Welcome back to Owner to Owner—a newsletter for 1,200+ small business owners and operators who want to become better leaders and design the next chapter of their companies.

This month, we sat down with Christopher Baskin, who has run American Two-Way for three decades. It's a wholesale alarm company that sells through the dealers and integrators who bring its technology to end users.

American Two-Way is a company most of our readers have never heard of, that ironically helped build a category all of them use. The company drew up its first concepts in 1975 and incorporated in 1977 in California, founded by people who wanted to sell technology that didn't exist yet. So they built it: wireless systems back when wireless was a controversy in the trade press. Mail-order DIY install decades before Ring.

American Two-Way also made some of the first personal emergency response devices, the receivers to monitor them, and the central station software to run the receivers. These devices are now, under different ownership, probably the most widely used software in the alarm industry. That's four decades of building things before there was a market for them.

What makes Christopher's story interesting isn't just what’s been invented. It's what he's chosen not to change. He still lists a phone number, which by his own account is getting rare in his category, while his competitors route dealers through portals and pocket the savings. That decision, and his sense of which parts of the business are supposed to stay human, is what we wanted to explore with him.

I have been managing it for the past three decades, so it started about a decade before me. The company started the way a lot of wholesale companies did: as an alarm installing company, founded by some very visionary individuals who felt the technology didn't exist for what they really wanted to offer. So right out of the gate, the company started designing, patenting, manufacturing, and monitoring its own line of security products, and Personal Emergency Response Systems (PERS) products as well. We made some of the very first PERS products.

When you do that, you also need to design receivers to monitor those products, followed by central station software to run all of that technology on. That software, now owned by another organization, is probably the most widely used software in the alarm industry today.

Those early products were wireless security systems at a time when wireless was a real head scratcher: What do you mean, wireless? There was a lot of controversy, even inside the alarm industry. You shouldn't have wireless. And of course, today, most systems are wireless. Then the company developed a DIY concept: Let’s mail security systems to other states. There was coverage in the trade magazines asking, “Can you really mail a security system to someone and expect them to install it?” Well, today we have Ring and SimpliSafe; there are more installations happening in DIY than in any other form of security.

You make a lot of decisions over 30 years. You make good ones, you make some bad ones, and you try to learn from the bad ones. I don't know that you can ever really put a finger on what was your best decision.

Something I learned early on was never to feel that you can't be competitive, even up against companies bigger than you. We would go out and pursue deals against massive competitors with enormous resources, and we often hit the bullseye. So one of the best decisions was not being afraid to go after the whales: “whale hunting.” And partnering with large companies. Some of the behemoth companies we weren't necessarily competing with were willing to partner with smaller companies like ours.

I saw a Bill Gates interview early on that motivated me. They asked Gates what scares him. He said it's not Apple, it's not these other giants. It's the guy working out of his garage who invents something that changes everything. That stuck with me.

One of the huge challenges we faced was a challenge the entire world faced. That was around 2020, with the rollout of Covid.

As a monitoring center, you are monitoring life and death. You can't just close. We're headquartered in Los Angeles, and we're nationwide—North America-wide actually. Los Angeles had some very serious lockdowns early on.

So as far as tough decisions go, it was our decision to send operators home to continue monitoring. We were a UL-listed monitoring center, and you're technically not allowed to do that. (At that time, if you were UL-listed, you could not have operators working from home.) But we realized we were going to need to keep doing what we do. We're not a restaurant that can just close.

Interestingly enough, UL did pivot. They realized it's a pandemic, and came up with guidelines for how you would do that from home: use VPN, have dual paths of communication. Ironically, those were the things we had implemented ourselves. We just didn't wait for permission.

We were there at the birth of the internet, which changed everything. We're on the cusp of that again. The challenge in our industry is how you use AI as a tool without overusing it. There's a point where you've gone too far with overuse, and we're already seeing that dynamic with some competitors. So, we'll look at what we can be first in the industry to do with this technology, and make sure we don't over-implement AI. Video is a large growth area, and AI is going to help significantly there. It already is.

We also look at technology that already exists and use it in a different way. One of the things that has started to emerge is lone worker protection. Mobile PERS was created mostly for seniors, and it's really that same technology you use for lone workers today. We're starting to see some countries where protecting your workers outside of your own office is becoming a requirement. It could even happen here in the United States.

We've always served the aging-in-place space, too. There are really not enough younger people to take care of an elderly population that continues to grow. The U.S. definitely has that dynamic. Canada is a much bigger issue than America. Japan. Even China now.

Find the right platform. Buying the right organization to begin with is a huge part of it.

Then maybe don't disrupt too much early on, but don't be afraid to disrupt more as you go. Keep your same teams in place. Make sure your existing customers aren't overly concerned about change that they realize it's business as usual.

At the same time, don't be afraid of change. People get very comfortable in their roles, especially at a company that has had employees for a very long time. So don't be afraid to make sure that there still is change and that you're encouraging change. Don't get caught up in, “Well, this is how we've always done it.” A new owner faces that a lot when purchasing an established company.

Make sure disruption is not too heavy early on, but also lead that existing team to accept change. Change can accelerate growth. Make sure they are all buying in on that, because it's true.

If something here sparked a thought, a question, or a story of your own, just reply—we read every note. And if you’d like to be a part of a future issue, let us know through the button below.

Until next month, wishing you a strong week ahead. We’ll see you soon.

— Victor & Brian

P.S. Hit reply and tell us anything on your mind about life or business.

This is a private email for owners of B2B businesses in the US. Hosted by two longtime business owners, Brian O'Connor and Victor Saad of NextGen Growth Partners, we share personal interviews, honest lessons, and draw connections back to your work and life. Glad you're here.