I got real about security with Brandon Smith from Aura — no fluff, just the gap homeowners keep tripping over. I tell the story about pulling up to my driveway and finding my garage gutted (sunny weekday, tools gone), calling 911 and waiting...and waiting. Brandon and I dug into why cameras and recorded footage aren’t the finish line: in a lot of cities the police won’t prioritize property-only calls or need more verification before they roll. Aura’s neat move is bringing a human deterrent back into the loop — on-demand guard vehicles that roll up, flash some lights, and make the bad actors think twice. It’s not fantasy law enforcement; it’s practical deterrence and documented response so you’ve actually got something to hand to your insurer or the PD if things escalate. We talked logistics — how Aura built an Uber-like dispatch network across guarding companies, why aggregation matters (don’t rely on a single provider), and how integrations with monitoring centers let the tech do the heavy lifting: machine-to-machine dispatch, turn-by-turn directions, gate codes, PPE notes, and full reporting. Brandon shares that average national response sits around 18 minutes and that verified dispatch can even get law enforcement moving when officers see an officer in distress on their end. I loved his honesty: we’re not promising vigilantes, we’re promising a documented, professional deterrent that fills the response gap when the public system can’t. If you’re the kind of homeowner who thinks cameras equal safety, listen up: we’re not saying cameras are useless, just incomplete. With Aura layered on top you get a living response, not just a cold file of footage. It’s earthy, pragmatic security — and yeah, it would have been nice back when my garage looked like a tornado hit a tool store.

Takeaways:

• I realized cameras are great for evidence, but by themselves they usually won't get police to show up fast.
• We learned the one thing homeowners are missing: an on-demand verified guard response layer that actually bridges alerts and arrival.
• I can't stop saying it — Aura aggregates lots of local guarding companies like Uber for security, so someone nearby actually responds instead of one flaky provider.
• We joked that ghosted security vehicles that 'look like cops' are brilliant deterrence; sometimes flashing lights and presence are all you need to scare folks off.
• I found out monitoring centers handle most alarms first, sit on hold, and because around 98% are false positives cities deprioritize them — that's a systemic issue homeowners should know about.
• We talked about useful extras: scheduled drive-bys, officers grabbing packages, and custom instructions/gate codes — little conveniences that make security feel human and actually usable.
• I got nerdy about tech: AI verification helps cut down alerts, but video alone still gets triaged; future tools might include drones or more creative deterrents.
• We finished with a simple call to action: figure out who monitors your alarm, ask your installer about verified dispatch, and demand real response — not just recordings.

Links referenced in this episode:

• aurasos.com
• aroundthehouseonline.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Around the House
• Aura
• Deep Sentinel
• Ring
• Amazon
• The Home Depot
• Uber
• Lyft
• ISC West
• Vitamix

Thanks for listening to Around the house if you want to hear more please subscribe so you get notified of the latest episode as it posts at https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/listen

If you want to join the Around the House Insider for access to the back catalog, Exclusive Content and a direct email to Eric G and access to the show early https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/support

We love comments and we would love reviews on how this information has helped you on your house! Thanks for listening! For more information about the show head to https://aroundthehouseonline.com/

Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

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Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for joining me today.

I love talking security, whether it's a business, it's your home trying to keep what you own and what you love safe.

And today we've got a great guest, Brandon Smith with Aura.

Welcome to around the House Brother.

Thanks for having me.

Great to be here, man.

This is great.

I love talking to people about new ideas out there, better ways to keep your keep yourself safe out there.

Whether it's whether you're a small business owner or a large business owner or a homeowner and there's so many camera systems out there and stuff that you can, well, record events with.

But there seems to be, especially in the Pacific Northwest where I'm at, there can be a huge gap between recording what's on your property going on and actually having somebody show up.

And it looks like you guys have a good solution for that.

Yeah, definitely.

We essentially offer an on demand guard response for those in whether you're a business or a residential owner in markets across the country where maybe law enforcement stretched thin or there's legislation in place that prohibits them essentially from responding until it's verified or if there needs a, a certain level of verification.

We started back in actually South Africa a little over 10 years ago.

Very much personal protection down there.

Completely different environment than the U.S. it's very panic app driven.

We have over 2 million users, 6,000 vehicles on the road and then all those vehicles are licensed and insured.

Guarding companies that respond on behalf essentially law enforcement and the residents and business owners of the that market now kind of moving in to the U.S. we don't really have as much as a personal protection problem, but we do have kind of what you alluded to is this fixed location, whether it's a home or business where just law enforcement doesn't show up for a variety of different reasons.

Sometimes it's mostly it's not their problem, it's not their fault.

There's different things in place within these cities that essentially handcuffs them on what they can and can't do.

And it's funny, there's actually some Cities where this actually goes down a fire, they won't even dispatch fire unless there's an actual verification that there's real smoke, real flames.

So, yeah, that's kind of how we fit in with the ecosystem of these cities.

Man, that's crazy.

And somebody had wrapped a chain around the barn doors and ripped them down and took everything out of my garage and it busted into my house.

During a weekday in the daylight, I came home, I see the doors down in my driveway, huge doors.

And then of course, I see my tools are emptied out of the garage.

Called the police, and I was in Lake Forest park.

So I was still in a Seattle area and they didn't really want to show up.

And I said, I think somebody could be in the house.

They went, well, we'll see if we can get somebody out there.

I said, never mind, I'll go clear it myself.

What?

You're going to go in there?

I said, yeah, I'm going to go clear it myself.

I'll call you back if I find anybody.

But they showed up really quickly at that point.

But I almost threatened it to make it worthwhile for somebody to show up.

And I live down in Portland area now.

And I tell you what, I know so many people in Portland that have businesses and stuff and they'll make a phone call for somebody broke into their business and they'll show up, or they'll just tell them, hey, do the online report, nobody even shows up.

And there's just not enough officers to be able to go out and show.

Up for property crimes, especially if it's already done.

Because in their eyes, it's like, now it's just an insurance for insurance claims purposes.

So they'll get there when they get there.

That's usually where we see the big differences, especially in Portland, is if they're looking at an event, if you're looking at an event, say, hey, someone's actively breaking my home.

I see it happening, they're destroying my property.

Or, hey, there's people in this house because maybe there's a babysitter home and there's kids, or then they typically will react because now there's an immediate threat to life or property.

But your case, it's like, hey, I came home, I noticed my garage doors were missing.

They didn't actually take action until they realized, well, what if someone's still there.

Now this homeowner now goes out and then someone gets shot and killed.

This is a real event.

And I hear this over and over again.

And look, I'll say it in the beginning, at the end of the day, we're using security officers, right?

Every state has different restrictions and liabilities, what they can and can't do.

But at the end.

But really what it comes down to is deterrence, right?

Hey, some of these security vehicles, and we have many on our network, they're like ghosted vehicles.

They look like law enforcement driving down the road, right?

They pull in, they flash some lights and maybe the people who are there skedaddle.

Do we expect them to get out, draw a weapon and detain?

Mostly not.

We're really there, observed, you know, report deter.

That's why they're there and that's really why we exist.

And, and what's funny in Seattle and Portland, like Portland had actual public safety officers and there was some budget cuts that need to happen and they weren't going to cut the sworn law enforcement.

I mean that they're, they're trained, they're, they invest a lot of money, but they, what they considered doing was essentially doing, cutting what we do.

They had unsworn public service that would go to these low priority calls.

And what's funny is they were the first ones on the chopping box.

It didn't work.

It didn't work.

And when I was building my new studio out, which we're just finishing up, that was a major part of my decision.

Where was I going to put it?

Well, I wanted it close to my house.

But I also said, hey, I'm going to put this where if I call the authorities, they're going to show up.

And sorry, Portland didn't put my studio in your location because I knew that zero chance on my camera system if I saw somebody poking around, no chance somebody was going to show up within the next two hours.

And I don't blame the police.

They just are so grossly underfunded.

I don't even know if you'll get through 911 there.

That's the problem.

You could be sitting on hold for an hour.

And again, those are issues that you see out there.

And I'm happy that there's companies like Aura out there that are solving this in some way to help people get some kind of response, just to get some to show up and maybe scare them off.

I think that's huge.

Yeah, it's big.

And we see a lot of success across the country and all these jurisdictions.

The other piece of this too is usually when you.

There's also a distinction between calling 911 and getting right to the what we call a PSAP versus like having a home security system.

Because whether the homeowners know it or not, like when their home alarm or business alarm goes off, it's not going straight to the psap, it's going to the monitoring center that they're paying a monthly subscription for to verify the alarm.

And then they will be the ones that sit on hold.

So what's also amazing and someone to educate the market is they're sitting on hold just like you would if you call.

Right.

And then they're waiting and waiting and again back to where Aura comes in.

We can still sit on the call because sometimes they'll dispatch us and law enforcement at the same time, but we'll get there and they're still on hold waiting for a dispatcher to take it.

Right.

And then we can be hit homeowners and business alarms from the third party monitoring 98% of the the time they're false.

Right.

That's a statistic.

Unfortunately, that's what it is.

And that's also a leading factor and driving factor to why these cities make these changes.

Well, every time the officer goes to these third party alarms, nothing's ever happening.

Right.

So that's why they get deprioritized.

And it's funny, even from video you would think, hey, I'm seeing your garage.

If you watch or happening at live, like if you just have someone walking across your property.

Yeah, it's verified.

But at the end of the day, like it just gets deprioritized.

Now again, video is great.

If you'd be like, hey, they're smashing my windows, my dog's in the house, someone's going to get hurt.

Then they'll go, yeah.

But even video today, it's still not enough in certain markets.

Yeah, it's crazy.

And I would put Portland, the city of Portland, at least I would put it in that market as well.

With our Multnomah county up there, same kind of thing.

I live south of there.

So we get a pretty good response out there, which is nice, but that's why I've chosen to live there.

But I just feel bad.

I know so many people out there.

There was a sponsor of my show locally here that was a electrical company.

So he had a warehouse full of wire and the stuff that he was running into.

He had a security system, but again it was cameras.

And when the alarm would Go off, nobody'd show up.

And it was the same kind of thing.

Great example.

Guy jumped up from the homeless camp across the street, climbed the roof two stories up, got up on the roof, cut a big hole in the roof, came down and got busted inside the place before he could get out.

So he actually did.

And I think it was because the owner was involved.

But then of course, to fix the roof, the building department said, oh, now we're going to have to make your building earthquake compatible now.

So he had a $200,000 bill just trying to fix the damage from the break in.

And they're like, well, while you're at it, we're gonna force you to do this.

And wow, stupid stuff, stupid stuff.

And they should have just let him fix the roof.

But of course, that's just how that works.

And I tell you what, I think he would really love to have Aura at that time because at least somebody would have showed up and said, hey, dude, get off the roof.

Oh, yeah, most definitely.

And so I have to imagine, just so we got grandfathered in from having an old roof, and then when they had to make the replacements, they had to bring them up the code.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, that, that's definitely an extreme.

It's.

Yeah.

So, I mean, we see the nutty stuff out there and I think it's really cool.

And how did you guys come up with this?

I mean, across the US there are so many locations and of course, all these private security firms.

Did you guys have to go out and track these guys down and start building a ton of relationships just to have coverage?

Yeah.

I mean, I can go back to even really how the idea really came.

And it was our founder, Warren Myers, down in South Africa.

He had a video monitoring company and his video monitoring company wasn't getting a response.

And he's very much like, hey, I have a problem.

I'm gonna come up with a solution.

Sold his business and then created Aura, two other co founders.

And what they did is they put their heads together and it was very, like I said, personal safety ish.

Back then.

Back then, sure.

They went to the UK next.

Right.

So they solved the problem.

South Africa, they went to the UK and that's where they realized, hey, it's not the same issue.

It's more of a fixed location problem.

And the UK has very similar issues.

Much smaller land mass to take care of.

But again, it's.

There was a problem and the solution kind of fit right in.

I mean, even so much that down in South Africa we have Roadside and medical.

So I can 100% seeing that as the US grows, getting that network behind it as well and kind of being this all encompassing safety platform.

But yeah, so one of the challenges when we came in the US and I love talking about this is from the business side is you have to build the response network.

Right.

So these aren't aura security officers in the field.

And I spent 20 years in the gardening industry and let me tell you, it's one of the toughest industries to be in.

You know, the, the turnover is very high.

It's a job for a lot of them.

Very few make it a career.

So turnover is a big aspect of it.

The margins on guarding is actually is really tight as well.

But where they see a lot of success is kind of with this on demand and it's probably some of the more profitable pieces of their business is the on demand response portion of it.

So we had to go market by market and then go.

We were cold calling security companies and they're initially, oh, this is different.

And we try to explain like, hey, we're just a customer to you, but we're going to give you an application similar to a ride share app to where this is where you go if you accept it.

That's the most similar kind of business to what we do.

And right now we have over 100 guarding companies nationwide.

There's some national, some local, some regional companies.

And what we are is we're an aggregate network.

And why that matters, because this is the other problem, the monitoring centers we're running into is they will try and contract a single provider and be like, hey, we'll call you to go to these alarms.

But the difference is these monitoring companies are relying on one company to get to their locations.

Can it work?

Yeah.

But what's better is when you have a dozen different security companies in a city like Portland or Seattle, where we're not relying and being held hostage by one company because at the end of the day, if they don't accept it, it just goes to the next closest, fastest responding officer.

And we have an average response time of roughly 18 minutes nationally.

And we're able to do that because we use this aggregate network.

Once we solved the network issue, then the monitoring centers who are primary customers and like the security alarm dealers, that's when they were like, yes, this works now, right?

There's been a couple other companies try it in the past and there's really only one still around.

And yeah, so it's a tough thing to accomplish and we did it.

And we're doing well and the feedback we get from our customers is great because from the business side, they're retaining business.

You go to if you're not getting a response, like if you, if you're paying for, I don't know, a streaming service and half the time you log in, you don't get to watch what you want.

Just getting a loading screen, you're going to do one or two things, you're going to cancel it and never use a streaming service again, or you're going to try and find another provider.

And really what we are, is we're like this ultimate provider to some of the public service issues that are happening.

That makes a lot of sense.

And I love the Uber or Lyft or however people get around out there.

I love that because, yeah, you could find, if you have five or six providers in town, there could be somebody that was magically three blocks away and they're like, oh, I got it, bam.

And now you've got a faster response where maybe somebody's got something going on and it's a Sunday night holiday and they, maybe they got two people on board that night because it's going to be a slow night.

Now you got this aggregate of companies out there, so it makes a lot of sense.

And you're not just dependent on, well, I hope they're staffed up tonight because somebody will show up.

Yeah, yeah.

That's probably one of our biggest, like, value propositions.

I came from the largest mobile division at a private security company prior to this, and we said we were the largest and technically that we had the most vehicles.

But if you were to ask me if we had coverage in this specific market and how many vehicles we had, like, I could be like, yeah, we could get there.

Right.

But I can't give you an exact time frame on when we'll get there.

So this is much different.

It's.

I don't like using the word guaranteed, right, because it's 100%, but we do a very good job.

And what's really nice is it's all what we call machine to machine.

We try and take away a lot of the human element, right?

So when the alarm goes into the monitoring center, we have an integration with them.

They push the aura logo and then that integration goes right to our back end and makes the dispatch, has the address, gives turn by turn directions, has instructions when the officer gets the location, because that's the next piece of this.

We also just don't show up, look around for three minutes and say, yep, everything's great.

And then they move on.

There's documentation, there's reporting.

Some HOAs have a gate, so we need the gate code.

Some commercial businesses need ppe.

Maybe there's a padlock somewhere where they hide a key.

And then all that information is within for the officer to provide an adequate response.

Thorough.

That's the next part.

Like I said, we don't just want someone showing up and leaving.

We're going to do our due diligence, we're going to make sure it's documented.

Because if something did happen, you're going to need that information.

When you go to file a claim or escalated up to law enforcement, it's there.

The next part of it, which really is great, is we do get there and there is an event happening live.

Now, we have verified dispatch for the local PD and how that works is right on the officer device they hit.

I need emergency services.

It comes to our control center because we manage the dispatch.

It goes to the monitoring center who's also watching the dispatch.

And I got three different people calling for an event.

And the messaging is usually, hey, look, we have an officer in distress because we're not on scene, we can't exactly tell you what's happening.

But they push the button for a reason.

Right.

And then that's usually enough to send law enforcement.

Yep.

To the location.

And how does this integrate in with people's alarm systems, camera systems or whatever?

How does that work between you guys and the business, property owner, whoever's hired you guys for services?

Yeah, that's a great question.

We consider ourselves like a B2B2C business.

So business to business, down to the consumer.

Right.

And what that means is every consumer out there that has a monitoring system that's not like a diy, like a ring or that's the best one to really.

Yeah, go buy it on Amazon.

You install yourself.

Right.

So most of the time these businesses contract with a professional installer, usually like a low voltage technician or an electrical engineer or specialized security company for their security or fire alarms.

And then residents do it as well.

Right.

If they just want something a little bit more than your typical buy it on Amazon type of setup.

Now what we do is we actually contract with the business, then sells it down to the end user.

The end user can be a residential user or it can be a commercial user.

So when we look at it, when I have a residential user come up to me or a business come up to me and they're like, hey, we want this directly to our store, usually my question is who's your current monitoring center?

Right.

And then from there I can be like, reach out.

And if they're not a customer of ours, what we found really works is the more we get like pressure from the bottom up, from the end user.

Usually some of these monitoring centers are listening.

Okay, that's a service we need to start offering, right.

So B2B2C.

And if, if it's something you're always interested in, figure out who your monitoring center is today watching over your property.

As far the DIYs, we do have a couple partnerships where it's like self dispatch.

I believe more coming on that soon.

But like right now it's primarily traditional monitoring centers.

That is cool.

And there's so many of those out there.

And I think it's been interesting watching them grow over the last decade from just a alarm company, shall we say, to what level of service?

I mean, there are so many.

I mean, you've got the normal ones out there, but Deep Sentinel came out a number of years ago and they were kind of one of the first ones.

And I had them early on the show when they first came out.

And I know Sully pretty well from those guys.

And they started out with the alarm service and they had kind of were the first big ones that had the agent video monitoring using AI.

And of course now that's the industry standard out there.

But it's one of those things that finally people could go, oh, well, that's an animal setting that off at the door versus somebody actually shaking the door.

Oh yeah.

I mean, just the whole security landscape in general changed.

I watched it go when I was in the guarding side of the house, I watched it go from your traditional guards that are punching a clock, doing tours.

And then when the technology finally got there, obviously cameras have been around for a long time from the analog and then they move camera digital.

Now they didn't even call it AI then.

It was literally just camera analytics.

So they started coming up with different ones.

Hey, here's a crossline detection.

Hey, here is a loitering one.

Here is an audible one, right?

So they started coming with all these different things.

Now what's happening is, is businesses have some of them have thousands of cameras across at their campus, right?

And they have a security guy sitting in a what I would call like a GSOC or like a security operations center.

And they're sitting in there and they have five monitors and each monitor has 20 cameras on it and they're like sitting there like this, right?

And then all these studies started coming out.

Be like, hey, one person can only watch so many cameras effectively for so many minutes without taking a break.

So these analytic companies started pushing and pushing.

Hey look, you only need one one screen now.

And that one screen will then tell you when there's a cross line detection or trespassing in a certain area.

And then they'll get armed at certain times of the day, right?

Because sometimes areas just aren't as busy or someone shouldn't be there after hours.

So now you had one guy or lady in a console just watching these analytics come through.

What's really neat is then they start introducing it to the consumer side away from the commercial side.

I can, it's funny, you watch the progression of this and I'll use ring as an example.

I'm a ring user.

I got an alert and it's, they came out with this new software tech, I don't know, six, eight months ago.

And what it would do is it would actually, instead of saying someone's at your door or there's animal at your door, it would be like there's a guy in a Pizza Hut uniform delivering a pizza, driving a blue Honda Civic, right?

So it started piecing together and using AI without any human interaction.

But you kind of watch some of the, I would call moves like little comical hiccups.

One of my recycling bins had a yellow lid and when it would flicker with this spotlight, I got an alert saying there's a fire at your back door, but it was just the reflection off the yellow lid.

And at, at the my house I had two dachshunds and they just run around the yard.

And the one alert I got and I actually showed it to a ring rep that I was talking to was like, there's two chickens running around your black backyard.

And I thought it was so funny.

I'm like this is hilarious.

But at the same time, like this is only the beginning.

Like this is the infancy of AI recognizing it.

And eventually what I see is like you got this one person now sitting at a sock.

AI is now going to take that job.

Now they're even get fewer alerts.

So you watch the security industry go and then obviously comes down costs then too.

So then what happens while this AI gets great and now it's oh, we can do the remote guarding, right?

So now there's these remote guarding companies like Deep Sentinel, like ecamm, where they will provide guard services remotely.

And they cut Officers at locations and just do it digitally.

Right.

And so that's the new progression.

So much so I was at a a big association event in Dallas last week and half the conversations around video monitoring and AI.

So even your traditional monitoring companies are just doing berg an intrusion, glass breaks, they're.

That's their core business.

But they're also now moving into this video verification space.

It's just a progression.

Right.

And who knows where it's going to be.

Is it going to be drones in the future doing all the verification work?

Right.

So instead of sending security officers to a location, is there a drone from Oro that's going to be dispatched to verify an event who knows it's on our radar.

The idea is to be like a pathfinder and really find what the next problem is for us to come up with solution that ties to our product.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Hey guys, if you're just joining us, I'm talking with Brandon Smith from Aura.

And Brandon, the thing here is too is that you watch Deep Sentinel.

I think they've got one now.

Last time I was on their website and looked, I was a former Deep Sentinel customer.

So I was testing it out when it first came out.

Worked great.

But they've even added pepper ball launchers to some of their cameras that they could actually or spray.

Like if you had an entryway into a business that you could actually gas up that tear gas that entrance up, which is completely wild to buy time, shall we say, until somebody can show up.

But the smart thing with this AI detection which I think is great, that's partnered with what you guys have going is that great example, probably four years ago, step kid, my ex wife's kid comes running out of the house, Christmas time, it's raining black hoodie, kind of a goth kid holding a Vitamixer that was grandma's that was running over to go rap out the door.

No alarm had gone off but the Deep Sentinel had dropped in and went, hey, hold on a minute.

Identify yourself.

Because it looked sketchy because it was kind of that it was pouring so the head was down, hoodie couldn't make an identification, stopped.

It scared the crap out of the kid.

But it was awesome.

I was like, okay, it works.

So it doesn't catch it at the before, it can catch it at the after too.

And I think that's the perfect thing with what you guys have going.

That's the perfect setup for the alarm companies out there to go, okay, now I need to send somebody out there.

If they don't stop for instance.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I will tell you this, like, if we're going to stay on like the video monitoring kind of aspect of it, I think a lot of people thought that was going to be the end all be all to verified response.

And really, like I said earlier, it kind of just got like triaged down.

So now it's like, okay, use that same situation.

Let's say Deep Sentinel wanted to send a law enforcement.

Let's say you're in a market like Portland or la, right.

Where they walk up and they'll be like, are they doing anything?

Yeah, I mean, technically they're trespassing.

We kind of want to see what's going on again.

That's where or now comes in.

Right.

Because PD probably just won't come to that.

Right.

And by the time another alarm call for them.

Yeah.

By the time they get there, they're gone.

Right.

And then it's just another nuisance call.

We, law enforcement loves us.

In the uk, we have so many awards from the different law enforcement agencies over there because we started just.

They started seeing the brand, they started seeing the recognition, they started getting less calls and we started to tell them like, hey, the reason why is this is part of the reason why.

So now we're like, oh, this is fantastic.

Here's some, you know, more time for our officers to do what they're trained to do.

And now we're going less nuisance calls.

And that's also some of the what we're working on in the US is that public sector, hey, in this demographic or the city, have you noticed less nuisance calls?

Yeah, that's because the primary monitoring center in the city is using us for Dispatch.

Right.

Their KPIs look better and the residents and business owners are kind of getting the service they're paying for.

And then going back to what you talked about with the pepper ball, there's a big show every year in Las Vegas for security technology.

It's called ISC West.

And I saw that live.

They did a demonstration and it was actually a doorbell camera that had it off to the side and it would literally shoot pepper balls.

They were using just Nerf balls as a demonstration.

But you could go up there and test it.

You push the button, it set the panic, and then hit you a couple times.

I can't imagine what it's going to be like, what's next?

Obviously, there's probably a limit to it, but people get creative and I mean, it's really exciting to see what level of tech is going to be out there next.

Well, and for you guys, too.

I mean, that's just complimentary in a way, that they're out there on the front end.

And as that's happening, they've already probably would have called you guys for a response, let's say.

And now you guys are on route knowing that the police department's probably another 45 minutes before they get out there, depending where you're located.

So I think it's kind of cool.

And I'm sure it gets interesting, too, because in that situation, hey, we've got pepper balls deployed as someone's actively breaking in, and the police is going, what is going on?

And maybe that'll help, but not always, depending on what 911 operator you're working with.

Really?

Yeah, it.

It's.

I'm very excited to see what.

The future.

Yeah.

I have been in the industry for so long, you kind of see these little steps and baby steps.

But in just the last 18 months, the amount of progress that the industry has made to help protect the general public has come such a far.

There's been a ton of investment from the public side to the private side to kind of keep people safe at home.

Yeah, I love that.

And you guys are.

What countries are you guys in now outside of the U.S. yeah, so South.

Africa, the UK, Kenya.

So we're on three continents, technically, and we operate six.

Six countries.

Five.

Six countries globally.

Again, like, it's not, like a U.S. issue.

It's not specific city issues.

I think what happened was, is they all kind of started playing copycat to each other.

Hey, we'll try this.

Oh, hey.

It's kind of working, right?

I don't think there was enough time to see what kind of fallout would happen.

And they also started, like, following suit.

And now I do think some of it's getting backtracked a little bit.

But at the same time, you still see more and more cities become what we call verified dispatch cities.

So we'll see how it progresses.

But I'll tell you, from the technology front, it's exciting.

It's a very exciting time.

So you guys do everything from residential to big construction projects to probably all of that, don't you?

Yeah.

It's funny, the.

The.

One of the biggest things that we've seen creep up lately is have you ever drive around, like, the.

The shopping centers and you see these.

They look like solar trailers, and they have cameras on top.

Oh, yeah, 100%.

They're everywhere that they're flooding the market.

Even Ring has one now where it' A little more simpler.

It doesn't have wheels, but it's cleaner looking.

I just, I was.

I left Home Depot yesterday and they had one for sale.

Now they're obviously advertising it towards their contractors.

That's been like the real big push too lately is these construction sites.

They're the.

They get hit all the time.

All the time.

Think of all the copper and all the materials.

And if they're building in a city, like everyone's trying to make a quick buck, if they're homeless or whatever have you, or they're just opportunistic driving by.

They don't see any flashing lights or any type of cameras out.

And then what's tough for these construction companies is are they gonna invest in infrastructure before their actual primary structure is up?

Typically not.

Right.

So they came up with these solar trailers, and that's been like the, the latest big push.

But we see residential all the time.

And where we see residential a lot is what we call scheduled services.

So if you're a resident and you're like, hey, I want to get a security company to drive by my home, Let me tell you, you're probably gonna have to pick up the phone probably 20 times.

Figure out a company that's gonna take the time to drive by your house.

If, like you go on vacation, it's not worth their time, right?

So we have is what we call, like scheduled services.

And this is where it's like, hey, I'm going vacation.

Can someone drive by my house?

You're already part of the aura program.

They just schedule it from their phone.

They don't have to call a million security companies.

It gets scheduled right through the monitoring center.

And then they get that extra service.

So it's almost like a cherry on top for the on demand or alarm response.

We see the packages, hey, there was a package left on my door.

I'm not going to be home till later.

I don't feel comfortable leaving it out for Porch Pirate to come grab it.

So we've had officers show up, grab the package, have a door code, pop it in the door, pop it in the garage, put it in the shed, whatever the instructions are.

So again, like, that's even more service.

And then from the commercial side, from the scheduled piece of it is we'll do like that static guarding.

So your traditional, hey, my fire alarm system went down and my insurance requires me to have something monitored and my fire panels down.

So now I need a person here.

Well, let me tell you, it's typically cheaper to hire a security guard to go Patrol your vehicle, your building a few times a night.

Now that business owner has to try and find a security car to do it if they don't have one already.

Again, just pain in the butt.

It's pain.

Yeah, right.

So they can now schedule that right through the thing.

So there's a level of convenience as well as like the feeling like I'm gonna get a response.

There's also these additional services they can get where it just makes them feel a little bit more warm and fuzzy.

It's got to be good too for like property management people out there that have all these rental homes that you've got so many deals with squatters and people popping in that you can put cameras on all these properties and all of a sudden there's visibility of that and you guys can pop up and go, hey, we're trying to break in the front door.

100.

Yeah, we get it used all the time for that.

So just so we talk about the monitoring side, but there's also like corporate retail is another market that we're looking at.

So these big corporate retailers, they all have their own security operations center.

And in fact, I'm guarantee all their intrusion alarm systems go to what I referred to earlier as like a global security operations center, a gsoc.

Their alarms probably don't go right to a monitoring center to police.

Like, they want to verify it themselves first.

Now these big retailers, do they have security companies?

Yeah, a lot of them do, but they usually don't have it at every property.

So what happens when it something's happening at a property they don't have guards at Again, now we're an option for the private side on the retail side of the house.

So that's kind of like our next big target demographic is how do we get into those security operations centers?

Because at the end of the day too, look, we're also a cost saving center.

Like, you're not paying to have a guard on site at these locations.

You can use us as you need it, which is a big drive, especially in this day and age where everyone's trying to cut budgets.

On the corporate side, absolutely.

And yeah, corporate wise, it's gotta be hard too.

It's easy to get with a national company that's got a network out there.

If you're a retailer, let's say, and you now have 150 locations across the U.S. you might be making 75 phone calls trying to set it up out there, which, which is a big problem.

And if you can just go, oh, here's the easy button.

Smash.

That's simple.

That is really what it is.

It's that red button that you should go, this is easy.

That I should get those buttons made.

I should put them in, like, our booths at these events.

I think that would be.

I appreciate it.

I'm gonna send that, actually, after the marketing change.

Security, Bam.

Yeah.

Doesn't have to say easy.

So you don't step on anybody else's trademarks on that security.

I love it.

And that's the cool part.

And I think that's where you guys can be really helpful.

And we've needed that transition from a monitoring company to the police department.

And I think Aura is just a super smart response to that.

So I got to give you credit.

How do you.

How do people work with you guys now?

So if you're a retailer, are you just going to be or not a retailer?

But if you're a consumer, let's say, that wants their home, they're going to be talking to their alarm company basically to say, hey, do you work with them?

Correct.

Yeah.

That's the way we do it right now.

Where I see it eventually happen over time is I do.

I do feel like similar to South Africa.

I do think we'll have more of this B2B style business.

I think one thing we wanted to focus on, too, is just making sure we do it right and not trying to rush down to the individual consumer.

We wanted to get the market established.

We wanted to get the brand behind us.

We wanted to get the businesses to support us.

We'll get there.

But yeah, right now it's like, hey, if you're interested, check with whoever installed your alarm system or call your monitoring center and be like, is this a service that you offer?

And yeah, Aura, we do partner with a couple national monitoring centers.

We have a couple local ones, regional ones in that Pacific Northwest.

So I'd like to say there's probably a pretty good likelihood if you do make that phone call, they'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah, we can definitely offer this to you.

Man, that is cool.

And I think that's big.

And being you guys start out in South Africa, I tell you what I love watching in South Africa on YouTube, some of the security videos of things that go down over there, especially there was one that hit big.

Armor truck, armored truck one.

The armor truck ones are wild.

Those are wild down there.

And I mean, that's.

That's.

People get all worked up on police chases here.

Holy smokes.

Yeah.

Those little armored trucks and the firefight that happens on the interstate.

What you would say the interstate down there.

Yeah, that's nuts, man.

It's wild.

Yeah, it's when you it.

I've been there once.

So I went there one time.

Traveling there was super easy.

The airport felt pretty easy to navigate.

Didn't really feel too unsafe driving from the airport.

I got in late with a colleague of mine and.

Or the.

The highway all of a sudden comes a standstill midnight and we're all just looking around and you can kind of see our Uber driver start to get a little worried.

Yeah, I feel like I'm really good at reading body language and like reading the room.

And I could watch.

I can see him start.

His leg starts to shake a little bit.

His hands kind of like rubbing the steering wheel a lot.

What he did, he just decided to go on the side lane.

He I and just bypass it.

We just went right by it and it was funny.

He's like, hey, I'm going to miss my exit.

Because he was an Uber driver.

He was.

It's.

Do you care?

And we're like, now their decision is we're in a foreign country, what do we do here?

Do we say yes and he decides to take us through another sketch neighborhood or do we know, let's trust Uber and take us.

So we told him like, can you follow the Uber route?

So he like weaseled his way in between the cars and got off the correct exit.

And like our corporate office down there is in a place called Melrose and it's probably one of the more upscale areas.

And once I was there though, it felt great.

It just looked like everyday America in this location.

But man, let me tell you, completely different atmosphere.

I love traveling there though, so I'll 100% go back.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

I want to get down to Cape Town as well.

I didn't get.

I was in Johannesburg the whole time.

Nice.

But yeah, I mean there's a reason why we exist down there though.

Yeah, no question.

And you can run into that here in the US too, depending on where you're at.

I've been in a couple places here in the US to south of Chicago where I'm like, I was trying to get out of there because Uber actually the ca.

I got dumped down there for an event and it was awesome.

Get out of the event.

And the cab company that I was calling says we don't go there after 10 o' clock at night.

And I'm like, holy smokes, I'm in a really bad neighborhood and I can't even get out of here.

And I'm traveling.

So I ended up having to pay a cabbie after he was off 100 bucks to get me back to my hotel and cash just to go get me out of here because I was not walking on the street the, the five miles because that was going to be putting myself in a really bad situation.

And I'm like, okay, got to get out of here.

And yeah, that can happen here in the US Just as easy.

For sure, for sure.

Every, every country, like I said, it kind of goes down to the Portland, Seattle.

Every city has its own little, you think, unique issues, but there's problems everywhere.

Like there's where I'm in Dallas right now.

Drive some sketchy areas of Dallas, Philadelphia.

I'm originally from Pennsylvania.

Yeah, everywhere has it.

But the difference is like different markets just have a little bit different policing styles.

Brandon, for people out there to find your website to go, okay, I want to look a little bit more into this before I reach out to my alarm company.

How do they track you guys down?

Yeah.

Aurasos.com so a u r a s o s.com there's everything on there.

It's a treasure trove of information.

If you're a security dealer listening to this or like an integrator, there's a portal right there for you to look into it more, get a demo of the product and how it functions.

Because we are a tech enabled service.

Like we have a service but it's really driven by our technology.

So we really like to showcase that too to anyone who's interested.

So you'll get in front of me, you'll get in front of some of our business development managers and they'll kind of walk you through the process.

Also on the website there's other webinars, there's case studies and if you're a consumer down to that level looking for the service, reach out to your current dealer that installed it for you or your monitoring center.

Again, what we found is when there's a lot of down momentum coming from the end user, we see a lot of action happen for that service to get offered to you.

Awesome.

Brandon, thanks for coming on today.

This is eye opening.

I love what you guys are doing.

Absolutely.

Thanks, Eric.

I'm Eric G. You've been catching around the house.

Make sure you click that subscribe button on your favorite podcast player.

To find out more or to contact us, head to aroundthe House online dot com.

We will see you next time.

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