Here are a couple of important points:
-Starting out with zero experience with home building is very difficult. Just because you know the tech side doesn't mean squat when you have to fish wires around the home.
-Going into commercial without experience is even more difficult.
-Consider working for another AV company even for that year. LA is a great market for high end work.
-Consider moving to a smaller market. LOL LA is great if you work for someone but I'm guessing it's not great for someone with no experience or contacts.
-You won't be making 180k or even 100k until you have AT LEAST 10-15 employees. Without experience, this can be very challenging to manage!
-Things are evolving so quickly right now. With voice control, the industry is going to be turned upside down within the next couple of years. Between eero making a decent mesh networking system for nothing, Amazon making Alexa enabled speakers, and all of the consumer IoT things coming out we are no longer the reseller of products. We are the installers of other peoples crap. So our experience will be everything.

I'm not saying this in a bad way. Just know what you are getting into. I'm surprised you can't just get into a parallel engineering field (diesel or something)? Hell, I have a realtor friend who is a "decent" realtor in Mpls and he makes more than his wife who own a successful chiropractic clinic. There is so much disparity in the marketplace, I would hate for you to move into the AV world and be capped out. That's not to say that there aren't integrator's who make GREAT six figure salaries and only have to work 40 hours a week. But that's not the 1-2 man shops...