Hosts Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble sit down with Lee Odess for a wide-ranging, no-nonsense conversation about the forces reshaping the security and life-safety industry—and why operators who keep treating cloud, mobile, and AI like “features” are already falling behind.

Lee, one of the most connected voices in access control and physical security, makes the case that our industry is no longer evolving like a traditional hardware channel. Enterprise software norms are taking over: value is pooling in data, software, and architecture—not panels and readers. And that shift is happening now, not five years from now.

They dig into what this actually means for operators on the ground. Why alarms will become the minority of security spend. Why access control and video are converging into platforms. Why vertical-specific solutions are replacing generic systems. And why the real risk isn’t disruption—it’s clinging to “old truths” that used to protect the industry but now actively hold it back.

Lee also lays out the early warning signs operators should be watching for: losing deals to software-led solutions, manufacturers showing up with their own demand gen, revenue trapped in hardware margins, and brand-collector integrators who can’t operationalize what they sell. Throughout the conversation, one theme stays constant: this is an and moment, not an or moment. You can stay in the $10–12B high-security market—or reposition to compete in the $70B+ mainstream market—but you can’t pretend the choice doesn’t exist.

The episode closes with a clear, tactical starting point for owners of legacy security businesses: erase the old mental model, define a 30-year vision, and rebuild your product mix, partners, and talent around where value is actually going—not where it used to live.

✨ What You’ll Learn

• Why physical security is being reshaped by enterprise software—not incremental tech upgrades
• The difference between treating cloud, mobile, and AI as features vs. architecture
• Why alarms are becoming a minority of total security investment
• Early warning signs your business model is quietly falling behind
• How value is shifting from hardware margins to software, data, and systems integration

🔗 Connect

Lee Odess

Stephen Olmon

Collin Trimble

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Hosts Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble go deep on recurring monthly revenue (RMR) in the security and fire-alarm industry—why it’s the heartbeat of the business, the biggest driver of valuation confidence, and the single most stabilizing force for operators trying to scale without cash-flow whiplash. They unpack how RMR smooths payroll, fuels growth investments, and answers the only question buyers ultimately care about: where is the next dollar coming from?

From there, the Alarm Masters partners get specific on what “great” actually looks like. They lay out the RMR-to-topline ratios they see across company sizes, explain why big projects can quietly distort your mix if you’re not squeezing every available recurring dollar, and clarify that even EBITDA-based deals live or die on the quality and density of RMR.

They also walk through the five major buckets of RMR—monitoring, software subscriptions, hardware-as-a-service, maintenance plans, and managed services—plus the real tradeoffs between margin and stickiness. Burg monitoring might throw off 65–75% gross profit but churns more. Cloud access/video subscriptions run lower margin yet can be sub-1% attrition because the hardware and software are inseparable. Their core message: win by being multi-service per account, stacking recurring layers until switching costs make churn irrational.

Finally, they bring it home with an operator’s playbook: your back office must be built to bill and offboard RMR cleanly, your techs must be trained so installs stay profitable, and your salespeople must be comped like RMR is the main product—because it is. If you want to hit the “mature business” benchmark, they give you the homework to map your current base, model your path to 50% RMR, and tighten your execution over the next 12–24 months.

✨ What You’ll Learn

• Why contracted RMR creates stability and higher valuation confidence
• The “golden” RMR mix by company size—and why 50% topline RMR is the maturity marker
• How big projects can tank your RMR ratio if you don’t engineer recurring dollars into every job
• The five buckets of RMR and how to prioritize them by margin vs. attrition

🔗 Connect
Stephen Olmon — http://x.com/stephenolmon
Collin Trimble — https://x.com/TXAlarmGuy

More Entry & Exit — https://www.entryandexit.co/

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Hosts Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble tackle one of the most misunderstood parts of a security & fire-alarm business: the service department. Too many owners treat service like a cost of doing business—something you begrudgingly do to keep customers from canceling. That mindset is killing growth and lowering valuations.

In this episode, the Alarm Masters partners break down why service is actually the tip of the spear for customer experience, one of the most controllable revenue streams in the company, and a huge driver of enterprise value. They share real examples of how service failures cause churn, how tight process and communication prevent blowups, and why “see you tomorrow” has to be built into the DNA of your service culture.

They also get tactical on profitability: how to schedule tighter, keep tech utilization high, price service competitively without racing to the bottom, and actively create service demand instead of waiting for the phone to ring. If you’re buying companies, scaling one, or planning to sell, this is a playbook for turning service into recurring, predictable, high-margin revenue.

✨ What You’ll Learn

- Why your service department is the #1 driver of customer experience (and cancellations)
- How service can be more profitable than projects when run right
- The exact process + communication landmines that cause churn
- How to use non-customer service calls to win new monitoring accounts
- What to look for in a great service manager (and why the default picks usually fail)


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Stephen Olmon

Collin Trimble

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