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Meet Ron Callis of One Firefly

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ron Callis.

Hi Ron, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My story is a bit unconventional. I didn’t grow up dreaming of being in the AV and custom integration world — I landed here almost by luck. After graduating with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, I joined Lutron Electronics as a sales engineer. Lutron is a global company with many divisions, and they placed me in their residential group. That assignment turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of my life. For seven years, I worked directly with small business owners in the integration channel, first at Lutron and then at Crestron Electronics. Those years were like an MBA in entrepreneurship — watching how these owners hustled, adapted, and built their businesses lit a fire in me to eventually start my own.

In 2007, I bet on myself and launched Firefly Design Group, selling system design and documentation services to integration businesses. I was young, fueled with energy, and had the encouragement of my wife, who told me I could do it. I saw a real problem my customers were facing — a gap I believed I could solve — and I decided to leap. It felt like jumping off a cliff and hoping I could build a parachute before hitting the ground.

The early years were brutal. I launched Firefly Design Group right before the Great Recession, and there were dozens of moments where quitting would have been the easier choice. But I persevered to build a small but mighty team who shared my vision to help integrators succeed, and together we tackled challenges head-on. We treated each setback like a chess match: if we could just make the right next move, we could stay in the game. I’m proud that I never missed payroll and our team always delivered on promises to clients, even when it meant pivoting services multiple times.

One of those pivots was the turning point. At first, we offered branding and marketing as a way to help clients sell and profit from the engineering work we were doing. But we quickly realized that marketing was not only more scalable, it was less frictional, easier to sell, and, most importantly, more impactful for our clients. By 2016, One Firefly was solely offering marketing services for technology professionals and we hit our stride. The business became more fun, more sustainable, and more scalable than ever before.

Today, One Firefly has grown into a six-time Inc. 5000 honoree, with a global team of specialists serving more than 650 technology businesses. What drives One Firefly now is the same core mission that drove me to launch the company: helping small business owners succeed. Too often, they’re taken advantage of by so-called marketing experts. We take the opposite approach — giving clients clarity, ensuring they own their digital assets, and building relationships rooted in trust. That customer-first philosophy has been the foundation of everything we’ve built.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has definitely not been a smooth road. In fact, I’d say the story of One Firefly is the story of learning the hard way, taking punches, and refusing to stay down.

One of the earliest lessons came right out of the gate. As a rookie entrepreneur, I thought the “right thing to do” was to pay a large sum of money for a lawyer to draft an airtight contract. Then the Great Recession hit. Clients started backing out, and we quickly learned those contracts weren’t nearly as airtight as we believed. We had invested significant money and time delivering services that suddenly became very hard to get paid for. Painful lesson. But over time, our team learned to navigate these legal and financial hurdles together, growing more resilient with each setback.

There were also times when the business pushed me to the edge personally. Many weeks in the early days, employees got paid before I did. I can still remember late nights “dialing for dollars” on Thursday, hustling to close deals just to make payroll on Friday. Failure wasn’t an option. Once, I had a prospect in Seattle who told me, “I don’t do business with anyone I haven’t shaken hands with.” I was in Florida, but I said, “No problem.” I got on a plane the next morning. Halfway there, the cockpit windshield cracked, and the plane was forced to descend and limp back to Florida. I immediately rebooked, got on another flight, flew to Washington, shook the client’s hand, closed the deal, and got back on a plane home. That’s what it took to keep the doors open. Entrepreneurship is really about purchasing lessons under pressure, becoming stronger and smarter each time. Diamonds are made under pressure, and that’s how I look at those years.

And then there was the hardest decision of all: shutting down the engineering side of the business. It was profitable, but it was filled with friction. It was hard to hire for, hard to scale, and hard to generate repeat business. In hindsight, I should have pivoted sooner, but I gave it eight years of my life. Even today, I still get calls asking if we’ll take on engineering projects, even though we haven’t touched that work in a decade. Looking back, it taught me a crucial lesson: to evaluate opportunities more critically, to research what clients truly want solved, and to ensure we align services with our ability to deliver at scale.

So no, it hasn’t been smooth. But I wouldn’t trade those scars. They shaped the business — and me — into what we are today. And while those early years were defined by relentless hustle, today’s One Firefly operates with a focus on innovation, culture, and sustainable growth. With a distributed team and streamlined systems, we’ve built a business that thrives without burnout.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about One Firefly ?
One Firefly is a South Florida–based marketing agency serving a global community of custom electronics professionals — the companies that bring luxury home technology to life and integrate technology into small, medium, and enterprise-level businesses. The majority of our clients are based in North America, though our reach and partnerships extend worldwide.

We’re a niche agency in the truest sense. Since our founding, we’ve worked exclusively with technology professionals — integrators, AV specialists, and security firms — which means we know their world as well as they do. Unlike generalist agencies, the web, marketing, and design experts on our team work in this space day in and day out, and understand the high-end client experience, the craftsmanship our customers deliver, and the nuances of this referral-driven industry. That specialization sets us apart.

We’re also a full-stack agency. Our services span branding, award-winning website design, digital marketing, paid advertising, SEO, video production, live chat, and even print media. We also launched Amplify People, our hiring division, to help integrators solve one of their biggest growth challenges: finding and keeping the right talent. Over the years, we’ve helped 650+ businesses expand their online presence, some doubling and even tripling their growth or more through targeted SEO, advertising, and other marketing initiatives.

Our team of 60+ is fully decentralized, working from home offices across the U.S. and in Mexico, Colombia, Serbia, and Honduras. That global footprint allows us to serve clients with agility, diversity of talent, and round-the-clock collaboration. Our talented global team of strategists, designers, marketers, and hiring specialists is the engine behind our growth. Their creativity and resilience have turned vision into reality.

As for me, I’ve been in this industry since graduating from Virginia Tech in 2000, starting my career at Crestron and Lutron before launching One Firefly. Nearly 25 years later, my passion is the same: helping technology professionals grow. That passion is also what inspired me to launch Automation Unplugged, the AV industry podcast I’ve hosted since 2017. AU quickly became a platform to spotlight the incredible people behind our industry — integrators, manufacturers, and thought leaders who often don’t get the recognition they deserve. I’ve had the privilege of interviewing hundreds of hardworking, inspiring professionals, learning from their growth stories while also amplifying the very voices One Firefly exists to support.

We’re proud to be a six-time honoree on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in America, but what we’re most proud of is aligning with growth-minded small and medium businesses and being their trusted partner. At the end of the day, our brand is about one thing: helping our clients tell their story, attract the right customers, and scale with confidence.

If you’re a growth-minded technology professional looking to elevate your marketing or find the right talent, we’d love to connect. Visit us at onefirefly.com or follow us on LinkedIn to start the conversation.

Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
I’ve been a big advocate of mentors since my earliest days in business. When I first launched One Firefly, I hired a coach through Action Coach and soon after joined EO (Entrepreneurs’ Organization) and their Accelerator program for businesses under $1 million in revenue. Those communities were invaluable — I was surrounded by other small business owners, all guided by mentors and coaches who helped us sharpen our thinking and push through the growing pains of entrepreneurship.

That practice of seeking out mentors and peer groups has stayed with me throughout my 17-year journey leading One Firefly. In recent years, I’ve built mastermind groups with other marketing agency owners across the country, circled up with CEOs in the custom electronics industry, and continued to lean on coaches. These relationships have given me both accountability and perspective — a place to share openly, learn from others’ experiences, and support fellow entrepreneurs.

For anyone looking to grow, my advice is simple: don’t wait for the perfect mentor to appear. Put yourself in communities where growth-minded people gather. Groups like EO, YPO, Vistage, or BNI are excellent starting points, and sometimes it’s as simple as reaching out to a peer in your industry to meet regularly and talk shop. Networking and mentorship aren’t about collecting contacts; they’re about building authentic relationships where you give as much as you get. In my experience, when you show up with curiosity and generosity, the right mentors and opportunities always follow.

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