In 1953, John and Eleanor Duffy have been driving from Minneapolis to Denver with plans to start out a enterprise when their automobile broke down in Davenport, Iowa. They didn’t have the cash to repair it. They utilized for a $100 financial institution mortgage and have been denied.
That rejection might have been the top of the journey. As an alternative, it grew to become the start of Per Mar Safety Companies.
John Duffy had expertise as a personal investigator, so he picked up a couple of instances to earn the restore cash. The referrals saved coming. The couple stayed in Davenport, and what started as investigative work and Eleanor’s market analysis enterprise finally grew right into a safety and life security firm with greater than 3100 workers, operations throughout the Higher Midwest and a historical past of greater than 100 acquisitions.
Once I lately sat down with Per Mar CEO Brian Duffy for “Espresso Break with Jake,” that origin story stopped me in my tracks. A financial institution’s refusal to lend his grandparents $100 modified the course of a complete household—and helped create one of many largest impartial safety organizations within the area.
There may be an apparent lesson in resilience. However Per Mar’s story can be about one thing much less dramatic and harder to maintain: the compounding energy of creating smart selections, 12 months after 12 months, for greater than seven a long time.
Per Mar didn’t start with a grand plan to turn into a multi-state safety supplier. It expanded by following buyer wants and by recognizing when the market was altering.
In 1959, John Duffy secured a confession from an worker at a neighborhood manufacturing plant and advisable that the corporate rent safety officers. The client requested whether or not he might present them. He purchased uniforms, learn a e-book in regards to the guard enterprise, and employed his first officers.
In 1968, Duffy anxious that alarm expertise may finally make guarding out of date. Fairly than resist the risk, he constructed a central station and entered the alarm enterprise. Three a long time later, Per Mar expanded extra deeply into fireplace safety by buying Midwest Alarm Companies, a Notifier supplier headquartered in Des Moines.
As we speak, the enterprise contains digital safety, locksmith, fireplace alarm, fireplace sprinkler, extinguisher, safety officer, and loss prevention operations. The guard enterprise stays the biggest by income, however the mixture offers Per Mar a perspective few digital safety corporations have: it might see the place folks, expertise and monitoring change each other—and the place they don’t.
Succession With out Entitlement
Brian is the third technology of the Duffy household to guide the corporate, however his path was intentionally not automated. The household anticipated anybody who wished to return to Per Mar to work some place else first.
After school, Brian joined Capital One in Richmond, Va., the place he spent three years, earned a promotion and realized what it felt prefer to succeed with out the Duffy identify. That exterior expertise gave him each perspective and confidence.
He noticed what a really giant firm might do exceptionally effectively and likewise skilled what it might really feel prefer to be one in all many.
When he returned to Per Mar in 2012, he didn’t enter via the chief suite. He grew to become normal supervisor of a 12 individual digital safety operation in Cedar Rapids. What he didn’t know in regards to the gear, the workflows or the sector, he realized from skilled workers. He rode together with salespeople and constructed competence in a smaller atmosphere earlier than assuming broader duty.
That humility issues. Household companies usually battle when the following technology arrives with authority earlier than incomes confidence. Brian’s development—from department management to gross sales, digital safety, fireplace, shared providers, COO and in the end CEO in 2021—created credibility via publicity to the precise work.
His father Michael deliberately gave Brian significant autonomy, and understood that the worth of Brian feeling possession of selections was worthwhile tradeoff for some errors alongside the best way.
By the point Brian grew to become chief working officer, they maintained a daily one-on-one, mentioned main selections and usually labored towards settlement. The title change to CEO was seen however it didn’t instantly switch management; Brian had already been working the day-to-day enterprise.
What made the transition work was the mix of outdoor expertise, time spent studying the enterprise from the bottom up, and rising duty earned alongside the best way. By the point the CEO title arrived, the management transition had already taken place.
What 100 Acquisitions Taught Per Mar Safety Companies
Per Mar has accomplished greater than 100 acquisitions, a rare quantity for a family-owned regional firm. But Brian doesn’t describe the technique as a shopping for spree. The corporate is geographically disciplined, targeted on including density inside markets it might serve effectively.
That self-discipline additionally explains why Per Mar should buy smaller account bases that won’t entice nationwide consolidators. A 100- or 200-account transaction could make strategic sense when it strengthens an current native operation.
Deal sourcing is relational. Brian estimates that in additional than half of Per Mar’s transactions, the corporate knew the vendor earlier than the proprietor grew to become severe about exiting. Per Mar works to know native rivals and earn their respect lengthy earlier than a sale course of begins. When the time comes, independence, familiarity and continuity are extraordinarily vital to a profitable transition.
Expertise has additionally sharpened Brian’s potential to establish threat. Two corporations with comparable income can produce dramatically completely different outcomes relying on how they invoice service, management labor and set up the enterprise. After sufficient offers, monetary patterns and even the best way a vendor solutions questions start to disclose what will probably be simple, what will probably be tough and when one thing merely doesn’t really feel proper.
Most vital, Per Mar doesn’t power each acquisition into the identical integration template. Leaders first attempt to perceive what makes the acquired firm worthwhile, which obligations sit invisibly with the proprietor and the way the tradition really works.
The corporate standardizes the issues required to serve prospects—knowledge, accounting, area administration and monitoring—whereas resisting the urge to erase each native distinction instantly.
Brian’s communication rule is refreshingly direct: inform workers what is going to change, acknowledge what has not but been determined and be sincere about what won’t occur. False hope shouldn’t be kindness. Readability builds extra belief than a solution designed merely to make somebody joyful within the second.
The place Guards and Video Meet
Per Mar’s historical past started with folks, then expanded into expertise as a result of John Duffy feared alarms might change guards. Practically 60 years later, the identical pressure is enjoying out with distant guarding and video analytics.
At development websites, buyer demand has shifted considerably from steady non permanent guarding towards video monitoring. Per Mar’s LiveShield service makes use of analytics and proactive video monitoring to detect exercise, concern on-site warnings, talk extra confidently with prospects and acquire precedence police response.
Brian mentioned Per Mar recorded roughly 200 apprehensions final 12 months, with deterrence occasions representing a a number of of that quantity.
But Brian doesn’t consider expertise eliminates the necessity for safety officers. His brother, Brad Duffy, leads Per Mar’s safety officer division, which stays the corporate’s largest enterprise by income. Many websites want a human presence, human interplay or bodily duties {that a} digicam can not carry out.
In a number of markets, Per Mar officers additionally present cellular patrol and alarm response, together with getting into with a key, investigating the trigger and resetting a system—providers the police won’t present.
That’s the actual alternative. Distant guarding doesn’t must be bought as a wholesale substitute for folks. A supplier that understands either side can design the proper mix: video the place detection and deterrence are most effective, officers the place judgment, presence and bodily motion create worth.
The following frontier might prolong past safety. Brian sees main potential in utilizing video analytics to enhance security applications, measure site visitors and supply operational intelligence. When cameras transfer from being seen solely as a safety expense to changing into a instrument that helps prospects run their companies, the worth proposition modifications fully.
Per Mar Safety Companies’ Impartial Benefit
At a time of aggressive trade consolidation, I requested Brian why remaining family-owned and impartial is strategically vital. His first reply was probably the most revealing: the household doesn’t take into consideration an alternative choice.
Independence doesn’t imply working with out budgets, accountability or skilled administration. Per Mar has all of these. It signifies that when leaders uncover on in January that an unbudgeted funding is the proper resolution, they will make it. There isn’t a faceless proprietor demanding that each alternative maximize the following three years to arrange an organization on the market.
That lengthy view exhibits up in Per Mar’s native footprint. Brian pointed to Wisconsin, the place the digital safety operation maintains six places of work. A nationwide firm may consolidate that protection into one or two areas to enhance near-term profitability. Per Mar chooses proximity as a result of native service, robust managers and worker retention kind the corporate’s aggressive moat.
In Brian’s view, the impartial regional benefit in the end comes right down to discovering, supporting and retaining nice managers. Scale alone can not protect a household tradition throughout 1000’s of workers. Leaders do it by realizing folks, visiting places of work, sustaining continuity and treating frontline workers with the identical respect afforded to executives.
The Highway That Led Them House
I hold coming again to Brian’s grandparents standing beside a broken-down automobile in a metropolis the place they by no means meant to remain. They wanted $100 to proceed towards Denver. The financial institution mentioned no.
In that second, it should have felt like a door closing. They might not have recognized that Davenport would turn into house, that a couple of investigative instances would turn into an organization, or that the enterprise they started out of necessity would sooner or later present livelihoods for greater than 3,100 folks.
That’s what makes the Per Mar story so highly effective. Its scale is spectacular, however the numbers aren’t the guts of it. The guts of it’s a household that stayed. A grandfather who discovered a manner ahead. A grandmother who helped construct the enterprise beside him. A son who carried it right into a second technology.
And now two grandsons, Brian and Brad, are entrusted with defending what their grandparents began whereas making ready it for a future they might by no means have imagined.
Once I requested Brian what classes had endured via these generations, he didn’t speak about acquisitions, expertise or progress. He talked about how his grandparents and fogeys handled folks. Whether or not somebody labored on the entrance line or within the government workplace, they deserved the identical dignity and the identical respect.
Possibly that’s the actual cause Per Mar has endured. The corporate has modified dramatically since 1953, however the best way the household sees folks has not.
John and Eleanor Duffy by no means made it to Denver. As an alternative, they constructed one thing in Davenport that will outlive them, make use of 1000’s and carry their values into a 3rd technology. Typically the street that closes in entrance of us is the one which leads us house.
Jake Voll is president of SS&Si Vendor Community and host of “Espresso Break with Jake.”
