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Team Spotlight: Nathan Fowler

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Today we’re throwing the spotlight on another new member to the ECT Team: Nathan Fowler. Nathan joined our team earlier this summer as a Security Design Engineer.

He says he chose to join ECT because he wanted to find a company that really cared about the customer and saw the job all the way through. He met with John Arnold, Vice President of Security, and immediately could see the passion that he (and later the team) has in making sure the customer was given a complete package for their wants and needs. He felt that to be able to help in that way and to do what needed to be done for the customer’s benefit, shows character as a company. We agree, Nathan, glad you noticed.

Nathan comes to us from a career in distribution for low voltage with a system design team. He spent eight years on that team gaining knowledge and learning the needs for the variety of projects they handled. He plans to use that foundation with the systems and styles that ECT uses.

So far, Nathan’s favorite part of the job is “the trust that is given to me to make sure we have all the customer’s needs met for upcoming projects. I look forward to bettering my grasp on how and why ECT does things and, hopefully, adding to that process for a more efficient outcome for all,” he says.

When he’s not working, he Nathan enjoys woodworking and spending time with his family. He especially loves to hunt with his brother and to spend game night with his kids.

Welcome to the team, Nathan. We’re glad you’re here!

Team Spotlight: Sheila Kohler

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When a team member comes forward with a goal to take her career to the next level, it’s a true honor to be along for the ride. Sheila Kohler recently completed her Society for Human Resource Management – Certified Professional (SHRM-CP) certification.

“I started a 13-week Bellarmine University course in February.  Along with field experience, taking this course is a pre-requisite to being allowed to sit for the actual exam.  I sat for the exam 4 months later,” she said.

Sheila shared that if she’s not learning then she’s not growing. She’s been in the accounting field after studying at Sullivan, but to date had not received any formal education in human resources. She felt this was the logical next step for her so that she could have a better understanding and confidence in her knowledge of HR.

In her own words, Sheila says:

“My intent for gaining this certification was two-fold.  I wanted the education for myself, to grow my knowledge base and make me more marketable, but I wanted to be able to confidentially be there for the team members and company I serve every day.  There are many policies, laws, and regulations when it comes to the workplace, they have changed over the evolution of HR and they will continue to change.  Therefore, being certified and knowing these laws and being a resource in this area not only benefits our team members who may not know the full extent of a labor law such as FMLA but it also helps our organization as whole grow with the rapidly changing world around us.  As our society changes so do the expectations of the workforce.  The workforce wants to know what kind of company they may be working for, they want to know what a company’s vision is regarding DE&I, they want to know how the company is going to help them grow and how the company is overall aligned with their values and if the company is changing as cultures change. My hope is that I can help guide our team and organization to grow and align with cultural standards to help ECT become even more marketable to the workforce.”  

Her hope is to bring more value to our organization. Her favorite part of the program was recognizing that she had the room for growth not only in her personal development, but also how it could relay to those around her.

She found the most challenging part of the program was recognizing what she didn’t already know. She quickly learned that HR entails more than just payroll, benefits etc. She also found she had to sharpen her study habits, which can be true of anyone who takes the leap to further their education after being into their career for many years.

“I am in a much different place in my life now and trying to find the time to figure out how I learned best now compared to before and doing it all while having a full-time career, children, a family, and others that depend on me was the most challenging part of the process.”

Her husband, Scott, also an ECT Team Member was along for the ride. “Sheila had dedicated most of her evenings to studying for the SHRM certification for the past few months.  So, not only was she putting in a full day at work, but also many hours at home.  There were moments of stress and time she questioned  herself.  However, all her hard work and late hours paid off.  I am super proud of her dedication and work ethic!  She was beyond excited once she found out she passed.  I am so happy for her to gain this certification,” he said. Now that’s a great support system.

Sheila’s hope is to continue to learn and grow.  She says her education doesn’t stop at the exam because HR changes everyday and to remain an asset to any organization one must continue to learn and grow.  

CEO Jeff Murphy also chimed in on the accolades regarding Sheila’s accomplishment:

“Sheila is an intelligent, dynamic, and growing leader.  She has determination, passion, and grit to make things happen and get things done.  Her desire to obtain the SHRM certification has been driven by her passion for more understanding in how to best serve our most valuable asset – our Team Members.  She has a huge compassion for each person on our team and works diligently to make sure they are taken care of.  It is exciting to see her efforts pay off to achieve this milestone as one of the next steps in her career,” he says.

ECT Services Team Spotlight: Martin Nienaber

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Let’s kick off this July by celebrating not just America but also our team!

We’re proud to have recently welcomed another new member to our team, Martin Nienaber.

Martin is a Security Account Manager. He says he chose to join our team because of our industry and because of the culture at the company.

“With ECT being established for over 40 years in the security industry I felt confident in choosing to work here. Along with the company culture, I felt ECT aligned with my personal goals,” Martin said.

Martin worked in the field as a technician for a few years before transitioning into a sales role. He previously worked for an integrator based in Lexington, Kentucky.

When he’s not on the job Martin enjoys spending quality time with his kids and family and – for the past six years – coaching basketball.

His favorite part of the job so far is learning new applications that can provide our customers value and solutions.

Welcome to the team, Martin. We’re so glad to have you!

Team Spotlight: Sybil Riley

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The team at ECT Services has been growing again. Today’s spotlight is on one of our newest team members: Sybil Riley.

Sybil joins our team as an Inside Security Sales Representative. Why did she choose to say “yes” to ECT? “I chose to work for ECT Services because of the company’s reputation and values,” she said. She joins us after working on the Inside Sales side at Honeywell Security Products for 12 years.

So far, Sybil loves working with great team members. When she’s not at the office, she loves to try new restaurants and travel. We look forward to watching her journey at ECT Services (and maybe she’ll share some pictures from future travels with us!)

Welcome to the team, Sybil.

If you or someone you know is looking for the right place to land with a great team, check out our careers page and reach out for more information.

Sometimes our work means being a first responder

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At ECT Services, it’s a priority that we take care of our team. Of course, putting our customers’ needs out front is always task one, but without a strong team, we might have to work a little harder to make that happen. We take care of each other and support each other.

Lots of companies offer CPR and/or First Aid courses. These are great skills to have. For us, it’s more concrete than that. In our industry, out on job-sites, in and out of buildings, anything could happen. It’s important we, as teammates, know how to take care of each other when an emergency occurs.

Last week we held our first annual CPR/First-Aid Training course at our facility through the American Red Cross. Team members set aside time from their busy days to attend, learn and practice.

We’ve spoken before on this platform about the importance of time saved in an emergency. When a medical emergency happens on a job-site, it could be several minutes before 911 responds. In that time, our team needs to know:

  • What needs to be done;
  • How to do it.

It’s important that those at the scene can help until the proper authorities arrive. Learning the proper skills makes us not just fellow employees, but great team members. We’ve got each others’ backs, literally, and we encourage the team to continue to take this course each year as it’s offered. You just never know when it will come in handy.

 

Team Spotlight: Patrick Fisher, Security Account Manager (newly promoted!)

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It’s always exciting when we can announce a promotion within our team. Patrick Fisher has been in our industry for six years; almost half of those have been spent with ECT Services.

He says he initially chose to join the ECT Team while he was working with a local distributor, and had a relationship with ECT Services as we were his customer. As we talk about often, relationships are so much a part of who we are and what we do, and that rings true no matter if we are on the vendor side or the customer side.

Patrick and Kevin Mosby, ECT’s Service Account Engineer, became friendly and started playing golf together regularly. One particular time, Scott Kohler, ECT’s director of Sales joined them for a round. As luck would have it (for both of us) – there happened to be an inside sales position open for the Security Sales team. The rest, as it’s said, is history. Patrick has done a phenomenal job for the team, and this promotion is well-deserved.

I asked Patrick his thoughts about current technologies and trends in the security space. He says “video surveillance has taken a fascinating turn. Technology now exists to not just capture an incident, but we now have the capability to live-video monitor sites to prevent incidents in real-time. OptaSense is an exciting perimeter detection system that uses above or below ground fiber to monitor critical areas.” We’re working with clients to discover if this type of technology would benefit their company. In many cases, it does.

As I so often do in these spotlight pieces, I asked him for a favorite quote or mantra he lives by. I particularly like his answer:

“Too many Bible verses, movie quotes, and song lyrics for me to narrow down. Lately I have been reading about  what Alabama Head football coach Nick Saban calls, ‘The Process’, in which individuals and teams ‘focus on the present instead of pas events or future outcomes, and believe that all actions one takes in life, regardless of how trivial they may seem, affect the desired outcome’. Worrying about past mistakes or future outcomes gets in the way of focusing on the present.

My goal at ECT Services is to show up everyday to serve our customers and our ECT team members. Do this day in and day out, and our customers, along with ECT Services, will be successful.”

Patrick we’re glad you’re part of the team. Thanks for all you do!

ECT Team Spotlight: Heather Harrington, Service Coordinator

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There’s nothing we like more than sharing our people, and showing off just how amazing each member of our team is. Today we introduce our newest Service Coordinator,  Heather Harrington.

Heather’s been in the industry for 20 years. She chose to join ECT after taking about a decade and working in the finance world. “But,” she says, ” I know this industry and I learned a lot in past years and felt it was time to get back to what I know and expand my knowledge. After meeting with my manager and researching ECT Services, I felt it would be a great opportunity to get back in the game with a well-known company that has a lot of the core values I was looking for and I am glad I did.  In the short time I have been here, it is starting to feel like I am part of a team again.”

Knowing she had background in our industry, I asked her if she has any thoughts on the future, as it pertains to the world in which we work: energy conservation, temperature controls, security, active shooter detection, etc.

As with so many others on our team, Heather really feels AI technology is what’s going to continue to drive change. Automating all types of work won’t necessarily lead to losing “human” positions… it will create different types of specialized jobs.

She also said that cloud storage continues to grow quickly. It allows organizations to save money on storage, servers and management services. This can lead to not just cost-savings, but solid efficiencies in the workflow. Cloud technology is “always improving allowing companies to improve along with it and the best part is that cloud services can be scaled based on business needs and most all updates can be automated,”  she says.

Heather also sees value in more surveillance. Public spaces can be made safer with video surveillance. It helps to reduce crime and can also help avoid theft within an organization. It provides staff security, and can even protect companies against lawsuits in some cases.

Want to know the quotes that keep Heather going? She’s got a few. She shared two with me:

“With God All Things Are Possible”…Matthew 19:26;

“If you are not willing to learn no one can help you.  If you are determined to learn no one can stop you.” …Zig Ziglar

Welcome to the team, Heather. We’re glad you’re here!

Team Spotlight: Justin Kelley

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Today we are shining the spotlight on another new member of our team.

Justin Kelley, Systems Programmer, has been in the industry for eight years and joined ECT Services earlier this year.

I asked him why he chose ECT Services. Like many before him, it’s our internal culture that ignites that feeling of “I want to work here.” Specifically, Justin said “the team-first culture and the ability to continue my growth in the security industry” was a driving force. He enjoys working in what he calls a “fluid environment” with different customers around the world. Though his position is in systems programming, Justin is able to help on other projects and support team mates, which furthers his knowledge and capability.

As with all our team members, Justin is committed to his work for the clients. He says “Physical security plays an integral part in the overall success of businesses. While this will impact companies’ capital costs, providing a safe and secure work environment will allow team members across an organization to thrive. ” Who wouldn’t want this kind of attitude on their project?

We are lucky to have Justin on board, and we know our customers feel the same.

We want to end this team spotlight with one of Justin’s favorite quotes by Coach Bill Belichick: “Do your job, Work hard, Be attentive, Put the team first.”

Spot on.

Team spotlight: Jonathan Arnold

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Sometimes ECT is lucky enough to have not one, but two members of the same family on our team. Today’s spotlight features one such family connection.

Johnathan Arnold, Security Technician, has been in the industry for six years. Earlier in 2022 he joined his father, John, at ECT. We’ve shown a photo of them together on this post… see the family resemblance?

“I chose ECT because I knew the integrity of the leadership who work here and the knowledge I could acquire,” he says.

Johnathan, like all ECT teammates, is focused on quality and customer satisfaction. He believes it’s important that customers know you get what you pay for. The issues and concerns around security and technology are constantly evolving. He feels it’s important for customers to not try to go with the cheapest option when it comes to a security product. In his mind, it’s better to pay a little more and get as close as you can to the current top tier product instead of settling. The last thing you want to do is put yourself or your company in a position of being taken advantage of. He works hard to be sure customers understand what the product they’ve selected provides, and does not provide.

Of course, when it comes to customer service, he’s learned from one of the best, his father. We asked him to share his favorite quote and he said it’s “Strive to be better today than you were yesterday” by James Gordon. Seems like a great way to start each day.

Our team has the flexibility to support team members finding new interests.

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With a strong team, anything is possible. Our CEO’s favorite saying is “it’s amazing what happens when you show up.” Our team shows up day after day, ready to work.

Though we are in growth mode (have you checked out our careers page?), we still consider ourselves a small, nimble team. Sometimes that can mean we need people to be flexible in their knowledge base so they can pinch-hit when needed. Fortunately for us, this philosophy fits right in with the mindset of our team members.

Through the years, sometimes team members will show interest in expanding their skillset. They are not necessarily looking to “switch” from temperature controls to security, as an example, but are looking to expand the depth of their knowledge basis.

As more systems become integrated, it’s more and more critical that all people working on a project understand those integrations. Therefore, having knowledge of another part of the project benefits everyone.

Online trainings, making a laptop available, these are ways we can support our team members learning something new. If someone has spent years as an installer and wants to learn the art of programming, we can make that happen. Think how much better an installation will go if the people in these two roles better understand each other and speak each others’ language.

I spoke with Dave Stumler, Vice President of Controls who said, “we want our team members to continue to develop and know we’re supportive of their goals.”

We take the needs of our team members seriously. If they have a need to learn a new area, we want to cultivate and support that. The big winner at the end of the day will be our customer.

 

It’s amazing what happens when you show up.

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As we finish up October and the celebration of our 40th year in business, we take a moment to reflect on all we’ve accomplished in the past decades as well as this year. We’re also looking forward to what’s coming in our plans as a team.

Over the past few months we’ve shared stories from our founders and our team leaders, but each and every one of our team members are part of what makes us who we are and the stories told reflect what each individual has made happen.

There are a few themes running through the conversations we’ve posted here.

Kathy and Larry Fisher founded the company in the early 1980s with a mission to conserve energy, based on what Larry had learned at other jobs. It was bare bones to start but they were confident hard work would lead them down the right path.

He felt energy conservation was the direction in which he was headed and felt he could make a difference. Using his knowledge of electrical engineering, Larry and Kathy began the new business, Energy Conservation Techniques, in their living room. They had a card table, a couple of chairs and a phone. Eventually they purchased a (pre-Microsoft) computer to get things organized.

You can read that full story here.

The one thing Kathy and Larry knew from the beginning was that “It’s the people that make a company, not its owners.” This philosophy has stuck all these decades later. Our current CEO, Jeff Murphy, has said from the beginning “This isn’t just a group of people with a ‘job’ but everyone is part of the team and contributes to it growing, developing and scaling.” 

The people who are on this team work hard to keep relationships with customers strong.

One of our longtime customers, Computershare, feels so comfortable with the ECT Services team that many times they are not even onsite. That’s the kind of trust and credibility that can take years to build and at ECT, it’s precisely what makes us who we are.

Our team leads like Tom Barrett, VP Service Operations, John Arnold, VP Security Ops, Scott Kohler, Director of Sales, and Dave Stumler, VP of Operations, shared thoughts over the past few months and the running theme was about the commitment to the team, the philosophy of the company and the relationship with the customers that led to people staying with us for a long time. Of course, no one said it better than Kevin Brookshire, our longest-running teammate who said, “A career is something different than a job,” Being a part of ECT has been a major part of his life. “I’ve had a child and a grandchild all while sitting at the same desk.” What started as a job for Kevin nearly 28 years ago certainly bloomed into a full-fledged career, and more.

Our team is focused on the future now and how integration between systems is moving to the cloud and brings a new set of security details to work through. And we’re on it.

We capped off the anniversary with a commemorative coin that all team members (and many of the guests at our September celebration) received. Our CEO says often “It’s amazing what happens when you show up.” And we’ve been showing up for 40 years. We intend to keep showing up as time marches on.

Celebrating 40 years!

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We’ve been talking about our company’s 40th anniversary all summer long and it is finally here. This past Friday, we held our big event at Churchill Downs.

Thanks to all our vendors who came and set up tables, and to many of our customers who were able to join us that day. Celebrating the team is always important, but especially on this milestone event. Thank you to everyone for celebrating with us and for us! Please enjoy a small handful of photos from the event!

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