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Simplifying Life Through Technology
SoundVision LLC is a lifestyle technology company located in Mooresville, North Carolina. We interview vendors, clients and staff with the purpose of demystifying the capabilties of new technologies for your home or business and sometimes highlighting local content that is important to our community.
Simplifying Life Through Technology
Customer Testimonial: Joe and Nita Hunt
Transforming a House into a Smart Home: A Customer’s Journey with SoundVision
On this special customer testimonial episode of “SoundVision Tech Talks,” Mark and Zach sit down with SoundVision customers Joe and Nita Hunt as they share their journey of turning a once-neglected 12,000-square-foot property into a seamlessly automated smart home. Recorded live at one of our exclusive VIP client events, this conversation offers a firsthand look at their experience with SoundVision and the impact of smart home technology on their daily lives.
Joe and Nita open up about the challenges they faced after initially working with another AV company that failed to meet their expectations. Frustrated and searching for a better fit, they turned to SoundVision. They share how our consultative approach, expert guidance, and attention to detail made all the difference—turning their home into the smart, seamless space they had always imagined.
Beyond their personal story, Joe and Nita also share their thoughts on the real estate market—highlighting trends, challenges, and opportunities that could impact buyers and sellers alike. Whether you’re looking to enhance your home with automation or simply want to hear a firsthand account of the impact of thoughtful technology integration, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.
To learn more about about Joe & Nita's Company Hunt Executive Search:
https://www.huntsearch.com/index.asp
For Real Estate Services from Nita Hunt:
https://www.lakenormanprimeproperties.com/agents/Nita_Hunt/8459436
To learn more about SoundVision:
https://www.svavnc.com/
Check out our Instagram to see our recent projects:
https://www.instagram.com/soundvisionllc/
To listen to more “Simplifying Life Through Technology” podcasts:
https://open.spotify.com/show/7fIkJuLZ7lZ8xbafz62muQ
Contact Us Today: (704) 696-2792 Ext. 1 | Info@svavnc.com | soundvisionlkn.com
Welcome to SoundVision's Tech Talks, where we dive into trending topics and expert advice to help you make informed decisions about your home entertainment, automation and more. Whether you're planning a new project or just curious about the possibilities, tech Talks is your go-to source for staying updated on all things technology.
Speaker 2:Joe and Nita Hunt welcome. You've been customers for a number of years now.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:I believe, if I'm not mistaken, you came from another company we don't need to mention, but there was another company that did some work in your home and then we came in.
Speaker 3:Gosh, it's been three or four years, right, it's been about five. Has it really? Yeah, it really has.
Speaker 4:We started at six. And unmentionable we had a couple of things, including the geek squad. We can mention them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can mention them.
Speaker 4:And nobody's been able to solve our problems other than sound fish, and so it's all good.
Speaker 2:So what kind of take me back and take our listeners back to five years ago kind of what problems are you having? How did you find us and how did it start?
Speaker 4:We bought this house with the intention of flipping, and it's like 12,000 plus square feet.
Speaker 2:So it's a giant oh you were going to flip it. Yes, wow.
Speaker 3:Okay, it sat in foreclosure for like a little over two years. I have my real estate license. We're sitting downtown Davidson at Flatiron Grill. We're sitting there and you know, just said, oh, let's look and see what's up on the market right now. And this house showed up and it's like 830. And I said, oh wow, let's see if we can go see it. When you're a realtor showing, time shuts off at nine o'clock. So I called the guy.
Speaker 2:Oh, this is 830 at night. Yeah, oh, okay, okay, gotcha.
Speaker 3:Right, he goes. Absolutely need to go up there and look at it. It's been in foreclosure. It said 12,000 square feet and it said two bedrooms that's interesting yes that's all you need, and it was a large bedroom and it was listed for like it's like 1.25 acres, some eighth hole of the river run, golf course, you know it was listed at like 875 and I'm like what the heck is wrong something's wrong, something's a miss something is wrong.
Speaker 3:so, anyway, we go over there with our phones and walk through it and we're like what the heck? The whole house is commercial grade. You know I already had speakers run in it but everything was gutted. So we purchased it, sat there for a year and a half and renovated it. Then, you know, you start looking at all the speakers and all the whole wiring system in a closet. There looked like a commercial office space, one of your old AT&T Merlin systems Once we were through with that kind of stuff. And we're starting to look and we're like you know, we need to control some things around here through our phones at this point because this house was not automated.
Speaker 3:It had a lot of wiring and speakers there.
Speaker 4:It was prepped but not done. It was old school at the time. Old school but the best of the best in 1999 and it was prepped but not done.
Speaker 3:yeah, it was old school at the time old school, but the best of the best in 1999, when it was built right mark and I were doing this in 19, we were yes so anyway, at that point, you know, we'd had some people come out and we just weren't satisfied with the solutions so you found someone before we didn't come in at that point.
Speaker 2:Somebody else came in at that point and got you to another level of some sort.
Speaker 4:Installed all the original foundational stuff of the control for the whole home.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah sure.
Speaker 4:We're going to do lights we're going to do. You know everything inside and outside, obviously the audio video configurations and stuff, and that particular vendor disappointed. You know a lot and that's why I mentioned earlier we had the geek squad come out to try to fix the problem.
Speaker 2:Now you're just trying to find somebody, Well, no yeah, exactly, we're really hoping at that point.
Speaker 4:then we came across you guys and they literally I mean, this isn't a infomercial or commercial, but we I've written many, several reviews on you know, different river run next door, all those kinds of things.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow, oh cool, thank you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, based on my experience and it was competence versus incompetence, you know, and really more importantly, above and beyond the technical competence is really the commitment to service and getting it right Really put us over the top and everybody the technicians you know, zach and the whole team you know really made a commitment, kept the commitment no matter what and did it right Really kind of the first time.
Speaker 4:But then we wanted to do this, we wanted to do that and they advised against some stuff and pro some stuff and we decided, hey, we're going to kind of spread this out over a period of different phases and that was always well accepted versus sold. So iteratively doing it over the past five years. But different levels of systems and processes. All the audio video stuff is on lockdown, but even the home automation with the lights and getting the moods and all those kinds of things set on the control for systems where we were sort of advised against some stuff because it didn't necessarily make good sense from your perspective, and we're like okay, well, we can take that, because we don't want to do something for no purpose whatsoever.
Speaker 4:Now we're, you know, kind of redoing our backyard and we're ready to take it to another level.
Speaker 3:The other thing is is I'm a very tech person, so I understand.
Speaker 2:Are you really, are you?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, okay cool. That's cool Since I'm a tech person. Joe's pretty good at tech and so I understand how it works. I majored in computer science, minor business and accounting, so you know I get how all that works, and so a lot of the process was not having to be explained to me, but that I could ask them questions and they would understand and we could communicate because I am a tech person.
Speaker 3:So if I wasn't, it would still be great, but I could always ask questions to take it to different levels as a result of that, and it was a good partnership. You know, to find somebody that knew that More than you did.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. Yeah, we try to work on the Pareto, you know, 80, 20 kind of rule, where we want it to be easy to use when we do encounter someone that either has some very specific needs or wants or, like you, understands it and says, wow, maybe I could do this or how do you do that? That's kind of fun too, because there's so many options, especially with control for it, it's almost endless. It's almost like what can you think to do? I would come into meetings I haven't sold in a long time, thanks to sack but I would come into meetings because I have this incredibly long it's about a 70 step thing of going to bed and it just touches everything in the house, and so I would come in sometimes on the meetings and I go this is what you can do, you don't have to do it, but it will do this, and I'd go through the whole thing.
Speaker 5:So yeah, it's really just kind of limited by what you guys and the funny thing there is we have to create some processes and some boundaries that we preach from the top down Right, and then we have personal relationships with our clients in most instances, right.
Speaker 5:So learning their lifestyle and what they want and what they value and what they could understand through the course of a project allows us to get deeper and more fun into some of those things. There's some clients that you know. Have people that buy panelized lighting systems for the only reason that they won't have any the wall clutter of light switches. Have other people that buy panelized lighting systems because they want to do 138 lighting scenes in the house right. So understanding and trying to figure out who those people are and having a process to deploy it at a base level or a very advanced level is a lot of fun. We could do all of that, so what's been your favorite thing?
Speaker 2:What's the coolest thing that we've done for you guys or that we partnered with you guys on?
Speaker 4:I think in my case, you know, kind of just simplifying the world and the ecosystem of which I have to live in every single day, you know, and because it was unnecessarily complex, you know, prior to kind of laying things out and making different decisions and choices about what to do and including what not to do which in some cases I actually wanted to do some things and you guys actually said we don't necessarily advise that, even though we would be happy to install it and bill you accordingly, that's not necessarily in our best interest. So we were talked out of it. So I thought that was a special.
Speaker 2:Zach's really good at that.
Speaker 5:Early in my career I used to work with a guy who said just because you can doesn't mean you should, and I've applied that a lot in the technical aspect of the world, right? I mean, there are really fun things. Voice control.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say it when you finished up One of those things.
Speaker 5:I mean we, soundvision Corporate as a company, still consider that in a lot of aspects to be kind of a half-baked technology at this point in time. And we elaborate to our clients on our concerns of voice control, specifically through the couple of large names that we know that provide voice communication in a house. And if a client is okay with the way we paint the picture of how that system is going to work, then we'll deploy it. But it's not like we're going to give you the ability, or that we advise to give you the ability, to come in and tell your TV have a voice command to tell it to go to each individual channel in your TV lineup, right, and it just gets confusing.
Speaker 2:From marketing is just so preached and it always looks so easy. You know you see it on TV and someone's using the whatever platform and it looks easy. And then when you deploy it and you actually put it in and the person has to say the phrase exactly right, and you don't use it every day, you know it's the one time you're laying down to bed you want to turn the lights off, and what am I supposed to say again, like, what is the? What's the phrase?
Speaker 4:It's true because, like when we're doing our installation, I'm like listen, I want everything to be voice controlled, I want to clap on and clap off.
Speaker 4:The clapper, the clapper Exactly, and it's like 2020 at the time and now it's 2022. But I think it should just happen like all of a sudden, which is obviously not a very realistic thing. But your technicians, marshall I mean the whole crew that comes in and does everything, they actually, like I said, reverse engineer what was already done. Because it's an established home, we tried to retain as much of the infrastructure to the systems that we could. We never got oversold, like you got to rip it all out, which had been a monumental undertaking, financially as well as physically. And now, hey, we're very happy. Everything works flawlessly to the degree of what you want it, and then we have an option to take it to the next level.
Speaker 5:Quick story where you're talking about in 1999, the first commercial that I can remember about plasma televisions was by Panasonic and it was a couple and they walked in their house with this TV and they looked at a wall and they went up and they hung it on a wall like a photo and then they stepped back and they shook their head and then they went and they hung it on another. That commercial ended with this couple laying in bed and they're looking up. The camera pan back and the plasma was mounted on the ceiling and as an integrator, I'm like none of that's possible, it doesn't work like that. But the whole world now thinks that it works like that. Back to you guys' house. You're like the ideal sound vision client, and what I mean by that is our perfect client, is somebody that we have a long-term relationship with it's important you talk about not feeling like you've been sold like a full gut rip job, because that's not what was needed.
Speaker 5:We know our goal is to partner up with a client, be truthful, honest, hardworking, reliable, and we know that that relationship is going to last for a long time. Talking about your outdoor project possible theater like that is our play. When we our clients, when we developed our service memberships years ago, I tell folks the story behind that and the genesis of why we did it and how we did it, and I always use this term. We defined our 10 best clients and we had interviews with those 10 to figure out why they continue to use us. The criteria to be you know, using the air quotes here the best client wasn't how much money they had spent at all. It was how many projects they had done with us.
Speaker 5:Why do you keep coming back to us? We wanted to define that because we felt like if we could define that, we could hone in on what it ended up being. Was you guys give the best service of anybody I've ever worked with Internally. We didn't really feel like we were that great at it, but every client that was the common thread through every one of those conversations and we were like, wow, clients think we're really good at it. We think we're terrible at it. If we thought we were good at it, what would the client think? And that feedback and that came from clients just like yourself where we had done project A and project B and project C and work with them for a long time we're very grateful for it. I mean, we really are.
Speaker 4:The testimonial. I can say that that's really the driver of why we're here today and showing up at your football event, which is awesome. We've been here previously. Zach invited us to hey, listen to these outdoor speakers that we've got, that we've got out here that might work really well in your backyard kind of environment and really giving us that. But it's really about earned trust. Everything really kind of boils down to trust and we just we really trust you guys. You know and the advice that you give us and the do's and don'ts and we'll take our own, make our own informed, intelligent decisions because they're informed. But that's really what I think separates you guys from the, from the rest of the competitive landscape that we've experienced at least, is that we just trust you. Sure, we appreciate that.
Speaker 2:You're our ninth, so we've had two VIP events. The first time we had five folks that came in here and you're the fourth ones tonight and I've the only one that's been in here for everyone. But in every single one of them, the two things that have come up is that one trust and two service. Every single person has said the same thing at least in those contexts, and so, as a, as an owner, you know you hear it like nine times, like okay, these are the things we really need to work on and hone in and really do the best that we can, because this is what's really important to our customers. So thank you very much for that. That's awesome to hear and we're going to keep working on it.
Speaker 2:Let's go to something fun.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about real estate man.
Speaker 2:Yes, let's shift to that. What's your take on the market? I'm closet real estate geek.
Speaker 3:I would say at this point, of course it's slowed down a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yes, what it was in our area.
Speaker 3:here, as far as prices are concerned, people get a little bit scared, and things were staying on the market a little bit longer, and so people would drop their houses a little bit and, believe it or not, this week I've noticed some people have started bringing them back up.
Speaker 2:Oh, really, yes, that's, interesting.
Speaker 3:They've started bringing them back up. Last week, I think, they said that we were at the peak of the economy, you know, going into a recession.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:I think we peaked. You know it also affects customers into how they react as to what they hear on the news or watching interest rates, that type of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because we've had three 75 basis point interest rate rises in the last 90 days, or whatever that was, and the first time they went up and then the second time they actually came back down, which was odd, and I haven't actually monitored it this week. I know it was last week that they had that the most recent rate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was just talking to a friend of mine that works for a big bank down in South Carolina today and she's a big commercial lender and she just closed a $14 million commercial loan Right, but they darted the loan like two months ago, right, 4.35.
Speaker 5:Okay, Interest only, but $14 million 4.35. Sure.
Speaker 3:If they had to start it today and get locked in or whatever. It's 6.75.
Speaker 2:So did they actually reprice that loan? Do you know? No, oh they did.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they had locked it in.
Speaker 2:Oh, because they had the process. Oh, they had to lock it. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:It was a commercial loan but they had locked it in like two months ago and it was at 4.35.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But if they had to do it today, like she said, it'd be like 6.75, I believe.
Speaker 2:Which, on $14 million interest only, is an enormous difference. Exactly, it's.
Speaker 3:But she said it's starting to kind of stabilize and she's seen some come down a little bit over the last week. But I actually have, like I said, in the real estate market, especially in this area and you know every area is a little different but on the average, come down, stay in on the market a little longer. At this point of notice, they just started increasing from where they were, where maybe they decreased and and they are selling.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah, so I listened to a lot of bigger pockets stuff and I was just listening to one the other day and there's a Harvard study of demographic movement and it shows every state and then it shows every County and it actually shows the movement of the migration of people, both national and international, and people moving intrastate. Well, first North Carolina, south Carolina, tennessee, georgia and Texas were off the chart, blowing up like crazy, and our area is still incredibly hot. Yeah, so it's a good place to come.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you're looking to move in the area, you know you can't beat it. I'm a local, okay, I was born and raised in Shelby. Oh really, yeah, oh really.
Speaker 5:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:So you know, if you think about it, I've traveled a lot of different places. My husband and I Joe here talked about like moving different places and a steal. He's from Detroit but I'm a local and you know it just feels grounded and every time you go somewhere else is beautiful or whatever. But our area here provides so many different opportunities to experience the seasons. You can go to the mountains in two hours. You can go to the beach in three and a half hours.
Speaker 2:You've got the best of all the worlds Perfect sales pitch for the area.
Speaker 3:You really do, and you have not major extreme seasons throughout, and I think we've become the other Florida. We're starting to not see as much coldness, not as much snow, and it's getting warmer longer. You know global warming or whatever's taking effect here, because I've seen it change so much in my whole life.
Speaker 2:So, Anita, if somebody needs a really good real estate agent, how on earth would they find you?
Speaker 4:AnitaHuntcom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, is it really yes, oh? That's cool All right N-I-T-A-H-U-N-T dot com.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, Joe and Nita, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your business. We really appreciate the opportunity to serve you guys and for you coming tonight. It was really cool. So thank you very much.
Speaker 4:Thank you guys for your service. And we very much appreciate you guys for sure, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Good deal.
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