I didn't walk into Wachter through the front door with an MBA and a five-year plan. I walked in at 18 years old, three weeks before I graduated high school. I actually had to ask for a day off to go to my own high school graduation. Got yelled at for it. That was 33 years ago. I never left.
I'm not a family member, not a legacy hire. I had some family that worked there, that's how I heard about it. I started as an apprentice electrician, went through the full apprenticeship program, and started building customer relationships one project at a time. I'd go do a bathroom remodel, make friends with the facilities guy, and pretty soon he'd just call me directly. By my mid-twenties, I had seven or eight customers doing exactly that. The work did the talking.
Brad Botteron, our owner, noticed. He asked me to move to Bentonville, Arkansas to help start the electrical side of a newly developed rollout department that the company didn't yet have the electrical experience to run. At 26, I said yes.
How We Built a Security Business
We didn't set out to become a major force in physical security. We were doing data communications, cabling for a large retailer down in Bentonville, when I started noticing something that bothered me. Security installers weren't being held to the same standards as data cabling teams. The coax looked like a net up there. I used to joke that's how they caught the shoplifters, just dropping the cable on them.
That frustration became a business case. We stepped in and brought data-grade discipline to security cabling. When IP-based camera systems became the norm, we were already perfectly positioned. We understood both worlds, the network side and the field side, and we grew with the technology for over 25 years.
Today we have over 2,000 people in the field, 39 staffing agents, and we've quietly become the fifth largest fire protection company in the United States.
Built From the Bottom Up
Wachter was founded in 1930 by William Wachter, who cashed a $500 life insurance policy and opened a small electrical shop in Kansas City. It stayed small for decades. Brad Botteron bought it from his father in 1989 for $100,000. Brad still says he overpaid for it.
In my first year here, we did $3 million in revenue. Last week we did four times that amount in a single week. It's a different company now, but the bones are the same.
That growth didn't come from acquisitions or outside executive hires. Seven of our ten executives came up from the field. The average tenure on our executive team is 23 years. They didn't learn the culture in an onboarding session. They built it alongside me. Culture is the most important thing we have, and I'll protect it fiercely.
We Solve Problems
Ask me what Wachter is, and I'll tell you we solve problems. "Solutions integrator" is what the sales guys like to say, and that's fair. But at the end of the day, a customer comes to us with a problem and we figure it out.
We don't show up with a preset menu. We follow the need; electrical, data, cameras, access control, fire alarm, AV, signage, fire suppression. Every new capability we have came from a customer asking us to do something we hadn't done before. We said yes, we figured it out, and now it's part of who we are.
I make every decision thinking 20 years out. Not because I can predict the future, but because the long view forces you to prioritize relationships over short-term wins. That's the chess game I'm always playing.
I started here at 18 asking for a day off to graduate high school. Thirty-three years later, I'm still in it every single day. That's Wachter.
