Michael Zapata made his way through college engineering curriculum and earned a degree before realizing he yearned for something else.

Majoring in mechanical engineering, the UT-Rio Grande Valley graduate desired a work life beyond the confines of an office-oriented job. The Brownsville native tried working in restaurants and then did outside sales work in Houston before returning home with a clear goal in mind.

“I wanted to own my own business more than I wanted to be an engineer,” Zapata said. “I wanted to be my own boss.”

The path to surety can come from random encounters. For Zapata, it was a friend telling him about the opportunities in holiday Christmas lighting. The festive tradition of homeowners hanging up Christmas lights and taking more than a few risks high up on ladders to do so is engrained in American life. What if someone – specifically a company specializing in that work – offered to do that for you?

“I didn’t know it was a thing, but I found out it is,” Zapata said of commercial holiday lighting. 

Beginning in 2019, with clients from his church being his first customers, Zapata launched his holiday-themed business.

‘Choose Your Hard’

In early November, the holiday season pace was already picking up for Zapata’s Homeglow Permanent & Christmas Lights.

He was back in Brownsville on a recent Friday afternoon after installing a Christmas display in Edinburg. As with most small businesses, it has been a steady climb to reach sufficient success to keep his enterprise going. 

“Everyone wants to be an overnight success, but it doesn’t work that way,” Zapata said. “It takes a while to get noticed.”

The years of building up a small business go largely unseen with the exception of the entrepreneur and those in his or her family and business circles. For Zapata, it was largely the same in constructing a clientele via word-of-mouth recommendations and localized advertising on Facebook. There was a niche to be developed. In the United States, the holiday lights installation market is valued at over $2 billion annually.

There were a small handful of such businesses in the Rio Grande Valley when Zapata got started six years ago. Demand has grown steadily with technological innovations in smart, solar-powered and LED lighting as well as large-scale public installations as requested by cities and municipalities. For Zapata, his big breakthroughs in business came in 2024. The City of Brownsville contracted with Homeglow to install Christmas lighting along historic Palm Boulevard, at the Linear Park near Gladys Porter Zoo and at the airport.

“You choose your hard,” he said, referring to a philosophy that says big challenges are inevitable, so pick which ones are to be faced. “You know there will be struggles for at least a couple of years when you start out, but you keep working. It’s about people finding out about you.”

Building Year-Round Business

Zapata has become adept in installing permanent lighting as his customer base has grown. 

It’s a durable, weather-resistant lighting system that is installed permanently in place unlike temporary string lights that are put up and taken down seasonally. This type of lighting utilizes long-lasting LED lights that can be controlled via a mobile app or a remote and can change colors from non-holiday illumination to the bright colors of the holidays.

Installing permanent lighting has given Zapata’s Homeglow a more year-round type of business. Holiday-related jobs still generate the majority of his company’s revenues. The goal is to make enough over the holidays with lighting jobs from Palmview to South Padre Island to fund his off-season work. Focusing on quality work, acting promptly to fix problems and working closely with customers to give them the lighting presentation they seek are the foundations of his business.

“When I finish a job, I’m proud of it and my customers are thankful and happy with what we’ve done for them,” Zapata said. “And who doesn’t like Christmas? It’s getting super busy but I still love it.”