Under new ownership
By JENNIFER MINYARD, The Bolivar Bullet
Jimmy McClellan didn’t really plan on a career in security when he founded Security Services in Cleveland 25 years ago.
“I was just doing a part-time job, waiting on some resumes to come in and I kind of started liking the money and liking the work,” said McClellan. “I worked for several people, and I didn’t like the way they ran their companies so I started my own.”
It has been a successful and thriving business that he has believes to share with some longtime employees now that he has decided he is ready to slow down a bit. McClellan has retained 20 percent of the business, and has sold Kevin Nollett and Sonya Hall each 10 percent, and the remaining 60 percent was sold to Jason Shaw.
“I’m letting my employees who have worked hard for me try and share the love with me,” said McClellan. “I’m letting them run the company, let them enjoy some of running a business and seeing what it’s all about. They’re very smart in the electronic security industry. I’m getting a little older and thinking about retiring and, slowing down a little bit and traveling. So that’s where we are today actually. And that’s just what we’re doing.”
Like McClellan, the new co-owners also had no plans for careers in the security business.
“Well, I can honestly tell you that I didn’t necessarily get into the security business at first,” said Sonya Hall. “I started working for the McClellan family 30 years ago come this May. In October 2001, Jimmy opened a new office and I had gone to work for another company while he was getting his security business off the ground and he called me and he said, ‘Look, I’ve got to ask somebody I can trust. I’ve got to have some help in this office.’ And I said, ‘Well, you know, in this brief time that I have not seen you guys I actually have had a second child and I’m working for another office and they let me bring her to work with me.’ I was doing airport recording and he said, ‘Well, bring her with you.’ And I said, ‘Ok then,’ and I’ve been with them ever since.”
Kevin Nollett and Jason Shaw both also entered the security business by chance.
“I joined the business in 2010 as a sales representative after I left law enforcement,” said Nollett. “And within a year I was promoted to sales manager. And then after that, from sales manager, I was promoted over at the office and that’s where my current position is – being the office manager, doing logistics, ordering, pretty much a gofer.”
“I started in 2005, when I left the Navy,” said Shaw. “I moved back to Cleveland, and I don’t know if it wasn’t a good time for jobs then, but I was going door to door to every business in town putting in applications. And Jimmy was the first one that called me. And I’ve been there ever since. I was an aviation electronics technician when I left the Navy and had nowhere else to go when I decided not to re-enlist. And I think I applied everywhere except for fast food places, just for any kind of skilled trade. I had put in an application, but nobody was hiring. And Jimmy called me back about a week after I put my application in. He had to let someone go or someone left, and he called me, and I said, ‘I’ll come right now.’ I started out as a training technician and, with my previous experience, it translated very well into this new field, and it just grew from there,” he said.
McClellan spent several years thinking long and hard about how he wanted to handle possibly retiring.
“Jimmy and I talked about it. We started talking about that maybe 10 or 12 years ago that we were working so that we would both eventually have something one day,” said Shaw. “And then, about five years ago, we started talking about me maybe actually buying into the company. And he came to me one day and he said, ‘I don’t know if I want to just sell part of it. Maybe I’ll keep a piece and just sell you the most of it.’ And I said, ‘Okay, that’s what it will be.
“And it has been a very good deal. We all work well together. We’ve all worked together for many, many years and I think it’s made us stronger having four people invested in the company than just one. We take better care of our customers. We provide services and are still able to take care of our people that have worked with us for years,” said Shaw.
“In December Jimmy decided that he’s getting to the spot where he wants to retire and he called us all in one day and he said, “I just kind of want to reward the people that have been with me forever and I want to share the love’ and he asked if we would be interested. I think our whole general consensus was yes, we would,” said Hall.
Security Services offers residential and commercial burglar alarms, fire alarm systems, camera systems, access control, internet solutions and low voltage wiring, primarily. Customers don’t need to worry about any changes in customer service with the new changes in ownership.
“We’re all about serving our customers. We’re all about our small town feel and we go to work every day and we work more like a family than a company,” said Hall. “It’s just a great place. It’s a great place to be. Absolutely. I love everybody I work with.”
“And the good thing about a little family company besides the struggles of being a small company was getting out there and getting our name known, trying to get new clients – which is a challenge these days, but we love challenges,” said Nollett. “When the offer came around to purchase part of the company, we all looked at each other and since we work well together, we said, ‘Hey, let’s go ahead and do this.’ It was an excellent opportunity and we took it.
“Being a small company, and now being small company owners, our number one concern is always our clients and providing solutions,” he said. “We don’t just do security. We do access control, CCTV, sound. Put it this way, you give us the challenge and we meet that challenge. I’ve got a good group of people that work for Security Services. It’s a small family. And I love working with these people. Moving forward, we’re just going to go ahead and continue to provide the best possible service for our customers that we can. And if you have an issue, you give us a call, we’re going to try to solve it.”
“I just wish them the best,” said McClellan. “I know they’re really good at what they do. Jason’s very good about anything electronics and Kevin’s very good in taking care of running the business part of it, the office part of it. Sonya is very good at the administrative part of it, and I just want to give them a chance to have a chance of running the company and taking care of everybody.”