So, for my full time job I am a Mechanical/Petroleum engineer and work on the offshore platforms here in LA. I work with SCADA systems and PLC's, high voltage equipment, design oil well bores for drilling, program management ($25M + projects), etc.

But - I'm over it. Im done. With the lowwwww price of oil, there is no money in the oil industry. There are barely any table scraps left. I used to be making a good six figure income at $180K+/ yr, but those times are gone.

So, I want to switch to the low voltage industry - what all you guys do...

I can get my C7 contractor license in a year as all my previous experience is all applicable.

I have been on this forum for a few years so I can see some of what you guys go thru.
Q: Is the money in this business decent?? My market is in LA (South Bay).

Any other major things I should be aware of???

Thanks !!

RUN AWAY!!!!
Seriously, no one makes anywhere near your old salary. Short of owning a large integrator.

You can certainly make that kind of money but it's work. I'd imagine there is lots of competition in LA. It's all about location...

a wise man once told me -"do you know how to retire with $1 Million as an AV integrator?"

"start with $2 million"...

I hear you guys loud and clear!

I have friends in South Bay (Torrance, Hermosa Beach, MB, Redondo, etc) and they are in residential construction, painting, etc and they constantly get work by word-of-mouth. They haven't advertised once and get all their jobs by thru references.

Is this the norm with most of you guys as well? Mostly by references and word of mouth?
My friends work regularly with the same contractors and builders...

yes referrals and repeat customers make up 80% of my work - I've been at it 20 years and it takes time to build a pipeline up. otherwise you spend a TON of time and $$$ on marketing/promotion. larger cities with more competition will make it harder.

If you are going to do it, I would focus on Lutron Lighting, Shading, Sonos/HEOS, and networking. I wouldnt get into the prewire business, and would minimize the retro aspect as much as possible using the above mentioned brands wireless capabilities.

You are going to want to minimize your exposure to service intensive products. Lutron lighting and shading just work, Sonos and HEOS just work, quality networks just work and are a necessary evil anyway.

What you need to ask is do I want to do 10 10k jobs which generate upto 10 referrals or do I want to do 1 100k job and have it suck the life out of me and get upto 1 referral, then constantly service the 100k job for various shit that is out of your control eventually souring your relationship with said client.

Have you thought about the plumbing industry? It pays the same and you connect 2 pipes together and they never call you again. IF they do call you to unclog the pipe there is no expectation that its a free service call. You will never hear "It never worked".

If you have $ in the bank and you really want to get into this industry i would probably try and buy (or buy into) an existing firm or hire someone who really knows what they are doing so you can skip the learning on the job phase.

IMO the average one man shop outfits are lucky if they can pay themselves $100k.

Well, I am just getting out of a divorce here in CA and as you can guess, the courts literally took every asset I have (had) and gave it to my ex. Absolutely disgraceful. Word of advice - marriage is for suckers - don't do it.
That aside... there is no more money left in the bank. What was left is gone to her..

So I'd be doing this myself. I have plenty of friends who are contractors and I could work for a friend in low voltage for 6/12 months to get my feet wet...

+1

This past year (2017) has been one of my best and I’ve been at this for 10 years. I will do ~290-320k as a one man shop. I play in the 15-80k job arena which is my bread and butter. I’ve been at this for 10 years and this is the first year I’ve nailed down my billing.

I will hope to pay myself 75k after all expenses. This has been the busiest year and I have some very very long days in. Margins are low, taxes are high and after a very long 12-14 hour day there’s 2-3 more hours in the office todo billing, ordering RMA requests, emails the list goes on and on. A lot of these hours are dealing with garbage equipment and service calls that don’t have a single thing todo with you or your installation. You “eat the cost and the time” manufactures do not pay for your time to deal with their crap.

I would STRONGLY suggest rethinking your idea of joining this industry. It takes YEARS to build a business and tons of money to get started. Word of mouth doesn’t come easily and quickly. Now it’s 80% of my work but it took 10 years to get to that point.

It sounds like you have Just tinkered with stuff and have the itch to get into this industry. That is how most of us got into this industry, but most of us got into this at a different time. This day in age to be successful you have to be a network engineer and then an AV integrator. Tinkering on your home pieces are entirely different then in the real world. You HAVE to choose brands and products that you can partner with and know they will make your life “easier”

I wish you the best of luck but I would strongly consider something else. Also you had better have some damn thick skin because dealing with the public and your phone ringing off the hook by a irate client because Netflix isn’t loading can and will start to wear down on you.

If I had started ANY other business 10 years ago I would be a very different place then I am now. There use to be a time where you could make a very good living in this industry, but they were also the times of 20k plasmas and HDMI didn’t exist. Sorry to hear about your divorce. (I just got married haha) I started my business when I was in high school, I built this on a shoe string budget and also when credit was easy to get. It took me until 2012 to pay off all my debt I had accrued starting this!

It was NOT easy.

As others have said, you will be moving into a different pay spectrum. I grew up in Torrance and did low voltage work on the peninsula for many years. There is no shortage of work there and the south bay beach cities.

Not a day goes by that I don't think to myself, "what else can I do with the rest of my life". That says it all...

I left college and a guaranteed job with Merrill lynch to do this. The two things I have ever wanted since 22 is to own my av company and be on the cover of ce pro . If these are your goals then do it.

But if you are looking at this like easy money than don't do . My live in gf text my every night to see if I'm coming home "early" which is most nights 8pm. Like 3 pedal mini I have been in this game a long time. And I'm doing similar numbers.

Every one here can tell you stories of some Nubie got some big jobs and got way over his head . Then one us had to step in a fix it.

There are some many lil things that we learned over the year you would have no idea about.

X10. The learning curve is steep and it never ends. Its a moving target and basically I describe our industry as "bringing order to chaos".

If you have contractor friends, I'd say get into framing, roofing, etc. If you're intrigued by this industry even after all our warnings, I'd suggest moving into a sales position after a year or 2 once you understand how to design these multilayered systems. Then, your income can be decent but let the techs deal with the tech headaches and the office deal with the office headaches.

I would suggest finding something more akin to your existing skill set, and pay grade. It’s going to be hard to go from a Ruth’s Chris budget to Sizzler :-) Most people in this industry started at it as a hobby, or came from car audio. I started tinkering in 9th grade. A couple decades later the only skill I have is this and bartending; both of which are dead end skills. This trade is rarely considered legitimate as their are no accredited degrees needed and the courses you may take, nobody has ever heard of or cares about.

If you’re at a stage in your life where you can start this out and try it as a hobby that’s great, but it doesn’t sound like it based on your current situation.