Nils Welin is a highly accomplished serial entrepreneur and the CEO of ProGuard Security Services, a company that provides personalized and professional security services to the San Francisco Bay Area. He is also the Founder of EON Venture, a specialized investment company that provides strategic growth and business development guidance. Nils currently serves as a Board Member at the California Association of Licensed Security Agencies, Guards & Associates (CALSAGA) and is a Board Member at the Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows Foundation (SAF).
Nils is an authority in sales and marketing with the expert ability to develop new teams and companies. He is skilled in generating ROI by focusing on the strengths within a company and applying new strategies.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Nils Welin talks about life during the pandemic and his work at ProGuard Security Services
- How is the security services industry growing, and what changes are being made?
- The biggest challenges Nils and ProGuard Security Services faced in 2020
- Nils explains his company’s involvement during past protests
- Security robots: who uses them, and how do they work?
- Technology, energy efficiency, and the future of the job market
- How can you start your career in the security industry?
- Nils shares his growth plans for ProGuard Security Services
In this episode…
As the pandemic swept through the world and enforced change, in more ways than one, industries have adapted and found new strategies for growth. For the security services industry, there has been an increasing demand as tensions rise in regards to COVID-19, racial injustice, and political unrest. How is the industry changing, and what are the plans for future growth?
Nils Welin is in the security services industry in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he has witnessed the challenges and transformations taking place over the past year. As the pandemic shut down businesses and increased health and safety risks, security companies began focusing on training, protective equipment, and workplace adjustments. Now, Nils and his team are looking ahead at the future of technology to aid their development plans.
In this episode of Watching Paint Dry, Greg Owens is joined by Nils Welin, serial entrepreneur and CEO of ProGuard Security Services, to talk about changes taking place within the security industry. Nils discusses the obstacles his company’s faced, security robots and the future of technology, and how you can start your career in the security services industry. Stay tuned!
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- Katrina (Hayes) Stephenson on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Nils Welin on LinkedIn
- ProGuard Security Services
- EON Venture
- CALSAGA
- SAF
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of 1000s of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:31
Hello, everybody. This is Greg Owens with the podcast Watching Paint Dry. And this podcast is sponsored by my company McCarthy Painting. This company was started by my uncle Fred McCarthy in 1969. in Marin County, and we paint businesses homes, commercial properties, apartment complexes, condos, we’ve done work for Google we’ve done work for Autodesk for Abercrombie and Fitch, h&m stores, Spin Zooks, Chase Bank, and many many more if you need to find out more information and or have a project that you want us to take a look at, go to info@McCarthypainting.com or on the web McCarthypainting.com. And I’m super excited to have the CEO of ProGuard Security Services, Nils Welin, on our podcast today. Welcome, Nils.
Nils Welin 1:34
Thank you so much. I’m glad to be here. It’s gonna be exciting.
Greg Owens 1:37
Yeah. And I mean, and we also have Katrina Stephenson on the call, who is also with McCarthy Painting. And Katrina has been learning a lot about facilities, facilities, management, construction, painting, and all that. And sometimes she chimes in with a question.
Katrina Stephenson 1:52
Yes,
Greg Owens 1:54
thank you. So I want to check in how are you how your how’s your family? how you’ve been holding up during this, you know, seemingly it’s things are feeling good, they’re opening up out there in the world, I you know, a lot more activity is going on? How are you guys doing?
Nils Welin 2:09
Well, thank you for asking a strange years for everybody. But, you know, fortunately, I have, we’ve been fortunate we have survived with the sanity still intact. There’s been several challenges that we have faced, obviously, from a social and family perspective, with with some being out of school for for for a while, and also challenges with the with the company. But all in all, you have to take it in stride, and you have to look at it from a positive stamp my opinion. And we have found solutions that work for us. And yeah, we’re surviving. Luckily, both on my boss myself and my wife, at this point, have been fully vaccinated. So we are hoping that the rest of the world and will follow footsteps and we will be able to beat this virus sooner rather than later.
Greg Owens 3:04
Yeah, it’s definitely feeling but I got my second shot just yesterday. So it feels it feels good. And people yeah, people seem to be excited. And then I was just with my nephews, who are 17 and 11. I took them to Montana to do some ranching. And I moved 11 year old it’s been struggling this year in front of zoom. Like he’s just got way too much energy to put him down in front of his zoom classroom every day. Right. And it’s been tough for them and
Nils Welin 3:34
on the family. Yes, yes. It’s been very tough. We, our son is part of the ski program up in town but I was also programming still running but our our ability to travel there is limited, and we were not able to be part of the ski program this year. So a lot of adjustments,
Greg Owens 3:52
which which ski program is, is that with that we were talking off off air and I’ve been up there a lot this year, I was watching the ski. I was following the ski team one day where we were I didn’t know I was following them. I followed them up the glacier peak. And I was like, Oh, well, these guys kind of know where they’re going. I keep following them all the way up to the top and then they all started dropping in off these cliffs. And I was like, okay, we’re not following them through that mess.
Nils Welin 4:21
up in a bad spot. If you fall on the ski team all the time, depending on what level they are out there. Some of them are extremely good. My son is in the, in this ski cross team, which is the people don’t really know the ski cross. But that’s the one where you going in a court and of course, and you have these different bumps and you go for four at the time. I knew. Yeah, the first one down wins and there’s no, no gates. It’s just like, down through bumps and stuff. So that’s what he’s doing. It’s a pretty advanced one.
Katrina Stephenson 4:53
So it’s kind of like, like, cross country but on your skis. Like run it
Nils Welin 4:59
Yeah. It’s more like I would compare it, what do we do compared to it’s it’s like this slope is just they have these different bumps that they build up, or jumps, you have to, you have to be able to jump, you have to be able to go straight. And you have to be able to obviously turn at times and they get pretty rough to each other. But the they might get you a little elbow here and there. And that’s the sport sign up for
Greg Owens 5:24
Wow. Sounds like you could lose a tooth in that pretty easy.
Nils Welin 5:31
It’s not what we wanted,
Greg Owens 5:32
right? Yeah. And so like, tell us a little bit about your company ProGuard Security Services. This is new founded at two? Yeah,
Nils Welin 5:42
I did. I founded it. And we are currently about 300 plus employees. We are Bay Area company, we provide security services for a range of different clients. I was envying your client list that you mentioned in the start of this podcast, we have worked with h&m I recognize that was one of my biggest clients. But that was actually my, in my other company that I that I sold. We haven’t gotten to that point yet. But so we work with a primarily commercial facility managers or commercial property managers, they and we provide security for their buildings around the clock or per the requirements that they have, or what the needs are for that building. Sometimes it’s a one officer and sometimes it’s a team of 15 officer at the site. So we work with biotech, high tech. But it’s it’s primarily within the lobby setting of a building. And we Yeah, we’re focused here in the Bay.
Greg Owens 6:41
Yeah, and you guys are the true gatekeepers, we definitely deal with a lot of security in in NC you do both the full time security for a company at the in the lobby and supply full time security at the desk at the door, making sure checking people as they come in and go and that kind of thing. But then you also do like one offs when a store is being renovated or painted or anything that’s happening after hours, and they need to have a guard on service. Right?
Nils Welin 7:09
We can do that we call them special events or you know, sometimes as you know, there are there are requirements related to the fire panel, the five pound goes down and they need Firewatch which is it which is essentially replacing the the technology what a what a human being watching that nothing starts that it’s no fire starting might seem a little bit tedious, sometimes kind of redundant. But it’s very, very important. Because if you don’t have your fire system online, you you need to have eyes on on the building. And but yeah, we do everything from, you know, small gathering sometimes where people are they their need for security to larger events, but in the primary business focuses for us ongoing commercial buildings, there’s something special with an ongoing contract versus a onesies and twosies they’re hearing there there is the residual revenue related to those contracts. Yeah, it’s
Greg Owens 8:05
a little bit more can be more predictable. I would imagine. I mean, the same thing for us. We do a lot of one off painting for companies or we do ongoing maintenance painting inside their companies. They just call we just send people you know, and it’s much better. I like that model.
Nils Welin 8:20
Yeah, obviously, you want to be able to manage your business in an appropriate way. And if you have long term contracts, you can you can build on those, you can build a team around it. And that makes it makes it easier, that’s for sure. Then you have to ramp up and then ramp down again, that was for a special event. So we liked them, but and we can get good exposure from them. But they’re probably more headache than they’re really worth in terms of dollars or profit numbers.
Greg Owens 8:48
So yeah, and I know security become more and more complicated necessary. I think it was the there was a shooting at lawyers offices back I forget what year it was probably in the 90s. It was in California one Oh, California 101 or 100 or something like that. Where where the person was able to walk right? I remember those days, right? We used to work in those times. And you always walk right through the lobby and walk right into the elevator and go all the way up these right? It’s not possible in my right it was badges security security at the door, you have to know who you’re coming to see who What are you going to do. I mean, we run into it all the time with painting when we’re sent painters and the the the maybe somebody didn’t put us on the list that morning and then our painters are waiting around, because security is like nope, you guys are not going anywhere. Right? So it’s definitely become a needed service in the world today.
Nils Welin 9:44
It’s definitely a service that’s not it’s not going to go away anytime soon or ever and it’s a it’s a growing market. I would say that we growing slightly more than the economy in general. Due to the demand and due to the upgrades or rather, I should say the the security threats that people perceive. And they want to plan for it. There are several buildings that you can walk into and and get up on the different floors even there if even if there’s a lobby officer, because they’re just not that strict. But more and more classes, especially buildings are definitely buildings that you cannot enter anymore without having any invitation or, or having a badge to to, for your floor or building in. And then they also limit you to just the floor that you work out if you want to the tenants of the building. Technology goes into it today. And the industry has changed. I’ve been in industry for Yes, since 2001. And it’s changed drastically over those 20 years. But when you say it out loud.
Greg Owens 10:56
And you had a company, you had a company before this one, that was also security.
Nils Welin 11:00
I did I did, I was not founded. But I became the CEO after a few years and became part owner and a partner in that business. My entry point to the industry was, I guess a little bit different. I was actually working within high tech companies prior to that all my career as a marketing in product. And when 2001 came around and.com had created a vacuum of my services weren’t as in high demand in the past, you know, 10 years or so. So I found myself without a job. And the market was not very forgiving to me. I thought at that time. And so I I got to know this guy who eventually became my partner, I became his partner. And he had this one company that he was going to write it off, essentially, he was he said, this is not going anywhere. And I said, Well, let me take a look at it. I really don’t have much to do right now. And I did some research into the security industry. And I realized there was a it was huge market. And I was like what, why? Why? Why write something off when there’s the underlying market? You just need to build some revenue around it. And they said, well, yeah, we got, we used to have more. And we have a really bad reputation, which I realized pretty quickly. They there was it was tough. It was tough two years. But I took that company, when I first joined, it was 10 employees, five of them working in the office. And so we had like five revenue generating individuals on the field.
Greg Owens 12:36
That’s a tough model.
Nils Welin 12:37
Yeah, I wouldn’t really call the company, it was more like a gathering place. For those five individuals who came to work, you’re in there. And in the partner, he he kind of funded it a little bit here a little bit there. He was losing money on it, obviously. And I realized it was a big market. And so I went up there and I did some changes. And I worked hard on it for like 13 years, so 12 years ago and took it from 10 employees to about 1000 employees. Wow.
Greg Owens 13:08
That’s a lot of mouth. That’s a lot of mouths to feed. A lot of responsibility.
Nils Welin 13:13
Yeah, yeah. So it became, yeah, it was, it was a very interesting journey. And I learned a lot. And obviously, I’m applying the good things into my new company and trying to skip the bad things. So
Greg Owens 13:28
and what year did you start the new company here?
Nils Welin 13:33
So we, you know, me and my partner we separated in? It was a separation, like back in 2013. And then my new company was pretty much ready to go early. 2014. So, or was it now? Maybe it was 2015 2014 or 2015? You know, time flies when you’re?
Greg Owens 13:56
Yeah, okay. No kidding me and I I’ve been painting since I was 16 years old when I first started working for my uncle, and then became a partner and my uncle passed away. And it’s, it’s Yeah, I mean, I think about that time. I mean, it’s over. It’s something over 32 years now or something like that. And mind boggling amount of years. They go fast in this industry. Yeah. It goes fast blink of an eye.
Nils Welin 14:21
Yeah, we, we looked at each other, my wife and I, and we said, Sure. Should we do this again, and we kind of, you know, we’re looking at other options. And then it was just like all, all roads lead to Rome. And we just fell back into it. Though we leave we had our challenges as any startup company has, but I think it was, it was fewer and far between based on the fact that I’d already done it before. So it was a good learning experience.
Greg Owens 14:48
Yeah, they say the second time around, it’s definitely easier.
Nils Welin 14:52
Yeah, yeah. I would agree with
Greg Owens 14:55