Security Solutions and Automation with Justin Armstrong of All-in-One Security and Home Entertainment

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Justin Armstrong is the Vice President of Operations at All-in-One Security and Home Entertainment, a security, smart-home automation, and home entertainment installer. All-in-One is a family-owned business that has been established for over 15 years. Justin is heavily experienced in working with the security and investigations industry to provide the highest quality service and technology.

Security Solutions and Automation with Justin Armstrong of All-in-One Security and Home Entertainment

In this episode…

How do you measure security performance? What are the ingredients to building your brand and outshining competitors?

According to Justin Armstrong, an experienced security engineering professional, growing your footprint starts with establishing personal relations within your community. His family-owned business prides itself on creating lasting bonds and providing high-quality security and home entertainment products and services. Justin knows that to turn your business into something exceptional, you have to prioritize the people above all else.

Tune in to this episode of the Key Insights Show, where Scott Johnson sits down with Justin Armstrong, Vice President of Operations at All-in-One Security and Home Entertainment. Together, they discuss the evolution of the security and home entertainment industry, different ways to establish meaningful consumer relations, and how to combine alarm and camera systems for maximum security.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Justin Armstrong talks about how his family-owned business began
How a high-performance subwoofer can change the dynamics of your home theater
Justin discusses integrating alarm and camera systems for better security
Why a personal touch can surpass competitors and scale your brand
Justin describes his thoughts on the evolution of the security industry
What piece of technology does Justin recommend for security?

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Key Marketing Group.

At Key Marketing Group, we specialize in getting more inbound leads for B2B companies.

Our proven process works time and time again to drive more potential customers to your website — and get them to contact you.

More leads in as little as 3 months. Get started today.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:02

Welcome to the Key Marketing Podcast, where we feature CEOs and how they’re thriving in today’s market. Now, let’s get started with the show.

Scott Johnson 0:13

Scott Johnson here I’m the host of this show where I talk with leaders in the security industry about challenges they’ve overcome and how they are thriving in today’s market. This episode is brought to you by Key Marketing Group. Key Marketing Group, we specialize in getting more inbound leads for b2b companies. Our proven process works time and time again to drive more potential customers to your website and get them to contact you more leads in as little as three months. You can get started today by going to keymarketinggroup.com. That’s keymarketinggroup.com. Today’s guest is Justin Armstrong. He’s Vice President of Operations for All-in-One security, and it’s been in the security and home entertainment industry for 20 years. Justin is based in Louisville and manages projects in Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia and Florida. Justin, welcome to the show.

Justin Armstrong 1:01

Thank you for having me.

Scott Johnson 1:02

First of all, did I say Louisville? Right?

Justin Armstrong 1:05

Yes, yeah.

Scott Johnson 1:06

All right. Yeah, I hear like, you know, the more you mumble it, you know, the more approval you get from

Justin Armstrong 1:11

Yeah, Louisville, Louisville, you know, yeah,

Scott Johnson 1:14

whatever works. So anyway, well, thanks for being here. So, you know, years and years in the commercial security, business and residential security. How’d you get started?

Justin Armstrong 1:26

So we’re a family owned business. Our owner, Eric started this 21 years ago now out of his own home, and I have worked with them since day one. So Eric and Lisa are actually my parents. We’re a family owned business. I started when I’d been about 10. Stuffing Envelopes and putting fliers in mailboxes, and continue to progress from there.

Scott Johnson 1:51

Nice. They started you at the bottom? Absolutely. There you go. You got to earn it. That’s good. So what are you doing? Now I know you’re VP of Operations, what’s kind of your your day to day look like,

Justin Armstrong 2:02

day to day is a lot of trying to organize the company, you know, in any way that we can to make things flow a little bit better. Setting out jobs, ordering equipment, learning new, new things in the technology world. And just keep in keeping the ball rolling and moving forward.

Scott Johnson 2:19

And there you go. Yeah, I heard companies rise and fall by their operations. So seems like you’re doing a great job. I mean, you guys are killing it. You’ve been around 21 years. What type of projects? Do you guys shine it? Like what if you get a project coming in? And you’re like, Oh, this isn’t our this is perfect for us.

Justin Armstrong 2:38

Our bread and butter for 21 years has always been a security, security and cameras actually. So if we come across a client that really needs premise security, whether it be a restaurant or a commercial building, that they need to know what’s going on and a given area, and they need to limit the access in a given area. That’s, that’s really our bread and butter.

Scott Johnson 3:02

Yeah. So and I know, you mentioned you residential as well, right? What’s kind of your percentage split? There’s 5050 or more on one side or the other.

Justin Armstrong 3:11

So we’re about 6040. Residential to commercial. Okay. And on

Scott Johnson 3:15

residential, you’re doing the surveillance cameras, but you’re also doing home theater stuff, right?

Justin Armstrong 3:20

Yeah. So we’ve dove back into that again, about three years ago, setting up theater rooms and a whole home audio, just given that that feedback to the homeowner that they can really sit down and enjoy their space.

Scott Johnson 3:34

Nice. So I’m an audio file you got to tell me about your you know, most awesome Home Theater Project are the super high end ones. Is that mostly projector or is that something else now

Justin Armstrong 3:46

doing mostly projectors on our end? That’s what we’re most familiar with. And it tends to be what a lot of our customers really want to be able to sit down with their families and really enjoy. So yeah, we’ve done it we’ve done some pretty crazy projects over the years 130 inch screen 4k projectors, Dolby Atmos lighting control you know the kind of the whole nine yards and really given somebody a space that they can sit down and enjoy we’ve actually got one that we’re working on right now that we just will be starting to finish here probably next month.

Scott Johnson 4:22

Nice multiple subs Speaker Yeah where

Justin Armstrong 4:26

Yeah, the whole nine yards chairs the lighting we really work with we work with the design designer setting that up with film making sure it’s perfect for that customer

Scott Johnson 4:37

nice when you first set it up for him what’s like a go to movie you have a you know kind of warm up with like alright it says you got to start with you know avatar Whatever,

Justin Armstrong 4:46

man I’m a big I love Avengers they there are sound effects are phenomenal. So Avengers. Man Wonder Woman’s got some good ones. But personally my favorite is like Ford first versus Ferrari. I’m a car guy, so Oh, nice.

Scott Johnson 5:02

You’re the engines per Yeah.

Justin Armstrong 5:05

As they circle around that track. You hear it all around and you feel it, man. It’s like being in the car.

Scott Johnson 5:11

Yeah. Oh man in my old house we just moved three months ago in my old house, we had this really nice theater room, the theater seats 120 inch projector, not 4k HD. And, you know, we started off with a $600 sub where I could hardly even tell the difference. It’s almost like it wasn’t there if I got a bad one or what, but then we upgraded to this $1,200 One, I think HS W. I think it’s called I could be wrong. But now it’s amazing. I mean, a proper sub changes.

Justin Armstrong 5:41

Oh, absolutely. So we just put up so we actually have a full theater room in our office as a showroom. 137 inch screen 4k Crystal projector. We just got this new sub and it’s from episode to snap one company. It’s called a mega D. This thing will rock your socks off.

Scott Johnson 5:59

Nice. Yeah, now they have you know, attachments that go into your seats for your seat vibrates. But oh, yeah. Sounds good enough. You probably don’t even need that. So.

Justin Armstrong 6:10

Yeah. So seat Rumblers. That’s actually something we’re looking into that one project that we’re gonna finish next month.

Scott Johnson 6:16

That’s awesome. All right. So you know, we talked about home theaters residential on the commercial side, what what kind of problems are you solving? Like? What’s the pain point they’re having? Where they call All-in-One? Or is it typically new construction, or a lot

Justin Armstrong 6:31

of both? I wouldn’t say that we do one more than the other. Mostly, I guess if it’s if it’s coming in after post construction, a lot of employee tracking, I don’t want to use the word tracking employee management. No one who’s coming into the building and at what time they’re coming in and making sure they’re not getting getting into restricted areas that they can’t get into. So a lot of CART access, integrating that with the alarm systems and the camera systems to really make sure that they’re able to manage their company without managing the company. Yep,

Scott Johnson 7:08

it’s all about the cards. Now. The electronic access I just got back yesterday from a client is the steel door Institute. And it’s the 12 largest steel door manufacturers and we just talked security and things like that. But there’s all these new regulations coming out where for electronic card readers, they actually have to track the amount of electricity it’s using to make sure it’s green. And the hardware guys are like, it’s almost no electricity. This is a waste of time and money. And then they have to report it on the packaging. There’s like really, guys, come on, like, I know it’s electromagnetic, but it’s very little energy compared to I don’t know, H back.

Justin Armstrong 7:47

Yeah, right. Yeah, it’s so minimal. Oh,

Scott Johnson 7:51

there’s so many regulations. Another thing that we’re talking about, this isn’t the health care access site. But um, now they have to start measuring how loud the hardware is when people go in and out of health care rooms. And there’s three points. So there’s when you, you know, open it when you release the knob, and when it closes. So the latches, and they have to measure, you know, all three points, put it on the packaging, because every single hardware distributor or manufacturer was saying that, Oh, no, we’ve quite hard to require hardware, but it wasn’t mentioned, you know, it’s not measured anywhere. So now they’re forcing them to measure it. And oh, yeah, these hardware guys just like, Dude, it’s just more and more complicated every day.

Justin Armstrong 8:36

What do you do? Not a whole lot? Yeah. Well keep moving forward and learn.

Scott Johnson 8:41

Exactly. Well, in the door guys we work with they’ll complain, they say the hardware guys make all the money, all the hardware. So So what was kind of an interesting commercial security project you guys had or something memorable?

Justin Armstrong 8:56

Got a couple of them actually, one that we have been? Well, continuing to work on started a little over a year ago was a city project that we started on out here. So revamping a city wide access control system that all of the government employees there can move fluidly throughout the city, whether it be from the police department, the City Hall, the Public Works Department, the parks department, so right now I think we’re sitting somewhere right around 53 doors have access control across five different properties throughout the city. That one’s been a fun project. We partnered with Salto, access control solutions. They’re Spanish based company, and they make a phenomenal product that has made this project come to light here.

Scott Johnson 9:52

Awesome. That’s Salto Sal to correct. All right. Awesome. Yeah. So what made you bring them in Oh, I see him. All right, Salto systems. Yep.

Justin Armstrong 10:02

So they’re just the robustness of the system and the different pieces of equipment that we can use, and the way that they transfer data. So they use traditional card access, as well as a electronic lock. So one FOB can work a hardwired access control system, or it can go over to this door. For like the parks department, they’ve got, I think, 21 doors that are electronic standalone locks that communicate over the network. And they can go around and set schedules and allow, you know, the police officers or dog park members, they’ve got a dog park that’s controlled there as well allow them to have access across the whole city on one platform that is managed in one location to prevent having to change out, you know, keys and stuff and forget get equipment back from employees when they move on, or somebody loses it. Yeah, so

Scott Johnson 11:01

awesome. Why do you think the city went with All-in-One versus your competitors,

Justin Armstrong 11:06

personal relationships, we’ve prided ourselves on it for 21 years that we get out there. And we make relationships with everybody that we possibly can, and give them that personal family feel. So this is a smaller city. Granted, we’ve got a large footprint out there, but it’s a smaller government city, that they’re trying to run all this by themselves, and they wanted to find a partner that could handle all of this for them. And really just be there with them along the way, and grow with them as they continue to grow. Yeah, we fit that bill.

Scott Johnson 11:39

So I know you have a strong presence in Louisville, and now you’re in other cities as well. How did you kickstart your sales when you kind of branched out these other locations,

Justin Armstrong 11:49

same way we started here, personal relationships, going out and meeting other business owners, join in networking groups, and really get to know that area that you’re working in. It’s once you have a good relationship with those business owners, you understand the area, when you began to meet other people, you have a more personal relationship with them. And that’s how we’ve started things in every single market.

Scott Johnson 12:15

Yeah, we’ve had a couple clients expand to new markets. And what really helps us well, not to get too techie is setting up a Google My Business with that location, and then having a separate web page for each location. That way, if someone’s in, you know, whatever, Tampa, Florida, they could search for access control Tampa, or you know, home security, Tampa, and then you guys show up at the top, exactly. It doesn’t work overnight, and it doesn’t replace the relationship, it’s more as fuel to start more relationships that essentially nudges them into your circle. And then you guys kind of work your magic from there.

Justin Armstrong 12:51

And so we do a lot with Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, we have a page for every market. That’s really controlled by two people up here.

Scott Johnson 13:01

Nice. So putting you on the hot seat for a minute here. So the ops guy I know you’ve ran into some stuff, what’s something you could share with us? Maybe a mistake you learned early on? Maybe something you know, now you wish you knew three years ago?

Justin Armstrong 13:15

Oh, boy. Yeah, put put it out there. So we’re gonna start, man, I’ve made some mistakes in my days.

Scott Johnson 13:25

If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not pushing yourself. Yeah.

Justin Armstrong 13:28

I mean, you’ve always just kind of be adaptable. You got to be willing to learn and be willing to make those mistakes. And I can tell you, I’ve gone through, I’ve gone through ceilings, over my years, I’ve drilled through walls over my years of broke stuff. I have fraud equipment. It’s just really about being diligent in your process, and providing the best possible solution for your customer that you can.

Scott Johnson 13:54

Yeah, and you’ll learn from every mistake. I mean, when someone on my team makes a mistake, I know I can trust them more of that task now than anyone else on the team. Because they don’t want that to happen again.

Justin Armstrong 14:05

Absolutely. Yeah. I just had a guy last. Oh, that was it last week, slept off with their ceiling. It happens.

Scott Johnson 14:12

It does. But hopefully it was dropped ceiling and not, you know, a skylight or something.

Justin Armstrong 14:16

Unfortunately, not. It was a large sheet of drywall. But, you know, I’ll probably never make that mistake again. So everything worked out.

Scott Johnson 14:26

I’ve put my foot through a ceiling or two.

Justin Armstrong 14:30

You do it long enough. That’s gonna happen. Exactly.

Scott Johnson 14:33

So zooming out for a minute here. Where do you see the security industry heading? You know, 510 years from now?

Justin Armstrong 14:39

It’s it’s not going to stop. It’s one of those industries that no matter what the economy looks like, it’s always got a foothold economy does great. People want to add to that security and make themselves feel more comfortable. Economy does bad crime rate goes up. Security still has that place. kind of unfortunate reasoning for it continue to grow, but it is going, it’s gonna continue up. There’s there’s no doubt about it, we’re seeing a lot more of it even with the DIY stuff coming in. There’s just a lot of things especially in the commercial world, that DIY will never be able to

Scott Johnson 15:17

touch. No way. Yeah, I mean, there’s always DIY and every trade, but those are people that probably wouldn’t have been your customer anyway. So let him do the you know, I know what to do. So the roof over who does the roof? Just hire a professional?

Justin Armstrong 15:33

That’s brave one. Yeah.

Scott Johnson 15:35

So I’m wrapping up here. Most people you know, you’ve been in the industry a long time that you kind of really respect what they’re doing, or maybe they mentored you?

Justin Armstrong 15:43

Yeah. So I’ve got I’ve got a couple people that I’ve loved to speak with over the years. So I’ll touch base on two of them. One of them is Dorian Jackson. He’s actually with ADT, phenomenal guy, great wisdom, love talking with them. And another guy is Paul spinella. He’s actually with Quickset door locks. Both of those guys, I’ve spoken to a lot over the years, they’ve really helped mentor me and helped me grow, keep me focused on on the business and growing and being that person that everybody wants to come and work for.

Scott Johnson 16:16

Yeah. And now it’s now that you’ve been around this long, it’s your turn to mentor the new people coming in?

Justin Armstrong 16:21

Absolutely. And I can’t, I can’t go just with those two, I’ve got my parents do, who started this thing. And they have really helped me grow as a person, and really trusted me with the reins of this company to continue it in an upward position. So I definitely can’t leave those two out.

Scott Johnson 16:38

Yeah. Awesome. That’s great. Last question, what is your favorite piece of technology right now maybe it’s an app, maybe it’s a, you know, tool or whatever.

Justin Armstrong 16:48

alarm.com. Hands down. They’ve got a very robust system out here. That is an all in one solution from their current access to their alarm system, to their cameras, to the automation side of it all one system that you can do nearly anything you want. arming and disarming multiple business locations, tracking employees as far as opening close times of the business, restricting access to certain areas, often all from one application. That is definitely my favorite, favorite piece out there right now.

Scott Johnson 17:26

Awesome. Well, we’ve been talking with Justin Armstrong of All-in-One Security. Justin, where can people find you guys to learn more about you and your company? Check us

Justin Armstrong 17:35

out on Facebook. All-in-One Security and home entertainment. All-in-One security ADT. We are AIO, that’s how you find us. All right.

Scott Johnson 17:45

Thank you so much.

Justin Armstrong 17:46

Thank you.

Outro 17:51

Thanks for listening to the Key Marketing Podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.