That Time We Talked About Home Security

This is episode number 84 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. This is Craig, and we are practicing social distancing. Here on the Homeowner Show.

To the best of our ability.

That's right.

We are not in the same place tonight.

As you can tell. So, uh, it's, it's, it's going to be a little bit different of an experience for everybody, but, uh, we hope everybody out there is staying safe, following the rules, not getting arrested for any COVID-19 parties or anything like that. So, because that would, that would be bad. Not just because you got arrested.

Yeah, well, yeah, but you know, I mean, it's one of those deals like this is not ideal for us. This is— this whole situation is not ideal for anybody. Um, we, we definitely would like to, to be all together and doing this, uh, differently, but there's a lot of things we'd like to be doing differently. But you know what I want? I want more than anything for this to go away quicker, and if that means staying away from people for a few minutes, I'm fine with that.

I've been advocating staying away from Kevin for many years now.

You've not been very good at it.

Well, do it. Do what I say, not what I do. Come on, people.

Oh, exactly. But I'll tell you what, man, like, it's kind of interesting because, you know, I'm working from home, I'm, I'm taking care of my kids, my wife's working full-time still from home, and, um, at the same time, I'm trying to figure out how to work in some projects, right? I mean, I feel like that's That's one of the things that lots of people are trying to do right now. And so the other day, man, I like— it's kind of weird. So I've got gutters on my house and the ones in front of the front door are just kind of useless.

Mm-hmm.

Because there was this— they had pulled off from the fascia board and they were separated. So the water was literally coming off the roof in between the gutters and just Down like a waterfall.

No.

So I thought, you know what, I'm gonna get up there and I'm gonna tackle this project. And so how hard could it be, right? I just got to attach some screws and all that. So, you know, I had to move some brackets over. If you've ever looked at gutters, they're kind of attached with brackets. And, um, so I was going to move them over because they were stripped out, um, of the fascia board. So I get up there, I take the little gutter guard off And, um, Craig, this won't surprise you, but like there were plants growing in them.

Yep.

I mean, like legit plants growing in my gutter. They had— there was like 2 inches of dirt and, and mud. And here's the thing though, like this was not like horrible mud. It was like, like topsoil that you would buy at the store.

Heck yeah, man. It's good stuff up in there.

Yes, I, I was like, what is happening right here? Because I took that stuff and I like filled in some holes and I'm, I'm already seeing results. But, but it, man, it took a while. I'm not completely done. I'm gonna have to do it with every single one of my gutters. But, uh, I, I got them reattached, I got them cleaned out, um, and tonight it rained a little bit. And that thing was working like a champ.

There you go.

So did you end— I mean, so earlier this week Kevin started sending me some, some pictures, and so I'm curious if you ended up dealing with the, the family of squirrels.

No, no, no, no. I should have though. Um, here's the problem. I've got my ammo is, uh, it's, it's too big of a caliber. I need, I need a little bitty BB gun to deal with this.

So So here's what happened.

So I've got this pillar on my house that, um, that holds up kind of this little false roof. Um, and I look out my window and I see a squirrel. So I sent this picture to Craig. There's a squirrel just like poking up out of the pillar. And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. I mean, like, he's just sitting there hanging out. I'm like, he's not doing anything. This guy is squatting in my pillar. And, and I started just watching him for like 5 minutes and he doesn't even move. All of a sudden another head pops up and I'm like, oh great, now we got little baby squirrels hanging out in this thing.

It's been colonized.

Oh my goodness. Um, and so I, I, of course, who do I call? I call Craig, the person who can deal with these type of vermin. And I said, what do I do? What do I do to get rid of this? And he sent me back— he sent me back a listing for a BB gun. And, uh, uh, honestly, it's a pretty— be a pretty cheap fix.

Yeah, I mean, they're only like $25. I mean, like, you know, exactly, and effective.

Sure. Um, but, uh, I honestly, I haven't seen them since then. I haven't really been looking, but, uh, you know, this whole 2-day Amazon Prime thing has turned into like a week, so I'm just not— I haven't, I haven't done anything yet.

It's weird, some stuff is still 2 days and some stuff isn't. I mean, like, it's—

Yeah, well, what I've noticed is anything from like a third party tends to take a little bit longer. The stuff that they have in their warehouse that's like Amazon stuff, yeah, as long as they've got it in stock, that stuff tends to arrive a little bit quicker.

Yeah.

So I gotta tell you, man, I'm starting to get some quarantine envy.

Oh yeah?

Yeah, I got—

I actually—

Okay, talk to me.

Like, I haven't been home.

Oh man, yeah, you've been working a lot.

It's, it's been insane. It's been absolutely insane. Like, and I think, and I think I mentioned this before, I think it's just everyone is at home now. And yeah, they're, they're noticing stuff. And then they also realize that they can't really go to the store to get the stuff that they need to deal with it if they want to do it themselves. So they just call us, and they have not stopped calling.

Well, I mean, I guess it's good for business.

It's a good thing, but like, I don't like— I mean, like, because of, because of everything that's going on, we've had to take extra precautions for our for our guys. And so like everybody's got to be masked up and gloved up and covered up. And, um, yeah, it's, it's just not, you know, you don't, you don't, you don't want to be the one out spreading stuff around.

So no, no, definitely not. And, and kind of to your point, like what's, what's interesting is, you know, I'm still, I'm still working from home. My wife's working from home. We got both of our kids and we got— we— I'll be honest, like we've got some friends who are like I'm bored. I'm like, bored? What are you doing all day? Like, I guess your kids are more self-sufficient. I mean, mine are still pretty young, obviously, but like, I don't have any time in the day. I am still very, very busy. Yeah. And I'm even home.

And you're—

I mean, you're not even home, but like, no, I don't know, some of us are still pretty busy.

Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's just a different— I mean, like, it's hopefully it's not the new normal, right? I mean, but, um, I hope not. Um, I mean, I mean, I'll take the busy part as the new normal, but like even— and so here's the other side of that is when I go to people's houses now, a lot of them, I think a lot of them are really trying to behave themselves and stay at home. And so, but when I come to the door and I'm all masked up and gloved up, they take that as a, I'm now a safe person to like engage.

Ah.

And like I had this one lady today, I mean, like even though like I'm gloved up, I'm masked up, all this, I wanna keep my like my 6 feet Distancing from people. And like, and I had this, I had this one lady today that like would not give me any personal space and kept touching me. And I don't mind that usually, but it's like, lady, like, we're in a pandemic. Like, stop touching me.

Right.

Who else have you touched?

Get away. No touching.

So, and like, but like, it's a, you know, it's a customer. And so you like, you don't want to be rude, but at the same time, it's like, I come— I'm backing up every time she's touching me. Like, she just keeps stepping in and touching me again. I'm like, oh, come on.

So, so she listens to the show. Here's, here's what we need you to know right now. Like, we love you, but just don't touch—

back away.

Yeah, back away.

So anyway, we— in light of, in light of everything that's been going on, I've had, I've had 2 friends now that have, in the midst of everything that's been going on, been the victims of burglary.

Are you kidding me?

No, man. It's bizarre. It's absolutely bizarre. And so when we had the opportunity to have this guest on tonight, I thought it was really an opportune moment to kind of discuss some of this stuff because You know, as things progress with this, you know, this situation that we're dealing with with COVID-19, people are gonna get weird, you know?

Yeah, well, we see it. We see it all the time in different things, like when there's hurricanes and, you know, tragedies like this, like people take advantage of the situation.

Right. So anyway, I reached out to my buddy Matt and asked if he could come on the show and talk about some of the things that they do. Matt, why don't you introduce yourself and let everybody know what you do?

Hey, everybody. Hey, Craig. Hey, Kevin. Great to be on with you guys tonight. I really appreciate you having me on the show.

We're glad to have you, man. Thanks for being here.

Yeah, my pleasure. Don't mind if you hear the kids being a little crazy in the background in the other room. You know, with all this social distancing and working from home, it's hard so much you can get away from the kids being crazy.

Children do not believe in social distancing.

Exactly. They're the complete opposite. Uh, but yeah, so just to kind of let folks know who I am, um, so I'm a, uh, security consultant with, uh, Hawk Security. Um, it's a residential and commercial, uh, security alarm company that's, uh, been protecting homes and businesses in Texas for about the last 40 years. Um, and then kind of on top of that, you know, some of my experience before that was Uh, a number of years, um, and serving in the Army, um, and specifically as a counterintelligence agent where I did a lot of vulnerability and threat assessments for, for government, uh, buildings and properties. So I've had a lot of experience when it comes to, uh, the threat of somebody penetrating, you know, your home, business, or

facility that shouldn't be.

Awesome.

Wow.

So, so just a little bit of experience.

A little bit.

Probably things that we don't nearly have enough time to hear stories about.

Oh, trust me, I could go on all night.

I bet.

Yeah. And so, Matt, you and I actually have a mutual friend that this happened to recently where he had some equipment in a storage facility that either this person specifically targeted him or they targeted the facility. Either way, they, they walked off with his livelihood.

Um, right.

And, uh, man, I—

you—

it's, it's so weird to think about people just being absolute— I mean, like, the absolute worst human being in a situation like this, right? Where, like, things are going to be hard on everybody, and now they're, you know, trying to take advantage by, you know, actually stealing from people. And, you know, Disrupting their businesses and their livelihoods.

Exactly. And that's definitely something that you'll always see. I mean, y'all mentioned it a few moments ago that we've seen this activity when hurricanes hit, all the looting and rioting that we saw during Katrina and other recent weather events that caused states of emergency and states of alert in different areas. And only this time we're seeing it Everywhere. Nowhere is immune to it. It's not just centralized to one city or one area. So it's a lot more widespread. And I mean, I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news or doom and gloom kind of guy, but at this point it's only going to get worse before it starts getting better, unfortunately.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the projections right now are through June or July that we're going to be, you know, dealing with this still. And those are like— some of those are— some people are even saying like those are optimistic, you know, objectives.

Probably.

Probably. I was even reading a study, something that was put out by a couple of academic professors the other day, where they were basically saying, you know, this period of social distancing and quarantine is great, but even once it's over, unless we have, you know, a viable vaccine or a cure or something that can you know, really hamper it down, once we end this period of social distancing and quarantine, we're just gonna see, you know, the whole COVID situation break out, you know, once again. So really all that we're doing now, we're kind of delaying it long enough to where we can ensure that, you know, hospitals and medical facilities have, you know, enough increased capacity to be able to deal with it when that happens.

Yeah. And I mean, I could, I would imagine, you know, at some point it's not just going to be an issue of, you know, hospitals being overwhelmed, which is obviously like the main concern right now is keeping hospitals not near capacity is what we're wanting so that we have enough physicians and nurses and medical care people to take care of these people. But I imagine at some point, we're probably going to be having the discussion of, are our police stretched too thin to handle what's going on because of instances like what we're talking about?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've seen reports out of, uh, you know, New York where they're getting hit pretty hard, where, you know, New York Police Department, you know, it's a police department of, you know, thousands and thousands of police officers, um, but they're already, you know, showing reports of numbers of, you know, easily over— I think it was around 1,000 or 2,000 officers who were, you know, being quarantined because they've been tested positive for corona.

Oh man, I hadn't even thought about that. I mean, like, that's, that's obviously going to be a problem too. Because they're going to be out there and exposed.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, we think about all of our first responders and our medical professionals that are out there on the front line, and we've got to keep in mind that they're just as susceptible to catching it as the rest of us. But when they go down with it, then they're taken off of that front line. So it puts a heavier burden on those that are still out there, still doing the job. That's what everybody kind of said.

Yeah. Well, I mean, so with all of that cheery news, um, what, what, what can, what can the typical homeowner do to start preparing to, you know, have their home a little bit better protected? Uh, you know, so maybe walk us through like some of the most vulnerable points of the home and then some things that, that they can begin to do to, you know, shore those areas up.

So when it comes to home security and trying to avoid being the victim of a burglary or break-in, I kind of take the same approach to it as I did with a lot of the stuff I've been protecting. Government buildings and military facilities on the government side is that you have to establish multiple layers of security. And you got to make sure that you harden yourself enough and so that whenever somebody is looking to victimize you, that you make yourself less of an attractive target than the person next to you. So for example, just having that sign that You have a security system out in your yard, makes you vastly less likely to get broken

into. There's 5 houses on your block that have an alarm sign out there and 2 houses that don't. Which houses do you think are going to get— that's what burglars are going to target and wind up breaking into?

Well, isn't it possible to get fake signs and just— I say fake, they could be legit signs and put it in your yard. Would that be Helpful.

So a little bit, kind of yes and no. When it comes to, you know, I wouldn't go as far as to get like fake signs or, you know, just, you know, a generic looking sign. The people that are out there breaking into homes, they've done it enough that they know what a legitimate sign looks like versus a non-legitimate sign. And then on top of that, having, you know, a newer sign in your yard or one that, you know, isn't broken, Or is it old and faded? A lot of these are signs to, you know, would be burglary that, you know, perhaps the previous homeowner had that security system and they had it monitored, but when they moved, you know, they moved that monitoring with them and they just left the sign

behind so that they could get a new one at the new house. So that could portray to them that while there might be a system in the house, you know, maybe nobody's monitoring it because it's, you know, company came through and reactivated the system for that new homeowner, they would have replaced that sign with a newer one out there. And then on top of that, you also got to consider some companies don't really stay in the security game for very long. For example, AT&T was doing security and bundling it with their other services, sort of like Reliant and Settling and some of the other companies are doing, and they branded it AT&T Digital Life. Well, in, I'd say, about the majority of the states now,

Texas is soon to become one of them, AT&T Digital Life no longer exists. They're not providing that service anymore. So if you still have that sign out there and that would-be burglar knows that they're not providing that service in the state anymore, then it's almost acting against you that, hey, there's a system in this house, but nobody's watching over it. So it can kind of go both ways.

Hmm. Okay. Well, that, yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. So I guess if you're just going to do something shady like that, be smart, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Or just go steal it from the yard that actually has one.

We just talked about stealing, Craig. It's petty theft. It's okay. But I mean, when we look back over, you know, some of the FBI crime statistics, um, you know, Specifically talking about signs, they reported that 83% of burglars— this came from interviewing people that were caught and arrested and interviewed later on— 83% of them specifically said that they looked to see if there was an alarm or if there was a sign out front, and that 60% of them would change their mind if there was even a sign in the yard. So even something as having that sign out there or those stickers on your window, from that security company can serve as a pretty strong deterrent.

Yeah, man. And speaking of deterrence, I actually saw when a lot of people were commenting about our friend today who was victimized, you'd mentioned something about because of what's going on in the country, some crimes are actually coming down with harsher penalties or categorized differently because of what's going on right now?

So it's kind of weird what we're seeing in that high-profile crimes like burglary and some instances of theft, a lot of states and counties and other areas, especially here in Harris and Montgomery County, they've declared that since we're in a state of crisis or a state of emergency, that any felony is going to be automatically enhanced. So say this person gets caught, you know, they stole our friend's equipment. If normally they would be looking at, you know, say a 3rd-degree felony for, you know, grand theft and larceny for, you know, the dollar amount of stuff that they took, since they did it during this time of crisis, they're going to be now looking at, you know, a 2nd-degree felony. It's going

to bump the seriousness of the charge up. Whereas on kind of the other edge of the sword, we're seeing in a lot of places like California, Um, in other areas where they're actually— I'm not gonna say decriminalizing, but it's pretty much put out and told the criminals that if you're stealing less than $900 worth of stuff, that we're not gonna come after you.

Yeah, I, I saw a story like that where like people, people heard about that and then they just started walking out of stores with stuff that was less than $900 and going, what are you gonna do?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's a video online that circulated pretty well of, you know, 2 folks with duffel bags in what looked to be like a CVS or a Walgreens and just Scooping stuff into the bag and just walking right out. So, you know, that happens. Yeah, that only kind of, you know, emboldens them a little bit more.

Yeah, probably whoever listens to our show from California is probably fine though, most likely.

Or they just need to leave. It's good grief.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Well, it's, you know, it's like I want to bring awareness to like this, this escalation of penalties. Not that we want anybody listening to our show that would consider burglary, but, you know, maybe if you're thinking about jumping into that profession, now would not be a good time to do that in Texas.

Not the best.

California, you'd be fine. Go steal all you want, apparently. What else in the home, man? I mean, we kind of got started with signs. What else we got?

So, I mean, just the presence of the system in itself, cameras outside, contacts you can pretty easily see through your window, stuff like that. There are other signs that there's a system in the house. Kind of going back to some of those FBI statistics that only about 17% of burglaries in homes occurred in homes with security systems. The vast majority of crimes happen at homes that didn't have a security system. But to touch on some things, not just security system specific and security system related, there's tons of other things that people can do to make their house less appealing. Making sure that they don't have overgrown brushes, structures that can provide cover for somebody trying to sneak around. Using, you know, higher, higher

grade locks on all of your doors. There's a lot that I see out there, especially with new build homes and older homes where they've got those, you know, quick set locks. And I just kind of cringe because I spent a couple years as a locksmith. Um, once somebody would call me out to get into a home where they'd locked themselves out, you know, if it was a quick set lock, you know, I was thanking my lucky stars because it would take me about 5 seconds to get through that lock.

Ooh.

You know, a higher-grade Schlage, you know, 5 or 610 lock, you know, that's when I'd be kind of sweating a little bit, you know, wondering how many picks I was going to break that day. And that just kind of goes back to, you know, some of those statistics as well that, you know, about 95% of home burglaries, you know, require some type of forced entry because most people are pretty good about leaving their doors locked, leaving their windows locked and everything else. So as soon as you got to get in your house, they're either going to pick lock, Break the window or kick through the door.

So, okay, so I got a question about that. What you're talking about, forced entry, let's talk about that for just a minute. Um, what, what are some things that people can do to prevent forced entry? Because I've heard a couple of things, not done anything about it, but are there some things that people can do To help that problem?

Definitely. There's a number of things that you can do to kind of harden your doors. When it comes to your windows, I mean, breaking a window is breaking a window. There's not really a whole lot you can do to prevent that. But when it comes to your doors, if you have either a metal door or one that has solid core wood instead of some of these doors where it's just kind of like Styrofoam, You know, in the middle, in the corner of the door, that can make it a lot more secure. Pairing it up with a beefy, you know, more heavy deadbolt is a pretty good measure. Putting in— you can put in a heavy-duty strike plate with screws that go deep into the frame. A lot of people— and I'd

even challenge you guys to go check this at some point— you know, take a couple of the screws out of the hinges of, you know, holding your door to the doorframe. A lot of people don't realize that most builders, you can't fault the builder, but they're looking for the cheapest option possible with something when building a home. So in about 95% of homes that I ever go to, when I take one of those screws out, it's a little 1, maybe 1.5-inch screw. That's not going to really give you a lot of protection for that door if somebody's looking to kick it in.

Yeah, that's exactly the thing that I was referring to. Someone told me, hey, Take those things out and put a 4-inch screw in the door.

Yep, yep, exactly. I mean, it's one of those things where, you know, going down to Home Depot and $4 later and your door is a lot more, you know, secure from, you know, getting kicked in just for the simple fact that you've got those, you know, longer screws that are biting, you know, deeper into that door frame. So it's going to take a lot more force, you know, to pry them out if somebody's trying to kick the door in.

Sure, sure. Okay, sorry to derail. If you can remember where you were, keep talking.

As far as hardening the home?

Yes.

Okay, so as far as hardening the home, some other small things. Make sure that you keep the entryway and the porch locked if you've got one of those, an outer kind of entryway or porch. Make sure that outer screen door is locked as well as the inside door. Because if they can't get into that, then it could trigger them to head on to the next house. If you've got one of those big sliding window kind of sliding doors in the back or something, get you a wooden dowel or some kind of a board that you can stick down into that sliding track. That way, if somebody opens it from— is able to jimmy that lock open and start trying to open it, then that wooden

board or something is going to stop that from going along. on that track so you can kind of secure it a little bit more that way. If you're going to keep your windows open, make sure it's not more than 4 inches. If you're going to leave a window open, just kind of crack it a little bit. Some of the newer windows these days, they'll have kind of an automatic catch in the window to where you open it just a couple of inches and then it kind of locks again with those little latches that go into the window frames.

Oh yeah. Yeah, I've seen those.

You know, kind of another good option. But, you know, all in all, it's, you know, multiple things that you can do, you know, to make your house more of a hardened target, more of, you know, a less desirable target so that, you know, if I come up to your house and I'm going to break in and, you know, I see a nice leg lock there on the door, all the windows are closed and, you know, I jimmy one of them and they're locked and I see a little contact on that window. I'm going to go check out your neighbor's house as opposed to continuing to skulk around your house. Because a lot of times, we like to tell people the majority of break-ins happen between 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM when people are gone at work. But

what's going to happen now that nobody's— a lot of people aren't gone at work. A lot of people are home. Well, the criminals aren't quarantining and staying home and teleworking like we are. They're still going to be out doing what they do. Now somebody's more likely to be home, which in a lot of instances we've seen is not going to stop them. They're still going to break into homes.

So is the presence of technology— and there's obviously a multitude of things that that can encompass— is that any sort of deterrent in this regard? I'm thinking Ring doorbells, electronic locks, different things like that.

Yeah, definitely. You know, there's a lot of DIY kind of options out there. Like you kind of mentioned the Ring doorbell.

Mm-hmm.

The thing I kind of caution people about though, about some of those DIY options, is that the thing a lot of people don't consider is if you can buy something at the store, I can just go to Amazon and order a Ring doorbell or an Amazon camera. None of those companies are held to any standard of regulation as far as the encryption of those devices.

Okay.

So you could go online right now and Google Ring devices getting hacked, and you can see that there's actually a big class action lawsuit that a number of people brought against Ring because their Ring cameras were getting hacked because they didn't have that level of encryption. If you are going to go with something like cameras or more of the technical stuff, then I always advise people, get it through a security company. Because with security companies, we have to be licensed and regulated by the state, and we have a certain standard that all of our equipment has to live up to. And that includes the level of encryption on our cameras, our contacts, our key panel, everything else

that's involved with what we put into a home, as opposed to what you can just go to the store and get yourself.

That's really good information because we've even done a show on the Ring doorbell specifically. And there's so many pluses about having a device like that. But I guess the thing that we want to also caution people, and you really kind of mentioned it, is just because we talk about it doesn't necessarily mean that it's the right device for you. And you still need to do your research on knowing kind of what's going on. But I think it's just important for us to realize, I mean, there's all kinds of stuff that gets hacked. I mean, you probably have heard about, you know, baby monitors getting hacked and like people from other countries talking to your child in the middle

of the night, which is creepy as everything.

You know, it's pretty scary.

Yeah, it depends on what language you want them to learn.

But yeah, I mean, that's That's really good information.

So are you telling me that home security companies have devices similar to Ring then?

Oh yeah, definitely. So pretty much anything that you can get out there that's DIY, all of your security companies are going to carry similar equipment, only it's higher grade and higher encryption. So your Ring doorbell that you have on your house, if you have me come out and put in a Hawke security system, We're going to put, you know, a higher-grade SkyBell doorbell camera to replace that Ring. And, you know, same goes with cameras. We do outside cameras, we do indoor cameras, we'll do everything all the way up to the level of hardwired CCTV if that's, you know, really the route that you want to go. But the thing I always tell people about cameras and other devices like that is that, you know,

it's great to have it. It can be a deterrent. Because that thief is going to think that after they've broken in or after they've done whatever they're going to do, whether it's just stealing your Amazon box off your porch, that you're going to have their picture. But if it's something to the extent of breaking into your home and invading your home, then not only are we going to have pictures of who did it, but at the same time, if you have a monitored solution, then you know that there's that backup of somebody who's going to call and start sending the authorities out to help you. If something's going on. So there's nobody monitoring, you know, those cameras or those high-tech devices. I mean, let's, let's be honest. I mean, do you have

a Ring doorbell?

I do, yeah.

Okay, so you know how you get the notification every time, you know, it senses, you know, a cat crosses by it or a car?

Yeah.

You know, anything, anytime anything sets it off. Exactly. So how long have you had your Ring doorbell?

Uh, almost 2 years now.

Almost 2 years. So every time that notification pops up, if you're busy, you're out working, or you're doing something, you always stop and check that notification and see what that— what your, you know, your Ring doorbell was picking up? Or you just—

No.

If you're busy, you're doing something else, slide it off to the side?

Yeah, you know, I did, I did it first for like the first 2 months, and then I turned the sensitivity of it way down.

Yeah, exactly. So that's what, you know, you find with a lot of people in these DIY devices is that, you know, while they're great, uh, you know, there's nobody behind it monitoring it for you while you're busy swiping those notifications. After a while, because you just become numb to it, then all of those devices are essentially what we like to call, uh, expensive baby monitors.

Yeah.

They're just going to show you who stole your stuff after they stole it. None of it's gonna, you know, alert the authorities and get them on their way while that crime is being committed.

Well, I tell you, because I mean, I, I, I feel like whenever—

like, let's take the Ring for example. If someone's sitting there about to steal your package, I feel like, I feel like if you talk through that thing and say, hey man, put it down, like, they're just gonna laugh at you probably because they know nobody's home.

Um, yeah, it's kind of a gamble really. I was watching a video earlier today online Where a lady had posted her doorbell camera footage with her. She had, you know, 4 good-sized boxes on a bench on her porch, and she gets notified because, you know, somebody pulled up in the driveway and came up close enough for the camera to set it off. And this lady had started taking these boxes and putting them into her car. And so she starts talking to her over the doorbell like, hey, what are you doing? And the lady tries to, you know, pawn it off as she's at the wrong address and everything else. Trying to make it seem kind of innocent. But while she's sitting there telling her, hey, put my stuff back, she goes

back and gets the boxes out of the car, puts them back, and then drives off and leaves. Even pretends to get on the phone with this supposed person whose house she thought she was at. But it served as enough of a deterrent that, hey, I'm here watching you steal my stuff.

Right.

That in some instances they might just run off, but in other instances they might Put it back and run away because they know that, you know, if they get caught later on, they're not looking at, you know, as high of a charge if they didn't actually, you know, physically take the goods.

Because it's definitely better than nothing, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, the whole reason I even bring it up is I had a, I had a police officer tell me one time, and he was, he was kind of a techie kind of a guy, um, And I was telling him about some of the stuff that we had in our home. And he began to tell me that some thieves have figured out that when they go up to a home and they see that there's a lot of tech, either like a Ring doorbell or electronic door locks, particularly electronic door locks apparently are a big signal for these guys, is one of the things they'll do is they'll walk around to the back door and yell into the home, hey Alexa, unlock the

front door. Or, hey Google, unlock the front door. And it works like half the time apparently, because people don't think that the mic— one, that the microphones are that good on those devices. And they just don't think that like, you know, like that's, that's going to be a vulnerable, you know, opportunity for a thief to like just, you know, get into their home without having to use any sort of forced entry.

Right, exactly. It's like, you know, we look at all these devices and they're making our lives easier. And in a lot of instances they do, you know, if you have the electronic door locks and some of the other home automation things like being able to control your garage door from your phone and your thermostat and all that fun stuff. Home automation is great, but when you get to the point of tying it into your Alexa or your Google Home and you make the voice prompt easy enough like that default response of unlock the door, then you open yourself up.

Yeah.

I imagine that— I haven't messed with one of those in a long time, so I imagine they've they've addressed that through like specific prompts and different— I would hope they've addressed some of that. But I mean, like, it's— I mean, but you're absolutely right. There's default settings on those kinds of things that like most people just know now. It's, you know, like, and if you don't think that, I mean, like, get a 4-year-old in your house with one of those things and see how quick they figure out all the little tricks to getting voice activation to do stuff in your house.

Oh yeah, exactly. And so it's very similar to, you know, years ago, uh, you know, when people started getting, you know, Wi-Fi in their house and we started setting up our own Wi-Fi networks and people would, you know, make a super simple kind of easy password so they wouldn't, you know, forget how to log into their home Wi-Fi. Right. And you had so many instances of, you know, people hacking into people's home Wi-Fi, uh, when you make it something simple like that, you don't have to go that extra mile to, uh, you know, change from the default, then you really leave yourself open. You know, something as simple as changing it from the default of unlock the door to, you know, open the gates to Funkytown. That was my, you

know, default, my, my passphrase for Alexa to open my door.

Dang it, Matt, I can't use that now.

Sorry, sorry, my bad.

Well guys, one thing you don't have to worry about is whether or not you know the right plumber to call when you have a plumbing issue in your home. Is that right, Kev?

Absolutely, man. We, we have got the right guy for you. Paul is the man. Give him a call if you got any plumbing needs, for sure.

That's right. You can reach them at 832-521-3252, and you can email them at deborah@paultheplumberllc.com or find them on Facebook or at paultheplumberllc.com. And I'll tell you, Kev, I had a really cool conversation with Deborah earlier this week. She was telling me that because of everything that's going on, they're sort of like me. They've been getting lots and lots of calls, probably because This is a homeowner show.

Yeah.

But what they've had to do is because so many people are having issues, they've now, you know, before we talked about how you can go on Facebook and click on book, and you can go on the webpage and click on book, and you can get an appointment and all that kind of good stuff. But now if you have a problem, you can actually call them and they can do a virtual visit into your home and actually diagnose your problem virtually. via the phone, via the camera on your phone.

Are you kidding me? That's absolutely amazing! Yeah, yeah.

And so obviously if it's, if it's, you know, pretty complicated and they can't, you know, see what's going on, they're gonna have to come out and take a look. But she said most instances they can just get on the phone, turn the camera on, you know, get Paul or one of his guys on there to look at what's going on, and they can diagnose it right there and tell them exactly how much it's gonna cost and get them set up on the schedule.

So that's awesome because like one of the big things that happens if you've ever had, you know, a plumber out to your house is a lot of times they're going to come diagnose things and if they don't have something on their truck, it's not because, you know, they, they don't try to stock their truck. A lot of times it's just because what you specifically need is a very specific part or it's just something that's outdated or whatever. They're going to have to go dig for it. But this way, man, if they can, if they can diagnose that over the phone, get a brand get a kind of a layout of what's going on, they can make sure they have exactly what they need on that truck before they ever arrive at your home. That's way more efficient. That means they

potentially save a whole other trip out to your house.

Which saves you money, saves them time, keeps the prices nice and low, keeps the service up really high. So if you got a problem, give Paul the Plumber the call. He can get you taken care of.

That's awesome, man.

Matt, what else What else we got, we got going on, man? We, we've, we've, you know, you know, dipped our toe in the, in the pond of technology. We've, we talked about signs, we've talked about, and, and we've, we've hinted at it a few times, but we, you know, what, what kind of things does, does Hawk Security, when they, when they come in, like, what, what are the, what is like the, I don't, I don't wanna say like the, the base plan for, for everybody, cuz you don't wanna think like, you know, I'm just getting the basic whatever, but. You know, like, what is the general plan when you're coming into a home and what sort of equipment

are you guys doing that's a little bit different than what I may have seen other places?

Well, you know, it's kind of cool that you mentioned kind of the virtual appointments and virtual diagnosis that Paul the Plumber is doing because you get this whole social distancing and everything else. Hawks moved over to a very similar thing where we're doing a lot of our Security consultations over video chat.

Oh, cool.

Zoom or FaceTime or whatever else. Because normally it would consist of me coming to your home and, you know, kind of seeing what you have in there and kind of diagnosing your situation. But, you know, with social distancing and everything, it's just as easy that I get on a Zoom call with you or FaceTime or Google Duo or whatever your preference is, and you just kind of show me around the house. But to kind of get down to, you know, how we do things, You know, one of the great things with Hawk is that, you know, we don't believe in the one-size-fits-all model when it comes to, you know, your home security or securing your home. We want to come in and just kind of see the layout of your home, find out what your concerns

are, find out where your weak points are in the home, and design systems specifically to shut down all of those weak points and vulnerabilities. in your home security. So the first thing that I'm going to look for when I come into a home is I want to find out, you know, is there an existing system in the house? About 85 to 90% of homes that were built after, I want to say, about the late '90s are getting pre-wired with security systems.

Okay.

So even a lot of older homes, you know, back to the late '80s, early '90s, A good percentage of those were even pre-wired with systems. So what that basically means is that in your front door, for example, if you kind of look along the edge of the door when you have it open, if you see a little kind of plastic-looking circle kind of recessed into the door— Mm-hmm. Then that's one of those recessed contacts that they would use when they pre-wired a home. So that way you know. Everything's pre-wired. The contact for the windows, nowadays it's going to be that little rectangular contact that, you know, it's pretty easy to see. But back, I say, a number of years ago when they were still using metal door— metal window frames and everything

else, they would drill into the window frame and recess that contact into the window frame. So you'd have a little white dot with a little bit of acrylic or something covering it. You'd be able to see that, you know, there's that contact, you know, recessed into the window like that.

So it's a good thing if it's pre-wired, I'm guessing.

Yeah, it definitely makes our life a lot easier, um, because we go into a house where there's nothing existing, and it's kind of a question of, um, you know, how many doors and windows do you want to cover contact-wise? Because we're going to give you enough contact to cover your exterior doors. The majority of people have You know, between 3 and 4 exterior doors with your garage, your back door, and your front door. But, you know, most basic packages that we start from are going to cover, you know, come with enough contacts to cover all of the windows in your house. What I usually tell a lot of homeowners, you got contact on your window, it's really only going to tell you if somebody's leaving the house through

a window or somebody's opening that window to get out of the house.

Hmm.

It's not really going to tell you If somebody's breaking that window and coming into the house. So that's one of those situations where we prefer to cover a lot more of those windows with something that we call a glass break sensor. A glass break sensor is kind of like a special microphone that will mount on the wall or the ceiling. It covers about an 18 to 20-foot radius of sound. So that way, one sensor could cover a whole bank of 5 to 10 windows. As opposed to putting a contact on each and every one of them and sitting there listening for that specific sound of that glass breaking. And unlike a motion detector where, you know, you're familiar with the 2 different modes of arming an alarm system where one you're arming it and

you're home, the other one you're arming it and you're not home.

Right.

So that arming and you're not home state is usually what turns on your motion detector.

Okay.

Well, the nice thing about the glass break sensors is even if your system is turned off and you're in the home, That sensor is still going to be listening for that sound of breaking glass. So those things never turn off. So that's kind of one of the perks of using those to kind of COVID a lot of windows as opposed to throwing contacts on all of them. Maybe you have teenage children and you want to know if little Jimmy is sneaking out in the middle of the night, in which case, great, put a contact on the window. But if you're more concerned with somebody breaking the window and getting in, then You know, glass break

sensors kind of going to be the way to go.

Hmm.

So definitely, if you have a pre-wired house, that kind of gives you extra coverage because they've already gone to the extent of putting contacts on every window and exterior door of the house. That's less work that we have to do when we come in and kind of take over that system. But then kind of the next thing that I'm going to look for, you know, depending on what's existing in the house, I'm going to look, kind of get a layout of your house. What are all the concerns in the different areas of your house? Because a lot of people think of home security as just somebody breaking in, but these days with a lot of the home automation things you can do, there's a lot of other situations you can cover.

We have this one device, for example, we call it a lamp module, but it's basically an appliance module. You plug anything into it and you can control the power going to it.

Okay.

So I have a lot of customers where, you know, maybe they have a teenage daughter or somebody, and I don't get the reasoning behind it, but it seems like whenever they're using the hair straightener, they like to sit on the floor in front of a full-length mirror to straighten their hair. Well, what happens if, you know, they accidentally leave it turned on and plugged in and then, you know, set it down on the carpet and walk away?

Oh God.

You got, you know, potential for a fire hazard there. Well, you know, some of the things you can do with modern security systems now, if you, you know, put one of those lamp modules there that the hair straightener's plugged into, is that you can, you know, set it to where it automatically powers off after, you know, say 5 or 10 minutes or whatever kind of time frame. Or if, you know, your daughter's phone leaves, you know, a specific, uh, if she leaves the house and kind of breaks that geofence that you have set up around the house, then It automatically turns that device off so you don't have to worry. You know, the age-old question, did I leave the stove on?

You know what I mean?

Yeah. Wow, that's a pretty cool function. I'd never even thought about something like that.

Yeah, and it's really interesting, uh, you know, a lot of the kind of creative things that you can do with a security system these days, um, that, that people don't always, uh, quite think about. You know, the lamp module, you know, and the curling iron is just kind kind of one instance of that. There's a lot of other applications. As you know, for instance, you know, say your kids were grounded and they're not supposed to be playing video games, you know, you can remotely, you know, click that little lamp module and their game system turns off and their TV turns off. And if they, you know, think they're gonna get smart and get around it, just unplug from the module and plug

straight into the wall, then you'll get— you'll get that notification that whatever was plugged into it, you know, is no longer plugged into it. So you can deal with a little jimmy later on however you see fit. But on top of that, you know, we've seen our customers get, you know, pretty creative with other things. You know, everybody thinks of the contacts of, you know, putting the contacts on your door or on your window, but I have a lot of customers that, you know, on the gun safe, they want to know, you know, not necessarily set off the system if it's open, but, you know, they want to get a notification every time that gun safe is opened or closed. Or they'll

put it between the wall and the gun safe. So if somebody comes in and steals your armory outside of your closet, then on top of the house being broken into, you know your armory's rolling down the street too. But on top of that, we have some homes and some customers where they have elderly parents in the home, and they want to make sure that they're taking their medication, that they're eating, that they're on a regular schedule. So, you know, we can put a door contact on their medicine cabinet, for example, and set it up to where, you know, if that cabinet isn't opened at certain times of the day or, you know, over— hasn't been opened in 12 or 24 hours, then, you know, it can send a notification to

somebody. And that way you can kind of follow up and, you know, kind of find out, hey, you know, Granny, are you taking your medications? Is everything all right? Or we'll put a contact on their silverware drawer. And, you know, older people, especially elderly folks these days, they're very regimented. They have a routine that they follow. They eat at a certain time of day. They do things at a certain time of day. So if that door contact isn't broken on their silverware drawer at least once every 12 hours, then they can send a notification out to somebody to find out, hey, why is Grandma not Taking silverware out of the drawer? Why is she not eating? Is she getting a lot of takeout and to-go and that's why she doesn't need her silverware?

Or is she actually not eating for some reason? So there's a lot of kind of interesting and creative ways that people have been kind of turning to their security systems to not only protect them, but protect, you know, people inside of the house. I was talking to a lady just the other day where they Their main concern was that they had a son that had special needs, and they were concerned that if he woke up in the middle of the night and they weren't awake, that he might harm himself or he might do something in the house while they're asleep. So they wanted to be able to know if he got up in the middle of the night. So one of the things that we did for them is instead of a motion detector high up on

the wall that's going to Send him a notification every time he rolls over in bed. We just put that motion detector closer to the floor. So if he gets out of bed and feet hit the floor, then it's going to trip off that motion detector. Not necessarily start sounding sirens and blazing in the house, but it'll send them enough notifications. And we have it set up as a medical alert so that our monitoring service will call them and wake them up and let them know that, hey, your son woke up in in the middle of the night. He's currently awake, he's doing something in his room, you might wanna go check on him. So that's just kind of a couple of

examples of kind of creative things that people have done, you know, with even the more older parts of a security system, from your door contacts to motion detectors and everything else. But with a lot of the extra technology, like you were talking about the Yeah, electronic door locks earlier.

Mm-hmm.

I know about you guys, but I remember when I was a kid, that was what, you know, they commonly referred to as a latchkey kid. You know, I'd get home from school before my parents got home from work, so there was that period where I was home by myself. So one of the, you know, nice features that people like about having that electronic door lock in concert with, say, the door doorbell camera is they can get a notification. They can set a different code in for their child to use so that whenever the child's code is put in, not only does it automatically turn off the system, but it sends them a notification letting them know that their child has returned home. And it will send them a clip from the doorbell camera so they can determine, you know,

your son came home by himself from school like normal, or he's got his friends with him, or somebody else came home along with him. That is true parent winning right there. Exactly, exactly.

So are these all notifications that you're talking about? Does this all exist with like in an app that's specific to y'all's system, or is, is it, you know, interacting with different apps that are already available? How does that work? Like, I'm thinking like, you know, like about the, the silverware drawer one. I mean, how would I get that notification?

So we do— our system does come with the Alarm.com proprietary app where you can control the entire system over your phone, and it also gives you a lot of customization on what you want to receive notifications for and how you want to receive those notifications. So you'll get a notification, you know, push notification through the app. You can also set it up to get an SMS text alert. You can set it up to where, you know, you get an email alert as well. And then depending on the situation, for instance, with, you know, the customer that wanted to know when their son was awake, you know, you could set certain things up as a medical alert. So it'll actually notify, you know, the monitoring

service that there could be a medical emergency in the home and that we need to start contacting, you know, medical assistance at the same time that we're contacting you, because we also have the old, you know, Life Alert, you know, help, I've fallen and I can't get up. Yep. Kind of thing. We have a similar— we call it a wireless panic pendant, which can be worn as a necklace or bracelet or something else, and it can detect if, you know, somebody has fallen over, or they can trigger it if they're having a medical emergency, and that sets it up as an automatic notification so we know it's not a burglary situation, but somebody needs medical assistance. So everything does work through that Alarm.com

app. Awesome.

I think you mentioned before the show some of the other things that you guys were adding on to these systems that a lot of people weren't, things like fire and smoke and different kinds of layers of protection that you guys can put into that system as well.

Yeah, definitely. 2 of the things that we're very proud of with our systems is that fire and that flood protection. When I mention flood, we're not thinking Ike or Harvey or anything like that, but it's more referencing to, say, the pipe bursts in your laundry room and it's leaking water out all over the place. Or your hot water heater bursts and all of a sudden that tank is just emptying water through your attic and into your home. Well, there's always usually a precursor event that can warn you ahead of time before it gets bad enough to where you're having to file a claim with your insurance. With the AC drip pan or the hot water heater, more water's going to be collecting there And there should be before, you know, the thing just breaks

loose. So we put what we call a water bug sensor in like those drip pans or your laundry room or wherever else that, you know, could be vulnerable. And basically it's got these 2 little metal prongs on it, and if, you know, enough water collects to where it gets up to the level of the device, you know, it completes that circuit between those 2 prongs and sends you a notification to let you know that, hey, you There's too much water in someplace where there probably shouldn't be. So you can respond to it, you know, at a point where you can throw a towel down and call someone like Paul the plumber to come and fix it before it gets to that

catastrophic stage. And that's kind of what we do when it comes to flood protection. On the fire side, we have this device that we call a firefighter. You know, with a lot of homes, new-build homes, every so often Since about the '80s, um, as your— if your smoke detector's gone off, you ever notice that kind of all of them in the house start going off instead of just that one?

Right.

Well, with, with recent fire code that they, uh, put in back in the '80s for, for residential, uh, homes, they had to be hardwired and kind of daisy-chained together so that if one went off, all of them would go off and that it would have a better chance of waking up everybody in the home. So what we do is we put in this— Yeah, exactly. So we put this firefighter device in, which, uh, similar to the glass break sensors, it's essentially a smart microphone, but its sole job is to listen for your smoke detectors to go off. So if it ever senses that your smoke detectors go off, then it sends an automatic signal to the alarm system as well as our monitoring service that there's potentially a fire in the home. So If

it's one of those events where a fire breaks out in the house and it's late at night, everybody's asleep, well, those smoke detectors could be going off all night long, but if it's already generated enough smoke in the house, you could already be incapacitated. You can't get to your phone, you can't call the fire department, you can't get help. But with that device in there, hearing that there's a fire event going on in the house, we can go ahead and respond. and start sending, you know, the fire department out to your house to find out what's going on in the event that you can't respond and you can't call them yourself. That's great, man. Those are some really cool features. And I think that's, you know,

I think that there's some certain things that, that we talked about early on in the show that, that you can really do to help your home. But then there are some of these other things that we're talking— unless you pay for some sort of a security system and have it monitored, then you're still going to be missing out on quite a bit of opportunity to protect yourself. So it's pretty great to have some of these options available. Yeah, it definitely is. And also on talking about the fire and the fire protection, one thing that a lot of people overlook is the type of smoke detector that they even have in the house. The majority of smoke detectors that are put into new-built homes, and really most homes

built since the '80s and '90s, are these ionization smoke detectors, which ionization smoke detectors are great, but the thing that a lot of people don't realize is that they're specifically designed to react to fast-rising flames. So, you know, if something catches fire in your house and there's fast-rising heat, then those things are gonna start going off. And let you know that there's a fire in the house. But in the instance to where if there's more of a slow smoldering fire, like your couch catches fire or something else, something that's gonna be putting a lot of noxious fumes into the air before those flames catch up, then that ionization detector's not gonna detect that. So one of the other things that we provide for homeowners, and homeowners can even

get for themselves to help protect against another source of fire in the house is what we refer to as a photoelectric smoke detector. Basically, the difference between the two is the ionization's looking for that fast-rising flame, whereas your photoelectric is looking for more of those smoldering fires that are putting off those noxious fumes before the flames follow suit. So in that instance, you've got a lot of CO rising in the house, you've got a lot of noxious fumes and everything else. That's the kind of stuff that could incapacitate you before those flames follow. So if you have some of those photoelectric sensors kind of spaced out in the house to kind of add on to

the existing ionization ones that you already have in your home, then you can kind of add in that extra protection. And then that's not necessarily something that you can only get with our system. I mean, you can go to Home Depot and get a photoelectric smoke detector. But having that, it gives you that extra bit of coverage from a different type of fire than just the fast-rising flame that everybody thinks about when they think about a home fire.

Hmm, okay, cool.

Listen, um, go ahead, Kev. One of the things that I'm curious about whenever it comes to, uh, to home security systems is like there's a lot more DIY stuff out there, like SimpliSafe for example, um, where you buy a fairly inexpensive system that's completely wireless and you just kind of, so to speak, slap it up on your house What are the pros or cons? I realize that you being in the home security business, like, you're wanting the business yourself, but I mean, is something like that— I mean, because it's a very popular option these days— is something like that beneficial? Is it counterintuitive? Is it really good, really bad? Like, I mean, because— Those security systems are quite a bit less expensive because they're wireless and they're a whole lot easier to

install. You can do it yourself versus having a professional come out and actually install it. And that's a big part of the cost with some of those systems as well. Yeah, definitely. And I mean, obviously, best case scenario, I'd want somebody to sign up with Hawk, but at the end of the day, I'm more concerned with people being safe. and your family being safe. So if you wanna go with one of those alternative solutions, I mean, as long as somebody has some type of security system in the home, I'm happy at the end of the day. If they go with me, all the better. But with a lot of those systems, there's definitely your pros and your cons when it comes to some of those. The reason that we're not always

excited about options such as SimpliSafe, for example, is that some of those systems are— the monitoring that comes along with it, while it may be cheap, only runs off of your home Wi-Fi. So if someone were to cut your internet cable outside the house, or something happens and— how often do you have a Wi-Fi outage at the house 'cause your internet provider just— something happens and the internet goes down? Well, if that happens, All of a sudden, nobody's watching your system. So that can definitely be kind of a big con when using a system such as that. Most of your standard security systems, when they're tied into some kind of monitoring, the best way that you wanna make sure that

it's being monitored is over cell signal and make sure that it's not over Wi-Fi. 'Cause especially with some of these Wi-Fi systems, like you're saying, SimpliSafe and others, They work off of a Wi-Fi hub that they put in your house that kind of controls the system. So that kind of goes back into the burglars, whether they're sophisticated or whether they're an amateur. Because if they're more of a sophisticated burglar and they see that SimpliSafe sign in your yard, they know that if they can find that hub somewhere in the house and just kind of smash it on the ground, there's no alert signal that's going out to the monitoring service. They're never going to know that they're in the home, and so you're pretty much out of luck at that point.

Whereas something like what we put in and what other, you know, a little higher-priced security companies put in, our key panels are what we call tamper-proof. They come with a crash-and-smash feature where if they break into the home and they pull it off the wall and, you know, throw it on the ground, then we're still going to be able to respond and send somebody out because A, we never got that distress, you know, that disarm signal to the panel. But then the other side of it is, you know, specifically with our panels, we have a— it's got a little speaker on there. We, we like to refer to it as OnStar for your house, basically, where we can speak to you through the panel. So we know that if we can't reach you through the panel and we didn't get a disarm

signal, then obviously the panel's been pulled off the wall and thrown on the ground. So we need to go ahead and send somebody out. So with some of those DIY systems, you don't kind of get some of those extra features such as your smash and crash or your cellular versus Wi-Fi. So it's really important to kind of weigh the pros and cons with whatever system that you're gonna go with. Like I said, as long as you have a system in the house and you got that sign out front, you know, I'm hunky-dory and A-okay. I'm glad you're protected. But then at the end of the day, people also have to realize that you're gonna get what you pay for.

Yeah. If you get that roofer that, is gonna replace your roof and they do it for a fraction of what the insurance is gonna pay, then you gotta wonder what kind of corners they're gonna cut, right, to get that roof put on there. Maybe they're using substandard materials or they're cutting some other corners. Well, it's kind of the same thing when it comes to your home security. You're just looking for the cheapest option out there, then you gotta kind of ask yourself, what are you sacrificing in order to save a couple of bucks? We always tell people, We're not the cheapest, we're not the most expensive, but we're going to give you the most value for what you are paying us.

So with a, with a, with a smash and, you know, whatever— I forget how you phrased it— yeah, with that panel, and like, this is, this is just a weird thought that came into my head, is like, say that happens to me, like someone, someone breaks in my home, they find that panel, they smash it. Am I, am I then on the hook to, to get that thing replaced? Nope, nope, not at all.

Nope.

So anything that a, that a thief might—

Speak for other companies, but I know for us, I know for us, um, you know, if you are broken into and they were to smash that panel, um, then we'd come out and replace that panel for you, no extra charge.

Cool, because I'm probably already having to deal with whatever else they already took.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so that, you know, one of the things we try to do on this show is we try to equip our listeners with some options and ideas out there. Like, when I'm looking for a home security company, what are some things that I can look for to know that this company's either not just legitimate or not legitimate, but what makes some companies better than others? Because there's all kinds of companies out there, and there's companies that guys are running out of the back of their truck, and there's some that are massive storefronts. And, and, you know, even stuff that's run out of box stores, right? So like, what, what are the types of things that we can tell our listeners? You need to look for this or this in order to know that the company that you're

having to come out and install the product with is also going to have my back. And, you know, the monitoring system isn't just some third-party monitoring system, like they're the real deal type of thing. What can I look—

what can we look for?

Well, really, when you're going to come down to choosing a good security company, some of the factors are really going to be the same as a lot of other companies that you would look at. You want to make sure that they have a good BBB rating. You want to check their reviews. You want to check their Google reviews, their Facebook reviews, make sure that they have a pretty good reputation. But on top of that, you want to make sure that they're licensed in the state that you're in. 'Cause every legitimate company worth their salt has to be licensed with the state. But kind of what you were talking about with a lot of other companies and your

mom-and-pop shops and everything else, that's kind of that conversation between, are you dealing with the actual security company or are you dealing with what we refer to as a dealer? Because there's a lot of these companies out there that they're simply a dealer for, say, ADT, or they're a dealer for Brinks. In which case they're almost like their own little franchise. Like you think of like a McDonald's or Chick-fil-A or whatever else, where they just kind of bought the right to use that name. And then they come out and they sell you the system. And then what happens after that is once they've gotten enough contracts in place, they sell those contracts over to the

corporate bigger company that they're a dealer for. So ADT, for example, once they get enough contracts, then they'll sell it off to ADT corporate and they take everything over. The downside to dealing with some of those, if you're dealing with a dealer, is a lot of those higher-up corporate companies, your ADT, your Brinks, and others, they have a certain level of criteria on those contracts that they're gonna buy off of those dealers. So your credit rating, your down payment, whatever else the factors are. So if you're dealing with one of those companies, then you run the risk that if your contract doesn't meet that criteria, that higher corporate company, they might not buy the contract off of that dealer. And so you're left with, you know, Bob in his office somewhere

is running your monitoring, whereas you thought ADT was gonna be running your monitoring. So that's kind of that dealer, that difference between, you know, the dealer or the actual security company when you're dealing with, you know—

So basically what you're saying is that that big corporation has no obligation to actually take over those contracts.

Right, right, exactly. And then, I mean, it's up to them whether they're going to accept that contract and take over the monitoring or just completely deny it. It's kind of up to them.

Geez, how would you even know? I mean, unless something happened.

That's kind of the scary thing is, is you, you won't know. Um, you know, you get into a situation where, you know, you get a mortgage on your house from a new builder and you get that mortgage and then they transfer the mortgage to somebody else, you get notified that that mortgage gets transferred to a different lender, that's who you're gonna be sending your payment to. But with the situation between a dealer and then their higher corporate, if they don't accept that contract, you never know. Yeah. You don't get— it's not like they're gonna notify you that, hey, ADT didn't buy my contract from you off of me, so I'm gonna be doing your monitoring. You just

simply don't know.

Yeah, that's probably a good example, 'cause our mortgage has been sold several times and no one ever asked me.

Yep. No, nope. At least you get notified, right?

Eventually, when they start wanting their money.

Exactly. That, that's helpful because that's, uh, it's one of those deals where it's like, do I know that I'm getting what I, what I pay for? And I think, you know, we, we preach this over and over and over, which is know what you're buying. Mm-hmm. Make sure that before you hire somebody that you've fully vetted them, that you've asked for references, that you've looked into what you're doing. I mean, unless you're in some sort of state of emergency, you've got to kind of get the best, the quickest person out there as possible. Make sure that you know what you're doing and you're getting the service that you're actually paying for because buying a security system, it's not a small investment.

No.

It's a large investment and it's something that— and it's one of those deals where it's like, you know, man, like, you know, I hear your kids there in the background, but, you know, Craig and I both have kids as well. Like, I mean, and if you're traveling or something, goodness gracious, like, there's not really a price you can put on keeping other unwanted individuals out of your home, you know? Right. Exactly. And that's where it kind of all comes back to, you get what you pay for. At the end of the day, if you're just looking for the cheapest option out there, then you're getting the cheapest protection. But if you're willing to spend a little bit more money to protect the people that are

most important to you, 'cause I always tell people, I don't care if somebody breaks in and steals all your stuff, I wanna make sure that your family's safe. That if something happens and your family's, your wife's home, your kids are home, I wanna make sure that they don't get harmed. You know, we can replace stuff. I can't replace your family. So I wanna make sure that your family remains safe. And so that's where we kind of go that extra mile with everything that we do to make sure that, you know, we— oh, our little tagline, and what we always tell people is we keep bad things from happening to good people. We're more concerned about the people than the stuff.

You know what I mean?

Well, with that in mind, I think I have the perfect question for that. I'm curious as to what is the most over-the-top security system you, you've ever seen or put in. Um, so knowing that full well that like there's no price tag for people or anything like that, but like I, I can imagine that you've probably seen something that was just like, all right, that was— that may have been a little much.

You know, um, I, I, I can't really say that anything is a little much. Exactly, because, you know, if people want to go the farthest lengths and, you know, say put 12 hardwired CCTV cameras around their house and, you know—

I mean, I guess, is that when people are getting really serious? Is like CCTV— I mean, CCTV systems?

Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, at that point you're going for the same security that a commercial business would have if you go with That's the hardwired CCTVs and the DVR and everything else. But we have seen some kind of over-the-top systems where we go into the house and we do the consultation and we sit down and ask the homeowner what are they concerned with and what are their big concerns. And we get blindsided with something that we just weren't expecting whatsoever. We've got one customer that they wanted extra contacts on a certain room They wanted the hardwired CCTVs. I mean, they easily spent a couple thousand on the system itself. But when we kind of digged a little bit deeper, we found out that this person makes a lot of their income because they're a

Twitch streamer.

Oh.

They stream video games and they have a whole bank of servers in their closet and they have a lot of expensive equipment. So if anything were to happen in that one specific room in the house, That's their livelihood. Mm-hmm. So he kinda went a little over the top with all the extra equipment and all the extra precautions because he really wanted to protect that. We had another customer that they bought a decent-sized property, and with the property came a full-service mechanic garage. He didn't have just your normal 2-car garage. He had like, it was more of a 4 to 8-car garage, and it was fully, kitted out with all of the hydraulic equipment and everything else that you would see down at your local Midas.

And so for him, he wanted those extra hardwired CCTV cameras all around his property because that was part of his livelihood. Him and his brother ran their mechanic shop business out of this garage that was on his property that he bought. So, you know, that was more than, you know, the normal person would get, but in those instances, you know, they needed— they were willing to pay, you know, a little bit more to protect their livelihoods and what they had there on the property.

Have you ever dealt with anybody with a panic room?

I don't think I've ever personally seen a panic room yet. I'm sure they're out there.

Oh, they're out there.

Oh yeah.

I have some clients with some. Oh really?

Oh yeah. That would be interesting to see. It really would. I mean, does it have like the blast shield door that drops down or like a safe level door?

So most of the ones that I've encountered are underground.

Okay.

So, I mean, like, so at that point, blast shield may or may not be Necessary. And depend— I mean, like, the door obviously is, you know, has that sort of— but like, yeah, most of them are under— the ones I've seen, most of them are underground.

Yeah, that would definitely make sense. Um, and, you know, and that's kind of one of those when we kind of go back to, uh, hardening your home and having those extra layers of security. I mean, if you really want to go to that extra level and have that, you know, underground panic room, and that's kind of the ultimate, I guess, when it comes to your home security.

Yeah.

Because there's— once you get in there, there's, there's no getting in there to you.

Yeah, nice.

But they can definitely take all the stuff they want, but they're not gonna get to you. Um, but one of the things that I tell a lot of people, because we— all of our systems come with, you know, the 2 little, you know, key fob remotes that can— you put it on your key, turn the system on and off. Well, a lot of people think, I'm gonna stick this on my keychain But I've gotta educate a lot of homeowners and let 'em know, sure, we're giving you 2 of these things. If you want the person that's constantly going to work and leaving the house to have one on their keychain, that's great. But I want you to put the other one in, say, your master bedroom closet or

wherever that place is in the house that almost serves as that panic room. Mm-hmm. It's your safe place because you can hold down the top 2 buttons on our remote and it sets off a panic signal. So I always tell them, you know, put that other key fob in, say, your closet, or, you know, if something happens in your home, where are you going to retreat to? That way you don't have to worry about, you know, where are my keys, where's my phone. You've already got that, you know, remote there in that safe room where you can go ahead and send that panic signal so we can get help coming out your way.

Yeah, it's probably smart because most people don't keep their keys accessible by like their bedside or something like that. So then they're gonna have to like go through the house in order to get that.

Um, yep. So if it's already kind of there ahead of time, yeah, then you're, you're kind of protecting yourself a little more.

So is, is the key fob— and I think I've seen these before— where like you can arm and disarm the alarm and, and do different functions like that?

Yeah, yeah, it's— I mean, it's pretty basic to where you can arm it, you can, you know, arm it and either stay away more or disarm it. But, um, you know, the ones that we usually give our customers, if you hold down the top 2 buttons on the little key fob, it sends a panic So it kind of gives you that extra little protection if something is going wrong. You have that handy and available.

Well, Matt, is there anything we haven't covered yet that you wanted to make sure we got into tonight?

I think we've covered about the good majority of it. We touched on your fire protection and your flood protection and kind of what some of the things are that people can kind of do to to harden themselves and make themselves a less desirable target. So I think we've pretty much covered the topic pretty well, Craig.

Nice.

I do have one other question that I wanna hit, and we don't have to spend a long time on this, but I'll just tell you, like, one of the reasons that we purchased in the neighborhood that we purchased in, beyond the fact that we just really liked the neighborhood in general, is there's— it's a guarded gated community that's got a guard shack that you have to go through in order to get into our community. It's not even just an electric gate that opens up if you push in a code.

There's no code.

There's a— you have to go through a guard shack in order to get through here. And they've got people on patrol. It's not a huge neighborhood, but it's not the smallest neighborhood by any stretch of the imagination. They got a couple of patrol people, the security guards are armed, you know, all those types of things. Like, at what point should I or anybody that lives in a neighborhood similar to mine put some stock in that as far as just, you know, keeping you safe, knowing that people can still get in if they're not supposed to be there? There's other ways to get in. And even They may even, you know, look like they have a

legitimate reason to get in. They can still get in. But what— how much stock should I put in something like that? There's definitely a certain amount of stock that I'd say you can put into it because, you know, when it comes to hardening your property, you know, the factors of the neighborhood definitely play into it. I always kind of harken it back to, you know, you want layers like an onion or You know, like Shrek talks about that, you know, ogres, their feelings are like an onion, they're made of layers.

We finally got a good Shrek reference.

There you go. I wanted to make sure I worked that in.

Okay, good.

But yeah, so, uh, you know, the, the security around your neighborhood itself, uh, before you get to your actual property, you know, it's those extra layers. So having a gate is great, but I can still follow somebody in through the gate. Having that guard shack is great, but I can pretend that I'm going to service somebody's house in the neighborhood and I can still get past that guard shack. If you're in one of these neighborhoods that's off of Lake Conroe, for example, then having all of that stuff is awesome, but if I've got a rowboat, you know, I can come up off the shore and I can get in the neighborhood and go wherever I want. So, you know, a lot of those things are great extra factors. But, you know,

we did a homeowner's event at one of these gated communities off the lake. I won't mention which one it was, but a lot of the people were passing by our table and kept commenting to us, oh, we live in a gated community, we don't need security. So we were like, okay, I'm gonna— I brought up our SpotCrime app on our iPad and we showed them that you've got a gated community with a guard shack and everything else, But there's still been 3 burglaries here in the neighborhood in the last 6 months. There's been 2 shootings. There's been a number of thefts. So while all those things are great, you definitely don't want to give— get that false sense of security that just because your neighborhood has that,

that nothing can happen to you. Yeah, so, so kind of what I'm hearing for you, any deterrent is that it's a deterrent and, and Your run-of-the-mill burglar may pull up to my neighborhood and go, nah, not worth it. But maybe some more sophisticated, even whoever, a deterrent is just that, it's a deterrent.

Cool.

The more deterrents you have set up, the better. But at the end of the day, I always tell people, if you don't have a system that's being monitored, then In the event that somebody is determined enough to get past all those deterrents, then if you don't have somebody that can call for that backup, then you're still kind of leaving yourself vulnerable at the end of the day.

Yeah, cool.

Well, uh, we would, uh, not be doing our job if we ended this show without doing the Final Four.

The Final Four.

Final Four. So, uh, 4 questions we ask all of our, all of our guests on the show.

So it's the most feared segment on the, on the show.

And rightly so.

These are, these are soul-crushing questions.

That's right, that's right. All right, so 4 questions. The first one's this: what's the must-have tool you won't leave your house without? Most, most used tool, I'd say it would probably be my Leatherman.

Nice.

My multifunction tool. It has saved my butt more times than I can imagine. Pick a lock with that thing. Yep. All right, awesome. Yeah, that's definitely a good one. Those things are, man, almost indestructible. We had a— so I was doing an event and I had a bunch of people with me. We had a teenage girl. We were actually in New York City, and we were going to the Statue of Liberty, and we walked through security, and she had like a pocket Leatherman, like a legit one, one of the really nice ones. And it was different than some. It had the actual— the scissors in it instead of the pliers. Yeah, yeah, the pliers. And so anyway, they confiscated it, and she never saw

it again. I had a similar situation where I was, I was flying out for some military stuff And I forgot that I had my Leatherman and a, uh, it was a combination like corkscrew bottle opener in my backpack. And so they said, you know, your 2 options are you can either throw it in the trash or go through security, or if your bag hasn't made it back to security, through security yet, you can run back and put it in your bag. Luckily, I was, I was carrying what they considered an oversized bag. They hadn't took it yet. So I'm like, you can take the corkscrew, but I'm putting my Leatherman in my bag. That's right. H&K Leatherman. I mean, I'm not giving that up. Nope, nope, that's a nice one at all.

Awesome.

All right, second question: what's a job you've walked away from? Okay, so we always have to caveat this a little bit. You can use a career if you want to, but also you may have a job that you've had at your house, that you— a project, for example, you were working on Kind of got fed up with it and you're like, you know what, I'm walking away. I gotta call Paul the plumber or whoever it is and get someone else, a professional, to get in here and take care of it. So, what's a job you've walked away from? So, it's kind of funny that you mentioned Paul the plumber because it was actually a plumbing incident. When my kids were younger

and they went through that phase of, we want to put fun stuff down the toilet, I've actually removed my toilets a couple of times.

Yeah.

I had to replace the ring and fish whatever it was that they put down in there. But we had one instance where some water started coming up from one of the toilets, and I took it off, tried to check it out, but nothing really seemed to be fixing the problem. So we wound up having to call the plumber out to determine that, I guess, a branch or something had worked its way into the drainage pipe under our house that feeds out of the house. And it had gotten clogged with, uh, some like toilet paper or something that was catching around that branch. Um, and they were able to kind of, you know, snake it out and everything else. But originally I was just like, great, the kids put something else down the toilet.

They immediately got the blame.

Yep. Wow, nice. That's a good one. That's a good one.

Awesome.

All right, 3rd question. Uh, how do you wind down at the end of a long day? Winding down at the end of a long day. I mean, really, I kind of depend on the kids for that. They're kind of crazy throughout the day with everything that they're doing, and they seem like little Energizer bunnies. And I mean, you can still hear me here in the background. What is it, 11 o'clock at night and you're still going strong? But when I come home at the end of the day and And, you know, I come through that door and, you know, they, you know, run up screaming, Daddy! And, you know, give me a hug and they just want to sit in my chair

with me and, you know, watch their videos on their tablet or play their game. You know, that's what kind of helps me, you know, kind of wind down and kind of, you know, push everything else from the day and kind of, you know, to the back of my mind, all the stress that I was dealing with and all the difficult things I was dealing with. And I can just forget all about that for the rest of the night and just kind of— focus on, you know, playing with them and what's, what's kind of making them happy.

That's awesome.

No, that's great. Yeah, we— well, we say it often, we're big advocates of family. So definitely, that's awesome. Very good. All right, uh, 4th question: what's one of the best pieces of wisdom or advice you've ever received? Probably the best, uh, The best piece of wisdom I have received probably came through reading The Tao of Pooh, in which, I don't know if y'all are familiar with that book or not, but it kind of explained the tenets of Taoism through Winnie the Pooh, the show of Winnie the Pooh. Oh, okay. And so that kind of helped me put a lot of things into perspective and the age-old adage of don't sweat the small stuff, that really, a lot of stuff used to, Little things got me wound up in the past, but kind of after reading through that and

learning of the wisdom of Pooh Bear and the Thousand Acre Woods, I kind of learned how to just kind of shrug some things off. That if something's outside of your control, especially with the situation that we're dealing with now, sometimes you just gotta let things kind of slide off your shoulder and deal with what you can make an impact on.

Hmm. That's cool, man. I actually kind of want to check that book out. That actually sounds interesting.

Yeah, it's a good one. Yeah.

Is it like a long read or is it like kind of like condensed, like bits of wisdom?

It's pretty— yeah, it's a pretty short— you can get it in paperback. It's maybe 100, 200 pages.

Okay.

It's not really, you know, a long read. I probably— first time I read it, I probably got through it in, you know, in an afternoon. And it's It's a pretty easy read because it explains everything through the stories of Winnie the Pooh and the Thousand Acre Woods.

That's cool.

Yeah, no, it's awesome.

Well, and so we have the secret 5th question at the end of the final 4 that— yeah, so gird your loins. How do people find you if they want to get a hold of you?

So if they want to get a hold of me, they can check out my Facebook page. It's facebook.com/MattHoustonHawk, or they can reach out to me directly. Can I give my cell phone? Can I get my number out?

It's your number.

All right. Well, if anybody wants to get a hold of me to talk about their home security needs and do a virtual consultation or anything else to kind of determine where we can do to help harden them and make them a little bit safer, they can reach out to me at 281-210-6804. So either by phone or my Facebook page or Facebook Messenger, those are the primary ways that they can find me, or they can look up more about our company at hawksecurity.com.

Awesome. And they can find you through all those different avenues, correct?

Well, if they go to hawksecurity.com, it's the main company website. Okay, um, they'll tell them everything about the company. Uh, but if they want to get in contact with me directly, uh, anywhere here in the Houston area, um, uh, personally I service the greater Houston area, um, they'd have to either go to my Facebook page or, uh, reach out by text or give me a call.

Okay, awesome. We'll link all that up.

And anywhere else in Texas, they can go to the company website And, uh, we'll get the closest Hawk representative out there to take care of them.

Okay. And are you guys only in Texas, or is— are you guys in other states as well?

Uh, so we mainly cover Texas. Um, we're a Texas-based company and we only cover Texas, but we also fall under the myalarmcenter.com family, which is a large conglomeration of security companies that fall under kind of that umbrella. So we have, uh, there's another company called, I want to say, AMSA, that covers Georgia.

Okay.

We have another company— the corporate headquarters for myalarm.com is up in Philadelphia, so they have a company up there. So we're primarily Texas, but there are a number of other companies under that myalarm.com umbrella that cover other areas of the country.

Gotcha. Well, we'll take all your contact info and put that up in the show notes.

Yeah. So is that— is the, is the primary company for Hawk in Yes. Okay. That's where our corporate office is located, up in the DFW area. Okay. And we work out of the Houston branch down here. We also have branches out in San Antonio and Tyler, Texas, as well as DFW. But when I say the greater Houston area, we'll pretty much service anywhere within 150 miles of our Houston office. So we cover all the way out to Navasota, Huntsville, Galveston, Katy, you name it.

Yeah, people don't realize how big of a sprawl Houston is.

Exactly.

It's ridiculous.

That's right, that's right. Well, cool.

Well, what, uh, what else we got, Kev?

And I, I can't think of anything. Uh, what I do know is that, uh, we appreciate you tuning in to our, our show tonight. Um, And thanks for, for giving us a like on Facebook and following us. And you can find us on Twitter and Instagram, Facebook, all those sorts of things. By the way, I mean, like, if you still use Twitter, I mean, you can send us a message. We may never see it.

But let's, let's just be real. If you're on Twitter, the only reason you're there is to see the crazy things that Trump is tweeting. That's right.

That's it.

That's right. That's the only reason you're there. If you're—

that's right.

Nobody else is there for any other reason, which is a legitimate reason. It's fine. Okay, I'm okay with it. I'm just like, we just all need to be honest with ourselves.

That's right.

That's right.

So, you know, we are, um, we're actually, uh, doing a little bit of a promotion here with Meals on Wheels. Is that right, Craig?

Yeah. So, uh, really cool thing that Podchaser is doing right now. They're doing through April 15th, if you go on Podchaser and look up our podcast, which you can now listen to on Podchaser, and leave a review, they will donate $0.25 to Meals on Wheels. And if we respond to that review, they'll double that donation. So if you leave a review, we promise to respond to it. So your review will actually be getting a $0.50 donation to Meals on Wheels through April 15th. It's just a way that they're trying to help get meals safely to seniors during this crisis and pandemic without spreading the COVID-19 virus. It's a really, really cool deal.

That's a really big deal. I'll just mention this really quick. I don't think we sometimes realize how these Meals on Wheels get delivered sometimes. For example, my grandma is in her upper 80s. And she has a Meals on Wheels route on Thursdays.

Right.

And which is awesome. I mean, I just really love that about her. Uh, but I called her 2 weeks ago and I said, I said, Mamaw, you gotta call your person and tell them you can't do this right now. Like, you just need to give up your route right now because, um, I mean, the, the risk is too great for someone of your age and, uh, And there's even logistical things with that, right?

Right.

Like how people are getting their meals, making sure that, you know, there's enough donations for some of these senior adults to get the things that they need. So this is a really great opportunity for you, and y'all would really be helping a lot of really great people. 25 cents doesn't seem like a lot. 50 cents seems like a whole lot more. Still doesn't seem like a lot, but you'd be amazed at how How far 50 cents can go to feed one person.

Yeah, and this isn't just— this isn't just for us. I mean, like, go— I mean, like, we don't care. Go on there and review as many podcasts as you want. I mean, everyone you review is gonna get them 25 cents right now through April 15th. So really, really cool deal.

Yeah, not about us at all. So we just want to make sure people are aware of that. But yeah, thanks for listening to us, for downloading. Tell your friends about us. We would love the review, but not just for Meals on Wheels. We would love to have some interaction with you guys. You can email us at info@homeownershow.com if you have any questions. We will get back to you as quickly as possible. Thanks for downloading, and until next time, we'll see you later.

See ya!