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This week's episode of Automation Unplugged is a little different — and a little special. As we wrap up another year, we’re taking time to pause, reflect, and look back on the journey behind the scenes at One Firefly.

In this end-of-year episode, I’m joined by our CFO, Taylor Whipple, for a conversation about the past year — what challenged us, what energized us, and what we learned along the way. 

About this episode:

We talk about:

• Key highlights, milestones, and moments that shaped One Firefly in 2025
• The successes we’re most proud of this past year and the challenges that tested us and helped us grow
• How AI is influencing our business today and what it means for One Firefly as we head into 2026 

SEE ALSO: 2024 in Review: Growth, Challenges, and Vision at One Firefly with Taylor Whipple

Transcript

Ron:

Hello. Hello there. Ron Callis here and welcome to a new episode of Automation Unplugged. And today, right out of the bat, I am joined by partner in crime, Mr. Taylor Whipple.

Taylor:

Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Ron:

So, Taylor, today is our annual wrap up show. You and I have now been doing this show at the end of the year. We're actually recording this, this show Tuesday, December 30th. We're gonna air this show tomorrow, so it's gonna be hot off the press right there on New Year's Eve. I'm sure all of our listeners and folks on YouTube are just gonna be dying to, to tune in to you and I riff on all things One Firefly and marketing and the customers we serve and the custom integration channel. And so, thank you all for tuning in. And Taylor, thank you for joining me here and let's jump right into it. What do you say?

Taylor:

Let's do it.

Ron:

Alright. Uh, Taylor, why don't you go ahead and get yourself introduced just in case any of our listeners don't know or remember who you are.

Taylor:

Yeah, absolutely. So I am the CFO here at One Firefly. Ron and I have been working together for 12 and a half years now, if you can believe that.

Ron:

Are you counting the days Taylor?

Taylor:

No, as we're entering a new year, I have to like do the math and just kind of adjust it for, you know, another, another year gone by. But, yeah, so I've been working with Ron for 12 and a half years. You know, obviously we've grown quite a bit during that time. So as the CFO I'm overseeing not only our, our financial operations of the business, but our general operations and overseeing sales. And helping our other leaders, uh, accomplish their goals here at One Firefly.

Ron:

So Taylor, every year we do this wrap up and kind of give all of our, our listeners kind of a state of One Firefly, and we also give a little bit of a state of Automation Unplugged. You know, this, this podcast, we'll go over some really fun stats from this past year. But at, at a high level, like any personal big wins or accomplishments. And I, I know that's a leading question 'cause I know the answer for you is certainly yes, but do you wanna share some of those big things in your life?

Taylor:

Yeah. So 2025 has been a really big year for myself and my family. Uh, I had lived previously in South Florida, just not too far from Ron for the past, 12 plus years or so. My wife and I moved to just outside of Houston, Texas, this past July. So, moved into a, a brand new big house out here, just past Katy, if you're familiar with this area, Katy, Texas. And a few months later in August, our first child, our son named Grayson was born. And so that, that alone, has really made our year, you know, we just, this cross country move moving while my wife was pregnant, that was also an experience, renting out our home, you know, dealing with some, you know, tenants and being a landlord and, and going through that process. And then, you know, having the birth of our son. So there's a lot going on this past summer and, you know, lots of challenges, but, oh my gosh, so many great news. Tons of blessings all over, lots to be grateful for.

Ron:

Amen. I would say for me, what, what sticks out, is just kind of a big personal highlight. If, if you remember Taylor, and certainly some of our listeners, if you saw me at Lightapalooza last what, January or February, you would've seen me with my arm and a sling because in, on December 23rd, 2024, I, I, had a sports injury, tore my pectoral muscle in my chest. Uh, it was pretty severe and I had surgery on January 9th. So this year for me was really about recovery. And, I've, I've been on this, this really fun fitness journey for several years now. I was a little derailed with that injury. You know, but it's not like things in life don't knock you down. It's really about how you get up. And, and this year I got up and I fought back and, and, you know, regained my fitness. Even at the end of the year, I, for the first time in my adult life, certainly since high school, I started doing races again. So I started joining local 5K races and, I'm, I'm very proud to say, I did a race in Miami and a race in Fort Lauderdale. And in both of those races I got in the top 10 in my age group. Now I'm not out there beating the young whippersnappers in high school, or, you know, in their twenties. But, in my age group, I'm 47, so I was in the 40 to 50-year-old age group. I was able to get to the top 10, and that was, that was pretty cool. I'm right there running speeds that I honestly, a couple of years ago, I would've never thought humanly possible. I was 25 pounds heavier. You know, my body was not in the best of shape. I was beating it up on, on a regular basis, and I just. I took charge, took control back, and, the rest is history. So I'm really enjoying where I'm at physically, my energy levels. I'm, I'm better and more present for my family. I'm better and more present for my team and and ready to, you know, tackle all the opportunities and challenges that is entrepreneurship with this kind of new state of mind. So that's, I'm super proud of that.

Taylor:

It's been really neat to see you go on that journey. Ron, obviously you and I have known each other for quite a, you know, quite some time now. But to see you tackle this new challenge and, to see the effects, you know, on you physically, mentally, it's been really cool and very inspiring. Not only to me, but it's the other members of our team as well. It's been really neat to see.

Ron:

I appreciate that. I've had some people as I've stopped around, you know, been at different shows this year. I've had some people that I don't always even have regular dialogue with, because I'll post a little bit of my personal kind of journey with running and fitness. I'll post a little bit of that on my personal Instagram and people that follow that and they, they're in my feed and they, they say that it's inspired them to, to get back into running or, or losing weight or, or hitting the gym. And so that's, that's been a lot of fun to see the impact that that's had on others. And, it is, it is awesome to be healthy. I can tell you, there's no better way to fly. It's, for me, I've cut, I've cut back probably 95 to 98% of the alcohol in my life. I just, I just don't go to the glass of wine or I don't go to the glass of bourbon. And that's been powerful just in itself. My quality of sleep has gone up. And then my running progression. You know, I'm hitting some speeds personally that I probably have no business hitting as a 47-year-old, you know, middle aged guy. And, uh, it's really neat what the body can do to regenerate and get you back to the levels of fitness if you're willing to put in the work. Not gonna lie, I hurt a little bit more, maybe a lot more every morning when I get outta bed than I remember as a youth. But, it's, it's a lot of fun. All right. People don't wanna hear about that stuff. Let's dig in or any more about that stuff. Let's dig into some of these other details. I'll kinda riff a little bit at a high level, and then you, you add, add your context here.

Taylor:

Yeah, let's do it.

Ron:

So, at the beginning of this year, 2025, we, One Firefly had already made some decisions around kind of moving more back into a phase of innovation, being of the utmost importance in our business. A lot of that, of course, was inspired with AI and the changes happening in the world. And so we hired, we had put out an open rec and ultimately hired Jessica Mott. She joined us as our Innovation Manager there in Q1. She's just doing a stellar job in that role. She works very closely with you and me and she with Cameron on, on our team and just helping really move it to the next level. Our focus on product development, product management, overall organization, AI implementation across the company. And then in March, we launched our Amplify People website. Uh, for those that are listening to this podcast, that's amppeople.com, A-M-P-P-E-O-P-L-E.com. That's our dedicated website for our, our hiring services business. That business. Maybe. Taylor, do you wanna, at a high level, do you wanna just speak to kind of what's the growth of Amp People look like over the past year?

Taylor:

A hundred percent. So, you know, that, obviously it's been a new business unit for us. We've grown though significantly, 116% year over year. So very proud of what our team's accomplished. We're helping more and more integrators with their recruiting support and hiring needs. And we've got just, you know, tremendous amount of success stories. And it's awesome to hear, you know, once you know a candidate has been placed and just how well they're doing and how they're integrating into the culture and just really, really proud of Amplify People.

Ron:

Yeah, I completely agree. Sam and Andrew and the team over there are just doing a fantastic job. And then in August we were super excited and I'm actually gonna state, I think, pretty surprised that we made the Inc. 5000 for our sixth time in a row. Why, why were we so surprised? Taylor?

Taylor:

You know, obviously as you continue to grow, it's difficult to maintain that sort of same growth pace or trajectory as you get bigger and larger as an organization. And so we had seen our rate of growth slow down a bit, and so we thought that, you know, maybe that we would be right on the edge or maybe just missing out on the list, you know, based on last year's results. But we were pleasantly surprised to see that we were included. Albeit, or granted, our ranking has dropped a little bit from what it was in previous years.

Ron:

Ever closer to that 5000.

Taylor:

Yeah. But to do it six consecutive times is really, truly special. I mean, it's a very fraction of a, you know, percent of, you know, the companies that are able to sustain that pace. Again, I think just speaks to the team and, just how well we've done over these last, really six years now and all the hard work that team's put in.

Ron:

Yeah, I, I completely agree. All throughout this year, 2025, we've been doing product development. In September we launched our LuxePost product. That's our direct mail, the modern approach to direct mail. That's been very well received. And, we have active campaigns going on across the country with clients. And then in September, we launched ConciergeIQ. That is our approach. Basically our upgrade from our live chat service known and beloved across the country, known as Lead Concierge and ConciergeIQ blends really a lot of modern technology and it's a modern tech stack that gives us AI capabilities. So now that service is live on client sites offering 24/7 support and customer service, and it's helping our clients capture lead generation, deliver great customer support, and, it's able to tie directly into APIs through client CRMs. So it's just, it's faster, stronger. It's smarter, it's a really neat solution and we're continuing to launch more and more clients to get all of our pilot clients live, and then we'll be ramping up that execution in 2026. But that's a very exciting product. I think the first of many, you know, AI innovations that will, One Firefly will be bringing to market. And then in November we, we expanded some of our in-house tooling around the way that we serve our clients with SEO services. So that's more of a product management refinement of SEO. But, maybe Taylor, just at a high level, if you could, you know, give context to, you know, pre 2024, what role did quote air quotes SEO have in our business model versus, you know, over the past 24 months? What's, what sort of impact has it had both on us and our customers?

Taylor:

Yeah, a hundred percent. I would say, you know, certainly pre 2024, a lot of the content that we were doing and developing for our clients, it did have a sort of residual SEO value. But it certainly wasn't the primary focus. So when we initially launched the service last year in 2024, we, we definitely struck a chord. For sure, both in terms I'd say of demand and interest with the product. And then, also in terms of the results that we started to see as well, once the product got launched and off the ground. Now today, this is actually our fastest growing part of our business right now, and represents about 155% year over year growth within that category. So continuing to see really strong results. A lot of integrators, raising their hands, knowing that this is gonna be an important part of their marketing strategy for years to come.

Ron:

Yeah. Today is, like we said at the beginning of the show, today's Tuesday, December 30th. I was just on the phone or just in a video conference with a Lutron dealer out of, the west coast outta California. The whole conversation we were on for 90 minutes, and they were talking about the way that their business is showing up, or should I say, not showing up in both traditional search. But then a lot of our conversation was about how are they showing up in Gemini searches? How are they showing up in ChatGPT searches? And,it's, it's awesome. And I'm very proud of the team at One Firefly and the hard work we put in, not only back in 24 when we launched this, but the continual cycle of innovation, of modifying and retooling that product to make sure that we're making our clients as visible as as possible and or within their willingness to invest in making their business and their brand visible for online search. So, I'm excited. You know, as we cast vision into 26 and beyond, I had this suspicion the Internet's not going away. I have a suspicion AI is gonna become more and more important in all of our lives. And so for all of the small businesses out there, including our own, us controlling the narrative of how we show up in traditional search and AI search, I think it's gonna continue to stay very relevant. And that's fun when you're the provider and the inventor of those types of services to serve your clients. I think we're in a really neat spot. So I'm excited to see where, where we go with that. At high, high level, Taylor for, you know, year over year, we're, you and I are, are known as fairly transparent, maybe completely transparent, both with our team and our industry about the state of the business, what's going well, what's not going well, year over year growth revenue. One Firefly's been this, I don't know, awesome growth story particularly, you know, if we go back to late 2015 when you and I made that pivot to stop doing engineering, stop doing programming, and to double down squarely in the marketing space, for technology contracting businesses, how does this past year, from your perspective, rank against, all of those years of growth?

Taylor:

Well, it was certainly the most challenging as it relates to revenue growth in particular, as you mentioned, Ron, you know, in those early years where we were seeing this sort of 30 to 40% year over year growth, super aggressive, super, you know, up into the right type of trajectory. This past year was much, was much more meager, much flat. We might end up a few percentage points up. Now when it doesn't sound great in theory. We obviously are very ambitious in terms of our goals. We always want to be growing. That's what we always strive to do, but when we start to put that into context and we look at other, you know, industry benchmarks, particularly within the other marketing agencies that are out there. Most of them are actually down this past year. This was a year.

Ron:

Now, how do we know that? Is that a subjective, like you think they're down or do you, do you know they're down? Like where, what is that based on?

Taylor:

Yeah, so this is based on, so you know, Ron and I are, are part of a, a number of different, agency masterminds where other agency, marketing agency owners and business leaders are meeting regularly to kind of exchange best practices, kind of what they're seeing, talk about, you know, what the market looks like, how they're operating their business, et cetera. And I would say almost all of them are flat to down this past year. Now, this past year was fraught with challenges. I know we're gonna talk about that in general and what that means economically. But for agencies in particular, it was a very tough year. So kind of with that in mind, to be sort of flat, all things considered, you know, wasn't that bad, obviously doesn't, doesn't really help when we have ambitious growth goals that we're trying to achieve. So if anything though, it's, it will just help us, you know, learn some lessons and retool and prepare for next year.

Ron:

Yeah, I agree. I think it comes down to, a detail about One Firefly, we practice EOS traction, EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system. For those of you that haven't read it, strongly recommend reading the book, Traction by Gino Wickman. And in the EOS methodology, we, I circle up with my executive team every quarter and we plan out, you know, the quarter ahead. We, in December, we actually gather and do annual planning. So we're planning out the year ahead. So for example, just a couple of weeks ago, Taylor and our, our full executive team, we all circled up, uh, here in South Florida, and we're designing our game plan for the year ahead in 2026. We did not enter 2025 planning a hard year, planning a flat year. But that's one of the keys I would say the keys to success in, in having a great executive team and, and having a planning regimen is that, as you know, if we all remember back to the beginning of this year, right out of the gate, it took off like a rocket and then the tariffs and the threat of the tariffs hit and, you know, the whole world trembled, including some of our clients, which meant some of that rolled downhill to us.

Taylor:

It’s that old adage, like, everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face. That sort of thing. It's very similar.

Ron:

A quote from Mike Tyson. Yeah. Everyone has a plan to get punched in the face. So we had a plan and then we got punched in the face. And, I'll just say at a high level, super proud of our executive team and all of our, our leaders and staff at One Firefly, because although we may have lost it in certain categories, and a big example, and I won't name any names, is, a growing part of our business at One Firefly was our programs with manufacturers, a lot of manufacturers pulled back, right where they had made commitments verbally, you know, committed, ready to, to roll forward into 25 with spends and programs to invest in their dealers. And, a good number of those manufacturers, changed suit and that resulted in us needing to pivot, right? Because they were, they were considerable dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars of planned revenue. Coming in from those channels. And when that, you know, that faucet got shut off, we dialed in and ultimately put together game plans. Not guaranteed they would work, but we put together, you know, strategies to help us execute growth for the year. So I would just say net in the end, us ending the year still with growth, growth over 24. I'm proud of that. And now what did we do? We came outta planning and now we're planning growth for next year. So that's just the name of the game folks. You get punched in the face, just know everybody gets punched in the face. It's not if you're gonna get punched, it's what you do when you get punched. That's right. And you just focus on the prize and, and go get it. And that's, that's certainly what we did. In terms of, you know, the biggest successes from 25, Taylor, what sticks out to you?

Taylor:

Yeah, the first one, I kind of alluded to it earlier, but it's gotta be SEO. I mean, again, we continue to see that growing 155% year over year. More and more, you know, dealers are signing up, seeing more and more success in terms of the, you know, the actual results of those campaigns. It's really been fantastic for us, especially considering it's still such a new service for us only having formally launched, back in 2024. So that was absolutely my top one for the year of 2025.

Ron:

And what was the biggest challenge? Like, could you put, is it the tariffs? Is that what we're gonna say?

Taylor:

I’m just gonna encapsulate that into say, you know, the economic uncertainty, particularly the, you know, in Q1, I would say of this past year, you know, obviously from a CFO perspective, we, you know, love our forecast, we love our spreadsheets and a lot of that uncertainty just sort of nuked a lot of what had been forecasted at the time. You mentioned, Ron, you know, manufacturers pulling back their marketing campaigns and programs because of the result of tariffs and just the uncertainty in general of not knowing how things were gonna shake out. Yeah, and just being more conservative there, obviously that had an effect and let's say this general uncertainty. We also saw it as well on the, on the dealer level too. Just some folks, again, kind of not knowing when and where to invest and just being a little bit more cautious. At times. And certainly that had a major effect. And so, you know, that's affected our ability to plan in terms of what we forecast from a sales and expense standpoint. Again, we're trying to hit our ambitious growth goals. But I would say that was the, the biggest challenge, the silver lining there, and you again had kind of alluded to it earlier, Ron, is that I think that we as an organization and as a leadership team have learned a lot of lessons on how to plan for the future in times of uncertainty when you have all this additional, unknowns out there that some, some you can't control, a lot, that you cannot. Economic factors, government factors, things of that nature. We've started to sharpen the blade a little bit in terms of what we can control, and knowing that, all right, we've got some contingency planning in place, if things do go south, well, how can we make the best decision forward to make sure that we're supporting our, our dealers, supporting our team, and, you know, ultimately trying to, to support our ability to hit those goals as well.

Ron:

There was a takeaway from our annual planning just a few weeks ago. We have a wonderful EOS implementer Caesar from The Profit Recipe based outta Miami, and he, you know, heard some of our challenges, you know, from, our discussions and dialogue. And he just, he brought up this concept that sometimes when we are planning our business or planning for things to happen, we underestimate the time period that it takes to build or implement a foundation. And we under, we maybe overestimate how quickly the positive impact from a change will be. And so an example could be you launch a new product, maybe you expect too much revenue and, and if you're wrong, then it throws off your forecast. Or if you hire new salespeople, you could expect them to make a bigger impact than is probably realistic. And so just within that theme as we enter into 2026 and we just, we left our planning sessions, what stuck with you from that conversation? Kind of the concept of build versus harvesting the fruit from the tree. Certainly how we design our year ahead.

Taylor:

Yeah. Certainly the first thing that comes to mind is just being a bit more conservative, with our goals. Still pushing ourselves, you know, stretching ourselves when necessary. But like you said, Ron, we want to forecast in a way that if we, you know, don't accomplish this or we miss it, let's say somewhat significantly, it doesn't all of a sudden just nuke our whole year or, you know, the quarter or whatever time period we're measuring it. So just being a bit more conservative, that approach. And then also looking at contingency planning as well. So looking at, are there other areas of the business of like, let's say one, a particular part of sales or, you know, what have you might be, let's say, lower than expected. Are there things that we could do to kind of counteract or combat that to give us the best possible chance to, to hit that? Again, we don't know. We can always predict the future, but we can't predict how we, you know, respond to things when they come up. So that, those were, I'd say, be some of my main takeaways.

Ron:

Yeah. Well, so, we did end 25 launch. For those that are listening, what's on the screen is, is some of the artwork from some of the press releases around some of our products. So we, we did launch, from a product development standpoint and, and we differentiate for all those listening, product development from product management. Product development means we're, we're either inventing something from scratch that we've never offered, or it's a full stack rebuild. And so for us, LuxePost was, a from scratch product, actually born out of request and demand from our clients who were, you know, some of our clients were realizing some success from direct mail and they said we'd prefer to do it with One Firefly. And then, ConciergeIQ was, just an opportunity for us to fatten all of the critique and clients because that product's been out there for almost nine years. And we had received, I mean, it's a beloved product, like churn clients leaving that service is very low. But yet at the same time, there, there was consistent drumbeat of people saying, I wish it did this, I wish it did that. And then of course, technology has advanced significantly since we initially launched that product. And so, I think everybody listening, certainly if you're, tuned in and, and watching us or listening, I hope you're out there playing with AI and, and realizing what's possible. And, I think it's nothing short of awesome. What's possible for you personally and professionally using utilizing AI. And for us, something became very clear, and that is if, if we were to train, I'm gonna use a fancy term, a knowledge base, call it a brain on everything about your business, who you are, who you serve, the solutions and services you offer, the markets that you, you wanna do work in, the geographies where you wanna do work in, the brands that you represent, how you want to treat inquiries, like what is a lead, what is a customer service request? Uh, all of that, those things, like I just, I just said a lot of words and ideas there. If you were to capture all of that into a brain and then have the ability to serve that to visitors on your website instantaneously, and if and when a customer wanted to bypass that and go to a human and still talk to a human, that then would have access to all that knowledge in that brain. And what I just described is ConciergeIQ. And we think, although it's not common today to see these agents on websites, we predict it will become common. And so we like to get our hands dirty, dig in, invent, innovate, and uh, and that's what we've done. We've actually spent the last year and a half on ConciergeIQ and now we're, we've been rolling that out slowly this fall. two products I'm very excited about. I think they're gonna make a real impact for our clients. And, I don't know, Taylor, I'm riffing a bit just on those two products. Of course, we have other things in the works. Anything jump to mind for you?

Taylor:

Yeah. You know, having been involved with the previous product of Lead Concierge back in its launch in I think 2016, it's really neat to see just how far it's come and just how truly, you know, much more capable this service is going to be in, in helping our, to serve our, our clients. Like, it's pretty neat to see that it's, the growth has been exponential in terms of its capabilities and I'm really excited to see more and more, you know, dealers sign up for that.

Ron:

I completely agree. All right, so we, we had already commented, so we stole our thunder a little bit. We did get our sixth consecutive Inc. 5000 here in 25, but this was another neat one. I'm even gonna say it was under the radar, but we were nominated, One Firefly was, to a program called Grow Florida, which was, their effort was to identify the best air quote, the best small businesses in Florida, the state of Florida. And I'm super, proud to inform everyone that maybe didn't know One Firefly won. We were actually awarded one of the top 50 businesses, which is the category. There is no number one, so it's just the top 50 get recognized as, companies to watch, Grow Florida companies to watch, you know, celebrating second stage entrepreneurs. I don't remember the exact number, but I think the business has to be doing maybe more than a million dollars in revenue or something like that. And, we were competing against, you know, hundreds and hundreds of businesses up and down the state. And, Kendall and Rebecca and I went to a ceremony. And, we're able to receive that recognition and it was, it was super cool. So it's, it's just a badge, you know, it, it may not mean much to, to many people out there in the wild, but as anyone that's ever heard me talk about it, if you win something or gain a certification, it only means something if you talk about it. And so we're proud of it to be recognized in this way. You know, running a growing business now, we're going on 18 years, and to have many of those years is strong growth years. Anyone listening that is running a business, you know, that's not easy. You know, and I always say business would be easy if it wasn't for all the people, both your team and your customers. But, you have, we have a large team and we have a large customer base, which means there's always a lot going on. So, means a lot to me to be recognized in this. You know, what, what are your thoughts on, on the Grow Florida.

Taylor:

You know, it's really cool anytime that we're able to be recognized for these types of awards. We obviously don't do it to chase awards. We don't, we're not in this, you know, for the badge or for the, the accolades. We're, you know, first and foremost, obviously speaking for you as well, Ron, like just trying to build a great company to serve our clients, to serve our employees, like just in general to serve, you know, humanity in general. And but to be recognized in the, the pursuit of doing that is, also special as well. So I'm just, again, kudos to the team and all their hard work. They’re the ones that really, truly deserve and earn it.

Ron:

Amen. That's, it was super cool to be recognized. Now we, so I guess there's this, this slide, for our listeners. I've got a slide that says Embrace innovation. This is a reference to our team event. So One Firefly, since we became a virtual company that started in 2016. We have always had an annual all staff event. Now, I wanna say in 2016, I think there were 12 of us at that meeting or at that event. And we, we did that down at, I think it was Nova University down in Plantation or Davie, Florida.

Taylor:

Davie, Florida. That's it.

Ron:

And, we just this past summer had our, all staff, our latest all staff event. We tried to pick a different location. This year we held our all staff event, in Carmel, Indiana. And we flew our team in, everybody that was willing to attend. From throughout the United States. We have folks, throughout South America, we have, some folks in Europe. We flew everybody in and, we themed the event, embrace innovation. All of our programming over those three days was around, embracing innovation. And, high level, I'm gonna say it was our most successful event yet, we've done these events all over the country. Even a few years ago, we did it down in Cancun, Mexico or just north of Cancun, Mexico. And, high level, what was your takeaway from the team event this year?

Taylor:

It was absolutely, I'd say, our best event ever. I would say Indianapolis surprised many of us, including myself. You know, you, you never kind of know, how it's gonna go when you pick a particular city and how it's gonna be received by the team. But, you know, just a boy, it was a great place. Uh, in particular great two great activities planned. Everything was in, you know, logistically went off without a hitch, which again, if you can imagine with 60 plus people in attendance, things can absolutely go wrong. So kudos again to our People Operations team for planning. This is such a great event and for everyone participating, it was really neat.

Ron:

T, we have at One Firefly an ENPS score of 78, and that's, that's on this slide, so that's why I'm reading it. What, what does that mean and, and why should folks care?

Taylor:

Right. So most folks have probably heard of an NPS score, so that's a common scoring methodology that businesses use. And they ask, the sort of standard question is you know, would you recommend, how likely would you recommend, this company or these services to a friend or a colleague, right? And so, generally speaking, that's on a, you know, minus 100 to 100 scale. And so we have taken that same approach, but for our internal staff, right? So all of our employees who work here. So we're asking them, how likely would you be to recommend One Firefly as a place to work to a friend or a colleague? And we're soliciting that feedback anonymously every quarter from every member of our team. And they're giving us very honest feedback. And it's something that we measure, again on a quarterly basis to see where, you know, we have room to improve, where we can grow, et cetera. And as you can see here, our score, average score from this past year of 78 is, really quite, quite high. If you benchmark this, this score against other scores from, you know, even, major corporations who have lots of different benefits than you kind of hear of the Googles, the Apples and things of that nature. Many of them are well below where we're at. And we're obviously far from perfect. We have our, you know, areas to improve. But again, I think it's very something we're, I'd say, me personally, something I'm most proud of, or at least one of the things that I'm most proud of, of working here is the type of culture that we build and the type of team members that we hire and bring on as well.

Ron:

Yeah, and I would highlight really around this concept, the elephant in the room is AI. And as we, as a business, and, probably many of you listening as a business are incorporating the use of AI into workflows and even the concept of adding, you know, the, the terminology is adding AI team members or agents into your workforce? We really believe we practice the idea that the humans on our team are irreplaceable. Meaning that, you know, the humans, the human element, you know, the reality that our clients, when we work with them, they get to work with humans. They're not working with a robot. They get to work with humans that care about them, that, that, you know, have empathy for their situation that are, living their own lives like we all are trying to take care of our families and take care of our friends and live our life and not just have everything be about work. That's really first and foremost here at One Firefly. So, and at the same time, we're driving agendas around technology and the use of technology, improving our tech stack, and improving our use and utilization of tools so that we deliver better products and services for our clients. Like I feel, and, and Taylor, I'm curious. I'm not curious. I know you and I are in agreement. You know, it's necessary for us to adapt and adopt these technologies if we're gonna remain competitive in this new normal where AI is front and center and frankly vying and coming for, all of the white collar knowledge workers on planet Earth. It's not just marketing agencies. It's, it's all, all knowledge workers. The difference maker then for business is not gonna be necessarily about tech stack. It's gonna be about the people on your team. And the experience that they deliver to each other, and ultimately to the customers that they serve. And so it's for that reason that we care so deeply about our team and helping make sure that they're growing and their knowledge, their careers, their opportunities. Because at the end of the day, if they're happy and satisfied, they're gonna deliver better care for our clients. And that's why we invest in an all staff event. It's why we do the things we do for our team. And, uh, you know, and we're fighting, we're fighting the fight. Like all of you, you know, the fight to, to maintain humanity while at the same time these, these technologies are advancing at lightspeed. I won't even promise we have it all figured out. I'm pretty confident we don't have it all figured out, but I know that we, it feels accurate and it feels appropriate that if we maintain a focus on our people, that a lot of things will figure themselves out. And that's, that's at least how we're running One Firefly. So, Taylor, what do you, what are your thoughts around that?

Taylor:

I think it's very well said. I think the word that comes to mind for me is balance. You know, trying to balance out these new technologies, everything that they're, that's coming out, with a, and not losing that, that human component with both, with our, our staff in particular and how we treat our employees, but also the, how we treat our clients and the experience that they are delivering. You know, that cannot be, substituted with a, with, with a bot or an agent, right? There are some things that are just irreplaceable when it comes to that, that sort of human to human connection. So, yeah, it's striking that balance. And like you said, Ron, it's not always easy, but I think we're learning as much as we can about it and, you know, trying things and, and certainly doing our best.

Ron:

I agree. We did a, speaking of taking care of our team, just at a super high level, we send our team to a lot of different trainings, cross disciplinary trainings, depending on the department or area within One Firefly. Just this past year, 2025, we had Keith from HTSA, world class trainer. Many of you out there maybe have had Keith come into your organization, at least if you're in the HTSA space. That's true. Well, Keith's been a regular trainer with Team One Firefly, both in person and virtually. He's wonderful. Uh, at our team event, we had the fortune of having the leaders from both Premier Group and TRIPhase, both to Carmel, and Indianapolis based integrators come speak to our entire team and then allow us to come to their space to tour their facilities, experience their hospitality and graciousness to have us in there. And, it was just awesome, real world experience for our team. We went out to the MAICON Conference. That's an AI conference held in Cleveland. I go every year. It was my third year attending. I bring five, four additional members of our team, cross-disciplinary members of our team, to that conference. And, Taylor, you've been, a couple years ago, you went out to MAICON, it's awesome. Those folks from MAICON also have a great AI podcast. I highly recommend. We sent team to Zoholics. That's to build up our, our CRM skills, both for ourselves, and we also do some consulting for clients around Zoho. Social Media Marketing World, to sharpen our marketing blade, Content Jam, our friend Andy Crestodina at Orbit Media puts that conference on in, Chicago. AI training modules, both virtual and we've also built out, maybe it's a good opportunity to give Jessica Mott on our team a shout out. She's been building out an AI whole curriculum for our team that lives in our LMS system inside of Zoho Learn that, all of our team go through to, to build up everyone's capabilities. 100%. Folks, it's not like, you know, Taylor and me and a handful of select people are learning this. It's 100% uniform. It's that adage that, if, if I train up people, they might leave me. Well, we operate on the other side. Well, if I don't train them up, they might stay. And so we absolutely train up our people to make sure they're as sharp as can be so they can deliver, at the end of the day at a higher level and take better care of all of you. That's why we do it. And then we of course, fund all of our team, what are called professional development funds, just a company funded budget. Taylor, I actually don't remember. Is this based on tenure at One Firefly or is it a flat fee or how, how has it historically worked?

Taylor:

Yeah, so it is based on tenure. Yep. And so the longer that someone's with us, the, the more that they're able to, utilize in that sense. And yeah. So Ron, the overall theme I'd say that you're seeing here is just, how can we facilitate, enable our team to have continual improvement, improve their skill sets, help improve our products, help improve our services? Obviously with marketing in particular, and also even for recruiting from an Amplify People side, things are constantly evolving. We never wanna rest on our laurels. We always wanna, you know, skate to where the puck is going, so to speak. So trying to stay ahead of the curve.

Ron:

Love it. One Firefly, one of the benefits of a growing profitable company is that the company generates profit and through that profit we like to give back. So one of the this is actually on the screen, just a couple of the activities there. There's actually dozens and, I'll describe kind of how we go about that, of entities that we donate money to, both as a company and as individuals. But First Robotics, we, One Firefly are, are one of the, the big, corporate sponsors behind the First Robotics program, at least the regional event in South Florida. So on the screen, is a picture of myself and my son delivering a big check, to the, the event, the First Manager for the state of Florida, Sandra. And then, at our team events, our all staff events, we always wrap a, give back event. And, Taylor, I dunno if you wanna speak to what we did in August or at our team event, for Rise Against Hunger.

Taylor:

Yeah. So, for Rise Against Hunger, we had our team traveled to a local warehouse where we were helping to assemble food packs. For, families in need. So these are ultimately distributed across the country, across the world, actually, from Rise Against Hunger. So if you think we're all in sort of assembly line style, one person is, is packing and one of the person's putting the food another's, you know, sealing it, putting a sticker on it, measuring it, boxing it, et cetera, all different.

Ron:

Was it competitive? Taylor? Were the lines competing?

Taylor:

You know, if it's One Firefly, it's competitive. We have a very, you know, uh, ambitious group of, employees and team members. So it was a lot of fun. You heard,different, you know, songs and chants and stuff like that. And, no shortage of, you know, trash talk and you know, just friendly rivalry going on there. It was a lot of fun.

Ron:

Yeah. And, it, you know, for any Jason Sayen fans out there, Jason's obviously one of our industry’s awesome trainers and coaches around process. There was, Jason would've been so proud and I haven't talked to him, so I don't know if this message will get back to him. I'll be curious if he ever brings it up. But in our lines, you know, one person, everybody had a job. Yeah. You know, someone's doing the corn, someone's doing the oat, someone's doing the rice, someone's doing the beans. And our line, at our table, for example, was getting backed up at one station and everybody was kind of, you know, razzing that section. And, my son, who participated, Max, he was up there. He was initially part of the problem in that area. And then he spoke up and he said, well, why don't we move this person over there, do this, stir this around. And he reorganized that section of the assembly line and all of a sudden the whole line started producing two x the volume. And that was just a neat lesson. It was a neat lesson for him. It was a neat lesson for everyone in that experience. 'cause they saw just very minor tweaks in a process can have significant output changes.

Taylor:

Yeah.

Ron:

And it was just, I don't, I don't know, Taylor in your line if you experienced similar bottlenecks and solves.

Taylor:

We absolutely did. And the other thing that I'd say that struck me is that we had no shortage of people willing to step in and help if a particular part of that assembly line got backed up. So everybody was willing to kind of raise their hand, like, let me do this, let me step in, let, let's trade for a minute. I have an idea of how to do that. A lot of that just happened organically too. Yeah. So it's a really neat team building opportunity, for anybody listening as well. I mean, if you wanna, you know, there's certainly value in bringing your team, outside this sort of work. You know, day to day and having them accomplish a task and work together on that task. And you're gonna be really surprised, I'd say, with some of the, the trust building and some of the, you know, the, just the team building dynamics that arise from putting them in those situations. And obviously the, the theme of giving back to, with certainly a contributing factor as well.

Ron:

Well said, well said. All right, just a few more slides, folks, and, a few more topics here. One Firefly was super busy this year, we attended 12 industry events. So I'll just, I'll give a high level concept here. So we, One Firefly always talk about a business should invest a percentage of their target revenue into marketing. And One Firefly has, you know, over the years we've invested anywhere from five to 7% of revenue into marketing. And, and for many integrators listening, we're generally recommending two to 5%. If you're over a million dollars in revenue, right? If you're under a million dollars, it might need to be more than that. And so just to put our money where our mouth is, you know, we're generally in that five to 7% range. And one of the ways that we then deploy that capital, not all of it, but some of it is by attending events. And so whether it's CEDIA or Lightapalooza or buying group events, I'll just, I mean, I'll just state the obvious. It's expensive to do all of that and to be in all those places. And if you think about all the people that we send and they're away from their families, and the flights and the hotels and the food, and the, you know, it, adds up. But that said, 2025 was, one of our busiest years for events. I just wanna dig deeper there. 2025 was hard. So what did we do? We did more. So the idea for us and for all of you is when things are hard, do you pull back? Or when things are hard, do you lean forward? And so what, One Firefly chose to do was to lean forward and be more active to combat some of these economic factors that were simply outside of our control. And that's a choice that we made. And it's a choice that all of you can always make. And I just, I wanted to remind you all of that because it's a common knee jerk reaction to when times get tough to pull back and kind of turtle up and, and, you know, hide back in your shell or your foxhole. And I would challenge that. That's not the way to take new ground and that's not the way to become the market leader. In terms of other activities, we did 11 corporate programs. These are manufacturers that we partnered with. So although some of their budgets did pull back a little bit, we still pushed the pedal down and maintained our partnerships and collaborations. And we hosted the most number of webinars we've ever held. We did 13 webinars in 25, and although the stats not on the screen, we had, a couple of thousand people, register and ultimately attend those webinars. It was our most successful year for a webinar. Rebecca and Kendall and Melanie and all of our staff involved with that. They just did a spectacular job. It is hard work people to put all that content together. We pride ourselves on our content always being original and unique and up to date. And to do that, you have to invest in the time, money, and energy to make that true. And we did that and it was, it was very cool. I’m just gonna rapid fire here. Automation Unplugged, the show that you're listening to or you're watching. 2025 was a spectacular year, and we, I had, we had Allison join us. Allison's my Executive Assistant. She joined Rebecca and, and our awesome production team. And, Allison really helped us take it up a notch in terms of organization managing me and my time. That's easier said than done, and, we put out 52 episodes, and for those of you counting there are 52 weeks in a year. So we put out a show every week of the year in 2025. I want to say that might be the first time we've done that. Rebecca will fact check me later, but it's gotta be one of the highest we've ever done and we just had industry all stars all the time on the show. And, I just wanna say thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you. If you've been on the show. Thank you for doing that. Uh, the reason we do Automation Unplugged is to give back. If you have been paying close attention, you'll notice in the app, if you're looking at Spotify or in the Apple Podcast, we now color code our shows. Orange is a show that has an industry expert, and that's usually where I'm the host. Green is a marketing show and we do one marketing show a month, and education is blue. Blue means we're repurposing a webinar that we've probably done with a vendor or we've done around some,education theme. So when you're tuning in, you can always zoom in on the type of content that you want, but the content really is for you. So if you are not regularly, regularly listening, that's a hard word to say. Tune in and or tell your friends about it. And, it's always fun for me to go out to an industry event and have someone come up to me that I never in a million years thought was a listener, and they tell me what a positive impact listening to their peers on Automation Unplugged has had on their business. And that's, always a delight. Here's some of the awesome stats, and this goes to our marketing team at One Firefly. Automation Unplugged had 59% more downloads in 2025, 71% more unique listeners and get this folks on YouTube. 549% increase in watch time. For those of you that prefer to watch the full interview. We do record every interview with, you know, great video. So if you prefer to watch that, we have that format for you. Just really, really neat stats and, I want to say, it looks like we did not make it onto the slide, but you certainly can go, check out your Apple, Apple podcast or your Spotify, you know, search for Automation Unplugged. Tune into the show, subscribe, go to YouTube, follow the show. That way you don't miss any of those interviews. They come out every week. Now, the 800 pound gorilla, the elephant in the room is like, what is the role of AI in our world and where are we headed? And, Taylor, do you have that million dollar answer?

Taylor:

You know, if I did, I think, I might be, you know, somewhere else. Who knows? II think for my perspective, certainly I think, kinda like we spoke about, it's, we're gonna see continual integration with AI and AI literacy across all of our team members, all of our solutions, while not sacrificing, again, the human component. Certainly not from a client experience standpoint, you know, putting a lot of stock in that and, you know, in relationships and what they, and what they mean specifically. I mean, we are a relationship based business, with our clients. And so that, that is certainly not,lost on us at all. But we want integrate more and more of this technology to serve our clients better, to make their campaigns more effective, to empower our teams with more tools and capabilities so that they're able to deliver more value to our clients as well.

Ron:

I agree. And one thing that folks that, uh, may recall back in 23 and in 24 One Firefly took more of a leader role in teaching and educating around AI, kind of how to think about it, the role that it's gonna have in our lives and our businesses. And in 25 we took a bit of a step back, I would just say publicly, a bit of a step back. Within One Firefly we were pedal to the metal, right? We were, you know, we had fully pressed down on the, on the gas pedal in upgrading our teams skills and developing AI team members and agents. And that work, if, if anything is accelerating it, even it, it probably further was accelerated after our team event and a lot of our face-to-face programming around innovation, product development and really our team understanding. The why, and then understanding what's possible, right? There's a process in this, this genre called change management, where you're changing hearts and minds, where if you just shove it down people's throats, they're gonna choke and they're not gonna be happy, and they're not gonna necessarily achieve the outcomes that you know are possible. And, and I would even go as far as to say in the very beginning, back in 23, that's we did some of that wrong at One Firefly, at least internally. And I think we've learned a great deal in 24, and we're really been accelerating through 25 in terms of developing tools that our team can use. If you think of any person on your team, their workflows, well, what are the workflows that are repetitive and or require processing data or doing, mundane tasks? Those are really great workflows for you to insert tools or automations, and we've been getting better at identifying those and ultimately upskilling our team and even building out a product in AI, call it a, a lead team that then can be the supporters of all of our other managers and staff throughout the company. And we've had to learn how to do that. And so this is, you know, maybe product or team architecture that you'll often see in software development companies. And we've had to learn and almost reimagine One Firefly and how to operate so that we are operating with the best tools and best processes to deliver the best outcomes for our clients. At the end of the day, we want our clients to love the experience of working with One Firefly, not only the people they work with and the relationships they build, but also the outcomes that we deliver for them and the growth that we help them realize. And that, uh, it is, that is our goal. It is awesome what's now doable and achievable. And in 26, we're gonna also step back into the role of trying to teach others. So I know that I am gonna be doing, sessions both at Lightapalooza and at the ProSource spring conference, and they're gonna be AI workshops. So I definitely, if you're gonna be at either of those events, check those out. It's gonna be all about teaching tactical, actionable, lessons in how to use AI to impact your day-to-day workflows, to make your life a little bit easier. Allow you to maybe better serve your clients or better serve your teams. You can expect webinars around this content, articles and thought leadership. We're going to, you know, let's say step back and, and, and look at leaders like Ari Suran over at Sonance and, Alex over at Josh and some of the teaching and education they're giving back. And, we're, we're gonna step back into joining that chorus to try to, first of all admit we don't have it all figured out, but the things that we do have figured out that have made an impact in our life, we're gonna try to teach others how to do those things so that they can benefit their teams and ultimately their families and their communities. So that at a super high level, our approach to AI, you know, hiding from it is not an option. It's you lean forward, you know, you all have seen the meme of the, what is it? I don't know the name of the meme, but it's where the dog's outside drinking, drinking the coffee, and the house is on fire.

Taylor:

Oh, it's like, this is fine is the caption or something of that nature?

Ron:

Yeah, this is fine. The reality is AI is here. It's, we can't fight it. Yeah. The aliens have landed on earth and we now need to learn to live with the aliens. So, you can't fight it, so you join 'em. We're running into the, house and, we're just gonna make it happen. So, looking ahead, charting a course for 2026, at a high level, I'll let you Taylor start and then I'll, I'll maybe wrap it up. What are some of the big ideas or just kind of big thoughts coming out of annual planning for 2026? As it relates to One Firefly in the industry that we serve.

Taylor:

I think for me it's a renewed enthusiasm and optimism, for what next year will bring both in terms of the, you know, the possibilities, of that this technology is gonna be able to bring, of how our products and services are gonna continue to evolve. How our client experience is going to continue to evolve and improve. You know, us thinking of new, and more innovative ways to partner with clients and manufacturers, within our industry. Just I'd say that that'd be the overall theme for me is just, just enthusiasm,and excitement, honestly. Just a world of possibilities. Doesn't mean we have everything figured out. Doesn't mean that there won't be challenges, but I would say that we've got a terrific approach. A great team, team members who are aligned. And just, yeah. Excited about what next year will bring.

Ron:

Yeah, I agree. I think2026 is gonna bring, really the, you know, the theme maybe that comes to mind is momentum. It's gonna be a year of momentum where AI is further integrated into our org. Both, you know, Taylor, you're using AI and the financial management of One Firefly. Our project managers are using it, and our project management, our account management team is using advisor bots and helping them advise and, and service their clients and so on and so forth. We are, as a business, accelerating the use of these tools and technologies. So that we can better do the work that we know today and our clients know us, know of us today. What's additionally, happening behind the scenes is we're also, working diligently on inventing the services and solutions of tomorrow, and it's really thinking about what are the other ways, like what's coming? You made the reference Taylor to skating where the puck's gonna be. That's a, I think a Wayne Gretzky reference. And so it's really looking at what are gonna be the needs of these, our customers that we know and love? What are gonna be their needs and how can we, enhance our ability to be a value to them? And, that's really our focus if we are asking the right questions of our customers, where's the pain in their life? Where's the friction? And if, One Firefly’s well suited to be an intermediary and a solution provider, that I think that's where our growth comes from. And,I think that, you know, we'll surprise some, but we're gonna continue to, to roll up our sleeves and work hard to be valuable, uh, to our customers. One other thing that is, maybe some out there do not know, is that we're also expanding into serving other customers that maybe we're not normally known for serving, right? So we are gonna be expanding into, to new home service categories and verticals, attending new trade shows, within closely aligned industries. We actually have, some of these customers today. I mean, we have security contracting clients, we have electrical contracting clients, we have HVAC contracting clients. But the reality is we, One Firefly has only ever gone to custom integration shows and buying groups, and, we're, we're expanding, we're expanding our footprint and, with the, the singular goal of being valuable and helpful to all of those clients. And I guess I would just close on, you know, we are, we're a great fit for businesses that wanna lean forward and work on growing their business. And if, if, if the customer, I'm gonna even say regardless of size, wants to lean forward and wants a partner to help them grow, then I think they'll find great partners in One Firefly in 2026 and beyond. And, with that, Taylor, I think that was our last slide. Uh, there you go. For folks, I'm signing off. We're gonna sign off here in just a minute, but I do have on the screen these subscribe to Automation Unplugged. If you do wanna subscribe to this podcast, maybe a friend of yours has sent you this video or this, audio podcast and you do wanna subscribe, be sure to check it out. We'd love to have you follow us and follow all of our content. We ran a couple of minutes longer than usual, but Taylor, it has been a fun year full of many, joys and, some of the greatest things in our lives have happened this year and we've had, you know, wonderful stress and challenges. But I'm super happy and proud that you've been right there beside me and our full executive team to help us tackle this year, and I'm excited about 2026, man. Let's go get it.

Taylor:

Let's do it.

Ron Callis is the CEO of One Firefly, LLC, a digital marketing agency based out of South Florida and creator of Automation Unplugged. Founded in 2007, One Firefly has quickly became the leading marketing firm specializing in the integrated technology and security space. The One Firefly team work hard to create innovative solutions to help Integrators boost their online presence, such as the elite website solution, Mercury Pro.

Resources and links from the interview:

• • Amplify People Website

• • Taylor Whipple LinkedIn Profile Page
    
    
• • Subscribe to AU!