Yeah. And then Oh, so this last, you know, 2020 unbelievable. challenging year, even more. So I would think for security companies because there were so much different things. We we get hit with a pandemic, unknown territory there. And then here in California, we there was the protests and riots and challenges all around in that regard. And then the, and then the fires and smoke and on unbelievable, you know, like I keep forgetting that we we had we had it. So where’s painters couldn’t even paint outside it was so hard for him. And so when you look back on that year, what was biggest challenges for you and your company?
Nils Welin 15:39
Yeah. 2020 It was very interesting, as you said, the pandemic kicked us into, was it 17th or 18th of March when it really started to hit home when when the government was starting to shut down things around St. Patty’s Day to 17? Yeah, yeah. And we had already been looking for things like that to happen. I mean, COVID was was discussed, it was in China, it was very, it was a little bit of a relaxed approach to it. We’ve heard this before we’ve seen it SARS, we’ve seen these things. And it didn’t really materialize in the US at those times Ebola, and you name them. So there was, in my opinion, a very little bit, it was it was not an urgency that I would think that companies actually should have, it was a little planning from a lot of our clients, actually, we brought it up with our clients, we have some clients who were early on, especially in the in the area where they have a lot of daily visitors, museums and so on, they were actually concerned to start with, and we have dialogues with those and how we were preparing yourself for for the pandemic. And we started earlier on to actually prepare yourself in the terms of getting equipment, getting personal protection equipment, the company was already set up to work from home, most of our managers, the key point with our service is obviously that we have people at different locations. So the security officers, that was very important for me to make sure that the security officer had proper equipment that was that was recommended by CDC. And clearly from the beginning, there was a back and forth on this mask wearing and which I found a little bit confusing myself and I have made recommendations with the mask, then there was like, Well, if you have the mask, you will touch the mask and therefore you will bring the germs from your hands to the mask and therefore you will. And that’s it. Well, that kind of Yeah, that makes sense. I remember thinking the same thing. Exactly. Yeah. So I said there was more of a volunteer really seeing some clients didn’t feel it was comfortable, the officers wearing a mask while they were at work. And so we had some pushback, there were some dialogues. With that eventually, it hit home for everybody. When we were deemed as a as an essential service. Obviously, the impact on our business was only based on the fact that some clients actually closed retail stores closed. Luckily, we were not heavily focused on that. But we had some retail stores that just closed and those officers will resign, or they elected to go home on on unemployment. And some of those businesses are no longer around, they file for chapter one, unfortunately. So they’re not going to come back in that in that shape and form we plugged along and I realized that, you know, this is not going to go away very anytime soon. So my concern started, I started focusing on on the fact that this is going to take a toll on people. So I was very concerned about my employees and how they you actually would react, it made sure that, you know, the normal sees as much as we could do was still there for them. And once again, I mean, luckily we were able to be able to work. Most of my office staff was working from home, but the security officer were in the field. And I realized, you know, having someplace to go is actually good for people, even if there is a element of fear. But most people kind of overcame that. And in a way that I was actually pretty amazed. We didn’t have a lot of people calling off or electing not to come to work. We had some some employees who were going through maybe some treatment and they elected not to and we took care of them and you know, so from that standpoint, it’s been you know, all things considered fairly smooth from an operational standpoint. Then we have the state and then we have the defence and we have the city. Now I have to say they have not been in my opinion, that helpful, the changes that they did the I understand them, but they are also very arbitrarily. Like for instance, you know, we already provide our security officers and this As you know, in San Francisco, we, we have the healthy San Francisco, we have the nine days of sick time and so on. But clearly it’s not a federal mandate. You don’t have to pay for vacation or sick time and so on. But instead of it, I get it. I mean, if people needed to be home for two days, then then they should, they should do that, because we all wanted to stem the spread of the virus. Yeah. And we didn’t have any options, because you already have nine days. And you can use those cores or something like that. No, it was just like, slap this on top of the companies, the company has to carry the burden. And we see that across the board. Now San Francisco has implemented like, on the 23rd, or 21st of March of this year, San Francisco has implemented a $5 $5 household pay for anybody who works in the grocery store, including security officer and janitorial staff.
But that was about a week’s lead time with no no outreach whatsoever. So luckily for me, I came across it and I saw it and I was like, well, this is affecting us. This is affecting our officers working there. And we have to scramble and make sure that they’re getting compensated. But it’s so there’s been a lack, in my opinion about that from from a planning perspective from from the state and local and the federal government. Under the funding adjust and go look, we’re doing so much, you know.
Greg Owens 21:23
Yeah. And having that. Yeah, I feel like they’ve been lacking clarity and direction, right. It’s like fine with me, like, just be clear with what you want to do. And then like, you know, and and have it make sense. I remember early on when the governor, you know, they had this list of activities you could and couldn’t do, and for some reason tennis wasn’t on it, but volleyball was right. And you’re like, how does that make any sense, right, are walking on the beach? Like, they’re like, don’t go to the beach, right? And it’s like, well, wait a minute, and we’re painting contractor, and we were not deemed essential. And so we had to actually shut down, which made no sense to us. Because we’re we work in a lot of two men crews. Were all alone. The buildings are empty now, right? There’s ways we could go about working and doing it. And we have all the gear already. We had all the PPP. Yeah. We’re used to it. We wear that stuff all the time. Right. And so yeah, it just it made no sense at all right? And then how did the challenges of the protests and then like then there were some riots, and I know that San Francisco still boarded up in a lot of buildings, like I was just there the other day, and I was just blown away that there’s all these buildings still with a lot of a tremendous amount of plywood on the windows and that kind of stuff. How did that affect security? Did you have to up I would think you’d probably have to add more or do different things at that time.
Nils Welin 22:47
Yeah. So going back to the the buildings that are still boarded up, in my opinion, most of those are currently there, they’re out of business. So that’s the that’s part of what we see today is the fallout from from the economy going down in the going down the toilet. So most of those buildings, in my opinion, are now boarded up. tenants. They are no no business taking place. We went through several iteration with boarding up and going down, boarding up and boarding down and it was wrong. It was around the election, there was property managers were concerned about the fallout from the election one way or the other. And luckily, that didn’t materialize at all because we’re not in Washington. But the the protests were not in San Francisco. These protests were not as bad as other protests have been in the past. We remember the shooting of sorry, forgetting his name, though. But the BART police officer was shot African American, young male he was those riots were way more intense. And they went on for much longer. In my opinion. I think the planning was good for a lot of property managers in regards to the the potential riots and what did take place. And there was obviously happening, but yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, there was a Union Square. There was a bunch of stuff happening. This one, I actually kind of forgot about that. And a lot of stuff was broken over there. We don’t have any say yeah,
Katrina Stephenson 24:17
sorry, the occupy movement in Wall Street.
Nils Welin 24:21
That was that was pretty interesting. But we the planning for our perspective is really kind of just make sure that nobody can get into the building and it kind of goes into lockdown. Then it’s just anybody who’s got up there will have to verify themselves and then they can get in but so they security is a little strict to get in and out of the building. And then we we hope for the best in terms of the plywood will keep them out and not vandalise the building. And when I say hope for the best, it’s just you don’t know which street they’re going to go down on and you don’t know if there’s going to be some some groups breaking apart and going off and just doing criminal stuff. I mean, in my opinion, demos is our it’s our, it’s our legal right, and we should be able to continue doing so. But unfortunately, with those demonstrations, there is always an element of followers that are not there for the cost, but they’re just there to cause some and I know that the the organizer of these demonstrations are as they’re, they’re not interested in having these followers coming either because they want to focus on their costs and not smashing up window, though it gets they do not just destroy property or steal or or property damage, but they also destroy the message that are being that’s being put out there by these organisations.
Greg Owens 25:42
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Totally with that. And then, you know, if they, if demonstrators pro rioters can get into the Capitol Building, they can get into Macy’s, right, pretty easily.
Nils Welin 25:56
Yeah. That that is, that’s for sure. I mean, and When, when, when we are there, gotta remember a security officer is not legally he doesn’t he or she doesn’t have any more legal rights than a regular citizen. We’re not police officers. So you know, we can do a citizen arrest which anybody can do. If we know that a person committed a felony, we have to know it. It’s not like somebody can tell us that somebody did something, we have to know it that we have to see it, we have to witness it. And then we can do as citizens arrests. But there’s also a huge liability there. Even if you do it proper citizen arrest, there’s always some lawyer who will be willing to fight that
Greg Owens 26:34
the training for that must be intense, right? When to actually use physic get physically involved in a situation?
Nils Welin 26:42
Yeah, we have, we have officers who go through that training, and it’s very strict. And clearly we have tools in our hand to protect ourselves. But that’s really, primarily what it’s all about our clients doesn’t want us to, to stop somebody who’s running into the building with with an AK 47, or something, but sheltering in place in that case, making it that person to, to to get into the building, and then just evacuate, and the proper authorities to respond to that kind of threat. We work we work hand in hand with law enforcement. But we also rely on them. When there’s a demonstration. And there’s riots across them. We know that if they’re smashing a window in our building, that’s not going to be top priority. They have their hands full already police officers.
Greg Owens 27:31
Yeah. Katrina, you have a question?
Katrina Stephenson 27:33
I’m so curious on on this, if you guys have those robots, a few of them in some of the like higher rise, commercial buildings, those security robots that kind of go on each floor, and they’re monitoring is that part of what you guys have,
Nils Welin 27:52
we actually do offer that this through through a vendor, obviously, we don’t, we don’t build them or develop them. I don’t know which one you’ve seen. But there’s one called Knightscope. The company is called Knightscope. And they have a couple different units. One, their first unit was a was called a five. And I think they have a smaller unit, not a bigger unit. That’s called case set. But we do operate the key five, at some locations, it’s very helpful in a setting of a parking garage, where you can, you can constantly roll without robot and you have video feed, you have audio, you can actually read license plates, you can then run that through it through a database. And you can see if there’s always any stolen cars on the property, which obviously, if you’re pulling power on the property, that can be an indication for something to come down the pike in itself should be reported as is. And hopefully the PD will respond and actually start investigating that but yeah, nobody used them. And that’s
Katrina Stephenson 28:56
because I actually feel safer in a parking garage, multiple levels down even if I know there’s just a robot, you know, patrolling the area, just so I’m not totally alone.
Nils Welin 29:07
The way that those works, I mean, you there is a feed and if you’re in the vicinity of the robot, they will see you on the cameras. And they will also see us obviously on cameras hiding between cars or something more normal people usually don’t do that. Normal it I mean, from Normal to but, you know, if you have a bad intent, that’s that’s kind of what you might be doing hiding between two cars or something. But it’s a it’s a technology that’s you know, it’s fairly new obviously, but it’s it’s working and it’s it it augments our services. I would say a lot of clients, they don’t they add a service like that or the robot to to be a compliment to our services. It’s not necessarily taking your way our bread and butter but it’s more of adding more layers of security.
Katrina Stephenson 30:01
That’s interesting, because I was also thinking that it might someday replace security guards. But it actually is, it helps you more.
Nils Welin 30:09
One day, as we all are facing the current AI, and we can all be replaced by robots in many different ways. painting, I would think that’s coming down the pipe, I’ve
Greg Owens 30:23
seen the robot that’s actually doing drywalling and mudding. So, if they can do that, I’m sure they can do, which is more, which is more complicated than painting, I’ve seen drawings where they have them fly up, and like paint the ceiling behind me here, like they’ll fly up and have a hose attached. And you know, and they’re triangulated, right, and so they’ll just like perfectly painted out, you know, and then you don’t have to have a human being with their shoulders, moving something back and forth,
Nils Welin 30:53
there’s still gonna be jobs that they when the robots comes in, they’re not going to take over our world, we need to be able to, to manage them, and you still need to plan for the job, you need to, you still need to operate, you might be doing a job with one guy instead of two guys, or three guys. So this becomes more efficient. And there, there will be other jobs, that’s going to open up for us, like, you know, when we talking about taking away the jobs in the coal industry, I know for a fact that it’s going to require more jobs in the renewable energy if we replace it, if we replace fossil with renewable energy, because all that stuff has to be built out. But when people are talking about job killing programs in regards to cutting down on fossil fuel, they don’t understand the flip side to that we have to replace that energy with something else.
Greg Owens 31:44
Yeah, I completely believe we’re all expendable, including myself in my role in so many different ways, right. But then, at the same time, each person, each individual should try to level up their game and make sure that they’re ahead of that and open to change. And, and that’s where I think a lot of things get really challenging for people is that they get set in their ways. And, and, you know, this is what I’ve done for the last 30 years. And they feel like they can’t change. But that’s not true, right? We know that. Yeah, I’ve
Nils Welin 32:15
gone through a few changes personally, and I know that you have to adapt. So I mean, one of the philosophies of these I have with my company is the fact that I want to, I want to give people a second chance and be able to take that chance. And then within our company grow to their fullest potential, which hopefully or or either they will move up within my company, they will be able to maybe get another job in another industry, but my company to be kind of a platform for something bigger, but some people take the opportunity, and some people just they like it where they are and they don’t, they don’t want to move upward. But if we go back to the robots, there are more technical jobs, even in our field where you can develop and then become you can operate these can be a control room requires more skills than just being sitting at a desk and having a pen and paper and having people please sign in here. It just does. It’s you need to be more computer savvy. So.
Greg Owens 33:15
Right, right. And I would think also for you, there’s still is that human element, because it’s going to be harder for robots to discern when to get involved in a situation or not, and which way is going to be the best, you know, and that takes that I think of our, I was thinking of our training. And we do ladder safety training and respirator training and all these kinds of things, right. But you have to do really sort of much more social engagement training and how to like discern what’s happening in a situation how to calm things down and not not escalate it to something worse, right? I think that’s going to be that human element is so important right there. And it’s gonna be a while before I think robots can figure that out.
Nils Welin 33:57
Yeah, I mean, there is this soft skill that we provide that that the robots are having a hard time doing on it’s more binary, I guess one or one or zero, that’s how they operate. So the the, they’re developing the AI to help things like that, but still, there’s there’s just the interaction today between two humans beings is an important component one, when there’s a situation that goes not according to the schedule, it’s interesting, I mean, the past here taking away any stress in our society. And the contrary, it’s it’s elevated a stress level across the board. People are just ends and when things doesn’t go their way they delayed this if they I think people have they blow up a little faster these days than they might have been in the past. In general, obviously, some Akil still is still keeping their cool, but the stress level has just gone up for for for obviously, recently.
Greg Owens 34:58
Yeah. I mean, I I’m reminding my office and painters like there’s a shorter fuse, right? Like people are, even if we’re, you know, we’re doing some residential painting and we’re, they’re home with their kids. They don’t they didn’t want to be around their kids all day long. And that’s challenging. Yeah, it’s hardship for everybody out there in so many ways, right. But it is looking up, it’s looking so much better. We just had our first our second in person meeting of this year 2021, with the whole company this morning doing safety, and it was so great to see everybody. And we’re able to have some egg burritos and coffee together and do some safety talks. Right. And we’ve been trying to do them on zoom, but it’s just not the same as being able to connect with them.
Nils Welin 35:43
It’s not the same. Well, you have to reassemble your team and move on from here.
Greg Owens 35:49
Oh, yeah, yeah, we were able to start working. I think we were off, they closed us down for about four weeks. And then they then they changed up the rules. I had written to the governor and written to the our state assembly person to like say, hey, like construction, this kind of construction we do, it’s really safe. So they opened it up for us early on, which was great to be able to get back to work, you know, and it’s been challenged, there’s been a tremendous amount of challenges, as you know, in that in that regard, and but when our at that tail end, and it’s feeling so much more optimistic, and the sun’s coming, you know, unbelievably, perfect, beautiful days, which for a painting contractor is awesome, because we can be outside with no worries. Yeah, well, this is this is great. I’d love to up one of the things I like to sort of touch on in this podcast is how if people hear this and listen to this, how would they get into or involved in what you do in the security industry? What would you suggest as a as a gateway? Because there’s multiple levels to there’s the security guards themselves, but then there’s, you have a management team? And you have there’s a lot of things that have to happen in order to run a company of your size?
Greg Owens 37:04
What what what can you add what offered to somebody young or somebody older, that’s transitioning or changing?
Nils Welin 37:09
Well, so obviously, there, there is the security officer in the field, that’s, that’s doing the work in the field operating different at different levels, single sites, as I said, before, multiple officers sides, if you want to be involved, or if you want to get involved in the industry, it’s really a good way of understanding the industry is by working in the field, on the lower level, it goes like with any other industry, you kind of have to understand it. And if I looked around my business, and I look at my managers, they all have that kind of experience where they they worked in the field, that in some capacity, that that’s very valuable, because if you if you’ve never done it yourself, you have more time to kind of relate to the individuals that you are going to be managing, we have other functions in the company, you know, we have administrative functions that are not related to security at all. But in accounting, HR. And HR is obviously a big component for a service company, where where everybody has some knowledge of HR. There, there are laws in the state of California and and in in San Francisco, that can get you into trouble if you don’t follow those rules. So it’s very important that we as a company focus on training our managers on those topics, how, you know, the payroll needs to be completed out how we have to pay them time that overtime rules are followed, that the break rules are followed at the zoo are different things that they need to understand. So if you want to be in the service industry, that’s actually a very important component to to understand the the HR components of the industry, some of our officers, and some of our employees have have used the industry as a stepping stone to go into law enforcement. It happens. Sometimes you get drawn in and you stay in the industry. But I have several employees who have worked for me in the past, who have made it into the Academy, and they they use this as a building stone to or stepping stone to get that experience and then get into the Academy. And obviously you have to do a lot of tests to get into the Academy, but it’s a good stepping stone. But yeah,
Greg Owens 39:35
that’s great. Yeah, that’s really good info. And then just looking at the future here. What do you see on the horizon opportunities and upcoming next? Any any thoughts in that regard?
Nils Welin 39:47
Well, we will continue to grow as a little blurrier on the podcast. We are we’re opening offices in Walnut Creek. We’re open offices in San Jose and we’re going to open up an office in Sacramento. Those are Those are our growth plans for the first for the next year. Now, a year and a half. I would say, though, if you’re, if you’re in any of those markets and interested in those markets know, you can reach out to us. And we can talk about your credentials and how you could fit with our team, the industry has gone through a serious number of consolidations, or there’s been one huge one big company, it’s been buying up smaller companies. And we see a lot of opportunities related to that, because the clients have fewer choices today. And we are positioning ourselves well, as a regional company who was was was big enough to handle but small enough to care. That’s our model, we see a lot of interest from new customers that they’re they want to see something fresh, they want to see something new in terms of how we handle their securities. And we really focus on quality. And that said is we we don’t overwork our managers, we give the managers a portfolio of business that they can actually manage Katrina any
Greg Owens 41:04
thoughts on the security industry when he
Katrina Stephenson 41:07
as someone who very greatly wants to feel secure, I think that I think those robots are great. And having security available as as a young woman on this earth is great. And I’m very grateful.
Greg Owens 41:23
Anyway, that that’s that Yeah, there’s just some of those opportunities that you’re seeing out there in the future and this growth track that you have, oh, and I love your motto, because I think that’s something so true about our company, too, is that, you know, yes, we’re not as big as some of the big painting contractors that are out there. But we offer like, you get to deal with the CEO directly, you get to deal with like, you know, and we care a lot more about our clients, because we’re closer right there, the chain of command is much closer, the big companies can care too, but it’s just different, you know, they’re removed quite a few pieces, right? Whereas, you know, if anybody has a challenge or problem, any client customer, anything, you know, they can get in touch with me and we can have a conversation for sure. Right. Try to work things out. This has been absolutely just wonderful to touch base with you Nils and any last words and also how would people connect with you and your company if they wanted to learn more? Well,
Nils Welin 42:24
thank you, Greg. It’s a it’s been fun. Thank you for allowing me on your podcast the easiest way to get a hold or get in touch with ProGuard is, obviously go to our web page, which is ProGuard proguardsecurityservices.com. All one word, proguardsecurityservices.com. And, yeah, that’s all our contact information is listed there. Obviously. That’s that’s the best way of getting in touch with us. That’s perfect.
Greg Owens 42:55
Thank you so much for being on the podcast Watching Paint Dry.
Nils Welin 42:59
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Outro 43:02
Bye, everyone. Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.