This week Jake Voll sits down with Scott Elkins, Executive Chairman of Zeus Fire and Security and 37 years into the industry. Scott started at his family's small commercial shop outside Philadelphia, grew it into the national account business UAS, then partnered with Access Holdings to build Zeus, which now ranks eighth on the SDM 100 by revenue after 27 acquisitions. He explains why Zeus keeps the local names on the trucks while running one set of systems behind them, and why the best idea wins no matter which company it came from.
In this episode, we talk about...
✅ Why national accounts returned $10 for every dollar and the local business got starved
✅ Choosing Access Holdings, and interviewing for the job of running Zeus
✅ Running your business today as if you were selling it tomorrow
✅ The house of brands strategy, and what a name change costs employees and sellers
✅ One ERP, one CRM, and fixing "I didn't know you did that work"
✅ Firing bullets before cannonballs when adding a product or service
✅ Why consolidation is still in the early to mid innings
✅ Handing the CEO role to Mike Cox and spending more time looking up and out
✅ Practical AI, starting with an HR benefits agent
Coffee Break With Jake is recorded live every Friday at 11am ET. Join us live or register to attend at https://go.ssandsi.com/coffeebreak
22 Sept 2026
Mobile Surveillance: Growing Your Fleet
This week Jake Voll brings three lenders and one operating dealer together on the money side of mobile surveillance trailers. Marvin Fuller of M&S Security Services Inc has gone from two rusty prototypes to seven trailers in about a year. Jim Wooster of Alarm Financial Services lends against RMR, Jennifer Holloway of CIBC Bank leads the specialty security group there, and Peter McCoy of NewLane Finance writes the fast equipment paper. Nobody spends a minute on camera specs. The whole hour is how you pay for the first trailer, and then how you pay for the fleet.
In this episode, we talk about...
✅ Marvin's path from two prototypes in the yard to seven units, including why he bought a couple of used ones
✅ Selling a $2,000 a month trailer when your sales team is used to $40 a month alarms
✅ Who actually buys these, from contractors and municipalities to solar fields, and who to stop chasing
✅ Short term versus long term contracts, whether they are on wheels or not, and why the advance rate differs
✅ Utilization rate instead of attrition as the number that matters, and how two dormant months eat your margin
✅ The three financing routes: an RMR based facility, a traditional bank line, and one page equipment paper
✅ CIBC's three by three by three timeline, and why the banking relationship has to exist before it starts
✅ NewLane's four hour credit approval, and financing your customer instead of guaranteeing the note yourself
✅ Four week billing and the thirteen month year, which Jake had not heard before this call
✅ Cash flow versus crash flow, and the concentration risk hiding inside a 150 trailer deal
Coffee Break With Jake is recorded live every Friday at 11am ET. Join us live or register to attend at https://go.ssandsi.com/coffeebreak (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUZZTVljR3ZLVEN2NC1PVkVuT0RGR0JMUGpDWHxBTl9pYzRmUnhLWm9kRGczWDdEOUJpVHdQTXJBZzY0djBrRENZelZMWXBzT1phMjRnU0d3M0lvaHJBRmkzTHQ0QUlBcHRyeTlUaUVUNkI2YnVlekJBSGd6XzRpNjUwUS1zbWdS&q=https%3A%2F%2Fgo.ssandsi.com%2Fcoffeebreak&v=U6sUrK4Xwe0)
15 Sept 2026
The 107-Year Startup
This week Jake Voll talks with Jack Doyle, President and CEO of Doyle Security Systems, a company founded on St. Patrick's Day in 1919 and now in its fifth generation of family ownership. Doyle runs roughly 60,000 customers and $2.3 million in recurring monthly revenue across upstate New York and Erie, Pennsylvania, which puts it 19th largest in the country by RMR, and Jack stepped into the CEO seat in 2023 after a deliberate three year succession plan. What makes the story worth an hour is not the longevity itself but what the company was willing to give up to get here, starting with a guard division that once employed 3,200 people.
In this episode, we talk about...
✅ The family business constitution, including the rule that you work somewhere else before you work at Doyle
✅ Why the family holds annual retreats and conflict resolution sessions, after an earlier generation's split broke the company in two
✅ Selling a 3,200 employee guard division to reinvest in the alarm business, and dropping to 80 employees
✅ Exiting locksmithing, and the phrases that tell you a division has outlived its usefulness
✅ Deciding where to play and, just as deliberately, where not to
✅ Keeping a UL listed central station when almost everyone offloaded theirs, and how video monitoring made it a differentiator again
✅ An acquired customer base whose RMR grew 10% over four years while the unit count shrank
✅ What a trusted security advisor does differently from an integrator chasing projects
✅ Why you cannot automate the ambiguity out of a central station seat
✅ Jack's closing advice on contracts, and why you cannot cede ground on the customer relationship
Coffee Break With Jake is recorded live every Friday at 11am ET. Join us live or register to attend at https://go.ssandsi.com/coffeebreak
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
7 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 11 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
8
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
32
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Who hosts Coffee Break with Jake?
Jake host the show. Published by Jake Voll.
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