Most of it wasn’t planned.

Technology started with sound. The rest followed one problem, one person, and one “I don’t know, but I’ll try” at a time.

Watch and learn, bub.

My mother owned a dance studio. My father—a master electrician—handled sound and scenery for the performances. As a kid, I read his RadioShack catalogs and became fascinated by the equipment that made sound happen.

Around 12, I found my mother’s old sound system in the attic and promptly appropriated it for my bedroom. When the receiver failed, my father found the bad amplifier chip, ordered another one, and soldered it in. He brought me along on electrical side jobs, too. Sometimes he answered my questions. Sometimes the instruction was simply, “Watch and learn, bub.”

By 8th grade I knew enough about electricity, lighting, and sound to be useful in school theater. When my grade needed a DJ for a dance, I volunteered. I bought a mixer, figured it out, and made about $50.

SoundStage, then sound.

That school dance became SoundStage Entertainment, a mobile DJ operation. Everything I earned went back into better equipment. I devised lighting controls and, with my father’s help, built a rolling equipment rack. Music and audio kept pulling me deeper. I studied piano and voice, then Music Production & Technology at The Hartt School.

After college came Bose, classroom technology at Harvard, and eventually freelance corporate AV. From roughly 2012 to 2018, freelancing was my career. Doug Pouliot—my “AV godfather”—recognized what I could do, opened his network to me, and showed me that freelancing could be a real career. Later, I found I loved doing the same for other capable people: pulling back the curtain and showing them how the work actually worked.

“I don’t know, but I’ll try.”

A church I attended had replaced its audio processor, and the room suddenly sounded terrible. The priest knew I was an audio nerd and asked whether I could help. I didn’t know the system. I downloaded the software, learned it, and fixed the problem.

That led to another church, and then another. Landry Audio grew without a startup plan—mostly because I cared intensely about the final result, sometimes longer than was financially sensible.

The next unexpected thing.

Through the processor manufacturer’s representative, I reconnected with Eric Morgani, whom I knew from freelance AV. He needed help programming that same platform at Communications Link Service Corp. One project led to another. During the second, Eric mentioned that the company was for sale.

“So, are you going to buy it?”

He said he had considered it, but would need a partner and would have to risk his house. My response was essentially: “So?” Then, more usefully: “Let’s look into it and see if it’s possible.”

We spent about a year figuring out how to buy a company. On November 28, 2018, we closed. Landry Audio merged into the business, which became CommLink Integration.

There was no master plan connecting an attic receiver, a school dance, church acoustics, freelance mentors, and business ownership. There was just a recurring habit: learn enough to begin, get your hands dirty, and figure out the rest.

I live in Massachusetts with my wife and our two sons. These days, the short version of what I do is: I’m CTO of an AV integrator. I solve nerdy problems and help develop talent.