#360: Speed, Precision, and the Business of Custom Integration with Jonathan Smith
In this week’s episode of AU, guest Jonathan Smith, founder of Fusion Automation Systems and Technology, joins Ron to discuss how his experience in NASCAR shaped the way he approaches precision, pressure, troubleshooting, and entrepreneurship.
This week's episode of Automation Unplugged features Jonathan Smith, owner and founder of Fusion Automation Systems and Technology, based in Trumbull, Connecticut.
Jon’s career started in a place most integrators can’t claim: behind the wheel as a professional NASCAR driver. After competing for four years and working his way toward the top tiers of racing, the economic downturn of 2008 and 2009 forced him to pivot. That transition led him into the world of smart home integration, where he spent the next 13 years working on high-end residential projects across Fairfield County, Westchester County, New York City, and even around the globe.
In 2022, Jon launched Fusion Automation with a focus on boutique, design-forward smart home integration. His goal is simple: make technology feel seamless, perform beautifully, and disappear into the design of the home.
In this episode, Jon and I discussed:
- How his experience in NASCAR shaped the way he approaches precision, pressure, troubleshooting, and entrepreneurship in the integration world.
- Why professional design documentation, outsourced engineering partnerships, and strong project planning are critical.
- And how Jon is building Fusion Automation through relationships with architects, designers, and builders, while leaning into high-growth categories like lighting, shades, invisible audio, and digital displays.
Whether you’re interested in building stronger relationships with architects and designers, growing a design-forward integration firm, or hearing how lessons from NASCAR translate into business ownership, you’re going to enjoy this conversation.
So settle in and enjoy my conversation with Jonathan Smith. Let’s get started!
SEE ALSO: #359: Blake Urmos on Building AI Tools for the Low-Voltage Industry
Transcript
Ron:
Hello, Ron Callis here with another episode of Automation Unplugged. Today's show is dropping on our July 4th weekend — not quite July 4th yet, but that's right around the corner. For many of you racing fans, this might be a big weekend where you're at the beach or having fun with your family, maybe watching some of your favorite motorsports. The big race this July 4th weekend is the Chicagoland Speedway — that's for NASCAR. So I said, "Let's bring a NASCAR professional driver on." That's right, a former professional NASCAR driver who also happens to be in our technology integration space. He's been here for a couple of decades, well informed and well experienced, and he's been running his own operation since 2022. Without further ado, in the racing world he's known as Jonathan Smith — a professional NASCAR driver. Here today, we're going to call him Jon, because he's one of us: an integrator working with the same types of consumers you all work with. You'll see him at trade shows, buying groups, and all the usual places. Let's meet Jon Smith, owner and founder of Fusion Automation out of Trumbull, Connecticut. Jon, how are you?
Jon:
I'm quite well. Thanks for that introduction — I'm extremely humbled.
Ron:
You earned it. You're my first NASCAR driver on this podcast. We did have a gentleman on the show, Scott Smith, not too long ago, who was in NASCAR on the advertising side of the business. But you're the first person who's actually sat in one of those loud, powerful cars and driven them around the track. That had to be at least an exciting part of your life and career.
Jon:
Extremely exciting. There's nothing like the feeling of being in a race car. We say you're taming the beast, but you can't really tame a race car — in most cases it will win. But the power, the speed, the atmosphere, being in NASCAR, the fans — every piece of it. There's no greater high than getting to drive in NASCAR.
Ron:
How much horsepower do one of those cars have?
Jon:
They range — the different types of cars — anywhere from 650 to 700 horsepower when I was racing. At the time, the Cup Series cars were at about 900 to 950 horsepower. They are monsters on wheels that do not like to handle well.
Ron:
Is that really the difference in racing — the human element of your ability to respond quickly and manage that beast? Or is it that plus the engineering team building the car?
Jon:
Interestingly, in our space — the technology space — technology is huge. Even in a NASCAR stock car, there's nothing stock about these cars. The engineer's role is right there with the driver's. The driver has to perform, has to stay on the track, not hit the wall, not hit other drivers. The engineer has every nut and bolt dialed down to the millimeter. At the top level of racing, that's the difference between first and twentieth.
Ron:
The slightest little difference in the mechanics of the car.
Jon:
Just the slightest little difference, and the driver has to perform to that.
Ron:
Tell us about Fusion Automation — what types of projects do you do, where do you do them, and what are some of the typical brands you work with?
Jon:
I'm talking to you from my home office in Trumbull, Connecticut. We're in Fairfield County, where most of my business is — Fairfield and Westchester Counties. We do travel for trusted customers who have homes in other locations. Consider us a boutique smart home firm. We want to take care of your specific needs. Smart home, yes — but we want to make it smart and simple. That's been my goal from companies I worked at before and into launching my own company. If there's an issue — and there will always be technical issues — we react quickly. We do our best to make it easy for customers to enjoy their space, enjoy their tech, not have to look at it or be annoyed by it.
Ron:
Tell us about a typical project — small, large, and some of the brands you work with.
Jon:
We're still a very small company — it's me and two guys. One just graduated college, the other is hustling with growth in mind. A small project, which we don't turn away, ranges from $5,000 to $15,000. An average project is probably $40,000 to $60,000. We have a couple of large projects around $200,000, a little north of that. That's where we are right now, with sights on greater things.
Ron:
I want to go somewhere we were actually discussing before the show. I founded One Firefly back in 2007 as a design and engineering firm. When I folded that portion of the business in late 2015 and 2016, those engineers repollinated the marketplace providing design and engineering for integrators across the industry. It turns out you're working with one of the engineers who used to work here — Mike. To what extent are you leveraging outsource partnerships for drawings and detail work?
Jon:
We met Mike at a previous company, Precision, where we both worked. He did all the drawings and engineering — very high-level knowledge of the space. He knows what the installers are looking for. We built a great relationship. My skillset is not the beautiful drawings and engineering — I can make something look halfway decent in Preview, which is almost embarrassing to say. But when you put his documentation and knowledge of Lutron systems and Savant build-outs up there, it's a perfect match. And I get to stay in touch with a friend.
Ron:
Mike deserves some public praise. He likes to be behind the scenes, so he's probably going to hate us for mentioning him. But there are these superheroes throughout the industry who help so many people look good and get projects done. As an entrepreneur — a business of any size, really — why did you choose to invest in professional design and documentation even as a small shop? Because I'd challenge that many don't do that regardless of size.
Jon:
It's threefold. First, it's not always cheap. But being on the installer side and working with Mike's drawings, I could take them to a 60,000 square foot site and deploy all the lighting loads while limiting 5,000 questions down to 10. Having been on the installer side and seeing how that helped me get a job done, it was always very important to me. On the other side, looking professional to architects, designers, and homeowners shows you care and are willing to invest in yourself. The homeowner isn't sitting with a set of blueprints on the wall, but if you bring them in and show that this is what we do behind the scenes — that's what you're going to perform in their home.
Ron:
Do you bring examples of plans from past projects when meeting a new architect, designer, or developer? Or do you tell them about your documentation process and pleasantly surprise them later?
Jon:
I've done both, and I see a drastic difference. Saying "I'm going to give you great documentation, trust me" versus showing them a project we closed six months ago — down to patch panel layouts and switch ports — there's no comparison. Showing what we've actually done far outweighs what I say we can do.
Ron:
A nuanced question: when engaging a customer in the sales process, do you present a budget range and then move into a paid design phase? Do you charge for design?
Jon:
I've listened to enough of your podcasts to be embarrassed to say I have not charged for design yet. I'm doing site walk-throughs and initial scope work without charging — which I do believe needs to change. I know I'm telling myself what I need to do and not doing it. But there's money being left on the table when I'm giving my expertise to someone who may or may not become a client. If I'm there for two hours and they go with somebody else, I could've been with someone who became a client.
Ron:
I'll flip the script — your wife is an interior designer running her own practice. Would she offer a design and not charge?
Jon:
No. She has her consultation fee. They pay it upfront before she even goes out.
Ron:
I need to record that for her. "My wife was right, and I need to learn from her." All right, tell us your background story — how did you land in integration?
Jon:
We touched on my racing career. I've raced everything growing up: dirt bikes, bicycles, go-karts, cars, bigger cars. All of that led me toward a professional career with a trajectory toward the NASCAR Cup Series through a program called the Drive for Diversity — NASCAR reaching greater markets. That all culminated in the economic downturn of 2008 and 2009. Marketing dollars — most needed in racing — were pulled due to the recession. I had some factory support and manufacturers willing to put funding behind me, along with some sponsors. They could subsidize half the race season budget, but I still had to come up with the other half — which was still a very large amount.
Ron:
Millions of dollars?
Jon:
A winning season at the time was about $7 million. I was blessed to have manufacturers willing to come up with half of that, but coming up with $3.5 million — I might as well have needed $20 million. Companies just weren't spending that kind of money on marketing, and I had to go find a job.
Ron:
It's fascinating that the pressure is on the driver to go get the money rather than a marketing or biz dev team. Is that how it works at that scale?
Jon:
It is, especially when the market gets competitive and sponsorship dollars aren't leading the seats. Someone with personal funding can go write the check — their talent might not be at the top level, but their money helps them get there. Back in the '90s and early 2000s, money was flowing and they were throwing millions at the NASCAR beast that was growing. When ad revenue pulled back, the teams couldn't go look for talent — they had to go look for talent with money.
Ron:
Can money buy championships?
Jon:
Money cannot buy a championship. Money can bring you to the table. Your skill level still needs to buy you championships. The guys winning championships — rest assured they deserve those championships.
Ron:
Tell us about your background in integration. How did you get here?
Jon:
From racing, I needed to go find a job and make money to pay the bills. I was still in my early 20s. One of my best friends, Jason Sherick — who's still in the industry with his own firm — called me one day and said, "Do you want to come help me? I have to move a system from one house to another." I went with him. He paid pretty well for the day, so number one, there's money to be made here. But number two: I walk in the house and there's this Fujitsu plasma TV on the wall — some of the older guys in the industry will remember, a 55-inch, 300-pound plasma. I noticed there was no equipment in the room. He said, "We have to go move the rack in the basement." And it clicked — the TV is in this room and the equipment is in another room. There's an emitter on the TV that one remote can control back to the equipment in the basement. I thought that was really cool. I needed a job and went to work with him. It's something I found interesting — much like racing, you're at a different location every day, seeing different things, hustling something new, troubleshooting and triaging. That innately worked with who I am, and I fell into this pretty cool industry.
Ron:
That was around the Great Recession — 2008, 2009. Take us from that introduction to launching your own business in 2022.
Jon:
From there I worked with Jason, and together we went to another company — a larger outfit working with some of the most prestigious people in the world. That's where I really started to see the full scope of this industry: Crestron systems, tablets, thermostat sensors, penthouses in Manhattan. It was that same realization I had on day one — "these two-story penthouses you see in the movies are real." I stayed with them for a few years. Then I got picked up by Precision Audio Visual, where our buddy Mike came from. We went up another tier — elite clients, travel around the world, projects in Singapore, sent to Brazil to work on a yacht, all over the country. Really cool stuff. But that's also where I experienced documentation and more structured business — how you take a company and deliver real results. I was there for nine or ten years. I've always had the entrepreneur mindset — like racing, you're an entrepreneur if you're going down that path. My dad was a mortgage broker and owned his own business. I always knew that was me. I had a one-year-old son at the time, my wife was already in interior design, and I said, "I know the industry. Let's go do this." A big thing for me was that I got removed from racing because I couldn't afford it. I decided that a W-2 wasn't going to get my kids in the seat if they wanted to race one day. Starting my own business — with all the freedoms, headaches, sleepless nights, and great things that come with it — could offer no ceiling. I don't see any reason why any of us can't get there.
Ron:
What have been the biggest surprises about being out on your own?
Jon:
On the installer side, by the time I showed up on site, I didn't know we were already a year into planning. I showed up and installed the stuff, ran wires, managed the team. The owners of the company had meetings with the architect, homeowner, and designers a year prior — planning everything, getting documentation and systems ready. I didn't really know how much effort went into that, which is turning out to be what I like most about this industry. That's what drives me and puts fuel on the fire — I enjoy those conversations, the exploratory parts. Going to the client and showing them what they don't know: showing them that the TV on the wall is controlled by a rack in the basement via a little emitter. They're very successful in their hedge fund, but that is mind-blowing to them. I think that's a lot cooler than I expected it to be.
Ron:
Where have you personally grown the most over the last four years?
Jon:
I'll name drop Eric from Precision. He was very blunt and very direct — he would tell me, "Jon, you don't have to be so nice all the time. Just be direct, get what you need, and do it respectfully." I learned a lot from that: to be direct. When a builder calls and asks a question, it's not "well, we could go this way" — it's "I need a mechanical room. I can't work in a utility closet with my rack. The equipment won't fit. We need to go back to the architect." That's a real situation I'm working with right now — they gave me a tiny utility closet when we started with a full mechanical room, and we lost all that space to a red light therapy sauna ice bath. Even with billing — sometimes you look at the number and think, "I can't send this to the client." Just send it, talk to them, and you know what? They just pay it and say, "Cool, what's next?" That directness has helped me grow as a person.
Ron:
Learning how to not think with your own wallet — thinking with the client's wallet instead — is something I had to learn too. You don't want your salespeople afraid to deliver the bill. The customer asked for this. If that's what they want, deliver it with excellence. How are things going right now, mid-2026? Is it an up year?
Jon:
So far it's been an up year. We're closing out a few big ones and have a couple more on the horizon. Year over year the trajectory has gone up, and 2026 and 2027 are still trending that way. Our area in Fairfield County is still booming — construction everywhere, renovations, new builds. We are a saturated market with integrators, but there's still a lot of space given the sheer volume of work. We're a company of three, and I leverage ChatGPT to help with day-to-day and strategy. The mindset is to hire more in the near future, get me more out of the field and into the driver's seat — doing more lunch and learns and getting in front of more architects and designers, because they're landing these jobs and more jobs are coming.
Ron:
Is networking with designers, builders, and architects how you're generating business today? What role do they play in your growth engine?
Jon:
My wife being a designer opened my eyes to this. The whole idea behind Fusion Automation Systems and Technology — the long name — is seamless integration. We want the tech to be felt emotionally, heard, but not necessarily impactfully seen. Working with my wife, we utilize invisible speakers, shades in pockets, cool lighting — the tiny little lights from Aspire so you don't see them in the ceiling. The days of the big tower speakers aren't gone, but they're used more discreetly. That's what created the FAST acronym — Fusion Automation Systems Technology — which brings me back to my core: racing is fast. Working with my wife and seeing her frustrations on projects where planning wasn't there, I kept hitting the barrier of "I can't do an invisible speaker in this room because I'm way too late to the game." They have a bank of five switches on the wall because nobody explained a Lutron system. We need to be in front of the builders, and more importantly, in front of the designers — because the client doesn't truly know what they want until you help them get there.
Ron:
Tell me more about the lunch and learn strategy. Is this something you've implemented or are planning?
Jon:
Planning — I haven't done them yet. What highlighted this was when I went to the Origins event in January. You talked about lunch and learns and getting to architects, and I thought, "Let me explore this more." I've been building out that plan and working with my reps to make it happen.
Ron:
I'll stand on my soapbox for a minute: if you can build rapport with a designer or architect and deliver on the promise of taking care of their customer, they can feed you many projects. Getting there takes time — you need to make deposits. A wonderful way to build that rapport is to give them something they need. Designers and architects need CEUs to maintain their licensing, and many brands already have approved CEU courses. If you're a CEDIA member, CEDIA has courses that are CEU approved. You can leverage your reps or manufacturer representatives who are already CEU trained. It's a win-win-win: the manufacturer wins, you win the business, and the audience gets the training they need. In Q3 of 2026 — July, August, September — can I hold you accountable to your first event?
Jon:
I will. I'll commit to at least one event with a design firm and one with an architecture firm.
Ron:
And having dinner with your wife doesn't count, even though she runs an interior design practice.
Jon:
I'll commit to at least one architecture firm.
Ron:
Deal. Let's pivot — you do work with your wife, who is an interior designer. How has that worked?
Jon:
It's kind of two-way. We're on our second project together. The first was a beautiful Victorian home in Saratoga Springs — a complete remodel. The house needed to stay true to its era, with the medallions on the ceilings and existing lighting, but they wanted speakers. I put invisible speakers in. They wanted TVs but didn't want to see them, so we have Frame TVs throughout. Really cool stuff. She brought that project to me. The project we're doing now is the complete opposite — ultra-modern. We're turning a racquetball court into something amazing: the top half is a motorcycle lounge and garage with a gym, and the bottom half is split between a golf simulator and a movie theater. Tying all that together with tech and her design is very hand-in-hand. I lead all my conversations with "Do you have a designer?" because she could be a great fit. It's about working in partnership. I was recently brought in to help another firm close out a project, and I truly believe rising tide lifts all ships. We're in an industry that can be extremely competitive, but if the AV guy in a house did a terrible job, the next integrator walks in carrying that reputation. But if a client had a great experience somewhere else and just bought a home in Connecticut, they're more likely to invest in the system. Working together across the board — designers, architects, and integrators equally — is what helps the industry move forward.
Ron:
Let's close out with any technologies you're excited about — ones you're designing, installing, or learning about as you look a year or two ahead.
Jon:
Lighting and shades — I think we still haven't scratched the surface of what that market is going to be. It's growing exponentially every year for me. Full speed ahead with that. I haven't done any video walls yet, but being at CEDIA last year and seeing what's possible — video walls are the future. Hopefully a couple of those will come across soon. Lighting, shades, and digital displays are really what we're focusing on.
Ron:
Jon, thank you for joining me on Automation Unplugged. It's been a joy learning about your background and your experiences.
Jon:
Thank you. I really appreciate the time and the connection that gives us all this platform.
Ron:
For folks who want to learn more about Jon or get in touch: Email:
Jon:
I really appreciate it, and we'll do it again when you hold me accountable in Q3.
Ron:
You got it. Have a great holiday weekend!
Jon:
You as well!
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:
Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fusionast/
Instagram: @fusionast
Scott Smith’s show- Referenced in the episode