{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Coffee Break with Jake","title":"Old Fashioned Service, Modern Growth","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3284,"description":"In this episode of Coffee Break With Jake, Jake Voll sits down with John Loud, founder and owner of LOUD Security Systems out of Atlanta, for a 30-year look at what it takes to build an alarm company from scratch, survive a housing crash, and stay founder-led at 70 employees and 14,000+ customers.\nJohn came into the industry from all the way outside it. He was a Delta flight attendant with a political science degree and a pilot's license he decided he did not want to use. A passenger explained recurring monthly revenue to him. He walked into a Georgia Burglar Fire Alarm Association show, met a DSC rep who introduced him to a distributor throwing in a year of free monitoring, and he had his supply chain figured out before he had his first customer. So he had eight competitors come to his own house to sell him an alarm system and reverse-engineered their pricing, their paperwork, and their placement. He calls it R&D. Rip off and duplicate.\nThe rest of the conversation is a working playbook for going from a $20,000 personal line of credit in 1995 to a 51,000 square foot headquarters in 2025. John is transparent about the misses too. The 63 home builders on the books in 2008. The controller (Diane) who refused to let a builder go 60 days past due without a lien on the property. The fact that when the market collapsed, LOUD lost $77,000 instead of the company itself.\nIn this episode, we talk about...\n✅ How John got into the alarm industry from the flight attendant seat at Delta, and the passenger conversation about recurring monthly revenue that reframed his whole career\n✅ The real estate agent closing-gift program that seeded LOUD's first customer base, and the tagline he wrote at the beginning that still holds up: \"Take action 30 days too soon instead of one day too late\"\n✅ Getting caught two years in without a low voltage license, buying the books, passing the test, and then installing for another ten years until his team politely fired him from the truck\n✅ Diane...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/7pEjwSVHCLQviz9srAd7xFaY2bEoKIK9XOsv9WxNvsM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS81ZWJk/YTZlNzBhNzM4YmQ0/YWUzMGUxMjRjYmM2/ZmI3OC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}