Zealth Audio: Employing Homeless Veterans

January 27, 2015 - BlogSquad,

If you’re like me, little things sometimes frustrate you. Maybe the kids left the cap off the soda again and it went flat. Or your spouse put a small scratch in the bumper of your car. Possibly the cat left you a present in a remote corner of a spare bedroom…

Then you learn about someone like Kevin Nelson and it puts everything in perspective. Nelson (about whom I’ve written previously) is the founder and owner of Zealth Audio, a small speaker company based in San Diego. He’s an eternal optimist who puts his money where his mouth is — literally — and does business a little differently.

Nelson is very open about the rough times he’s experienced in his life. After returning from his military service, he spent years in homelessness in San Diego. Despite the hardship of living in shelters and on the street, it was during this time that his dream of designing and selling his own high-fidelity speakers took shape.

Fast forward to 2015. Nelson is now happily occupied designing new and affordable speaker models and with the effort of growing his fledgling company.

If that was the end of the story, it would be inspirational enough. But Nelson believes in giving back. Plus, he knows, firsthand, the plight of homeless vets who have given so much for their country, only to face hardship and challenges after returning home. Hardship and challenges that, too often, lead to substance abuse, poor health, and even an early grave.

Thus, he hatched a plan. Nelson’s company, which hand-builds each set of speakers in a wide variety of beautiful wood finishes to the specifications of his customers, employs homeless veterans. For each set of speakers ordered, Zealth Audio temporarily hires one or two homeless vets at his small shop in San Diego.

During an interview, Nelson was frank with me about his inspiration for hiring vets to build his unique speakers. “I got the idea while on the streets, watching my fellow veterans just fall apart. Sometimes I would find them dead; it happened three times to me. So I made up my mind, right then, that I would not quit ’til I could do my part and help some veterans,” he said.

“I know how it is, so I can talk with them very easily. I can help them with resources they don’t know about. San Diego is a beautiful place, but it’s money hungry, so it really doesn’t have good places for the homeless. That stuff you see on TV about shelters is staged… they are a living hell,” he told me.

When asked about how he selects homeless vets to help him, Nelson responded, “The veterans I help have to be in a program with the VA [U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs] or in a shelter trying to get life back on track. I help those that are getting something done. I know several still on the river, where I stayed when I was homeless. I will bring them in as long as they are sober — ya still gotta be tough.”

Nelson said he is frustrated by how both veterans and the homeless are treated in the United States. He’s critical of what he perceives to be the hypocrisy of many who claim to help the homeless or support veterans. “Don’t tell me how much you support them. Show me,” he said from his shop in San Diego.

Nelson’s company wasn’t around when I was shopping for the speakers that populate my two home theaters. If it were, I would have seriously considered purchasing from Zealth simply to avoid padding the bonus of an already wealthy CEO who probably wouldn’t have been employing military veterans down on their luck to build me audiophile-quality speakers.

The next time you’re feeling sorry for yourself, remember Kevin Nelson and Zealth Audio. Remember the homeless vets who are being given another lease on life by one of their own who, by the miracle of his own determination and hard work, has managed to escape a life on the street.

That man is now giving back, not only by selling killer speakers that satisfy pampered audiophiles like me, but—more important—by helping others to rehabilitate themselves.

Curt Robbins