How We Bought a Security Company (And Why It Was the Perfect Industry)
episode
Entry & Exit - Inside the Security & Fire Industry
19 min
2 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why did Stephen and Collin decide to buy a security company instead of starting one?
how we decided to pursue buying in the security industry. Oh, like I could actually buy a quality business from a retiring owner type of concept, regulatory environment that existed in that industry 'cause it's life safety. All of that was music to my ears. So
We used an SBA 7A loan, which is specifically used for acquiring businesses. We did no formal diligence. And so by the grace of God, it worked out. I would not recommend that to anybody.
My friends that like the whole licensing thing and the moat around that that were doing like HVAC and plumbing, but they didn't have the recurring revenue side, but this did. And so you combine all that, and I was like, okay, that's kinda hot. Welcome to Entry and Exit. My name's Steven Ullman and this is Colin Trimble. with me and we are actually starting a bit of a side quest. You could say. Yeah.
What made the security industry stand out compared to HVAC, plumbing, and other trades?
We are going to walk through our founder story. We're gonna explain kind of how we got started and the entire journey kind of up to this point. And then we're gonna keep adding to it as cool, important things happen, annual updates, things like that. Um, just to allow people if to kind of catch up if They don't know our our background and want to learn more. So today We're gonna kind of start out with our initial interest in the industry, kind of how we decided to pursue buying in the security industry. And um kind of everywhere from our initial interest to closing. uh our first acquisition kind of the platform that was alarm masters.
Yeah, I love that. Um I wanna hear also from the listeners if they end up liking this content. And they like want to hear it on some type of regular cadence. Like monthly. Quarterly, every six months, every year. Daily. We we wanna know like w how often do y'all wanna hear updates of what's going on in our business? So Leave a comment. And while you're there. Click the subscribe button, leave us a comment, give us a thumbs up. Just you know, normal stuff. Uh yeah. So we're gonna do we're gonna do the uh origin of alarm masters. Um basically everything up until from inception up to close, closing on the deal and and acquiring the business. Um, which by the way, we're coming up on three years here. Yes, we are in a couple of weeks.
Mm-hmm.
Um, has gone by fast. So um I think it probably makes sense to start with the fact that I, if you don't know my story, I came from the industry.
How did they discover Alarm Masters and decide it fit their buy‑box?
Um I worked at Brevo, which is a cloud access control platform. And is at the time was the sister company to Eagle Eye. And at that time Brevo was the the bigger company and Eagle Eye was just kind of getting started. And so we were selling both Uh my role was selling both Brevo and Eagle Eye and so I had gotten A lot of exposure to Um, channel sales where my day job was supporting integrators like Alarm Masters and probably many of you and helping them with all the things. If you're in this industry right now, you already know exactly what this is. If you're not in the industry, there are uh manufacturers that sell technology and then they go um the the integrator us goes and installs and resells it and manages it going forward.
And so that's what I did is I helped kind of add new dealers, get them enabled, help them with sales, help them with quoting, help answer questions, uh just spending a ton of time with them. And that was my first like real experience um getting exposed to the security industry. I didn't know anything about security Prior to that. Um And one of the main jobs I had was m building our independent dealer base. So that was the group of dealers like us that are not corporately owned, like you know, you could think of ADT or Convergent. I did spend time with them, but mostly independent. And one of the dealers that I came across was Alarm Masters and Brian Turner. And um I actually have a very vivid memory of trying to get Brian over the finish line.
And had to become a dealer and he was very hesitant about selling cloud products. And he ended up coming back to me and saying, Hey Um I You know, have a lot of questions and I'm not sure if I'm gonna do this, but I really like you a lot.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why did Stephen and Collin decide to buy a security company instead of starting one?
0:00–0:54
2
What made the security industry stand out compared to HVAC, plumbing, and other trades?
0:54–2:40
3
How did they discover Alarm Masters and decide it fit their buy‑box?
2:40–4:54
4
What role did an SBA 7(a) loan play in financing their first acquisition?
4:54–7:34
5
Why did they skip formal due diligence and what problems arose from it?
7:34–10:00
6
How did a missing hold‑back clause almost derail the deal?
10:00–12:36
7
What unexpected issue hit them the morning after closing?
12:36–16:13
8
What lessons do they share for entrepreneurs looking to buy their first business?
16:13–19:36
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Entry & Exit - Inside the Security & Fire Industry
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