I got started as a hobbyist like most in this industry did. One of my favorite quotes that I've heard in this industry just because of the brutal honesty it showed was from the resume of a guy that turned out to be a great PM and a great guy. His resume started something to the effect of "I wanted to be a rock star and that didn't work out, so now I do this." I think that and my story are pretty typical.
I can't remember the exact ages or dates, but I was a constant electronics tinkerer as a kid. I remember going to yard sales with my grandmother and I'd always radiate towards anything with an amp or speakers I could buy for a few bucks and take apart to see how it worked and/or make something cool out of it. Thinking back, having a kid playing around with electricity probably wasn't the safest idea in the world, but I figured out a lot on my own and only got zapped a few times. My dad studied computer science at one point. His final project was submitted on punch cards, but for most of my childhood he was in food distribution and my mother was a nurse, neither really technicaly inclined.
Their was, however, a lot of much around my family. My aunts and uncles were musicians and in bands. I remember sitting on the stairs to my grandparents basement watching my uncles band rehearse in complete awe.
I got my first electric guitar at around 13 that was a very old hand-me-down along with a very old hand-me-down amp. Both broke pretty quickly and I never had money to fix them, so I figured it out myself as well as how to hook the guitar up to everything and anything else in the house with a speaker and see how it sounded.
In high school I switched to bass and then to upright bass. I was also the "geek" for the music department and did recordings for them and set up/maintained the PA gear for shows. I went to a public high school with a very serious music department that became one of the best in the state. They have a pretty amazing performing arts center now. The music department is almost like a separate school in a building that's almost the same size as the actual school next to it now. At the time, though, we did shows with "vintage" gear in a crappy gymnasium with awful acoustics, but learning how to make that room sound good taught me a lot.
I spent summers at the state University studying music theory and performance as well as recording and learned a lot. I was pretty much completely immersed in that world. I got good grades and could have persued the standard academic route, but I had every intention of going on to music school after high school until I realized that I had nothing saved and my parents had nothing saved for me to go to school. I went for a little while and payed my way through working in the auto business. I eventually dropped out as I didn't feel like I was getting much value for the money and time I was spending going to work early in the morning, then straight to class until 10pm or so and then doing homework and pretty much leaving just enough time to sleep.
I eventually ended up in auto sales, specializing in B2B commercial truck sales. I was making good money most of the time. I was young and making a heck of a lot more than my peers and having a pretty good time. For all the negatives about the auto business, it was a great boot camp for sales. The two dealers I worked for were very honest straighshooters with 30+ years in business in the same towns, etc. I also started helping them develop the technology and e-sales side of the business as I was obviously somewhat technically inclined.
One of my clients for trucks was an up and coming commercial box house turned integrator and I remember trying to learn about what they did to spec their trucks and thinking it was pretty cool. My brother was an accountant and temping at the time. He ended working for and getting hired by another up and coming box house turned integrator. We were talking one day and he had some pretty good things to say about the company, the jobs they were doing, and the income potential selling there. I was pretty bored with doing what I was doing.
About a month later one of the sales reps left to join another company, leaving a territory open. I setup and interview, nailed most of the sales questions as the owner and I had a lot in common in that way, and most of the tech stuff they asked me from my "hobby." I'd been keeping up with this stuff for years, just had no idea you could make a living at it.
When they gave me my first business card there it said "consultant" on it. I thought I was just supposed to sell the stuff. I had no idea that's just what they called their salespeople. There was no real training. I just got a bunch of names and phone numbers for manufacturer's reps and was told to call and setup training with them. I did as well as sought out every aspect of education on the industry I could while I was making sales pretty much just selling early LCD projectors. I eventually got pretty good at systems sales, designing systems, managing my own projects, etc. I had one big job that turned into a complete disaster and spent 2 weeks onsite cleaning up the mess as a helper for one of the engineers to try to save my commission and the project. I learned a ton and that started me learning more about doing installations. I'd already done staging, so I picked up the rest pretty quickly.
Fortunately or unfortunately I ended up in a position where I could sell, design, manage, install, and support all my own projects. The owner figured that out and how to take advantage of it so I found myself getting assigned fewer and fewer resources to complete projects. I also started getting assigned to bid projects with lower margins as I could impress the consultants. With time bogged down dealing with everything my sales and my income dipped and I started wondering "what's the point?" I went into a yearly goals meeting and ended up catching a whole line of BS about how my sales numbers were off, margins were lower (dealing with the bid jobs), etc. They didn't want to here that everyone else just sold and walked away because they were helpless otherwise. I decided I'd had it then and there.
My brother had worked his way up and become the operations manager, running a large part of the business. He lasted about a month or two longer than I did. A bunch of other good people left around the same time.
I spent 3 months in introspection and exploring the opportunities that the industry offered, interviewed with all the big companies, entertained job offers, etc. I had no idea the residential side of the business existed. No one in commercially really took it seriously.
I met with the owner of a big residential integrator that was expanding, building a new showroom, and that wanted to get into commercial. I was already handling almost all facets of my jobs anyway. I was pretty happy with the company and the quality they were putting out. I was assured I have experienced installers and engineers, etc. Great. We came to an aggreement and set a start date.
My first day I met with the installation manager for the first time and his first question was "So you are going to teach my guys how to so all this stuff, right?" Great...
So now I'm kind of back where I started, but I've already committed to this. I sat down with my brother at a family event and picked his brain a bit. He was newly unemployed and kind of in the same place I was. He was also talking to a couple of installers that had left the company we worked for and looking for something new.
What we decided to do was present the idea of using a completely subcontracted labor force for the new commercial business where I'd started to the owner. That would mean not taking his residential guys out of what they were doing or spending time and money training them. We could work off fixed price labor bids, keep overhead low, etc. It would be safe as these were all guys I'd worked with before. They really liked the idea, so my brother started an install only company. I did he sales, design, engineering and bought all the gear and they installed it. It worked out real well for a while.
The company grew real fast and went through a growing pains phase and had to contract a little for a whole bunch of reasons that would make for an even longer story. I ended up in a situation where I desperately needed help to keep up with the business coming in but we were in hiring freeze, layoff talks were starting, etc. etc. I asked to get laid off. My boss freaked out and finally convinced me to give it another 6 months. I did. I still wanted the layoff. I finally made a deal with the owner to get the layoff if I agreed to stay on as a consultant for a period of time to help them with the continuity/transition. I didn't want to walk away from a commitment, so I agreed. By the end of that day as word got around I was already getting phone calls asking if I'd re-considering staying on.
By the end of that week I had 4 "name your price" job offers, so I was feeling pretty good. I just didn't see an opportunity that I really wanted to persue. That's when I decided to give this a shot on my own. I started doing consulting for my old company and for a couple architects. More and more my clients were asking why they were paying my old company where they were just subcontracting me anyway. More and more the old company started thinking the same thing. At one point they just started referring commercial work to me rather than subcontracting me.
Today I have a great relationship with them. I have a lot of respect for what they do and for knowing what they do well and what is better left to someone else. The owner still helps me as kind of a mentor. He's obviously been in business a lot longer than I have and is very well respected in the industry. Most of my old clients have stuck with me. I've lost a few, mainly because of that transition period not knowing where this was headed. I'm using most of the same installers. We're still a new company, but we're operating in the black, doing good work and have happy clients. We're headed in the right direction a little bit every day. We have a long way to go before I'd consider it a success story, but so far so good.
While my story is very similar to a lot of people in this industry, the difference and what sets us apart today is that most of the integrators are converted box house. We never were. We approach everything from the perspective of installers and engineers, not salespeople. We're young and hungry, but we're hungry to be the best at what we do, not the biggest. We're not the guys to call for the multi-million dollar project, at least right now, but if you want high quality and great service from a committed partner and aren't spending the big dollars that catch the big guys attention and get the "A" teams, then we're the company for you. Maybe that's second tier in some people's minds, but that's my niche right now and I'm very comfortable with it.
Very few people get rich in this business and you need to go into it knowing that. A lot of people get in thinking it's all fun and games and then get out when they realize how hard we work. In the end, though, what we do is pretty cool and there are a lot of good people in this business. For me, even if I don't get rich off of this, if I can make a good living and create some good jobs for good people, it's worth it. That's the key difference between us the good integrators and the not so good. The good ones understand this is a people business. The not so good ones are still in a products business.
Along the way I've seen a lot of people come and go. I've also brought a lot of people into the industry. We all know there is more and more IT coming as the industry evolves, and in a lot of ways they have a leg up on those of us that come from an analog background. Just go into it understanding what you know and what you don't know. Everytime I sit in a meeting or training or whatever with the "holier than thou" arrogant IT guys, and have to smile and nod at the questions they ask recommendations/criticism of what we do and how we do it it reminds me why we've been in "convergence" for 10 years or more. Not better or worse. Different.
In your case, I'd suggest persuing some integrators as marketing clients or looking for a marketing job with a bigger integrator and see where it goes. If you are good at marketing, you know that learning about your customer's business is the most important part and that's a great way to tread lightly into this and then see if you want to go further.
I'll give you the same advice I give everyone else that I talk to about coming into this business. There are good and bad aspects to it like everything. Yeah, there are cool toys, but it's 90% hard work and maybe 10% cool toys (if that). Realistically, we spend very little time actually "playing with the cool toys." I didn't even own a TV for many years, nevermind have a cool control system at home. The cool toys are less cool when you are they one that has create the magic behind them. The genie is out of the bottle pretty quickly and the cool toys become just bringing your work home with you. That being said, however, this is one of the few places in the economy we're you'll always have a job if you are good at what you do. The markets we serve are diversified enough that if the average consumer slows spending, the high end independently wealthy are still there. If the corporate market slows, educational institutions still have their endowments to spend off of and the government still has to function.
Oh, and be prepared to be providing free consulting at every cocktail party or other social gathering. As soon as someone finds out what you do it never fails to turn into a conversation about work and "what tv should I buy" or "Is plasma better than LCD?," "Oh yeah, I have this great Bose system at home. I only buy the best."
Last edited by Other
on March 8, 2008 15:19.
