll see that on the road there in seven by 24 exchange fall conference, DCD connect in London, like you mentioned, data center, world Asia, capacity Europe, DCD Virginia, China cloud convention, data center, world Ireland. Again, wherever you are, they are there, I'm sure. So go ahead and scan guys and make sure you set up meetings if you are in the same location. Sorry, Evan over to you. Wow, Jane, that's a lot of places. You need more places, Jamie. But so suppose the data center operators interested in K&N products, I mean, how do they procure them? What's the process work in terms of setting it up, installation, all that kind of good stuff. The the obstacles we're looking to keep the obstacles as small as we possibly can. So the first step, I would say the easiest way to reach us is by by way of that QR code and to sign up for a pilot. We offer a lot of big claims, and I understand that it's easy to make claims like 40% more air efficiency in three to 15 years without landfill waste, everything else. We'd really like to just show that it's real, and we do that by way of a pilot. So we offer a free pilot in most circumstances to try our products out in the data center, particularly those data centers that have rooms dedicated for testing products like this. We'll engineer the right size, inspect to their requirements, and allow them to just drop them right in and see a pre and post test. That's the pilot stage, and we'd encourage anyone to sign on for one of those. The way somebody who does that, just go again to that knglobalfiltration.com website. You'll see lots of places where you can sign on to have someone contact you, and we'll get a pilot ready to go. But that's really the biggest thing. I would encourage anyone who's interested in this to see it for themselves. It's not transformational, it really just works. It's a better mousetrap, and we'd love to really show it and how it can work in their own data facility, in their own environment, because everyone is unique. See what that pre and post, what that benefit can really look like in their own data center. Yeah, and you know what? It also speaks to the type of people over at K&N, because from what I found in you being exemplary here, you have such faith and trust in your product. You put your words where you walk the walk, and we like to see that here in our industry, so thank you. Thank you for saying that. It's easy to do. We've got 50 years of proving it in the toughest automotive applications out there, and so it's really easy for me or anyone at K&N to put our money where our mouth is, as you say, because it's been working for 50 years. It's not new. It's just new to this application. And I wouldn't want to make enemies over at the race car tracks. I feel like they're pretty tough folks, so you have to be strong and tough and have good products with them. There's no jokes around. You know you're a huge NASCAR fan, Jamie. We know you're always there. You know, I'm in that pit changing those tires out. All right, so Jason, let's go ahead and talk about your career a little bit. We always do on data movers, and we're excited to really talk about your own career path, what inspires you, what, how did you even get to your role over at K&N? It's such a great one. Absolutely. I love K&N, though I'm new. I'm a lifelong marketer. I'm a lifelong marketer. I've been in the marketing field for 20, I guess 23 years now, and it's because I enjoy people. I enjoy what makes them tick. I enjoy the problems that they have and how we can best solve them. That's why I love marketing, and I've been doing marketing work in the automotive and power sports fields for pretty much that entire time, all 20, 23 years or so. The majority of that with Polaris Industries. You may know Polaris Industries from snowmobiles or side-by-side off-road vehicles or motorcycles like Indian and others. Wonderful career and a wonderful, wonderful company at Polaris. Most recently, the last three months or so at K&N. As you described at the beginning, everybody knows K&N. It's a wonderful heritage and a brand that people love and a brand that people know. It was a no-brainer to come to work at K&N and pick up not just a legacy of automotive performance, but now to take and diversify a company and take what I love doing, which is meeting people and solving problems into a new vertical, a new industry for this company and really for this company anyway, help chart the future of a new business unit. That's my career in a nutshell. I'll say it. Love it. Awesome. Polaris is really known for innovation, doing things differently. So many products and segments, really cool company. You're only there three months at K&N. So what do you hope to do differently or innovatively at K&N, given your tenure, and how do you encourage innovation within your team? There are so many good people at K&N that have been doing this for a long time. The people around K&N embody that labor of love situation that's out there. They love the brand. They love the products. They love the customer. They love the applications of it. So fostering innovation is really, really easy. For me, I've been able to come in and not coming from outside of the brand anyway. I just like to get to root cause and ask ourselves and ask the teams to think about who really is the customer, what really is their problem. And if we can get our problem statement down, then we can ask a lot of fun questions like what if and so what? What if we were able to solve the problem a different way? And so what? What would it mean for people if we did it that way? And just by asking those three questions, what's the root cause? What if we thought about it differently and so what would they understand it? The ideas are inside the people of K&N, for sure, because they love it and they've been around it for so, so long. It's just a matter of unlocking it and then pushing it forward. I love that. And clearly, that's what you did to get yourselves as leaders in the data center industry too. Big data center came knocking and you were like, you know what? This will apply and we will make you better because of it. And boom, you developed it and now we're bringing it. I mean, that whole thing is just amazing. So, sorry. Okay. We are now at our rapid fire fun fact section of our podcast, which we're really excited about. That's basically, we're going to throw wacky, crazy questions at you that have no topic at all. No beam going on. Just wacky, silly questions. You just say the first thing that comes to mind. You want to kick it off? Yeah. So, Minnesotans love their sports teams. Jay, who's your favorite sports team? Yeah. I bucked the Minnesota trend. I am a lifelong Green Bay Packer fan. Good answer to that one. I feel like the whole state would revolt. All right. And your number one piece of career advice? Career advice. Well, they say it's not what you do, but who you work for. And so my career advice is to be someone that people enjoy working for. Nice. So Midwest nice, isn't it? It's really unlike New York and Boston. Like East Coasters. We got a bad rap. We're nice. We're nice. No, I'm not. No, we're not. But thank you. Anyway, favorite hobby. I'm guessing maybe something to do with four by four or off-roading, but that's just off. Off-roading is right up there. I love photography. I love sports, golf, lots of different hobbies. Nice. My husband does have an Indian motorcycle, just saying. Do you let him ride it anymore? Not since the very day. But very safe, though. Beautiful, beautiful bikes and innovative. Going back to Polaris. Anyway, okay. Favorite place to travel, Jason? Oh, easy. Italy. It starts and ends in Italy. I could spend the rest of my days traveling around Italy. Every now and then we're like, why don't we just move to Italy? Life is better in Italy. I think there are a lot of data centers that need new redesign. I look forward to visiting every single one. Line them up. Yes, I will deliver personally over there. We'll do a tour. And music preferences, genres. What's a you? You know, I listened less to music and more to podcasts these days. It's funny. Good answer, too. I heard there's a good podcast called Data Movers. It's really up there in the rankings. All right. Last question, and really because we're both Italian-American and I'm going to ask. Favorite food was on here? Well, I mean, anything in the Italian genre here, we could go on for days and days, pastas, pizzas. Yes, please. All right. North ends down in Providence. And Gelato, Jamie. Am I right? Gelato? You have not had an experience until you have a chocolate Gelato in Rome. Have a little taste of that. It is life-altering, especially, I don't know, especially as a woman after a baby. What's this little taste business? No, re-scoops. That's it. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Jason. It's great to see that there's so much innovation happening in our industry, in the data center industry, and it's the whole supply chain. People are rethinking their design top to bottom. And you're at the heart of that. So congratulations on your success. Yes. Thank you so much. Appreciate the time and thanks for having me. We so enjoyed every second of this. Thank you. And if you enjoyed viewers and listeners to today's Data Movers podcast as much as we have, please go ahead and check us out, jsa.net slash podcast for more upcoming episodes. And be sure to follow us on X. That sounds vaguely pornographic, but that is what it is. It used to be Twitter. Okay. Twitter on Evan Kirstel and Jascada. Yeah, absolutely. Check us out there. And as always, happy networking.