Avoid expensive post-close mistakes by running a calm, disciplined first 90 days after acquiring a security or life-safety business.

In this episode of Entry & Exit, hosts Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble break down what actually happens after you close—and why most buyers hurt themselves by moving too fast. Drawing from real acquisitions (and real scars), they lay out a practical “stabilize first, optimize later” playbook: how to earn trust with a new team, avoid culture-killing moves, protect licenses and compliance, and lock down customer relationships before you start changing systems, comp, pricing, or process.

You’ll hear the biggest early-stage mistakes (the ones they made), plus the specific moves they now treat as non-negotiables: meet your top customers, over-communicate the transition, centralize logins, audit contracts, and use the seller’s knowledge before it disappears.

What You’ll Learn

• The 90-Day Mindset: Why your #1 job is to be the world’s best employee first—not the hero CEO on day one
• Team & Culture Traps: How arrogance, fast firings, and premature promotions create attrition (and how to lead with humility)
• Stabilize Before You Optimize: Which operational “improvements” (tech stack, process, comp, parties/bonuses) backfire if you rush them
• Customer Protection Plan: How to identify your top customers, meet them early, and prevent churn through over-communication
• Operational Risk & Compliance: License/CEU gotchas that can bite you when you’re distracted by integration work
• Post-Close Hygiene: Passwords/logins, contract cleanup, and why “we’ll get it later” becomes months of pain
• Pricing & Branding Decisions: Why you shouldn’t raise prices (or kill the acquired brand) in the first 90 days
• Homework Framework: Build your “do / don’t” list and keep your first 10 priorities mostly learning, not change

🔗 Connect

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

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

Owned and Operated

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Avoid expensive post-close surprises by mastering the first seven days after signing an LOI.

In this episode of Entry & Exit, hosts Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble deliver a brutally practical due diligence playbook for buying a security or life-safety business. Drawing from real acquisitions, they break down exactly how to run diligence without chaos—and why skipping steps almost always shows up later as lost revenue, integration pain, or legal risk.
This episode walks through a real-world due diligence checklist, focusing on what to request immediately, where buyers most often get blindsided, and how to protect yourself before money changes hands.
What You’ll Learn

The Week 1 Protocol: The specific diligence requests you must make immediately to uncover key-person risk and owner dependency
Financial Deep Dive: Why quality of earnings analysis and RMR audits are non-negotiable in security and alarm acquisitions

Legal Pitfalls: Purchase agreement strategy (Asset Purchase vs. Stock Sale), assignability issues, and spotting “tribal knowledge” gaps
Risk Management: How customer concentration and undocumented arrangements should impact deal structure and walk-away thresholds
Whether you’re evaluating acquisition due diligence for a small alarm company or a multi-branch integrator, this episode breaks down the real cost of rushing diligence—and how disciplined buyers avoid it.

🔗 Connect
Stephen Olmon

Collin Trimble

More Entry & Exit

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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

More Entry & Exit

Owned and Operated

New Episodes Every Wednesday!

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