Special Episode: Elevating Leadership with Ron Callis of One Firefly
Special co-release featuring Ron Callis on Elevation with Chris Oram—a candid talk on leadership, growth, AI, and building a thriving remote culture.
This week's episode of Automation Unplugged is a special co-released episode with my friend Chris Oram, host of the Elevation podcast.
About this episode:
Chris and I sat down for an awesome conversation about leadership, personal growth, building strong teams, and how technology — especially AI — is shaping the way we do business.
If you’re not familiar with Elevation, it’s a show all about personal development, mindset, and the stories of people who’ve climbed the ladder of success. Chris does a great job pulling out meaningful insights from his guests, and I was honored to be one of them.
In this episode, we talk about my journey building One Firefly over the past 18 years, lessons learned from both wins and setbacks, how to spot greatness in others, and why letting go is key to growing as a leader. We also touch on how remote work, innovation, and AI are transforming the way we serve our clients and our teams.
SEE ALSO: #253: Eagle Sentry’s Service Manager On Leadership Principles & Attracting New CI Talent
Transcript
Chris:
What's up everyone, and welcome to another exciting episode of Elevation with Chris Orm, the show where we talk to individuals who have climbed the ladder of success. Today is episode 31 and we have a very special guest. We have Ron Callis on the show. Ron is the CEO of one Firefly, a digital marketing and web development agency where he serves integrators and securities companies all around the world in their web development and design and branding and things of that nature. And for the last 18 years, Ron has been a champion of the custom integration industry. And fun fact, Ron is actually the reason that I started Elevation with Chris Orm after he said that I asked excellent questions and really was just a great guest on his show. So I want to give a big shout out to Ron for helping me start that. And. Ron is here today on the show after I recently wrote him about overcoming some challenges in podcasting. So I'll welcome Ron to the show and then we'll dive in a little bit more to that. So without further ado, let's welcome Ron Callis and he is the reason why that this show is a thing. Ron, thanks for being here,
Ron:
Chris. Uh, so flattering, I'm honored to be here, proud of you, proud of all the work that you've been putting in to yourself and to help others with this show and, uh, yeah, it's excited for this conversation.
Chris:
Yeah, so Ron and I met a couple years ago at cedia. So I went to Cedia, I believe in 2022 on my own dime. I wanted to get into the industry and a one Firefly seminar was actually the very first seminar I went to at cedia. So that was my very, very, very first moment of the Cdia world. So again, shout out to Ron for that and you know, I met some of his team. I networked, I figured out kind of what's going on in the industry like. What, what sort of different entities are involved in the industry And One Firefly is a very special company and they serve as kind of the marketing area of the industry. And I was able to meet some of Ron's team members and then, I don't remember if it was that year or the following year, but they had introduced me to you at the booth. And um, from that point you had invited me onto the show and a couple years later, here you are today on my show.
Ron:
It's, it's crazy how the world works, isn't it? It's, uh, it's been fun to watch you. I, I knew when I met you and, uh, you know, you, you, you shine. Anybody that that has met you, Chris knows that. And, uh, I spotted it in you that in that first interaction, I was immediately, sometimes when I meet people I'm like, I gotta get you on the podcast and share your story. And, uh, the rest, the rest is history. Look at you, Ron.
Chris:
Sure. And I appreciate that, Ron. So thank you for the kind words. And I think that, you know, one kind of nugget that we can already highlight on the show that you just shared is that your ability to spot greatness in another individual is like a, is a very key aspect of be becoming a great leader. So the fact that you can do that is, I'm sure why you can build out a successful team at one firefly because. As much as maybe you would like to do it yourself, or people watching would like to do everything themselves, it's simply impossible to be the best at everything. So by using something like leverage and allowing other people to use their greatness to shine, we can work together as one team to all be great.
Ron:
Amen to that. I mean, the key, it it, it wasn't obvious to me at the beginning of my entrepreneurship journey. I had to learn that through the school of hard knocks. You know, in the, I would challenge, in the very beginning, I thought that I could do quite a bit myself and as, uh, running a business will do, I, I was nicely humbled again and again and again. And, uh, ultimately, you know, had a, a breakthrough Where I realized is I hired better people, certainly in categories of the business that strengthened or fortified my weaknesses. So I'm good and, and talent and I have talents in certain dimensions. And as I started to understand myself better, I could surround myself with people that, uh, filled the weak areas. And as I became more comfortable delegating to them, so finding great people and, and delegating and letting go of the vine, that's really when, uh, this business was able to start accelerating.
Chris:
And when did you feel, when did you have the moment that you said, okay, I'm willing to give up some of my things on my plate?
Ron:
It, it was, uh. You know, funny enough, it was, it took me years into business to, to realize that it was, I'd, I'd love to say I figured it out within months. My, I'd have a lot less gray hair, if that was true. Uh, no, it took years, took many years. Uh, I launched the business in oh seven and it, it wasn't until, uh, many attempts at specifically, uh, trying to scale up originally in when my business was younger, trying to scale up the sales side of the organization unsuccessfully, that my breakthrough moment or my aha, was that my weakness in the business was not actually bringing the customers in. Like I naively thought to grow my, to grow the business, I needed more salespeople. And I, I didn't need more salespeople. I was actually a pretty good salesperson. I could bring people in the front door. What I needed was a better product and service and customer experience so that when we brought them in, we could retain them. And so we, what we had was a leaky boat. We were, we were bringing people in, but they were, they were dropping, uh, right back out. And so I, it, it wasn't until 2013. So if you do that arithmetic, it was, you know, a good handful of years from the founding of the company that I ultimately, uh, identified operations as where I really needed to level up the business. And I brought in someone that had, uh, uh, startup experience, background, both in operations and finance. And that person today is Taylor. He's my CFO. He's been with me now 12 years. And, you know, so being able to delegate a lot of the, the financial management operational tasks, it wasn't immediately perfect. I, I, I don't think he would, uh, agree that it was immediately perfect either. But, uh, that really, that concept allowed him to focus on operational and financial management, both areas that are not my strengths, and it allowed me to focus on customers and product, which were my strength. Yeah. And so that was, you know, it, it was very clearly a step function improvement in the business. And, uh, there were, you know, lots of other step functions, but that, that was a big one. And that was about six, seven years into the business.
Chris:
So you, you start focusing on things that you're good at and you allow, um, Taylor to go ahead and focus on things that he might be better suited for. And you're operating one Firefly as a remote team. So I'm sure that comes down to a lot of trust. You have to trust that the person on the other side of the screen is doing what they say they're going to do. And I'm sure you figure that out rather quickly if that person is going to fulfill their end of the agreement or not.
Ron:
Yeah.
Chris:
So from that perspective, let's, let's say, so obviously Taylor has, has grown with the company, so it did work out well. Quickly, you might find that another one of your team members is, is it's not working out well. Are you quickly making moves to correct that on a remote team? Like I, I, I guess my question is, I wanna dive in more how, how quickly you can find someone on your team that may not be pulling their weight remotely and identify that.
Ron:
Sure. So when Firefly, again, when you go back to the founding, we were all in an office. And we were in an office because I thought that's what you do. I thought you have a brick and mortar and I thought you rent, you know, you buy furniture and you put an office plotter. We were doing engineering drawings at the time and I needed to be able to walk around the office and look over their shoulder. Uh, I'm not diminishing anybody. There's a lot of business operators that still feel that's necessary today. But in 2015, uh, we made the move, uh, operating on theory that, uh, well, our clients actually never came to the office. Our clients were all over North America. So what, and, and our staff, I mean, we're here in South Florida at the time. Were commuting often an hour plus in the morning to get to the office and then commuting an hour plus at the end of the day, losing two hours of their life every single day in traffic, uh, you know, and for what purpose? So we just, we, we made the assumption at that point, cloud computing was far enough along we felt we could have our servers in the cloud. Uh, it was early. We were right at that point where this became possible. And a video conferencing was far enough along where it was reliable that, uh, we said, well, let's save. I think at that time, our, our rent was six or $7,000 a month. So that's just immediately the company becomes more profitable. Now, conveniently, this epiphany happened right as we were at a re a lease renewal. So like, let's not renew that lease and let's move everybody to home offices. And uh, and it's fair to say that, uh, maybe some of those people operated well in that environment and some didn't. But as we grew and scaled the company, uh, we successfully hired people that were comfortable being independent, loved the idea of working from a home office. And then you asked, well, how do you, how do. Maybe keep them on task or know when to part ways. At the end of the day, I don't believe an employer or manager's job is to babysit or micromanage anybody. In fact, a lot of people would really hate to be micromanaged or to feel that that's necessary. So if you hire the right people that are self-motivated, they woke up, they wake up in the morning wanting to work hard and wanting to do excellent work because that's who they are as a human. It's not because they work for me. It's 'cause that's who they are. And then I successfully go out and identify them and I bring them into my organization and I make sure it's very clear to them what their tasks are like, what are their projects, what are their tasks? We give them great project management software, so they have a software environment to to know what's uh, obligated of them or what's required of them. And they have the ability to report back, uh, again through software and systems where they are in, in a percentage completion of that task. Then at the end of the day, that task is either completed on time or not. It's completed with a high level of quality or not. And so they would, we would only ultimately put someone on a roadmap, uh, which is, you know, our, our version of a PIP or a personal improvement plan, you know, which is a, let's get this thing lined, let's get it back in, putting it in the right direction, or we're gonna part ways. We would only move someone through a plan like that if ultimately they weren't doing quality work, weren't hurting, weren't hitting time constraints, and with the supportive management or other members of our team that try might try to be coaching them, nurturing them, supporting them. To make sure if they are lacking knowledge, let's address that. But if it's not a knowledge issue and they just, they don't, don't really have the capacity to get the quality of work we done, we need done, then yeah. You part ways with those people. And so it's a matter of managers having standards and benchmarks for any particular role, knowing what normal is. What do we expect? Uh, I would go all the way back to the beginning of hiring. When you hire someone, not only hire the right person, but hire someone that clearly understands how they'll be measured and make sure they're, they're, they're excited about that, and then rewarded based on that. Here's where the bar is. If you exceed the bar, here's how you make your bonuses and or commissions. And so just full transparency, what what happens is when you're a business that does that, and it's it's certainly occurred to one firefly, is you just start attracting people. That that's their perfect workplace. That's the type of company they wanna work for. And then you just, you do other work. I don't know if you wanna go there or not, but you do other work to maintain the sense of community and culture that make it a great workplace like you might be working from your home office. I mean, I'm working here from my home office, but my goodness, I've probably been in meetings with 15 different people at one Firefly today where everyone had their camera on, like, when Firefly is a camera on workplace, if you're in a meeting, your camera's on, right? So no one's coming to work in their pajamas and they're, they're ready to work. They're, you know, you're here. I see you. I can see eye contact, I can see facial expressions. You can see mine. So much of communication is nonverbal. So being able to communicate, uh, with that visual, um, it was a mandate. I mean, right in January of 2016, we were a camera on workplace and that was just one of the little details of us going virtual.
Chris:
Awesome. That was a really well answered que uh, well answered. Great answer to the question, so thank you for that. Ron. I think really you kind of sell, um, remote work. Well, I think you as the leader of one Firefly set the expectation and I think that that's crucial in remote work. I think if you don't give people clear tasks and clear instruction and clear, you know, guidelines for what they expect, they might go rogue. But when you do, when you have talented people that want to be there and want to do great work, you kind of. You allow them to get that great work done, um, at one Firefly. So I think that was a really well, um, spoken answer to the question.
Ron:
When I hear people talk poorly, I mean, I, I'll be honest, I have a lot of admiration for Elon Musk. I know that's political to say that, but I love the technological genius and the entrepreneurial genius that is Elon Musk, but I think he's wrong. About what he says about remote work. I think the right people in the right environment can absolutely thrive and deliver an excellent work product. Um, I'm not, but, and I also on, you know, the anti antithesis to that. I'm not gonna speak poorly about people that want to have people in an office. Good for you. It's, it's just a definition of your corporate culture. And I think there's some value if you were in the same workspace and being able to huddle people up into a huddle space or a conference room and, and work something out. Uh, I think there's tremendous value in that. But there's also, uh, when you're virtual, there's just the virtual version of that. And we can use Miro and virtual whiteboards and, uh, video conferencing and breakout rooms to, to really accomplish quite a bit.
Chris:
And especially you, if you throw someone on a big screen, if you have, if you have the right space for like video conferencing. They're continuing to grow and grow on that with more like AI versions, you can, you are, you can now actually start to feel like you're in the room with somebody.
Ron:
Yeah. I've seen some of that latest software where you can like see which room they're in and yeah, I've seen some of that tracking or not tracking software, but some of those new AI enabled virtual workforce software. We don't use that. We, we are a, uh, although I've, I've looked at it, it's kind of neat. Um, you know, we're, we're power users of Slack. Uh, you know, we, we are inside of that, whether personal channels, client channels, um, and all sorts of flavors of everything in between. There's, you know, thousands and thousands of conversations happening every day at one firefly inside of Slack or not in, maybe not every day, but certainly every week. I think a typical month for us has something around 40 to 50,000 messages posted inside of Slack, um, from our team and either public or private channels.
Chris:
Or feel in your remote company that you, you or your people get overwhelmed by too many softwares. Right? So I heard someone say that. It's not, it, it's really like application to you now. Like
Ron:
I, I, I, I don't necess, I wanna say yes and no. I know that's a cop out answer. Um, we have a tech stack at one Firefly that our team uses in their day-to-day workflows. And I think within those constraints it probably feels pretty well tame, pretty controlled. We, we try to not modify that or, or, um, you know, for example, throw the newest AI tool people every day. I, I'm not saying some of that might not have happened in early 2023 when AI was all the rage. But, uh, I think we, we don't do that today. And where we do experiment with new software or tech that might be appropriate for the company, we do that in sandbox environments, usually in breakout groups where there's people there vetting a tool so that we're not, uh, disrupting production or operations in the company. And there are appropriate people involved to try to vet pieces of software or tools that might be useful to us. But we, we test them out and only if they, they pass through that process, would they be exposed to the team and, you know, programmed into processes.
Chris:
Wanna shadow to any software that has you excited right now that you might be testing out?
Ron:
Uh, you know, I, we are power users of, uh, OpenAI Chat, pt. Um, we're, we're developing more and more and more, you know, custom GPTs. Which, you know, think of them as just little niche tools. I'll shout out a fun one. It's kind of, uh, silly, but it's terribly useful. You know, at one Firefly, I have me, Ron Callus, I've, I've historically leveraged a lot of my client management experience, 26 years of working with small business owners across the world. And, you know, so when I am in an interaction, whether I'm selling something or I am, uh, maybe helping a sales person or an account manager solve a problem with a customer a lot, they'll bring me in. And I, I love to do that. I love to do it from a, a coaching and support standpoint, demonstrating to our team kind of how to maybe think about things or what are frameworks to think about situations. But what I can do that feels almost natural. Uh, and I, you know, I don't have to think, it just happens because of my experience to the, the younger member of our team, the younger professional that wants to excel, uh, they don't have that experience. So at one Firefly, they can bring me in to a meeting or they can join my office hours. I run weekly office hours. Anybody in sales or account management can jump in there, talk through their situation. But we wanted to further amplify that, right? So how can we put Ron still in more places? And so I built a custom GPT and that custom, that custom GPT is called Ron Bot. So if people wanna have a conversation with Ron, they now can go to Ron Bot and talk about, uh, a diversity of, uh, sales account management, client, customer service, client experience type topics, and that now for our wholesale team and account management team, onboarding team, SEO strategist, any client facing team, they now know. They're power users of that GPT. They go there first and if they don't get their answer, they come to me. And so it's allowed me, as an example to e to to multiply myself and support my broader team. I'm still here, I'm still ready and willing and able to work with them one-on-one, but I'm now able to help them at scale. And that's just by, you know, taking the time. Took me about three or four months with Allison, my assistant, to develop that. I'm refining it every week with new knowledge files and, and content to make it smarter, faster, stronger, and more valuable. I'm always soliciting feedback from the users on my team what's beneficial, what they wish it had. And so it's, that's an example of an AI technology that we're, you know, we're using AI for good, not evil. And that is to, to really be beneficial to the team.
Chris:
So I was at the Home Service Freedom event and Kevin O'Leary was speaking there and, and he was saying similar things about having that 24 7 kind of version of him on. And big thing is that a big kind of controversial thing is do you label things as ai? Do you label it as this is not ai, right? Do you not say anything? So, big thing that they were talking about is most people agree that if you're going to use an AI version of yourself to label it as ai, but I think you were talking about a text version of yourself. I think it's only a matter of time before this comes as a video version of yourself. The, you know, the Ron it be the
Ron:
avatar version of Ron Bot. I mean, again, right now it's internal, it's, you know, it's been an internal beta for two, three months now. Um, but the te and, and so why, why would I make a, a, an avatar Ron talking to my team? It's kind of weird if you really think about it. But because, and I'll go back to my origin story with podcasting. Like why did I start podcast. I started podcasting in the spring of 2017 because Facebook in 2016 had launched this thing called Facebook Live, and they were allowing originally only influencers to go live. I applied, I was not an influencer, but when they allowed us mere mortals to also go live, I was, I was right there and I say, well, then what would I go live with? I need to figure this out so that I can help my customers understand how this might play a role in their life. And so that's where Automation Unplugged was born. You know, we launched in April of 2017 as a Facebook live show where I was interviewing integrators about their businesses and about their lives and experience. So that was purely from testing standpoint. So I'll bring that back to this idea of maybe connecting an avatar to Ron Bot. The idea that, uh, businesses, I mean, again, there's so many infinite, uh, places to deploy this technology, but I'll talk to the business owner. I could totally imagine the role where you might, in the near future have an avatar on your website that's able to offer customer service and able to explain, uh, elements of the Solu solution offering. Maybe talk about brands and applications. And that avatar then is gonna be backed with a brain or an AI knowledge file, uh, you know, a, a natural language programming and or machine learning backend that. Knows stuff because you've given it knowledge and it's gonna deliver a customer experience. I could see a possibility where maybe one day, one Firefly helps build those for our clients.
Chris:
Just gonna say that I, I was literally, you can
Ron:
now see how my brain works. Well, if that is possible, then I probably should figure out how the hell it works. And that's just my nature. I'm an engineer by birth and education. I wanna figure things out and because if I, if I figured it out, uh, then I can speak first person about it, I can talk with my team about it. I ultimately would not as in this hypothetical example, um, I would not necessarily be the production team that's engineering the product for the market, but I would be a contributor in that role with first person experience. So that's, that's just my habit in business, is to go in, get my hands dirty, figure it out, bring that to my team, work with the other members of my team, and then ultimately be I enjoy product development, be a contributor on that product dev team.
Chris:
Absolutely. And I think that, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years that that's, you know, a product that one Firefly is offering. Um, heard
Ron:
it here, folks broke it on this podcast,
Chris:
so you might, because one Firefly is already leading with the, um, the website chatbot. So it's just kind of a evolution of that.
Ron:
Well, the, the evolution, uh, again, depending when this podcast, when this podcast publishes, uh, Chris, uh, we are, I'll just give the date. October 2nd, so I'm assuming this is gonna be after October 2nd, people can go check it out. We are having new product release, which is the next evolution of our chat solution on website, which is an AI chat with human hybrid. It's called Concierge iq. And it is benefiting, uh, our clients with a far more expansive, robust knowledge base about their business solutions, brands service offering. And at any point, if the human chatting on the website wants to talk to a human, there's a handoff. The human's right there still staffed and uh, and it's just, uh, a lot of neat things, a lot of neat things in technology that were gonna be built, we have built into that service. And, uh, and that's again, just the beginning. A lot of more exciting things in, in the pipeline.
Chris:
I think also there's gonna be a big parallel in like AI call centers. So you're focusing on AI chatbots. I know we have some friends that focus on more like call centers. Um, and, and AI is just gonna be a huge player in that. I mean, I went to this event for all home service businesses, so plumbers, hvac, everyone, um, and really a ai, you know, ai, uh, agents answering the phones is, is gonna be the future as well.
Ron:
Yeah. And they're gonna be your sales team and they're gonna be your customer service team and they're gonna be your tech support team. And, and, and AI is here. People like you can't fight it. It's like gravity. There's no winning. It's here. So now you figure out how to work with it and how to have it help make your business better and how to deliver more value to your customers. Uh, 'cause there's no resisting. Resistant. I'll channel my Terminator two. Resistance is futile.
Chris:
So I, I got something funny for you on, so this was not, uh, written into the show notes, but I was just on the phone with my dad yesterday, and because you talk about Gravity, we were talking about Sir Isaac Newton being one of the most high key, high iq, um, people who have ever lived on this planet. So he was at like a, something like a one 90 iq, which is very, very, very intelligent, very high, um, right? So this guy is sitting around figuring out gravity. Apparently he didn't have a lot of friends because he was just so smart that he would, um, his friends or his peers, he would, he would actually correct them in front of other people and stayed at that about how, how, you know, idiotic their ideas were and kind of expose them in front of other people. So, although very smart, he didn't have a lot of friends and he never really made a lot of money. So it's, it's not always about being the most high IQ person actually.
Ron:
I, I completely agree. I, I'd say in business it's about, in fact, not being the smartest person. It's about being a, uh, learning and practicing the art of active listening and listening to your team, and listening to your customers. And the better you, I mean, to, to look at that very specifically. The better we have gotten at one firefly at listening to our customers and their positive and negative feedback, the stronger our business has become. Now, that's with the action. After the listening, you have to listen. And then what are the actions you need to take based on that? Um, in the very beginning of of my business, I, I was very confident and, uh, specific about what I thought they needed. And, uh, being right doesn't matter in business, you can still fail. So what, what I became better at and business. Became a little bit less, uh, full of friction, was just getting better and better at listening to the customer exactly what they needed, and then just complying and serving up maybe with a little sizzle on top to make it, uh, even better. That's the managing expectations piece of that equation. And, um, you know, and that's, that's one of the ways we've been able to continue to grow year over year.
Chris:
Right? I mean, it's, it's listening to their problems, their pain points, and solving for them. So, you know, every, every, most things in life are, it can be very, very simple, but it's doing those simple things that are actually quite difficult. So true. So, Ron, I know you've probably been asked a thousand times about your starting of one Firefly, so I won't get too much into the details of it, but I'm sure I, I mean, talk to me about why you started One Firefly. Was it purpose driven, financial driven, or both?
Ron:
I had a fire in my belly that I just had to, I had, you know, I had a thirst I had to quench and I had worked for seven years, um, within manufacture for, you know, Lutron and Crestron in sales capacities. And, uh, I love Lutron, so I don't want, mean what I'm about to say as a knock. I think there, I could not have asked for a better career start than at Lutron, but the effort that I put in and or the results that I perceived I was producing were not commensurate with the way they compensated back in the early two thousands. And so I wanted to be somewhere where, you know, if I delivered the goods. I could be compensated for it. And so I went to Crestron and their, their equation was a little bit more in that favor, little bit higher risk, but more reward. And I delivered. And so I would say start launching fire at the time was called Firefly Design Group. Um, it was just further and going further on down the line on the risk spectrum, well, more risk, but more reward. And what I didn't spend a lot of time on was actually processing the full accountability of that risk. You know, I was full of little bit more spit and vinegar and uh, I, I was married, but I didn't have any kids. I didn't have much of a net worth. I didn't have a lot to lose. And so I said, if I'm gonna bet on anybody, I'll bet on me. And I went out there and it was just confident, um, and night super naive that if I build it, they will come. And, uh, we, we, the goal was to provide or assist integrators helping them build their proposals and project documentation, both presale kind of in that discovery scoping phase, documentation set, and then post design contract, um, where, or post signing of a proposal where you now need to do the proper engineering schematic level, engineerings, schematics, racks, CAD drawings, power plans, so on and so forth. And so I just, I had this imagination where I was, I, I imagined a room full of, you know, technology architects doing this work for integrators across the country and integrators banging our door down to get the best in the business. Project design and documentation. That last part did not happen. But our product was wonderful. It was a great product. I had wonderful engineers work for me in those early days. I had Doug Dot, I had Rich Harrison, I had Mike Carroll, um, you know, a few other ca CAD designers, you know, some, some great industry experts that, by the way, all I think all those people still do that, that type of work today. Um, but that business was just, what I did not fully analyze in advance and, uh, appreciate is how hard it would be to actually scale that business. And you just, you get into hiring people, hiring, uh, those individuals is difficult. Um, ultimately getting integrators to sign up for the service is difficult. Getting them to give you repeat business is difficult. So the business model was stinky, like we grew it into a multimillion dollar business, but every day, every minute of every day was fantastically hard. That's where I just started to learn. People had told me, but I started to recognize that maybe there's ways that you mentioned the word at the beginning of this podcast where I could have more leverage with my time investment and ultimately get a bigger dividend or reward for the work effort I was putting in. And that's where the pivot, I mean, we pivoted into multiple other services, but ultimately the marketing category, uh, I loved it. It was, I, I, I love to talk creative. I love to talk marketing and branding. I've since, you know, gone to school and read up and studied and become an expert on the subject. Uh, in the beginning I wasn't, uh, but the customers needed it and they wanted it, and they were willing to pay for it, and it was just a better business. So it's, it ultimately pivoted.
Chris:
So you focus on creative solutions, and I'm sure many people would say that that is a saturated market, right? So. You make websites, you do social media content, and you do a lot more than that. But those two first things specifically, I'm sure you have a lot of naysayers saying, oh, Ron, you know, so many people are, have a web design agency or a creative agency. What did you think to those naysayers? Did you respond? Did they get into you? Like, how did you react to those comments?
Ron:
Uh, if those comments existed, and I'm sure they did. I didn't listen, uh, I, I, so I'll just, I'll flip to what we are. We are a niche focused agency, and so, although there are many generalist agencies. Across the United States and across Canada, which are primary markets we serve, there are very few individuals, much less agencies that stay singularly focused on this space. And there it's even more rare air. And I'm, I'm proud to say of the size of one Firefly. I mean, we're in the rare air of, uh, you know, there, there's about five to 5% or so agencies reach our size or bigger in the, in the United States. And, uh, it's not bragging, I'm just saying it's hard to grow an agency to the size. I mean, we have almost 70 people on staff. We've been a little bigger. We're, you know, right now we're around 70. Um, and that's because growing a marketing agency, it's, it's tough. I mean, all, all businesses are tough, but this is tough as well. But most marketing agencies out there are, you know, I would say sub 1 million. And, you know, that's the vast majority in revenue. And maybe, you know, the next tranche maybe is like a, a three to $4 million agency. And there are generally regional, regionally focused. Trying to serve the business community in their area. Uh, what they don't work with every day is service businesses focusing on selling luxury goods. What they don't work is with the, the, the diversity of portfolio of solutions that our integrators work with. They don't work with all of the brands that are first name lexicon for all of the people and staff at One Firefly. And so if someone ultimately engages us, what they're getting is specialization. And specialization is a premium service. We have chosen to make their life easier by us focusing on this space so that ultimately, well, why would they pay a premium? And they do pay a premium. We're not the low cost vendor. It's because we require less of their time. Time is money. Time is a finite asset, right? Time is what you can't make more of. And so when they engage us. In the sales process or ultimately in the execution of a, a project or ongoing service, we're gonna require less of their time to, on an ongoing basis, deliver quality services that help them hit the target or grow their business. And so that translates to them that they can now spend their time in other areas of their life or in their business. And so it, it's not that there's anything wrong with local agencies, there's wonderful people and wonderful agencies, but any integrator that works with them will often find that the interactions are far less, um, efficient. And, uh, ultimately that results in one firefly delivering a higher quality product and a higher quality experience. It's the totality of the advice they're getting, the consulting they're getting, the, the end result that we're delivering. And when any integrator challenges us on cost, I just look back at them and I said, so you go to your customers and you're the cheap guy. I'm not sure you're right for one Firefly, we work with businesses that value their time, value their expertise, and want to charge a premium to their customers so they can work with the people that they wanna work with and do so profitably. It's your fault integrator that we do what we do. 'cause I learned it from you. I wanna work with you and I wanna work with businesses that wanna grow. That mentality is how we've grown our customer base, which is, you know, it, you know, it's well into the hundreds, many, you know, we're under a thousand. But, you know, in, in the multiple hundreds of clients we work with every day, every week. And, uh, we're honored to do so and we do it, I think, with the best team in the business.
Chris:
So, going off that, so you've continued, I would say, to even become kind of the name for people who wanna build a website and, and work with, you know, a, a builder of websites and a creative service like one Firefly. Mm-hmm. So congrats on that. Um, that didn't happen overnight, so that's been the last 18 years in the making. How would you describe that progression kind of going forward? Can you remember some of your earliest clients that you had to pitch on these types of services and, and when did you start gaining traction? Um, and, and you start really seeing some, some good growth.
Ron:
Yeah, so we started doing websites all the way back in 2009, and we weren't very good and every project was hard and every customer was fantastically difficult to please. And I'm pretty sure we probably made little to no money on any of those projects, and we did that for years. Uh, but we, we did understand the, the business owners needed websites and they did need help with websites. And even if it was hard and painful, we would probably deliver a better service than their local web agency. And we would definitely deliver a better service if they went abroad and tried to quote, get a cheap solution somewhere around the world. Uh, but yet there had to be a better way. And at that time. Uh, you know, I'd say early in, in the two thousands I had bought a home and it was what I'd call a semi-custom home. And I had gone to a design center and that design center had taken me through a very regimented process of picking my upgrades. And I picked the doors and the door handles and the tiles. Anyone who's bought a house has gone through this process, and that was always in the back of my brain. How could I add, you know, take that concept of system systemization, uh, constructing pre, you know, pre-designed frameworks, right? I'll just give a very simple low hanging fruit. Like integrators often have pictures of their projects. We could call that a gallery. Well, if dealer a orders a gallery, they're probably not the only dealer that's ever gonna order a gallery. So why don't we go design a whole bunch of gallery options so that now when the customer comes to us, I can say to you, want a gallery? They go, oh yeah, I want a gallery. Well, great. Here's six you can pick from. And they pick one, and they feel that they had the right and power to make the decision. And I know that when my team receives that order, they're gonna know exactly what that customer's expecting to receive, the management of expectations, customer wins, and one fireflies production team wins. And so we applied that, uh, concept, uh, built it in 2013. Uh, I, I, I was involved in that product development with, you know, members of our team, including John Baskerville at the time and others. And, uh, and then we launched it in July of 2014. And from July of 2014 until the present oct no, it's, I don't know if I'm telling a secret here, but it's October, 2025. Uh, we've sold five to seven websites every month since then. It just turned the machine on, like the machine was primed, it turned, the machine's been running constantly since, and we've evolved the product, you know, expanded the product. You know, as technology and standards have changed as SEO and online visibility standards have changed, uh, as content expectations for media have changed, like the product's evolved. Um, but we just evolved with it and it's been a, a wonderful, it's actually a very, I mean, not very, it's a small part of our business. It's, uh, less than 10% of our revenue is that website business, but that website business is, uh, steady and, uh, it's, people give us a call and, and we, we, we often get at bets. We don't win every project. Um. I think anyone that doesn't hire us makes a mistake, but we don't win every project. And, uh, some people wanna go try their own ideas. Often they'll come back to us and go, okay, can you help us? And we go, yeah, let's go. And we help them and we get a project done typically in 60 to 90 days. And the alternative path they tried, you know, was not going very far, six to nine months into the project. 'cause the, the integrator, the business owner thoroughly underestimates how hard it's gonna be if they don't work with someone like one Firefly. So it's, it's a neat business. It's, uh, it's been fun to evolve over the years.
Chris:
Awesome. And, and I think one of the great things about working with someone at One Firefly is that, you know, as an integrator, the, before you even have the first conversation with one Firefly, they already know a lot about your business, your pain points, like what, what business you operate and how they can best serve you. So I think, you know, just to kind of give a recap of what you said, right, that's. That's the advantage of working with one Firefly.
Ron:
It's just more efficient. I mean, net, net, net, an integrator, uh, might spend five to 10 hours with us total from beginning, middle to end of getting a website project launched. And, uh, if they have image assets, great. If they don't, we have them. If they wanna participate in copy, great. If they don't, we'll write custom copy for the whole site. Right. So it's, it's if they want a large site or small site, it's, it's like we, we always talk about we're Switzerland. I don't care if you want a large site or small site. We want you to be happy. So like what are you trying to accomplish with your, your, your messaging and your branding, and that's gonna dictate what lands as the result of your website. And or if you have budget constraints, maybe you've allocated, you have a pot of gold you've set aside to really build that website of your dreams that generates leads and, and has people excited. And if you have that, then let's work within those constraints. And that's, you know, that's generally what our customers find when they work with us on a project.
Chris:
Nice. Very cool. So I got two things I really want to talk to you about, so. Sure. Um, podcasting. So prior to the show we talked about that I had overcome some obstacles with my podcast and, you know, prior to me even starting the podcast, I thought, you know, a couple bad things could happen. You know, someone would ghost me, you know, not show up for a show, a guest would ghost me. You know, potentially I could not be recording the audio for a show and. I had a falling out with the previous studio and you know, it definitely bummed me out. I lost two episodes of the podcast, so it was definitely something that, you know, I didn't feel great about, but I had so many learning lessons kind of along the way about like, ownership of your show. We've now gotten control back of our, you know, Spotify and Apple music, things like that. But I had so many learning lessons through these failures or, you know, being screwed over. So I had written out, uh, reached out to you letting you know kind of about this, but it it's about like overcoming these. So when you're starting one Firefly or if you have any other examples that are top of mind, you know, I'm sure that you've put your trust into someone or you have probably trusted a person or a company and they've probably wronged you more incredibly than you ever thought they could, ever wrong you. Is there anything that you wanna share kind of along those lines with the viewers that maybe you feel like you had a great learning impact by something maybe not so great that happened to you in the moment?
Ron:
Well, I for sure, I'll, I'll try to pick. I probably have thousands to choose from. So it's, uh, so just operating under that idea, uh, every business owner, every person, you know, in this case, you're, you're, you're, you're the owner and operator of your podcast. All right? If it gives you any solace, it gives me solace that storms pass over everyone's head. It's not whether you're being selected or singled out, and like, woe is me, pardon my French. Shit happens to everybody all the time. But what differentiates people and where what they do after, um, shit happens is like, how do you think about it and what do you do? What's your next best move? And so. I've learned through so many, uh, experiences and opportunities in business when poor things or bad things have happened, um, is number one, I'm not being singled out. I'm not the only person that's ever been screwed. What do I do next? And, uh, is there, through self-reflection, always look in the mirror, don't point fingers. What could I have done differently to have prevented this? Or what could I do differently moving forward to prevent it from happening again? And so, I mean, I, I, that act alone, I can say as the leader here at One Firefly, when I'm involved in any sort of post, you know, mess up with a team member, I alwa they know it. It's like clockwork. I will always ask the question. Okay. What could you have done differently to now prevent this from happening again? And is there a process change that needs to happen? Is there some change in the way you communicated? Is there, um, again, not pointing any fingers, what could you own that you could do differently? And I, I'll just give a, a random example. The one I'm about to give, uh, happened, uh, last Friday, or no, it was Monday of this week. I, I was helping one of our salespeople in a sales call and it was with a long time relationship, someone I've known for many, many years. And that individual is someone I've known, let's call it 20 years. That individual was the, an investor in this much smaller firm and that much smaller firm. Uh, and through this sales process, which I won't bore you, Chris, or the audience with, um, they had made some very big, bold claims about what they wanted to accomplish in their business, very much out of line with the size company. They are very out of line and under all normal circumstances, and I was leading in this case, I was leading the interaction. I would've zoomed in on that person and I would've pulled the threads and I would've dissected and learned like, this is not adding up. But I was paying attention to the person that I knew for 20 years, and that person was nodding their head and agreeing and like high fiving me every step of the way through the conversation. Like, you nailed it. Yes, that's what we're gonna do. And in the end, we did not get the business, the smaller company. Came back to us and said, um, yeah, this I, not a prayer's chance in hell, I could afford what you just recommended. We can't do that. You know, very polite, like, are you crazy? And I'm, and I'm restating, he's like, and, and then I re he restated, uh, the scope, which was the literally opposite of the scope he had told us he wanted the week before, like diametrically opposite side of the spectrum. And when I did the post-analysis with my account executive, he and I were talking through it and I said, I failed you. His name, my, my guy Steven. I said, I failed you, Steven. I failed the customer because I was paying attention to the party that I knew who has a business 10 times the size of this small operator and this small operator. We were not extracting truth in that conversation. 'cause they were playing to us and they were playing to their investor, and we were not actually learning their fears, their anxieties, their pain points, what they really wanted to do, what they were really ready and able to, uh, take on in the year ahead. And I said, I, you know, I failed. Um, but it won't happen next time
Chris:
you learned,
Ron:
you learned. And uh, so that's just an example. I mean, opportunities where I've failed in business, I mean, they're, they're countless. I've been harmed by lawyers, harmed by consultants, harmed by, um, you know, dealers, uh, my customers. But I mean, that's i's harmed by employees. It, it's just, that's just life. I, uh, if you want me to really work, I probably could give you an exact example, but I'm just saying at this point, I guess what I always expect is. Things will surface, and it's just how do I, how do I manage it? And I just try to be better for myself and better for my team. You know, this many years in than certainly in the early years of the business where I might have gotten, I might hyperventilate and overreact. I try not to do that these days.
Chris:
And even some of those moments, like the, the moment I'm talking about specifically for me, right? Like I had trouble sleeping that night, right? It, it really like took a dramatic toll. And I'm sure moments in your life there's been nights where you had trouble sleeping because something just isn't sitting right with you, especially from business or something like that.
Ron:
So I have a little secret, a sleeping secret. Okay, so two, two things. Uh, one is I've recently started practicing something called breath work. Which is a great technique to, you know, improve your RHV, improve your VO max, decrease your resting heart rate, and help you sleep better at night. And then the other, this sounds super silly, but you know, the problem of sleeping at night when things go bad in business. 'cause things go bad in business all the time, or maybe not even bad, maybe things super exciting, but it could disrupt your sleep. You have to get a good night's sleep. You have to prioritize a good night's sleep. And so, uh, aside from trying to eat early, aside from, uh, not, uh, trying to do things late at night or be on your phone, when I'm laying at night, when I'm laying in bed and I find my mind racing, uh, my little trick, uh, is that I learned this technique is that I'll count from 100 to one. Backwards, but every time I say the number in my head, I have to visualize the number and I won't allow myself to go to the next number until I visualize the next number. I don't think I've ever made it past 70. I have never remembered making it past 70. So I don't know if anyone out there thinks I'm nuts or maybe try that. Tell me what you think. But it really takes active control to settle your mind and take your mind off of the day to day and acknowledge that when you know there's stress or drama or problems you're trying to solve, aside from maybe telling yourself right before you go to bed what the problem is you want to solve, let your subconscious do the work. Don't let your frontal cortex in your brain like try to keep you awake 'cause that'll harm you. Your brain will do magic for you just by marinating in your subconscious on the problem, and then on the front of your mind. Just give yourself meditation and breathing techniques to go to sleep quickly. It's, it'll be one of the best things you can do for yourself.
Chris:
All techniques. I think, uh, it's similar to counting sheep, but you know, a little bit more detail,
Ron:
similar sounds, doesn't sound as, as corny. Maybe it does. I don't know. Never counted sheep, but I, I do count.
Chris:
Um, okay. So Ron, one of the last things I wanted to talk to you about, so you host a podcast. You know, you've had close to 400 episodes now, is that correct? Yep,
Ron:
that's right.
Chris:
All right. So I, this is episode 31 and, you know, hosting my podcast, I've had a lot of interesting guests on, and one of my mentors, one of my, you know, my direct manager had come to me recently and she said like, what, what is your purpose in life? Like, you interview these people who have successful stories, like, what do you wanna do? So this is, this is something I've really recently been sitting on, and I, I don't really know if I have a question regarding it, but it's just something that's top of my mind right now, right? I don't know if I want to be. A podcaster if I want to be an integrator, if I want to be a trainer, if I want to be a reviewer. So it's, it's one of those things that I'm just sitting on right now because, uh, I don't have an answer for that question. And obviously I interview a lot of people who do a lot of exciting things, but the big thing that I got out of that conversation is that I want to make a story of my own. Um, I don't just want to be the interviewer. And I think that's one thing I did find. So I'd wanted to just state, not necessarily ask, but just that I'm on my purpose journey. I'm, I'm looking for what that is, and I hope to find it soon. And I'm, I'm going to keep looking and keep trying different areas and avenues and keep exploring and being curious.
Ron:
Well, I think you have a lot of talents. Those talents are, uh, have been identified by, uh, certainly those that work with you every day. And, um, I know you, you, uh, ran across the paths of, of people like Paul Starkey and, uh, helped you get, you know, uh, find the industry and, uh, people like myself. And so I think it's really a matter, my advice to you, unsolicited advice would be ultimately, professionally and or through your hobbies to do things that make you happy and that you're good at. And, uh, that's not always, uh, easy and obvious. So I'm not pretending it is. I will. As it relates to podcasting, you know, what has allowed me to maintain the consistency that we've delivered over the last, uh, so many years of the show. I think we're going on nine years. It's crazy is just that, it's knowing why we're doing it. And as I say, we, 'cause it's, you know, I'm their personality here or not on your show, but I'm personality on my show and, uh, I'm bringing in guests and I'm doing it because I identified that this customers that I serve, that I've worked with for 26 years professionally by random luck, that's where life placed me is that I just observed there wasn't a medium, a consistent medium where their story could be told and the, the, the publications weren't doing it. The various, a lot of the podcast in the space like, like to cover black, I'm not knocking them. I love everybody, but they're covering like black boxes and new tech and new this is, and thats, and I just personally don't find any of that remotely interesting. What I find interesting are people. And their stories and their motivations and the what, what keeps them going and what they think about what's happening. Like that really strikes me as personal. I'm curious and I theorized other people might find that information valuable and helpful. And, but I'm very specifically doing this to my audience, which is in my niche, which, uh, also benefits me. 'cause I, when I'm interviewing someone that I think's interesting, they also might be my customer. They might be somebody I want to be my customer. They might be somebody that used to be my customer and maybe I hope one day they might be my customer again. Or they might be somebody in some position of status at a rep agency consultancy, a manufacturer. Um, you know, I, and what's neat when you have a podcast. It's not a hundred percent, but people like to be interviewed. And so it means I, as someone who's genuinely curious about the other people, I, I gained access to people that I might not normally otherwise have access to and I get to personally learn. And I again, get to share that with everybody in the industry because I can tell you like doing a podcast costs time and money and energy, and you're making a conscious decision to spend that time, money, and energy on that thing and not on something else. And because I have a day job at one Firefly that does pay the bills, it allows me to have this like indirect marketing channel of automation unplugged, which I'm not, I mean, we don't generally talk marketing on the show other than that one show a month. Uh, the rest of the shows have nothing to do with marketing or, or hiring services through our Amp People services. And that's ultimately valuable to us. So for you, like, I think it, number one, find out like who is your audience? Who do you wanna serve, who do you want to be valuable to, and then what's the information that they would find valuable? And then ultimately, if you're trying to make that revenue generating, of which at one Firefly and Automation Unplugged, I've never tried to make it revenue generating. 'cause I'd probably be embarrassed and humbled if I did. I probably wouldn't like the way that went down. And maybe I'm being skeptical, but we've just, we've never even tried because I've had one firefly that pays the bills. Um, but if you're gonna try to make it revenue generating, uh, I just, I. I would run the economics and the forecasting of like, what, what would actually need to be true for that to generate some level of ad revenue for yourself that it would be meaningful and thus pay for itself. Um, because what happens alternatively, and it's no knock and completely understandable is most podcasts end because people don't have that focus. They don't have the justification for it. And if you don't have the why, it's hard to stay consistent.
Chris:
Absolutely. I mean, you, you spoke a lot of my truth as well, right? The reason I started this podcast is so instead of having a, a dinner, a nice dinner out with someone, we could just have a conversation with someone I admire and respect, and we can record that conversation. And not only do I get to ask the questions for an hour, we get to put that show out on the internet where I'm sure literally we have dozens, if not hundreds of thousands of people watching this show that will get to know a little bit more about you get to know a little bit more about me and kind of learn through us. So I think that that's really the power of the podcast. I, that is my why. That's why I do this. I, when I, when I, when I pick up the mic, I just kind of get in that flow state, right? Like we're about to wrap on today's show, but I just wanna say that having a podcast, having you on my podcast has been a great full circle moment, Ron. So. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for sharing all that wisdom. Um, thanks for reaching out to come on the show. I think it's an incredible opportunity and it's been a couple years in the making, but if you're ever out in Las Vegas, more than welcome to come on the show. Love to grab dinner and, you know, treat you special here in Las Vegas.
Ron:
Awesome. I, I appreciate, I appreciate that, Chris, and, and I and when Firefly, I guess I'll, I'll break it here on your show. I know we're over time, but, uh, when Firefly is gonna be participating in 2026 in the origin gigs in Las Vegas every month, so we are, we are gonna be, I, I'll be in Vegas. I'm saying we, the collective one, Firefly, we, but often myself with, with others will be there in Vegas quite a bit in the coming year. So I, I'll, I'll, I'll be taking you up on that offer
Chris:
just down sunset. We're like 10 minutes away, like very, very close.
Ron:
Let's go. It'll be fun.
Chris:
Cool. Ron, thank you. Thank you so much. And this has been episode 31. Thanks for being here and being our guest, Ron.
Ron:
My pleasure, bud. Be 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.