Alarm Masters is expanding across Texas.
In this episode of Entry & Exit, Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble break down two strategic acquisitions, their partnership with Platinum Technologies, and how they’re taking the growth playbook they built in Houston into North Texas.
After three and a half years and 11 Houston-area acquisitions, they finally have a repeatable strategy for scaling through M&A, sales, service, and RMR growth.
In this episode:
→ Expanding Alarm Masters across Texas
→ Lessons from 11 acquisitions
→ Building a repeatable M&A and growth playbook
→ Scaling sales into North Texas
→ Growing service and recurring revenue
→ Why business gets easier at scale
Connect:
Stephen Olmon — https://x.com/stephenolmon
Collin Trimble — https://x.com/TXAlarmGuy
There is this thing in business. It's like you don't really know what it's like to hit scale until you're there. We didn't have a playbook. We had a thesis. We had an idea. It took three and a half years. That's right. And now we actually did the thing.
We had to fail and break a lot of stuff and do a lot of things that were not correct.
We have now reached like a pretty significant scale from like an aggregate top line revenue. Frankly, it's more fun. Yeah. Welcome
to entry and exit. Back to the founder series, and we're talking about a major business update. We have been busy and uh we are we are expanding. We have we have landed land and expand. That's a sales strategy. We landed in Houston, and now we're expanding across Texas.
That's right.
Yeah, we did two very strategic acquisitions and hopefully closing on a third very soon in the last several months. The first one was an acquisition up in um kind of like we'll say southeast uh Texas, so south of Tyler, um, kind of Beaumont, Jasper, Woodville, part of Texas. So it sort of covers a bunch of tertiary markets. Um, it was a really nice size acquisition. The owner had owned the business. His uh father-in-law had started it. It's like a 55-year-old business. Um, incredible, um, incredible story and great customers. Um, and just kind of helps cement more of our footprint across Texas. So we're really excited about that. That actually uh rolled into our Alarmmaster's Houston office. So um those accounts uh and the employee that was there came over and is now working underneath the Alarmmaster's brand, and we're sort of rolling out to all the customers over the last several months, doing all the transitions. That would have been our 11th acquisition, um, all in the Houston area. And we were super excited to get that done. That gives us just a bigger footprint
across Texas. And then the big one, which we're really excited about, is this strategic partnership merger with a great friend of mine that I've been friends with for a long time, now a good friend of Stevens, uh Kevin Byrd and Platinum Technologies uh in North Texas. So Kevin's come on as a partner. Um, Platinum is part of the Alarm Masters family now. He's gonna be running all of North Texas, uh, which will include an acquisition we're hopefully closing at the end of this month, which is in Tyler. We'll have an office in Tyler and it'll kind of include some of those accounts in Southeast Texas and on the eastern side. So now we'll have North Texas, East Texas, uh, and then sort of the Houston office that kind of covers into uh Corpus Christi and some of South Texas as well. So we're super excited. This is exactly what we kind of set out to do, which was to build a really strong foundation in the state of Texas and be one of the largest independently owned security and fire alarm businesses in Texas. We we love that. We we're really invested in Texas. We think that there's a lot of growth that's happening here, and these kind of uh two transactions really cement our ability to grow and do the things we want to do. We have a lot, both Platinum and Alarm Masters have a lot of customers in both Houston and in Dallas. Um, and so that we were already subbing work to each other and working together, and it was sort of a natural progression. Kevin's a stellar operator, and so this is gonna be super fun for both of us.
We're gonna we're actually it what's I think Stephen, probably the coolest part about this is when we bought Alarm Masters, we didn't have a playbook. We had a thesis, we had an idea, and we had some things that we really wanted to do. We we had a perspective on the industry. Uh, we had to fail and break a lot of stuff and do a lot of things that were not correct. Um, but then the playbook started to work and we started to cement the playbook down to okay, now we've got 11 transactions, 12 with platinum, 11 now in Houston. And now we have this growth playbook, operations playbook, and we're still improving every single day. Like, no doubt stuff we're having to fix every single day, particularly around accounting and finance. Hashtag Sam, um, our director of finance. So we've got a lot to clean up still, but uh, in terms of a growth strategy, we've really honed that in and are really excited about that. Some of the things that we're doing um in in North Texas is really focusing on how do we grow sales? How do we grow uh the North Texas market? How do we instill go-to-market strategy, marketing practices, inbound and outbound sales. Uh, and we actually have the playbook from Houston that we can then roll out. Um, they're already super tight operationally. Um so I don't like, I think we actually have some things we could even learn from them for sure on operations.
Yeah, absolutely. And if you don't know, um this whole time we've been growing alarm masters, I have been living in DFW, which is better than Houston. And um I finally, you know, I I I feel giddy because if you don't know, I'm like a 300 out of 10 extrovert networker connected and uh North Texas is my playground. And so I finally get to kind of leverage my whole network and and all the uh connections I have to try to help grow alarm masters at more of a local level now because we you know did the did the platinum deal. And so and you're you're right, going back to the playbook, like it was all theoretical, and it took three and a half years. And now we actually did the thing. Um, we're not done by any means, but we have now reached like a pretty significant scale from like an aggregate top line revenue, team size, uh, maturity from like a technology perspective, sales process operationally, we've fixed so much. So I I do think that we're gonna learn a ton. You know, we've talked a lot about our sales strategy. We will be deploying that in North Texas, but you know, they have historically done much more bid work and GC work than we ever have. And so there's things that we can glean from them as we kind of continue to uh grow in both areas from a kind of go-to-market perspective. So I think it's gonna be an awesome uh kind of marriage, so to speak. And um the there is this thing in business, it's like you you don't really know what it's like to hit scale until you're there, and you people talk about it. It's like, I mean, it's it everything's hard, but it is so much easier once you're at like a certain scale, certain amount of team, or you can bring on a certain degree of talent. Yeah, and I feel like we're finally there, and it's yeah, frankly, it's more fun. Yeah. So I'm I'm pretty excited.
Yeah, yeah, I am too. What's really fun too, a lot of the acquisitions, well, actually, all of the acquisitions we've done in the past have I have all been the previous owners are retiring. The their team either rolled into Alarm Masters or you know, it's really small. Platinum is not that. Platinum is um got a fantastic team, um, a really strong ops team. We've got some great salespeople, great office folks. Uh, and so we're our whole motivation is to just add in to the existing team, which is super fun because they've already got the foundation of a really awesome business that's growing. And uh we're gonna make a great company grow faster and and use the playbook and the things that we've learned, particularly around, you know, the the kind of the two things that I'm gonna be hyper focused on going into next year is how do we build a scalable and repeatable sales strategy within North Texas? We've done that in Houston. We're gonna use a lot of the same approaches, some a little different. Um, we're gonna hire a bunch of salespeople inside and out. Um, and they've got a really awesome sales manager there that's really hungry and ready to to grow and North Texas.
Great name, that guy. What's his name?
Yeah, his name is he he his name is Steven. Unlike you, he goes he goes by Stephen. I know you go by Steve, right? That's your proper no.
He does spell his name phonetically correct. So it's correct. My parents thinks. Um yeah, yeah. It's and that's the thing, right? Like it's really fun when you combine teams with other really smart people. Yeah. It's just, you know, it helps you even faster.
Yeah. And then the other thing that so aside from the like scalable sales team, which we've already got like the the uh the foundation set, is we're gonna build a really robust service department, which is what we're doing in Houston and are gonna continue to do uh in the Houston market, is we want to be a company known for our service. I love projects and want to continue to do big projects all day, every day. But what I'm gonna be hyper focused on going into next year for a Lardmasters and Platinum both is dialing in on how do we build as much service and do it well. Like I want customers to feel like all the small touches were there in terms of like, we left a card at the end, we were professional, we were white glove, they got the things answered, we get a lot of Google reviews. We've actually seen that a lot over the last year. We have tightened up our service department so much here in Houston that we've had a tremendous amount of Google reviews. We've actually not really changed the ask or the initiative. We're doing the exact same things. We're leaving behind a card that has a Google review, uh, little QR code on there. We're sending a closeout email on every work order. Those things have been going on for over a year. But what's happening is our service department is getting so much tighter on how do we deliver a really great experience, how do we communicate really well, how do we delight the customer, every interaction we get. And so our Google reviews have continued to go up over the last six months and a year, really.
So yeah, another thing that we've had to say no to over the years is really great RMR add-ons or tuck-ins in DFW.
Yeah.
Probably six or seven opportunities we've had um to tuck in, you know, 20, 30, 50, 70k of RMR, but it just didn't make sense because we didn't want to necessarily greenfield and go like slam a tech into a territory where we didn't have a real operation. We could have people do it. We chose not to. Yeah. Think it was probably best that we didn't. Um, but now we can. And so again, like what we've done in Houston, we've talked like sales and technology some, but we really ran a strategy of tuck ins and then cross all ups all on top of those accounts, which has gone really well. And now I feel like we can run hard at that strategy also here. And um, and even outside of here, there's another, you know, you may be familiar with the Texas triangle. We may desire to complete the triangle. We don't have it yet, but uh prayerfully considering uh in central Texas, which if you're not from Texas, that would be like the Austin San Antonio area. And so we would love to get a deal done there eventually and and run the same strategy in Central Texas. So yeah, um more to more to come along those lines, but it does feel like we're very much kind of unblocked now in a lot of ways.
Yeah. Yeah, agreed.
So uh we'll share more as we go. You're gonna hear a lot about how we're gonna be trying to grow sales and marketing um and kind of help double down on that and use a lot of our playbook. We're gonna do more MA in North Texas, we're gonna double down on the service department, building a really robust, scalable service department, uh, and then just adding to the great team they already have. So we'll we'll share a lot about that and um give more updates as as we continue to go. We'll tell you the things that worked in Houston and did not work in Dallas because there will be like of course it's just that's gonna be what it is. Like we're we know that that's gonna happen. And so yeah, we're super excited. We we got a lot to learn. Um, you know, I wish Dallas could be as big as Houston, maybe one day, you know. I mean, I don't know, Steven. There's a little bit of a competition going on.
It's plenty thick.
Plenty thick. Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, what if people want to hear more about this like story, Steven? What do they do? Like, how do they get notified? What do they do?
Well, they could they could subscribe to to this uh to this YouTube channel. Cool. If you're not on YouTube right now and you're listening, you could subscribe to your favorite podcast platform. Leave a review, maybe leave a review, share it with relative, maybe a friend. If you have friends, I hope you do. We're friends, we can be your friend. Um, we already have the episode linked out. And then um you could also subscribe to our newsletter uh every single week if you didn't know. Uh I think we're up to 1500, 1600 people that are subscribed to our newsletter. Big number, you know. So it's like a restaurant with a lot of cars in the parking lot. That's right. Just show up, you know. It's there's good stuff going on. So join join the club. Yeah.
Join the club. Stay tuned. We'll keep you all in the loop. Thanks for listening.
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