An AV and integration-focused podcast broadcast weekly

This week's episode of Automation Unplugged we’re bringing you a webinar we recorded in September 2025 called “Get Rich Slow: How Integrators Can Win Trade Partner Relationships and Bigger Projects.”

In this session, we dig into how to shift from being seen as “the AV contractor” to a trusted design consultant, and the practical, repeatable actions that help you earn trust, get brought into projects earlier, and ultimately win bigger work.

During this conversation, you’ll hear from myself, Josh Christian, CEO of the Home Technology Association, and Rebecca Sternlicht, Corporate Marketing Lead at One Firefly, who helped moderate the discussion.

About this episode:

In this episode, we cover:

• Why “design consultant” beats “contractor” — and how charging for consultation and design services can instantly elevate your role with trade partners
• How to use consistency, credibility, and branding to build trade relationships that actually pay off
• You’ll also hear tactical ideas you can put to work right away, like CEUs, lunch-and-learns, and strategic gifting

SEE ALSO: Home Automation Podcast Episode #59: An Industry Q&A With Joe Whitaker

Transcript

Ron:

Let's get this party started. Josh, I'm excited to hang out with you here for this conversation. Josh, I think Rebecca has a slideshow even with the name of the conversation here. But, and by the way, audience, Rebecca, Josh and I wrangled Rebecca to join us. If you haven't met Rebecca, she'll introduce herself here in a minute. But she did such an amazing job of facilitating some other webinars Josh and I did. Josh and I twisted her arm and said, Rebecca, will you come help us out with this webinar? So, Rebecca, thank you in advance.

Rebecca:

Thank you for having me here. Yeah. You guys drive a hard bargain. So here I am.

Josh:

Yeah. Like, it's a rock star. Yeah. And we have fun with this, the title here, Get Rich Slow. We're coming with this together. Right? We always heard of Get Rich Quick Schemes. And Get Rich slow, the full title, how integrators can win trade partner relationships and bigger projects. I mean, it's really a thing that you have to commit to, but, wow, does it work as we'll get into. This is not theory. We're not just making up stuff and saying this is a good to have, or it might be nice to, this really is a career changing thing once we put what we're gonna talk about today into practice. And we'll share some, you know, real life experiences of how this is working. So that's why I say get rich slow because it doesn't happen overnight. But if you commit to what we're talking about today, put this on your plan and stick to it. It is literally career changing.

Ron:

I mean and I love that the chat is already lively. So, everyone, keep it up. Say, you know, say hello to your friends and anything that Josh or I are talking about. Feel free to either ask questions or comment or even interact with all the other attendees here. And, Bobby, I agree. Slow is fast. Fast is slow. Amen. Awesome. Yeah. Rebecca, are we gonna start off by showing the slide deck team, and audience? I promise we're not gonna hit you guys with a bunch of slides, but I think there's maybe a couple that we're gonna go through here at the beginning.

Rebecca:

We are. So I think let's go ahead and get started, guys. I'm gonna go ahead and share. We do have a nice title slide, and we have a couple of questions and polls to kick us off today. But first, I would love, let's get some introductions going. We'll start. Josh, we'd love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and then Ron, and then I'll introduce myself, and we'll get going.

Josh:

Sure. Thank you. So Josh Christian, I'm the CEO of the Home Technology Association. We're the association that launched in 2017, a consumer facing association that helps homeowners. And talking about today, trade partners such as architects, designers, and builders to give them a vetted set of integrators that meet a high standard. So we're proud to have created the industry's first company certification standard that is designed to differentiate and elevate those integrators that qualify. Many of the folks that are on here today are HTA certified, which gives some great advantages. I've been in the industry since 1995 as an integrator from 1995 all the way up till 2015 in the integrator and the sales and marketing role. So I lived what we're talking about today. A couple years as a technology design consultant, so on low voltage design consultation, and then cofounded the HTA in 2017.

Ron:

Love it. And, my name is Ron Callis. I know many of you that are logged in here to this meeting. It's good to see all the familiar faces, and it's awesome to be here with Josh and Rebecca. CEO and Founder of One Firefly, just because we're dating ourselves. I started in the industry in 2000, and so Josh has me beat by five years, it looks like. And, I ultimately founded One Firefly in 2007, and I'm pretty confident Josh could confirm this, that I was visiting with Josh and Eric at DSI, in maybe around 2008, with the, does that sound about right, Josh?

Josh:

That's about right. Yep.

Ron:

Yeah. When we were, I was out there pitching our proposal and project engineering services and the sales portfolio flip book. And, here we are, just a few years later and, trying to help all of you grow your business, with the design and build space, architects, designers, and builders, and just helping you see the opportunity and maybe some strategies to help you grow your business in that direction. So honored to be here.

Rebecca:

Awesome. Well, thank you both. My name is Rebecca. I'm the Corporate Marketing Lead at One Firefly. I’ve had the pleasure, of course, of working with Ron at One Firefly for many years and Josh as well. One Firefly and HTA have worked on several projects together. So we really wanted this webinar to be more of an open Q&A, conversational, more engaging for you guys. And so I agreed to step in and help moderate the conversation between Ron and Josh here. And we don't as Ron mentioned have many slides, but we have put together a couple of talking points and a lot of great resources for you So tomorrow, you can expect in your inbox a copy of this webinar recording as well as that PDF deck so that you can check all of those out for yourself. Feel free. The chat is open. The Q&A is open. Happy to take any questions, and happy to have some side conversations in the chat as well. So we'll go ahead and get rolling. Josh, I'm gonna pass it over to you. We're gonna start with a couple of quick questions to the audience. So I hope you guys are ready to get rolling with some of our polls here.

Josh:

Yes. Thank you. So we just have two quick poll questions. So if you could please just take a couple seconds to answer this. The first one, here you see it on the screen. Are you currently charging for consultation and design services? Like to know that, and there are your choices. If you could please answer that, would be awesome.

Ron:

It's like pretty good participation, man. This is an engaged audience, Josh.

Josh:

Yeah. That's cool. Look at that. That's awesome. You guys are leaders, guys and gals that are on this, so this is excellent. Yes. So, yeah, something that we see a trend that's growing in the industry. So it's like, to see this trend line going up of our industry doing this.

Ron:

Have you been asking this question, Josh, over time in order to kinda track that trend?

Josh:

Yes. And it's going up.

Ron:

Are the no's allowed to stay in the webinar?

Josh:

Yes. Yes. We wanna inspire those no's. Okay. We're about raising tides and moving this forward. So we'll get into why this is so important. And, the next poll question is here we go.

Ron:

We got 72%.

Josh:

Yeah. That's great. Let's go for 100% on this one. And the next one. The next one is about your marketing experience right now. So we're, you know, both Ron and I are very curious to know, are you actively marketing to trade partners now? And you'll see there's a couple of choices on the question. Alright. There we go. And just this is just kinda help us, again, get a gauge of the industry and help us help you. Three simple tips.

Ron:

Marketing to trade partners. Yes. Wow. Clearly, the focus of our audience, 66%, 65%. Yes.

Josh:

That's good. That's really good.

Ron:

Planning to start, wow. Look at that. Combine those two between the yes and and no, but planning to start. That's a compelling number, almost 90%.

Rebecca:

Yeah. Let me go ahead and stop that, and we'll share the results. Look at that.

Josh:

Alright.

Ron:

Little bit better participation on that question, Josh. That's almost 80% participation.

Josh:

That's great. So, this you will find very valuable. So alright. Let's jump into it. Now thank you for everybody for participating on that.

Rebecca:

Yeah. Thank you. Alright. Josh, I really want you to set the stage for us. You have been helping dealers grow their relationships with trade partners for years, and would love for you to tell the audience from your perspective, how do partners like architects, interior designers, and builders typically see integrators today, and why does that perception need to change?

Josh:

Yes. It's a big question. And as many of you that know me, one of the questions that I asked you when we probably first met is when you meet a new trade partner, do you get the feeling that you're innocent, excuse me, guilty until proven innocent instead of innocent until proven guilty? And most people chuck and go, yeah. Unfortunately, I do. Why is that? And that is because, unfortunately, our industry has an overall pretty poor reputation. And if you do your own polls to architects, designers, and builders, you'll find that just about well, probably all of them have been burned by a really bad integrator out there. And you know why. The barrier to entry in this industry is very, very low. And, I mean, even in states like California and Florida, where One Firefly is in, I'm in California. Both of these states are only two of the twenty one that have low voltage license requirements. Yet in both states, there are plenty of integrators working without a license. And these are people you're, you know, competing with, which is pretty sad. So, you know, as a side story, this is kind of a funny thing to say but true. If this industry were so good and reputable, there would be zero need for the Home Technology Technology Association. It's kinda sad. The only reason our association exists is because the vacuum of how bad our industry really is overall. And it's sad because there are many really great integrators. I know personally many on this webinar today that are just awesome, and it stinks that you have to go out there and compete with these folks. Right? So you go to an architect, designer, and builder, and they're like, oh, you guys. Right? The AV guy that comes in. So there's this perception that our industry is not professional. That's what it says on the slide point number two. But also the AV guy connotation is another thing that a lot of the trades look at our industry. And, of course, that's the roots. Right? Like, audio video, home theater is where this really started. But this industry has moved on, and yet we’re still pigeonholed into audio and video. They don't think about all the other things that you do, lighting and shading, or they even might not even know that you're doing lighting and shading. And if you tell them once, they're probably gonna forget it. So it's one of those repetition things that, hey. I do all the technologies in the home now. So don't lead with audio, video. Lead with lighting and shading. Those other things that will get you on the projects earlier. Another big perception to overcome, and this took me years of being in the trenches to figure this out or be told by an architect in Los Angeles, which was a career changing thing to hear, is even though I talked and I did a lot of lunch and learns. We'll get into that later. But I did a lot of lunch and learns at this architect's office, and he took me aside. And this is a really interesting thing because this is, like, a major architect in Los Angeles. And he took me aside after doing these webinars and said, there's a problem here. You're acting like you're a designer. I'm like, what do you mean? I've been showing design documents and showing you all this design stuff. And he says, no. But you're a contractor, and contractors aren't brought to the table early. And I looked at him, like, deer in headlights. Like, what do you mean? You know, it took a while for that to sink in, but I realized that's what he gave me gold there, just to say that. You are a contractor. You are not being brought. That's why you don't bring into the project early. So contractors aren't brought in early. Design consultants are. And here's the key thing. You are a design consultant, but here's a huge, huge takeaway today that you need to really talk about that service as your phase one. And that will be a game changer for you. You might know some design consultants that just do that. You know, they don't install the product or sell it or install it, but they charge for their design service. There's a handful of them around the US, and they charge ten, twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars, sometimes more, for just design documentation. You see why we asked that question in that poll? Right? Not that you're gonna have to charge four thousand dollars on all your thing, but instead of turning into a loss leader, now it's a profit center and you professionalize yourself. And you get seen as someone that deserves to be at the table because they're hiring structural engineers, MEPs. These are design consultants that architects are used to bringing to the table early, and you deserve a seat at that table. So talk up your design services, and we'll get into that later when we talk about websites and things that One Firefly could help with your positioning. But that's another thing.

Ron:

I was curious of whether you wanna say from the HTA membership, or broader for the channel. How common is it that AV integration firms, automation firms, are in fact charging a design fee? Like, how prevalent is this, 1% of dealers are doing this? Is this 50% in the audience here that's not doing it should go, oh my goodness, I need to catch up? Like, how common is it?

Josh:

I don't have industry specs from, like, a wide one like CE Pro, let's say, which has a massive audience to do a poll. I'll have to talk with them about doing that. But I could say from my personal classes that I teach, I've been teaching at CEDIA Expo the last couple years and asking this and at some of the buying group conferences, and I just, a show of hands going up. So in my group of integrators that are attracted to the topic I'm talking about, like, such as you folks today, I've been seeing that go from about 15% to 20%. And the last time at CEDIA Expo, I think we had probably 60% in the room that were doing it. So it's a trend that's going up at least amongst the folks that are attracted to this topic. Overall, it's probably less than 10%.

Ron:

Yeah. I know what back in 2009, 2010, 2011, when I was teaching design engineering, design and engineering cover this exact sales process and implementing a design phase. And I feel it was always maybe 5% of the audience, 5% to 10% at best, so this is fifteen years ago, would raise their hand saying that they regularly were doing this. And so if you're saying it's 15% to 20%, that sounds like the marketplace has advanced. And what you're saying, Josh, is that if businesses are doing that, that is going to accelerate or heighten the way that architects or interior designers are gonna view them. Like, they would expect them to be doing that as a part of their process, or no?

Josh:

The expectation isn't there yet. There's not enough awareness amongst the design and build trade yet that there are integrators that offer this design documentation. And by the way, I still teach architects and designers and builders of other things that I'm doing. And when I'm talking about the ideal integrator, sometimes they'll look at me confused and say, I don't know integrators that do that. Like, the good ones do. Really? So drawing sets like that, you know, device placement drawings and and such, you know, heat maps for Wi Fi, prewired plans, framing requirements, electrical requirements for electrician, and heat calcs for the HVAC person, these are sets of drawings that integrators are putting out that a lot of architects, designers, and builders had no idea our trade even does.

Ron:

Right.

Josh:

So showing that design like, show your design set to them, and they're like, oh. And then the light bulbs go off. Like, oh, I see how that's of value to me.

Ron:

I see Eric just made the comment that free has no value. And amen, Eric. That's so true. Yep. Josh, I wanna share with you kind of a general philosophy that I would talk about fifteen years ago. I've been separated from having this active conversation. You've been having it actively with your members. You know, the general idea was that a design fee well, number one, before you could offer a design fee, you've gotta land at the concept of a general project scope and a general budget. Right? I.e.,, is that client gonna spend fifty thousand or five hundred thousand? Does the client want two zones of audio or twenty two zones of audio? Right? So some general conversation has to happen. And when you land at a generalization and the customer or the the representative says, yes, we're in the range, the idea a design fee should include very specific collateral, like an engineered proposal, meaning not a list of pieces and parts from QuickBooks, but an engineered proposal and or device location drawings or lighting looped in group plans. And that when the customer would pay a design fee, I'm very curious, Josh, what you'd recommend as to what that design fee should be. But let's just say for argument's sake, a flat design fee of five thousand dollars or whatever that number is. You mentioned twenty five thousand dollars. That then gives the customer a deliverable, which is a proposal and a project, theoretically, they could then go take out to bid. They could theoretically go take that to other integration firms and solicit bids on that, of which if you've done your job, you've earned their trust. And naturally, they're gonna more likely give you that work. And you then mentioned heat maps and rack elevations and schematics and CAD drawings. Often, that type of work would then come into an engineering line item in the proposal, which you're gonna go do that super heavy lift and that polished execution work as a line item of labor in the project if they accept. Now I don't know if you agree or disagree, but that's at least some of the teaching and coaching that I was helping integrators with, you know, many years ago. What are your thoughts?

Josh:

So, yeah, the charging of design fee upfront. So a lot of times, you're right. Integrators will understand how much time and effort it takes to create these drawings, but they put it in only if they get the project and they do all this work for free hoping that they're gonna win the project. And it becomes a massive loss leader in your company to do that. So my suggestion is always charge upfront. And how much to charge? This is gonna be you know, this should be an industry poll going up on a whole webinar in the future because there's so many ways to do this, to charge. And integrators, I don't know anybody that has, like I don't know of a common one, a math equation that a lot of dealers, you know, can subscribe to. Sometimes it's based on square footage and how many systems we're doing because, obviously, if you're, you know, the scope's changing. Right? You could have a ten thousand square foot house with a small scope or a large scope, and your work's gonna vary. So, you know, it's gotta scale. But make the math simple so that an architect, designer, or builder kinda knows what you're gonna charge on there so they don't have to call you every time. You could give it to them, some simple math. And going back to what you said, Ron, a tool like you said, you have to figure out the scope first. Right? Because the scope is gonna vary. That's why we built that HTA budget calculator. It's a ten minute tool to sit down there with the builder, an architect, designer, a client, whoever. It's designed to be used with all those folks. And now within ten minutes, you'll have a scope. And they'll have a budget range because the calculator goes from really good to amazing top of the line, deflect that sticker shock. Now they know what things are gonna cost the range. And then from that discussion, you can have a very organic discussion about the scope. And then taking the output of that calculator, you can maybe and I suggest base your design fee off of that because you'll know what they want now. In ten minutes, you'll know what they want, and they could base it on there. And if you're nervous and my advice to the integrators, if you're nervous about charging up front, here's a couple things that you could do to maybe tiptoe your feet in the water. For first, charge up front. And if they say no and it's reasonable, then they're probably just interested in the cheapest price. Do you want the person that wants the cheapest price? No. Because there's gonna be someone cheaper in town than you. Don't ever compete on price. So you're saving yourself time by weeding those people out. Here's the cool thing. Once those folks are bought into you and, Ron, you said it the right way. It is what you wanna do to the client is you show them your drawing set, and you say, what will be the result of this design is, we're gonna have a discovery meeting with you and your family. We'll find out how you live, how you entertain, your security needs, all this stuff, and we'll come up with the perfect system for you. And when it's done, here's, like, a sample set of drawings we did for some other people. This will help with your architect, and I'll work with your designer to make sure this is all gonna look good so they understand the value. And you could shop this around if you want. You know, feel free to shop it around. Have the guts to say that. Yeah. Because the chance of them shopping that around, you do your job well, like you said, is almost nil. Your close rate's gonna be somewhere between 90% to 100%. It will not be below 90%. That's how high your close ratio is because they realize, oh my god. They were so careful about and so interested in how I live. I'm not gonna go through that whole process with someone else to see if I'm gonna save five bucks. So charge upfront. And if you're nervous about that, then say, if you optional. You know, if you decide to hire us, we'll refund, you know, either, you know, 50% of that design feedback or even 100%. Maybe you wanna do that just to test the waters, but I find that the integrators that start that way stop. Like, nope. We're keeping the design fee in house because it costs you to put these documents out.

Ron:

Is it fair, Josh, that most of the others, is it accurate that most of the other design based trades are charging for their design services and an integrator that is not charging for their design is the outlier? It's odd that they would be doing all this work for free?

Josh:

Yeah. You think of, on the luxury side, yes. Like, MEP engineers are often involved on these projects. Right? And they for those that know what that means, it's mechanical, engineering, and plumbing. And mechanical covers HVAC on there. So these consultants on there quite a bit and, again, structural engineers. I remember asking in ChatGPT about two years ago, you know, what are the services that architecture hire consultants for? And three of the ten had to touch integrators, like, the things that they need to do. Right? So, yeah, you're just putting yourself in a higher role or, you're perceived as and this is an interesting perception thing. Consultants are respected more than contractors to an architect. It's just the way it is. And I lived there.

Ron:

We didn’t make the rules. Life isn't fair. But learn the rules and then play by those rules.

Josh:

Yep. So you are a contractor in their mind, but you can change your perception to a consultant and designer if you talk about your services that way. Our space is consultation and design. Consultation design. Two keywords to them that give respect. And that goes into the marketing that Ron will get into your website, your blogs, your social media positioning, the way you show your pictures, the documents you share, it is a total game changer. And I experienced this real. I'm not talking just theory here because I worked two years for a company called Axiom Design, which is one of those design and consultation firms based out of Northern California. They've been doing this since 1992 very, very profitably. And when I went to work with Bob Cranson there, he said, if you come to work with me, you're no longer an integrator. You're a consultant. You're gonna get a lot more respect when you walk back in those architects offices. And I thought he was full of it. Like, no. I'm not. I'm the same guy with a different phone number, and he was right. And it was disturbing that he was right. And I was now talking to the principals, not the worker bees. And like, but I don't know anything new. I'm the same person I was at DSI. I perceived it different. Yeah. But this is the light bulb for all of you. It's how you talk about yourself, and you could change that perception. And like, I've trained some of the guys over I mean, we train all of our certified dealers, but one of the guys that listed really well is a guy named Zach Fagan over, he's over at DSI where I used to work. He's new to the industry. This month is his two year anniversary at DSI, and he's written three point two million dollars so far this year. Probably gonna close, I was talking to him the other day. Highly probable to close two point two to three more million by the end of this year, and and maybe as high as six million by the end of the year. He's been doing this for two years. New. Because he's using these tools. He's not doing things the old way. He's doing things the smart way, charges for design, uses the calculator or some of the other tools that we provide, but he is being perceived as a consultant, and he is being called in early on massive projects. So it really works.

Ron:

Yeah. I wanna call out. Jason, made a comment. He says, I do free consultation and provide a rough ballpark estimate and then charge 5% design fee based on the rough ballpark estimate. We then credit back the 5% back towards the accepted proposal, and this structure boosted our close rates to 95%t plus. And then Sarah asked the question, do you provide the ballpark estimate right at the end of the consultation? I'll just give my quick feedback. I think it depends on what tool. If you're using the HTA calculator and maybe your client did it on their own or you're guiding the client through using that calculator, you literally land at scope and budget right away. And so it's what mechanism I mean, if you're an HTA member, there'd be no reason not to use the calculator. I've seen, I've personally seen various versions all the way from, dealers that have, like, subsystems designed, at kinda good, better, best or small, medium, large and they have price points and they do it, you know, manually and tactically by kind of, you know, pulling out the approximate system. Have you seen dealers use their own Excel worksheets or Google Sheets? And then you have, you know, HTA's calculator, which I know so many dealers across the country are using. Is that pretty common, Josh, that that calculator output is then being used as the basis for moving into a percentage of that as a design fee?

Josh:

Yeah. Quite a few advanced dealers are leading with that. And some of them, I don't know how many are, I don't have a spec on how many of them are basing the design fee off of that math or square footage that's, I think it falls somewhere in between. But you're getting so much intel from there. Oh, we're not you know, we're on the lighting system, or we're gonna do a home theater, what level home theater, and you'll know from that calculator. And if it's gonna be a high end theater, your design fees are gonna go up. Right? Because you have interaction. Either you're doing that home theater design in house or you're working with Paradise Theaters or, you know, SH Acoustics or some of these folks out there have other fees. So you get a lot to base that fee off from that tool.

Ron:

Josh, just to move the conversation along, I know, Rebecca's over here. She wants to get through so much with us. I do just wanna bounce you back, a concept here. We've gone deep on that design fee. Is it your opinion that you need to do this and believe it so that when you talk to architects about your design process or the interior designer or the custom builder, that when you talk to them about your process, they take you more seriously? Is that kind of the crux? We went deep on that, but now if I pull back, is it that doing that is not only good for your business, but it also helps you then be entrusted by this group?

Josh:

Yes. You get seen as that design consultant. It elevates you on that project. Absolutely. And I'll just make a quick note on there. If your company is small and you're not, you don't have someone in house that could do these design documentation, there are companies out there that do this for you. You just hire them to do it, and we'll give you a price. So my contact information is coming up at the end. If you want a PDF of these folks that can do that, I would be happy to share it with you, and you could, you know, call them to find out what they're gonna charge for this documentation.

Ron:

Alright, Rebecca. I'm gonna hand you the baton. I know.

Rebecca:

That's fantastic conversation. I would not want to interrupt that. We also had a Q&A come in about the logistics of how to start charging for design. I hope that was answered here. If not, please feel free to ping us to follow-up. Josh, just wanna reiterate again, we've called this webinar, how to get rich slow, but how much time and energy are integrators gonna need to put into building these relationships with trade partners? And do you have any success stories that you could share about dealers who have successfully made this shift and are now seen as more design consultants and the benefits that it's brought?

Josh:

Yes. It should be an ongoing thing. So you have to commit to it. It's not like a one time push, you know, for three months and then expect these leads to come in. It's very much a relationship based thing. I'll have to repeat that. This is a relationship based thing. So, meeting these folks, you know, join design build trade associations. I got some resources to share with that on the handout you're gonna get later on. Join these folks, be there and meet them, become friends with them, have coffee with them, lunch, have events at your showroom. If you don't have a showroom, maybe there's a manufacturer showroom you could go and have an event at, offer some CEUs. Ways to build relationships are the key thing. So I'm saying that because it takes time. Right? You don't build a strong relationship over one cup of coffee. So commit to a regular cadence of reaching out to these folks, staying on their radar, sharing something of value to them. If you're talking to architects and designers, there's so many cool products in our industry now. Right? So many cool products that are designed to hide technology. So, you know, depending on your product mix, you can bring up Trufig one time or an invisible speaker of your favorite choice. Things that are so commonplace to us sometimes are still new to them. You know, motorized lifts that bring TVs out of all sorts of places. And when you keep sharing design minded things with them in time, they start seeing you like, this person really knows all sorts of tricks up their sleeve. Yes. You do. Right? But keep up that cadence. So it could take sometimes years. Let's be real. It could sometimes take years to land a big fish, architect, designer, builder, because they probably are working with somebody. But if you're persistent and you show your professionalism, odds are if especially if you're not a good company, they're gonna screw up, and you're there to kind of fill in that need and show them how great you are. But put that time in. That's why we call this get rich slow. But going back to what we're talking about, are there any experiences of this working? Yes. I was mentioning Zach over at DSI. He's a newbie and closing insane business because he's using these tools and not doing things the old fashioned way. He charges for design. He uses the budget calculator to start conversations, and he's trained the builders and architects and designers to use it. So they're coming to him with the budget already done because it takes them ten minutes. So it works. And another example of this working is, I mean, names, Chad Lasig of Audio Video Systems, and he's in the Park City, Utah area. That's his main market. And he credits just bringing up his HTA certification to differentiate himself as a way that he's landed some of the big developers that he was spending time trying to get these folks, but they were using somebody else. And when he brought up the elevator pitch of what makes him unique and, you know, why you? I already have somebody, and he brought the HTA thing up. They gave him a chance to go. That sounds reasonable. I like what that standard's about. I'll give you a shot. That's all you need. It was a shot. Right? Prove you're better, and then you'll win that business. And another folk, this is a guy that a lot of people know in our industry is kinda infamous. Murray Kunis of Future Home. He successfully, this is all him. He's got some of his architects and contractors. He convinced them to put technology trade must be HTA certified, like, on the bid set. And that was a way and the rate and how he's able to convince them that is, they knew he was a good integrator, and he said, are you sick of all these, like, trunk slammer guys that are knocking on the job site trailer trying to put a bid in? He's like, yeah. We'll put this on there, and it's a great rate of weed amount. So that's happening. Right? So a trade partner to build that credibility quick to show that you are different than the fray, and I won't get into this now. It'll be on the slide, but we built something called HTA Design Partner, which is a code of ethics and code of conduct that you'll wanna study. And it'll even define the drawing set that you're gonna wanna get them, the trade partner, that is what will get you hired early because it basically was built by architects, designers, builders. We work with them to say, what's your dream integrator look like? We built this into a code of conduct. You be that person and you wear that on your sleeve when you meet a new trade partner and say, this is how we work. This is our ethics. This is my promise to you. You will get hired earlier, and it won't take as long. It won't take many years. It should take, you know, months, not years, like, as, Zach has found out and Chad has found out, you know, at DSI and Audio Video Systems.

Ron:

I just, I wanna tag into that idea of not getting or of getting rich, but slowly. And I know we'll jump into some of the marketing and branding positioning, but I just wanna add that building these relationships with these trade partners, not only do they take time, but also integrating your branding and positioning into your company's identity also takes time. So I almost want to laugh when someone contacts One Firefly and they say, we wanna hire you guys for marketing. We wanna grow our business with architects, and we're gonna give you ninety days to demonstrate a return on investment or we're pulling out. We're not gonna do any more marketing. And it's just, the game is not played. It doesn't work that way. There no silver bullet. Any marketing agency is likely gonna deliver to any of you watching or listening that is gonna make your world turn or the needle move significantly in ninety days or maybe even, much longer, specifically as it relates to targeting architects, designers, and builders. I know we'll get into some of the bigger, broader ideas, but it takes ongoing commitment. And I would really challenge it needs to become part of the identity of your company. And then and thus, it would be a part of your branding of your company. And then you might go and target a particular architect that you wanna do business with, and we could call that a marketing tactic and business development actions. But it's, there's no silver bullets here.

Josh:

No. You're right. It's relationship based. And, you know, I had some key, that's what I was doing at DSI. I was trying to wine and dine architects and designers and builders as much as possible. And I would ask them, what's the secret to your business? And they said, this right here. He says, we get ads, we get phone calls, but, you know, like, advertisements and we get a lot of these in the mail, but you took the time to meet me and explain what you do and how you work into my process. So, Ron, you could open the door to your web, you could build the best websites, do the best blogs. So it's really a tag team thing because if you out there are gonna do this, great. But have your website back that up. When they go to the website, like, wait. He talked about all this great stuff that they do for me, and I don't see the word architect even written on the site. You know? Like, is there a disconnect? Talk about your process on your website and in your blogs and on your social media.

Rebecca:

Yeah. Yeah. Ron, I wanna tug on that thread with you right there. So for integrators who are interested in really, like, putting in the time and the effort for this type of relationship building, how should that factor into their marketing and branding?

Ron:

Yeah. I wanna point out for integrators tuned in here that your branding and your marketing are really not only about you trying to appeal to that end customer, that homeowner. They're very much if you've decided that building your relationship with trades is important to your business, then you need to work that into the identity of your company. You need to establish that you are credible. You need to ultimately prove that you are trustworthy. You need to prove that you understand the sense of collaboration and how to work with architects and how to work with other design firms. So if you really look at the positioning, you know, if you look at that concept of collaboration, it's that you understand the project's process, the architect's process, and you understand where you fit into that process. If you're able to speak that language and you don't only speak that language when you show up in person you speak that language on your website, you speak that language, on your social media, through the content and the discussions that you're having on those various platforms. If appropriate and if you segment your communication to architects, designers, and builders, you maybe also work that language of collaboration and process into your communication, through those angles. And then if you look at storytelling, I'm just gonna give you two more here, but through storytelling, you have an opportunity to feature portfolios of your projects on all of your platforms online. And if you're gonna feature your projects, well, a great way to demonstrate collaboration is that you're calling out the architects and the interior designers and the custom builder. You're then going into social media, tagging and following and participating. Right? If you love on them, when they're doing reference checks and they're doing their homework on you, they're gonna see that. And they're gonna see that is a company that not only is gonna deliver a great customer experience, but they're also a great partner. They're a great company that I'd wanna be working with. I want you all to remember if they bring you into projects, they are absolutely worried. Is this company gonna make me look good? Right? And that is the risk of bringing in a referral, bringing in if they go to that architect and that architect brings in the AV firm, will that AV firm better make that architect look spectacular? Because if not, it will be your last project with that architect. And so when you look at that architect referring you, they are ultimately wanting to know that that homeowner or that homeowners representative that's gonna go do research that it makes that architect look good because you look very trustworthy. You have accreditation. You have certifications. You're HTA certified. You have project portfolios. You talk the talk. You have example projects represented on your website, on your social media that make you look identified as somebody that absolutely should or could be working on my project. Right? When you look at your identity online and your ongoing communication, if you are not up to that bar, that standard, then that's it's okay. It just means those are I those are areas to identify to work on. And the quarter ahead, maybe that becomes part of your game plan for 2026 to ultimately grow your business with architects, interior designers, and custom builders. It is not only a sales action. It is not only a business development action. It's a comprehensive approach of marketing, business development, and sales, and then ultimately execution. Like, you need to walk, you need to talk. What is it? Talk the walk, walk the talk. You need to be real. And I'll give a real quick story of of our past where I learned a lesson. And One Firefly’s very early years, it's actually how I met Josh. I was in Josh's shop and I was showing him a presentation book and we had built project drawing presentation books and it was actually a way that we did business with our clients. We outfitted them with collateral so they could go out there and talk the talk with their clients. And the sad truth is many of the businesses that we outfitted with those books would act like they were doing it and then not actually do it. And the humble truth is that's why I stopped offering that service is because I felt that they were frankly a lot of dishonest businesses acting like they actually pay great deal of attention to design and engineering and execution. And the truth was they actually weren't doing that work. And I know that's what Josh worked so diligently at HTA to vet those people out and to really put the highest performing businesses out there in a place in the marketplace where they have the badge that proves that you are meeting that high standard. And if that is you, then you absolutely should be waving that flag, that certification. And as Josh has already described, Josh and I have done a lot of webinars over the years, and he tells you, make that a point in your dialogue when you're meeting with homeowners, architects, designers, and builders. Tell that audience why that matters. And because if you're HTA certified, it means you actually do it. And know that the vast majority of the marketplace does not do it. They might talk the talk but they don't walk the walk. That's what it was. Walk the walk and talk the talk. So that's my quick thoughts on that, Rebecca.

Rebecca:

Thank you. So I'm wondering too now, does a great high level positioning around marketing and branding, what about some specific tactics? I know you and I have both heard of some really interesting things that dealers are doing to build relationships.

Ron:

Two no brainers, I mean, aside from putting all of the the things on your website and putting great content on your social media, putting portfolios, all of you should have in your 2026 strategy, budgets for photography and videography so you can capture your beautiful projects and show that to the world. I'll give you a little hint. Your businesses are also being crawled by AI. Right? So your OpenAI's, your Claude’s, your Perplexities, Geminis, and the content on your website is being crawled, not only the words, but also the images and the videos. They are all being crawled and your websites are being indexed based on that content. So this is a heightened level of indexing than what you've known from Google for the last, you know, couple of decades. And so if you're shooting your projects and, through imagery or video and it's going on your website, it's wonderfully uniquely yours and that's gonna help you ultimately get found. So that's the low hanging fruit. The the slightly more advanced but maybe also obvious is, there's obviously tremendous opportunities to ramp up your events, both you are going into the architects, the the firms or the outfits, and offering training and support, doing lunch and learns, partnering with CEDIA, partnering with your manufacturers who have that, those certified courses, and being valuable. There's a lot of technology changing in our industry and, particularly architects are desperate for that knowledge. They're desperate for a partnership, a consultative partner that will help make them look good and look fully informed. So you can be that partner. You know, I have a philosophy, give, give, give, give, give ten times before you ask to receive. Just be very valuable in their life and you'll likely receive what you ultimately want, which are opportunities with their projects. And then I'll just give one more tip, which is the concept of gifting. It's called strategic gifting. There's a wonderful book out there called Giftology if you wanna read up on this philosophy. Rebecca, I think we also have a slide. I'll just, we could throw it up just for one you know, thirty seconds. And it's a shameless plug for a very recent episode of Automation Unplugged. And that is where I had, the folks from Maxicon, Andres from Maxicon. And in that episode, he literally talks about his gifting strategy, how he's significantly ramped up. There we go. There's a picture of Andres. Check it out. It's show 322 if you wanna hear right from the horse's mouth. Don't tell Andres I called him a horse. Right from the horse's mouth, how he's been growing, the Maxicon business through gifting. What you actually see there is, he's partnered with a local artist in Miami. That's actually a custom sculpture that they make numbered pieces just for them. And we can pull that down there, Rebecca. But the idea of targeting interior designers or architects or custom builders and gifting as a strategy that you can get people's attention. And this is an attention economy, they say. The idea is can you get their attention and then through follow-up sequences of email communication or outreach locally there in their office and then tying that into sequences of events and you giving back with value, you can, again, earn that opportunity, earn their attention, and ultimately get a shot at earning that relationship. So those are, you know, three, quick thoughts on marketing tactics.

Rebecca:

Yeah. That's great. Josh, I know we're running up almost on time, guys. I don't know where this hour went. But, Josh, we'd love to flip it over to you for a minute to talk about one great way, very valuable way, to provide this value to trade partners as CEUs. And maybe you could talk a little bit about what these trade partners need, what's already available, what are the value and benefits of doing this?

Josh:

Yeah. So this ties in really well with what we're talking about and then having events. So CEUs stand for continuing education units. And if you're a credentialed architect or credentialed interior designer, you need to receive a certain amount of hours of those over a certain time frame to keep your credential. If you don't keep up with your CEUs, you lose that designation. So it's a great way to have a captive audience because for those folks that, you know, need to get their CEUs and a lot of your manufacturers and even CEDIA has some of their own, but your key manufacturers, you know, name the big control brands, they all have them. And your speaker brands will probably have them, the bigger ones out there, you know, the Sonances and the Origins and the Jameses and and such out there. They've made these CEU courses. And what they are, they're basically one hour presentations that they have to be brand agnostic, but the idea is if you give them yourself, then you are seen as a subject matter expert. So it's a great way to get in front of those folks. I did many of those back in my DSI days, and that's a great way to get in. That's my favorite CEDIA membership benefit. So if you're a CEDIA member, you have to pay an extra fee. It's pretty cheap to become a certified giver of CEUs. I think they call it the design and build program now. But look it up. If you decide CEDIA’s design build program, you'll find out how to do that and have events. And I've seen dealers do this in creative ways. At my old day at DSI, we had a showroom. So I have lunch and learns and even dinner and learns where we, you know, brought in food. Or I'd go to their facility and do it, especially in a big firm. And that's often what they do. You want to come to them. Or you could some dealers, where some dealers will make, like, a multi hour event and break it up with snacks, and architects and designers and builders could come throughout the day. They, like, they have, you know, their vendors all gonna stack up different CEUs. So if some architect or designer kinda lapsed and they need to get a bunch in, they can hang out all day. Or if they need one or two, they take the class if they want and show up and meet the integrator, see the showroom space, and move on. So there's various creative ways to build real you know, again, the theme of building relationships and showing yourself as a subject matter expert. Awesome way to do that.

Rebecca:

Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you, Josh. Well, we've got five minutes left, guys, of the hour. So I'm gonna go ahead and say if you have some questions, start dropping them in the chat for us. I'm gonna ask one final question to each of you, and it's a look ahead into the rest of this year, in 2026. And then I'm gonna share one slide with both of your contact information if people have further follow-up questions. So, Ron, I'll start with you and just say, looking ahead, what is a big idea in marketing that people here should be aware about and prepared for? And then after that, Josh, if you just wanna mention what's on the road map for HTA in 2026.

Ron:

Yeah. I know the vast majority of people tuned in are getting most of their business through referral. I suspect that continues into the future, for the foreseeable future. But the folks that have been referred to you are often going on this thing called the Internet, and they're conducting search. And when they are going on and doing search, the role of AI is growing exponentially. So Google is still the big dog. It's still where the vast majority of searches happen. But, all of your AI large language models are becoming increasingly important for the business. And so your business is gonna be in a better place. If you're mindful of that reality, like, it's like gravity, you can't fight it. It just is. So being mindful of that and making sure your business is being found in the ways that you wanna be found. The second item I would just point out is that your online identity, your website, your digital marketing, your online presence, it plays a major function in trust building. You know, keeping in mind you're gonna go in there and shake hands of these architects, designers, and builders, but they or people on their staff are gonna go and vet you. They're gonna research you, and you want to make sure the brand image that you're putting online is by your design. It's not, you know, the person at the front desk and whatever they happen to slap on your social media channel or whatever they happen to design into your website, but you're absolutely defining your identity and controlling your identity with your content and messaging. So just understand that's important. There's also one other constituent. This is not this webinar. Also future hires. People that you would want to attract into your business are equally going into all of those places and they're determining is that somewhere they wanna work. So just be mindful of that and partner with a great marketing partner or hire a great marketing person on your team that understands that and really helps you control that narrative.

Josh:

All good stuff.

Rebecca:

Yeah. Josh, what's ahead for HTA next year?

Josh:

For HTA next year, so you'll see us doing more outreach to architects, designers, and builders in the form of we're doing some revamps on our website for those of us that for those of you that have watched our association evolve, the website's become a lot prettier and more interactive. You know, images of beautiful projects show up on the home screen and change every few seconds. And now it was done as a very deliberate way to draw in the design and build community because they like to look at their websites. They're beautiful. They show beautiful homes and beautiful interiors. For us wanting to help you and help establish beauty, that technology and design go together, we're gonna do more of that and bring them into our world. We're gonna allow even those folks, architects, designers, and builders to put free listings on our site. It's a way for us to draw them into our world where they can even showcase their work, and we're gonna put a design and build finder on our site too. Basically, giving them some free SEO, some free backlinks to their websites, but it's a way for us to say hello. We're here as an association to connect you with, here's our dealer finder. Here's the pros in your neck of the woods that are best. So never for those of you that are interested in becoming certified, I would never say leads is the number one thing to do. Put that on the bottom of the list. It's more about differentiation and building trust and lowering risk to potential consumers and trade partners. But that is something we do wanna do is to build more of a footprint of acknowledgment to the design and build trades because there's so much blue sky. What I'm excited about when I teach them and I show what integrators can do and all what's in it for them and how they benefit, a hundred percent of the time, you get nods and thumbs up. They just need to find you. So go out there and do these things that we're talking about. They are looking for someone to work with. Most there's so much blue sky in this industry. It's exciting. And one stat I wanted to share, which I kinda forgot, and this is, many might know Matt Bernath from Vital. And he had an early interesting stat that he learned from working with integrators. Integrators that have a hard time breaking the two million dollar in gross sales, what he finds in common is they don't have great trade partner relationships. Once those integrators focus on this, boom, they break through that two million dollar ceiling and they keep going. The throttle is on. So industry specs by respected people bear out this conversation.

Rebecca:

Alright. Well, we are at time here, guys. Josh, thank you. I saw you answered the question that popped up in our chat. Thank you so much everyone for joining us. Please feel free to reach out to either of these two experts with any further questions. And thank you guys for letting me be a part of this webinar. It was so fascinating.

Josh:

Thank you. Rebecca, great job. Thank you so much for facilitating.

Ron:

Josh, it was great job.

Josh:

Yeah. As always. Yeah. Great talking to industry friends here and having a lot of friendly folks on our attendees too. So thank you everybody for showing up, and hope you get massive benefit out of this. And like I said, Ron and I are your friends. We're here to help you out. If you wanna go deeper on any of these topics, feel free to reach out. This is the stuff that we get up in the morning for, put smiles on our faces.

Rebecca:

Yeah. Thank you, everyone. And you will get the recording as well as the deck of resources in your inbox tomorrow, so be on the lookout for that. Have a great day.

Josh:

Have a great day, everybody.

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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.

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Resources and links from the interview:

• • One Firefly’s Trade Partner Toolkit
  • HTA Certification & Resources
  • What Is an HTA Design Partner?

 

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