#362: The Power of Vulnerability: Jason Zuniga on Peer Groups and Second Chances
This week's episode of Automation Unplugged features Jason Zuniga, owner of Austin Home Systems. Jason founded Austin Home Systems in 2014 and has grown it from a three-person team into a 26-employee company, taking revenue from $850,000 to over $7 million. Built on a foundation of integrity and Christian values, he and his team have transformed the business from a small AV company into a full-service custom integration and electrical firm.
In this episode, Jason and I discussed:
- How he scaled Austin Home Systems from a three-person shop to 26 employees and over $7 million in revenue.
- How reading Traction helped him define his target market of custom home builders and break through the million-dollar ceiling.
- Why joining a ProSource peer group and learning to “be vulnerable” with fellow dealers has been, in his words, life-changing for his business.
Jason is known for his hands-on approach and for building a company focused on quality, service, and long-term relationships. Whether you’re building your own integration firm or just want to hear how a values-driven leader scales a business, you’re going to love this one.
So settle in and enjoy my conversation with Jason Zuniga. Let’s get started!
SEE ALSO: #360: Speed, Precision, and the Business of Custom Integration with Jonathan Smith
Transcript
Ron:
Hello, hello there. Ron Callis here with another episode of Automation Unplugged. Hope you’re all doing well and enjoying yourselves on this Wednesday. As you likely know by now, we release a new show every Wednesday, and I hope you’re also enjoying our new AI Insights episodes, which we launched this summer of 2026.
Ron:
So although today’s episode is one of our classic episodes, where we interview an integrator and share their story, thoughts, and opinions on current events, we’re now also releasing a monthly episode where I go deep with a member of our industry and community, talking all things AI.
Ron:
So be sure to check that out. If you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll see the show named AI Insights, and if you’re listening in a podcast app like Apple Podcasts, you’ll see a color-coded badge — we color code the different shows based on their type.
Ron:
So with that, let’s jump into today’s guest. My team here at One Firefly had been talking to Jason for several years, but I finally got to meet him and spend time with him at Lightapalooza this past February. Then he and I had a nice sit-down in March at the ProSource event.
Ron:
Through those interactions, I learned about his story, and it’s inspiring — it has all the ups and downs you’d want in a good movie. Jason has lived it out in real life, and he’s going to share that with us today as we talk about his journey in business.
Ron:
He now runs a very successful business out of the Austin market, and I know we can all learn a lot from him — from his trials and tribulations, and how he’s overcome them to run the business he runs today and become the person he is, which is pretty admirable.
Ron:
So without further ado, I’m introducing Jason Zuniga. He’s the president and co-owner of Austin Home Systems, out of Austin, Texas. Let’s go ahead and bring in Jason. Jason, how are you, sir?
Jason:
Hi, Ron. Doing well. Thank you for having me.
Ron:
My pleasure. Jason, where are you coming to us from — are you at home, or at the office?
Jason:
Today I’m at the showroom, in our media room. We have a lot of flex space here, so nobody really has an office — we have two conference rooms, and my desk is kind of in the middle of things, so I just hide out in a room whenever I need to take a call or do an interview like this.
Ron:
Okay, awesome. Tell us more about Austin Home Systems. At a high level, what type of work do you do, and where do you do it? Do you stay solely in the Austin market, or do you go throughout Texas or the country?
Jason:
We’re a full custom integration company — we handle everything automation: high voltage, low voltage, shades, security. We typically stay in the Austin area. Austin’s pretty big, and a lot of our projects are moving west of the city, so we work in some of the surrounding areas too. We have a couple of out-of-state projects, but that’s not typical — those only happen when a client here in Austin is building a vacation home and asks us to work on it. Otherwise, we stay in Austin.
Ron:
Okay, do you mind sharing — you won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t want to — what are some of the more important brands for your business? I’ll protect you a little here: you don’t have to name everybody, and you’ll probably leave someone out. But are there a handful of brands that are really critical to your business today?
Jason:
Absolutely. We’re a Control4-certified showroom, so Control4 is our primary automation brand. We also do Lutron lighting and shades — we’re actually the only Ketra-certified showroom here in Austin, and Ketra’s headquarters are here too. So Lutron, Control4, and we’re also a big McIntosh dealer, which makes our operation a little different. About seven or eight years ago we bought a hi-fi store — there was a two-channel retail store here in Austin called Audio Systems that was going out of business, so we bought it and still have that retail storefront. McIntosh, Sonus Faber, all these high-end brands — people can still walk in, and we have listening rooms for most of the luxury stuff.
Ron:
Quick follow-up question — maybe I’m getting into the nitty-gritty, but I’m curious: when you say McIntosh and Sonus Faber, did those brands come with the acquisition of that hi-fi shop, or did you add them yourselves afterward?
Jason:
Those brands were actually acquired after the fact. When we bought the store, I had a conversation with the owner — he was retiring. One of our clients had put us in touch with him, and what we really wanted was the building and the location. He said, “If you buy all my inventory, you can have the website, the phone number, and the business.” It was really about $60,000 to $70,000 worth of stuff he couldn’t sell.
Ron:
Is that this location here that I’m sharing on the screen?
Jason:
It is that location. I wish you could see what it looked like before — there was sludge all over the paint, and a weird awning that had been tagged with graffiti.
Ron:
It looked closed.
Jason:
It looks beautiful now.
Ron:
Very modern.
Jason:
I had driven by this location for years thinking the building was closed, not knowing what was inside — and that’s what a lot of people have told me since. But yeah, we gave it a complete makeover. The only brands we still carry from the original store are probably Dynaudio and Magnepan.
Ron:
Okay.
Jason:
Yeah, so McIntosh was an add-on after the fact, from growing the business and discovering new brands.
Ron:
Just some high-level perspective here — what’s the state of hi-fi right now? We’re recording this in the summer of 2026, and the whole economy nationwide has been a bit of a rollercoaster this year. Hi-fi felt hot, then it cooled off, then it felt hot again. What’s the state of things?
Jason:
We wouldn’t have been able to keep the store open if it were just for hi-fi.
Ron:
Okay.
Jason:
It’s probably 5% of our business. It’s funny — we still have someone here who worked in that original store. He’s been working at this location for 35 years, so people will walk in and say, “I bought my first pair of speakers here 25 years ago… from that guy?” It’s pretty cool. I think it’s more about nostalgia at this point. People do come in randomly — maybe once a month or every six weeks — and buy a full system: speakers, amplifiers, the whole bit, anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000. So it’s kind of up and down with hi-fi, but overall I think it’s mostly that this place has been here 35 years, and it’s cool to keep it alive. People in Austin know they can come back to the same location.
Ron:
When you’re designing a fully integrated project — your normal type of job — do you find yourself bringing up the idea of a two-channel room, or a room dedicated to quality audio listening? Is that something you regularly talk about, and if so, how is it typically received? Is it a priority for customers, or does it just depend?
Jason:
When you walk into our showroom lobby, there’s a big pair of orange Focal speakers and McIntosh gear — it’s right in your face. Then the rest of the store looks more like a modern custom home. We have a really nice listening room, and we try to get clients to at least go in and check it out. Most people want everything hidden — nothing visible on the floor. So we don’t push it on anyone, but it’s there, and we show them how cool it can be. Some people really are interested in a dedicated listening room, so we have the space to let them listen and hopefully get their spouse’s approval on some nice speakers.
Ron:
Austin — when I think of it, I think of all the crazy building that was happening, and then things seemed to slow down. What’s the current state of Austin? Is it back to being one of the fastest-growing cities in America? What’s the business climate like right now?
Jason:
I feel like a lot of the Californians miss California, so they’re heading home. During COVID, everybody from California moved here. In 2020 we were probably 12 or 13 employees doing right around $3 million, and then it exploded — first with our own clients, since everyone was at home and needed something, like an Apple TV in a room or a new Wi-Fi access point in their office. We had to scale, which was strange, because other companies were shutting down while we were growing. Then the real boom hit closer to 2022, when people started moving here in droves — we were closing $40,000 to $60,000 systems one or two a week, and they just kept coming.
Jason:
Things really started to cool off in early 2025 — there was no more real estate to buy and people stopped moving here. By the end of 2024 into 2025, the housing market really slowed down, and we started seeing inventory we hadn’t seen before. Now there aren’t as many people moving here, or at least not at that price point. The custom home side has grown a lot for us — there’s more custom building happening now than the kind of call where someone just moved here and needs their whole house outfitted. That side has really slowed down, though it’s starting to pick back up this year. We saw it start around March, right after spring break, with more calls from people moving into new houses. But with interest rates high, it’s still tough for people.
Ron:
That’s interesting — I appreciate you sharing that. One of the things that really jumped out to me, Jason, as I got to know more about your approach to business, is that you’ve had one heck of a journey. If you’re game, I’d love for you to share your entrepreneurial story — go back as far as you’re willing, and bring us to the present. It’s one heck of a hero’s journey.
Jason:
Well, I grew up on the border of Texas and Mexico, in Laredo — it’s kind of the Wild West down there. I grew up in a good family, kind of isolated, on a ranch. My grandfather went to the University of Texas, and a lot of my aunts and uncles did too, so they had a condo here in Austin, and I’d come up in the summers. I was a little skater kid, and I liked coming up to Austin — I always thought this is where I wanted to be. So I moved to Austin in 1997, with the intention of going to the University of Texas like a lot of my family members. I made it as far as community college, but that wasn’t for me. I got caught up in that whole party lifestyle on 6th Street, which really pulled me away from what I was there to do.
Jason:
I’d grown up doing AutoCAD for my grandfather, doing drafting, so I always had a bit of a computer mindset, but I couldn’t make it as an engineer like I thought I would. Getting caught up in that lifestyle in Austin, I ended up getting into some trouble. In 2000, I was trafficking marijuana.
Ron:
As one does.
Jason:
Yeah, and I got caught in Louisiana, of all places.
Ron:
Okay.
Jason:
The famous saying in Louisiana is, you come on vacation and leave on probation.
Ron:
Right.
Jason:
That happened to me. I went to a boot camp in Louisiana, which was quite a mess. One of the options at boot camp was vocational training, and I figured I’d do anything to get out of doing pushups all day, so I signed up for a network and cabling class. I learned infrastructure work — punching down cables, that kind of technology — and I thought it was pretty cool.
Jason:
When I got out of the boot camp, I had to stay in Baton Rouge, so I started working for a company there doing commercial cabling and infrastructure work. I liked it — it was fun. Then I moved back to Austin and couldn’t really find a job doing that, so I went back to what I knew: drafting and surveying. But I could never really get away from that lifestyle of easy money and fast living.
Jason:
At some point I wanted to get out of doing surveying in the heat, and a friend of mine knew somebody doing AV. I didn’t really know what AV was — I’d done car stereos, but I’d never heard of home AV. With my networking background, I got a job with a friend of a friend doing AV. This was 2004, and they were doing Crestron, luxury residential work. I jumped right into the high-end stuff, and it was a lot of fun. I worked for a couple of different companies and met some people along the way.
Jason:
A few friends I was working with decided they wanted to open a business, and I was game — but I told myself I just had to do one last run. That’s always the way it goes — everybody who gets caught, gets caught on their last run.
Ron:
Right.
Jason:
I had actually just met my wife — well, my girlfriend at the time. We’d only been dating about six months, and she didn’t really know what I was doing; she probably thought I was selling dime bags or something. I got caught up in a federal conspiracy for trafficking, and I ended up going to federal prison.
Ron:
That sounds really hard and terrifying.
Jason:
It was crazy — it really was quite a ride. Since I’d already been in trouble before, everything works on a point system in the federal system; everything you’ve ever done in your life factors in. So I ended up in a worse place than I probably should have. A lot of people hear “feds” and think club fed, playing tennis — that’s not where I went. When I got there, I remember thinking, “All of this for weed? Really?”
Ron:
I’m glad you can laugh about it now.
Jason:
Yeah. That was four years of my life, and I was very blessed to have met that fine woman — she stayed by me, and we became best friends. One of the cool things about where I was is that you could be on the phone as long as you wanted, or as much as you could afford, so we’d talk for hours some days. I was in Tennessee for two years, then Arkansas for two years, and she’d drive up from Austin on a hairstylist’s salary to see me. We’d sit in a room like this one, across from each other, talking for hours — it was really cool. We became best friends and fell in love, and when I got out, she was there for me. We were married within a couple of months and have been together ever since. Actually, this past Monday, June 22nd, marked 19 years since that day — the day I got in trouble. When they put the handcuffs on me, I was so relieved. I bowed my head, thanked God, and said, “I’m glad this is over. I can put all that behind me now and move on.”
Ron:
A reset.
Jason:
Yeah, a reset. It was just the beginning — I didn’t really know what I was in for, but I was glad that old chapter of life was over.
Ron:
Not to go too deep, but — whatever comes to mind that you’re willing to share — was there anything good that came from those four years away? Anything you discovered or learned about yourself through that process?
Jason:
Absolutely. Like I said, I didn’t go to college or the military — those are both typically four-year commitments. Well, I did four years in prison, so now I tell people: college, military, prison — pick one.
Ron:
So they put you in prison, and you found the library — you found your own way of studying.
Jason:
Yeah, absolutely. I discovered art — I discovered oil painting, and I really learned a lot. I also picked tattooing back up.
Ron:
Prison tattooing?
Jason:
Yeah.
Ron:
The art of prison tattooing?
Jason:
Yeah. I’d been interested in that since I was really young — at 18, a couple of friends and I got a tattoo machine and practiced on each other, since we were into art. I hadn’t done it since, but almost 15 years later I picked it back up. I told myself if I ever got caught doing it, I’d stop, since it wasn’t something you were supposed to be doing. But since I was already into oil painting and producing some decent work, I gave it a try and was pretty successful at it. One time I did get caught — they do random searches — and they took my equipment away. I didn’t get into any real trouble, but it was a reminder I wasn’t supposed to be breaking the rules.
Ron:
So you didn’t get in trouble. All right, silly question — when you’re in prison doing tattoos, where do you get the ink?
Jason:
It’s fascinating, the things people build in there. To relate it to something we do — like radios — there are guys who work in the maintenance department, and they’ll pull chips and circuit boards out of old DVD players or whatever else and use them to build amplifiers for radios. A radio is your lifeline in there — if you want to watch TV, you have to use headphones, so there’d be a “radio man” who’d take a little FM radio you bought from the commissary and add an amplifier and battery packs to it to boost the signal.
Ron:
That’s crazy.
Jason:
Yeah. For the tattoo needles, they’d take a guitar string — there’s an art room and music rooms — and shape that into a needle. For ink, they’d use ink from a certain type of pen, then burn certain plastics — I don’t know exactly what.
Ron:
So not the healthiest ink.
Jason:
Probably not. You had to get your ink from the right person — it was like its own art form.
Ron:
Who’s your best ink supplier?
Jason:
Exactly.
Ron:
I guess you just have to learn to survive — it’s a different world.
Jason:
It’s a completely different world. But I learned a lot — I learned art, I read a lot. I grew up in a good family; I went to a Christian school for a few years and was raised to live the right way, and I just deviated from that. Growing up going to a Christian school, it’s easy to think, “Sure, I’m a Christian, but I’ll do whatever I want.” I’d never really read the Bible or many books before, so that time gave me the opportunity to dive in — go to church, actually read and understand the Bible, and read a lot of other books too.
Jason:
I spent my time as best I could educating myself, reading, learning. I was actually a teacher for a pre-GED program — for people who don’t know how to read, where even three- and four-letter words are a challenge. You had to have a job in there, so mine was teaching. In the mornings I’d go to school and teach people to read and do basic math, which was pretty interesting. In the afternoons I’d go to the art room and paint for about three hours, and in the evenings I’d work out. I had to keep a strict regimen. I made the best of my time, and I feel like I learned a lot and came back a better, more educated person. It was a good experience, in a strange way.
Ron:
Sounds like — not to get into politics, I try to stay apolitical — but it sounds like real reform happened for you, at least in how you managed that experience.
Jason:
A hundred percent. The first time I got in trouble, I didn’t really reform — I just thought, “Now I know how not to get caught,” and figured I was smarter. That was bad thinking. But this time, I made the most of it, and there really was reform. I truly believe there was an opportunity for that, and I used my resources.
Ron:
Good for you. So you came out, got married — where did your career go from there? What trajectory did the job side take?
Jason:
I stayed close with my family, and my aunt got me a job doing punch-out work for a construction company. Then I ran into some people I used to work with in AV — two guys I’d once talked about going into business with had each started their own companies. I did a little work for one but didn’t like the operation, then worked for another and decided AV wasn’t really for me anymore. Before I’d left the industry, it was all speakers and TVs — I didn’t even have an iPhone. When I came back, it was all networking, and I thought, “I don’t know about this — I’d rather do construction.”
Jason:
I actually started doing a remodel with a friend who owned Austin Home Systems at the time. He was burned out — running a crew of three guys and doing all the sales and accounting himself — and he asked if I wanted to buy the company. I said, “Buy the company? I’m working hourly for you remodeling your house — how would I buy the company?” We went to the bank together, and they basically laughed at us: they told him they’d give him whatever he wanted, but they weren’t giving me a dime.
Jason:
So that didn’t work out. What ended up working was someone I’d been incarcerated with — he became a good friend, came from money, and was in for something like a motorcycle chase. When I told him what was going on in my life, he asked why I hadn’t come to him for the money. I said I wasn’t going to ask a friend for money — that felt weird — but he insisted they’d help. So I put together a business plan. This was before AI, so I wrote the whole thing myself: a 17-page business plan, which I presented to his mom. She agreed to it, we settled on terms, and she wrote me a check.
Jason:
I had a contract with the previous owner that he’d stick around for a year to help with the transition, but after about six months I told him I didn’t need his help anymore — I had it. He was antsy to leave anyway, so I paid him the rest of what I owed and he left. That’s how I got started, with literally $25,000 in the bank.
Ron:
Wow.
Jason:
Really, what I bought was a website, a phone number, and a bunch of service calls. He’d been doing Savant, which I didn’t really know — I’d done some Control4. The guy who was actually doing all the technical work, I had to fire before the previous owner left, since they weren’t getting along, so I lost my main installer and had to bring in someone else I knew. It was challenging — we had a six-month-old at home, and my wife was saying, “Please don’t do this right now.” We had a two-year-old and a six-month-old, and it was a rough start. I’d be sitting at the breakfast table and she’d say, “Hello? Anybody there?”
Ron:
I think there’s no perfect time to start a business, and no perfect time to have kids — you just do it and figure it out.
Jason:
Yeah, so I started with two guys and a minivan, since I’d had to let one guy go. We were down on West 6th Street, in a cool little bungalow in downtown Austin — a really neat spot, outfitted like a house, but operating out of there was challenging. Receiving deliveries on 6th Street was tough.
Ron:
What year was that, approximately?
Jason:
That was 2014.
Ron:
So from 2014 to now, in 2026 — that’s a 12-year horizon. Has that growth been straight up and to the right, or has it been jagged?
Jason:
It’s been straight up. The first two years were pretty challenging — I didn’t really know what I was doing, even though I thought I knew business. Thank God my wife was running her own show as a hairstylist and doing her own accounting — she was the brains of the operation. Even after I got back, she already had a whole plan in place, based on Dave Ramsey’s principles: how much we needed to make, where all the money went, every last penny accounted for. She was really the backbone of all of this. I wouldn’t have even known how to pay taxes — I was an AV guy, I knew how to do AV.
Ron:
Sounds like you married well — that’s a real partnership. She’s not just a life partner, but a business partner bringing real skills to the table.
Jason:
It was. It took a while before she was fully on board, but now she’s here 100% — she’s our CFO and handles a lot for us, which is pretty amazing. But back then she was still doing hair, and we each had our own businesses, so it was challenging. I didn’t know business, so I was going in circles, learning QuickBooks — the previous owner hadn’t even really used it. He just did taxes at the end of the year and paid the penalties. I remember thinking, “This seems crazy — there’s got to be a better way.”
Jason:
So I got everything onto QuickBooks and went through trying all sorts of different business-management programs — I won’t list them all, but I tried most of them, some more than once. It was fun, though, and we were growing and bringing good people on board.
Jason:
Around then I met the person who’s now my business partner. Before the previous owner left, he’d run into another guy running a similar business and told me I should meet him. So we set up a meeting — he was doing luxury jobs with a good pipeline, but needed skilled labor. We partnered on a few things, but he was a bit wild and it didn’t really work out, so we walked away.
Jason:
About two years later, once the business was still growing, I really needed a salesperson — I couldn’t handle everything myself. As it happened, that same guy and I reconnected, and he said he was ready to jump in and do this with me. My wife wasn’t sure — she asked if I remembered how things had gone the first time. I told her I felt it in my heart, that this was the way I wanted to go, and she backed me up. So Randall came on board in 2017.
Jason:
At that point we were stuck — we couldn’t cross the million-dollar mark. Then a client came to us wanting to do a really cool job in a downtown condo, and he wrote his own contract instead of using my basic QuickBooks boilerplate. His contract required me to show up to the job site every day — not for the whole day, but every day — with a full schedule of values laid out. It was a great project, so we agreed to his terms.
Jason:
While we were working on it, he walked up to me one day with a stack of books. He was a couple years younger than me and had already built and sold several companies — he was living in a beautiful downtown condo and told me he’d never have to work again. He handed me the books and said, “Pick one, apply its model to your business, and run with it. Business was figured out a long time ago — you don’t need to reinvent it. You guys are great at AV, but I can see you’re stuck, and you won’t be able to scale without some real direction.”
Jason:
I hadn’t gone to college and didn’t have that kind of formal training. Some of the books he gave me were Scaling Up, Who, and Traction. I started reading Traction, and it was eye-opening. I was doing all the sales myself at the time — Randall was still transitioning into the company — so I started writing everything down: the model for how the business should run, all the pieces of it. It was overwhelming at first, and honestly a little discouraging, because it was just me. Where would I even find people for all these pieces of the puzzle? I had a couple of installers who just wanted to install and go home. It felt like a daunting task, but I stuck with it, starting back with the basics — mission statement, core values, all of it. I had no clue about any of that stuff going in.
Ron:
So that client who cared enough to give you those book recommendations — when was that, roughly?
Jason:
That was around 2017.
Ron:
2017.
Jason:
Yeah. Funny story — once I started applying Traction to the business, we kept in touch, and he’d still give me some business coaching. One day he asked to sit down and talk, since he was still involved in some business ventures, and he wanted to make me a proposition. I thought it might turn into a Shark Tank moment, and it kind of was — he offered me $35,000 for 50% of the business. I said, “Wait, what?” We were right at the million-dollar mark at that point, and I decided that wasn’t a good deal, so I walked away.
Jason:
We kept applying those principles and eventually cracked the million-dollar mark. Around the same time, we’d just moved out of 6th Street — the owner of this building let us write a lease-to-buy contract, so we started saving up, trusting it was meant to be, and we hit the million-dollar mark while already in this building. The next year we hit two million, then three. We also figured out how to hire properly: we’d write down everything we were each responsible for, and once we hit our ceiling on a role, we’d pull a few tasks out, put them in a bucket, and hire someone new to own that bucket. That’s how we built out the team piece by piece. It wasn’t easy growth, but it was steady and positive — we had some setbacks, but never a bad year.
Ron:
You mentioned that part of your process, reading those books and building better habits, was defining the market you wanted to serve — the type of customer to focus on. Can you walk us through how you landed on that, and how it’s impacted the business?
Jason:
Sure. When I started out, I walked right into the luxury side — high-end custom homes. I hadn’t grown up with money myself; I’d bought a foreclosure here in Austin and was remodeling it, putting automation in, and I thought, “What if I could bring automation to working people — to folks who can’t afford these big luxury homes?” For a little while that was my mission: bring home automation to the blue-collar community. But unless you want to become something like ADT, that model doesn’t really work — it didn’t work out for me, and we had to change course quickly.
Jason:
I’d worked for a company here in town where I watched an aggressive, really skilled businessperson operate. He’d moved into a nice gated community, rubbing shoulders with the right people, and he was always going after custom home builders, always networking with them. I saw the success in that approach, but it didn’t really click for me until I read Traction and its idea of a bullseye — what’s your one target? I decided the custom home builder was my target market, the one I needed to go after, because even if you don’t hit dead center, everything around the bullseye is still good.
Jason:
Once I’d decided that, I had to figure out how to approach these people. I’d drive around on my way to a consultation, see a builder’s sign, write down the phone number, and call. Builders don’t want cold calls — they’d tell me they already had a guy and didn’t want to talk. But I kept calling, and calling, and calling. Then one day a builder would be frustrated because their current guy hadn’t shown up, and they’d ask if I could be there Monday. I’d say, “Absolutely, I’ll be there Monday.” That’s when I realized the value of just being there for these guys, doing whatever it took to earn their business, being a tool in their toolbelt, and never slowing them down. Builders have schedules to keep, and my promise to them has always been: you will not wait on us — we’ll do whatever it takes to keep your job moving, even if that means picking up slack outside our scope for other trades. I’ve built some really strong relationships that way. A lot of the builders I started working with early on, when both our businesses were growing, I’m still working with 12 years later — they’re friends now, and they advocate for me.
Ron:
That’s amazing. Does that mean you don’t market to luxury consumers at all? How does that target-market focus on custom builders translate into where you actually put your time, money, and marketing energy?
Jason:
Austin Home Systems has a really strong organic presence. The company was founded in 2007, right at the beginning of AdWords and Google, and a couple of tech-savvy guys built a website that got us ranking well early on. We still rank well organically, so we get a lot of calls — and I’m terrible at saying no, so I don’t answer the phones myself anymore. If I did, I’d get a call from someone who just moved into a house and I’d say, “Sure, I’ll come help you figure it out,” which isn’t good for the business. So it’s been about learning to say no, since our phone rings a lot.
Ron:
Does that mean no one answers the phone, or just that you personally don’t?
Jason:
Just that I personally don’t. Someone does answer — we get a lot of calls, and a good number of the right people call in. I think our website also positions us as more of a luxury automation company, and the brands we carry make clear we’re not cheap, which helps filter out jobs that aren’t a fit. But we still get plenty of calls for jobs we wouldn’t take.
Ron:
Got it, understood. A couple of years ago — my notes show this went live back in May of 2024, so you likely made the decision well before that — you launched an electrical division. Walk us through your decision-making process: why launch that, and how did you go about it?
Jason:
I’ve always been into lighting and lighting control — Lutron especially. I did the original Lutron RadioRA training, programming from the keypad, back around 2008 or so.
Ron:
I actually joined Lutron in 2000, and one of my first jobs was traveling the country teaching people how to program RadioRA.
Jason:
Wow, so you may have actually been my trainer, back at Avid.
Ron:
I might have been your trainer 20, 25 years ago — it’s very possible.
Jason:
Wow, probably. So, ever since then I really liked lighting, and with my AutoCAD background we were always doing detailed prints. We started redrawing electrical prints — we’d get prints for a luxury home with ten switches at the front door, which was crazy — and then we’d have to meet with the builder and the electrician to sort it out. I could teach a 16-year-old high schooler a complex panelized lighting system in about ten minutes; they just get it. Meanwhile an electrician with 30 years of experience, three or four projects in, would still be calling asking where to put a three-way switch. We were constantly on-site correcting these guys, so we started charging project management fees for managing the electricians. Eventually we got tired of teaching everyone how to do this, because then some of those guys would go try to market that knowledge directly to the builder themselves.
Ron:
You teach them just enough. Now they go to their electrical supply house, start buying the gear, and suddenly they’re in the lighting business.
Jason:
Yeah. So we decided we really needed to do this on our own. We’d been working with the same electrician since we started, and he agreed to become the master electrician for our company. We hired a couple of journeymen and trained them up — one guy in particular was really good, young, and knew he wanted to be a permanent part of the company. He got his license under Austin Home Systems, and we just grew that side of the business from there. It really only started making money after about two years of putting in a lot of time and resources. We were essentially starting a new company, and we ran into all the same bottlenecks and hurdles we’d already seen on the AV side.
Ron:
What was the reasoning for launching it as a new entity rather than just a sub-brand? Any legal or insurance reasons to keep it as a separate corporate entity?
Jason:
We just wanted to make Austin Home Systems more valuable — we wanted the builder to have one neck to wring, so to speak.
Ron:
Okay, let me clarify — so you have the low-voltage, automation business, and did you launch a separate business for electrical, or not?
Jason:
I did not. It’s all the same business — Austin Home Systems holds a security license and an electrical license, but it’s run as a business within the business, since it requires its own management.
Ron:
Got it — it’s similar to how we run One Firefly. We have Amplified People, which is a business within a business, but the corporate entity is One Firefly.
Jason:
Correct.
Jason:
So we’re dealing with the same hiring issues and the same growing pains — where do we find space for the electrical side, all of that — just applying the same principles from a working AV company to electrical.
Jason:
It’s been fun, but it hasn’t been profitable yet — we’re just starting to see more business from our existing clientele. We work with a lot of builders who trust us with their AV, but we’re also a little cautious, because if we mess up on electrical, we risk losing the AV business too.
Ron:
Yeah, it’s not without risk.
Jason:
Right. A lot of these builders already have a good electrician they work with. Pricing was hard too — we’re used to certain margins in AV, and electrical just doesn’t have those same margins. It’s a pretty cutthroat business, and most contractors just use subcontractors to pull wire and trim out houses. We learned that the hard way — the first few projects we bid, our builder clients told us we weren’t even close, that we were 30 points off on pricing.
Ron:
Way higher than the market.
Jason:
Yeah, so we had to fine-tune that and come in with really slim margins on the wiring side. We make it up on high-end fixtures — starting with something like DMF and stepping up to Ketra and full control systems. It’s been about figuring out the balance: where we can offset the cost of the wiring to keep it competitive, so we can sell more expensive fixtures to the end user. It’s been difficult to figure out, but I think we’re gaining traction now. Once you earn trust from one builder, you can go to the next and say, “So-and-so is using me and they’re happy — they’ll vouch for me.” So little by little, we’re building that trust.
Ron:
Two years into that effort, in hindsight, would you do anything differently?
Jason:
I’m not totally sure. We started out using contractors — I learned early on that you can’t hire too many people too quickly, that you have to scale slowly. I think that was the right model. Now we’re at the point where it makes sense to shed some of the contractors we’ve been using to pull wire, which means paying our own guys more, and taking on more overhead and liability. But we’ve gained enough traction now that we think we can sustain and keep growing from here. I like how we approached it — we all had to learn. It was actually a little easier for our electrician, since he walked into a business that was already successful and stable, so he didn’t have to worry about the overhead the way I did starting out.
Ron:
Love it. Switching gears — tell me about how you think about the value of your participation in ProSource. I know that’s been important to you and fundamental to your learning, along with the peer group you’re part of there.
Jason:
It is. One of my biggest competitors here in town kept pushing me toward it — funny enough, they have two owners as well. I was a little reluctant at first; I was approached by ProSource right around the time we hit the million-dollar mark, and my reaction was, “That sounds like a lot of money,” so I passed. Years later, a different friend here in town, someone I’d worked under before and really respect, kept encouraging me, since he’d found a lot of value in it. So we joined ProSource and jumped in right away — if I’m going to pay for something with real resources behind it, I want to get the most out of it.
Jason:
Then they started these V11 groups, and I think I’m in one of the first ones. It’s a breakout group of about 10 or 11 dealers, and we get on a monthly call that runs about two and a half hours. At first I thought, “Two and a half hours? I don’t have that kind of time.” But once a month, on a Thursday, we get together — a couple of us are from Texas, but most of the group is from the East, places like Florida and North Carolina. We go through topics together — what’s working, what isn’t — and share our experiences: how a certain product performed for us, how we’re handling a certain issue. I find a lot of value in it. It’s a great sounding board, and you hear different perspectives from different economies and different ways of running a business. Some people have been in business a few years, some for 30. Hearing those different experiences reminds you that your way isn’t the only way to do things. It’s honestly been life-changing for me. I’m a big advocate for it — being able to be open and honest, not worry about giving away my “secrets,” and hear other people’s in return. I always walk away with multiple takeaways from those calls.
Ron:
I love that. Would your message to listeners be: if you’re not in a group or mastermind environment, find one, because it can really change things?
Jason:
It depends on how you want to grow your business. Early on, I was selling TruAudio speakers, and they ran an annual trip called TruEscape for their top dealers, taking them to a different tropical destination each year. That was really valuable, because running a small business without exposure to other business owners, my wife and I would go on these trips and get to talking with dealers from outside our market, sharing ideas. They’d built a real culture of dealers helping each other out. When I joined ProSource, it was the same kind of thing — I wanted to talk to everybody and figure things out. But I’ve also seen people join the group and never really work it, staying in their own bubble instead. You have to be willing to be vulnerable and share some of your own information to really learn from other dealers. There’s value in the buying group itself, of course, but the biggest value to me is my peers — being vulnerable with them, opening up, and receiving from them in return.
Ron:
I appreciate that, and I agree entirely. Finding your tribe — people you can be vulnerable and transparent with, both offering and receiving help — matters so much as an entrepreneur. You don’t have to be on an island by yourself. There’s a lot of, well, “suffering” might be a strong word, but there are real challenges in entrepreneurship, along with a lot of fun ones. There’s a lot of value in leaning on people who’ve been there before and learning from their experience instead of reinventing the wheel — someone’s probably already solved that problem hundreds or thousands of times.
Jason:
Absolutely. On some of those trips, you’ll run into someone whose biggest problem feels unsolvable to them, and you’ll say, “That’s easy, here’s how you fix it,” and watch their eyes light up — “Oh my gosh, thank you so much.” Then you run into them a year later and see how much they’ve changed because of it. Same thing happens to me — someone gives me information, and a year later I run into them and just thank them, because I can’t believe how much it changed my business. It’s a cool thing.
Ron:
Jason, I want to close things out here — we’re just about up against an hour. I’m curious about your thoughts on attending CEDIA this year. Also, ProSource and HTSA teamed up with Avixa to acquire Lightapalooza, so next June, 2027, there’ll be a combined InfoComm event with Lightapalooza — now the new residential show, Reside. What are your thoughts on CEDIA first — any opinions for or against, and are you planning to attend? And any thoughts on the energy you’re putting into next year?
Jason:
Last year was the first year I didn’t go to CEDIA, outside of COVID — my first CEDIA was back in 2014. I really enjoy going, though I don’t quite remember what pulled me away from it last year. This year, with it back in Denver, I was a little tired of going there, since we already ski in Colorado pretty often and it’s one of the closest destinations from Austin. I loved it when it was in San Diego — that was a fun trip. But we are going this year, probably just a handful of us. We’re trying to bring the right people so it’s not just a company party — I want to find real value and bring people who’ll get something out of it. I always enjoy CEDIA and always come away with takeaways. I try to make sure everyone on the team leaves with at least two takeaways, and then we follow up on how they implement them — as long as we walk away with at least one thing we actually put into practice.
Ron:
Something actionable that delivers real ROI.
Jason:
And then there’s Florida — HTSA and ProSource are heading there. I’m not sure how that’ll play out yet. I really love the ProSource summit, though — it’s been in Nashville the last couple of years, and that’s been a lot of fun.
Ron:
Jason, I want to thank you for joining me on Automation Unplugged. You’ve shared some wonderful stories and lessons, both in business and in life. For folks listening who’d like to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to reach you?
Jason:
I think you have my email address and our office phone number. Feel free to email me — I’m not really on social media. Austin Home Systems has some social media presence, but early on my wife and I made a promise to each other that we personally wouldn’t do social media, so we’ve stayed away from it. You won’t find me there, but I’m a phone call guy — I like talking on the phone.
Ron:
All right, for our listeners: that’s
Jason:
Correct.
Ron:
And the website is AustinHomeSystems.com. The office phone is 512-293-3179 — and as Jason mentioned, he doesn’t answer that line personally, but someone in the office will.
Jason:
Yep, 24/7.
Ron:
24/7. Just mention you heard the podcast, and they’ll get you in touch with Jason. Jason, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Automation Unplugged.
Jason:
Thank you, Ron. Thank you for having me.
Ron:
My pleasure.
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:
Show Notes:
- Lutron Partnership Inquiry Page
- On the Blog: Lutron DMC FAQs — Everything Dealers Need to Know
- On the Blog: How Lutron Dealers Can Maximize Their Marketing Investment