By Mike Jagger, an EO Vancouver member and president of Provident Security

I started my business in 1996 as an industrious, yet naive, 20-year-old with zero experience in the electronic security industry. In many ways, my ignorance about this industry ended up paying dividends for our company. We were not saddled with any previous experience about the ‘way we’ve always done things.’ We had to come up with our own solutions to take care of our clients. That curiosity made it a lot easier to be innovative.

One of the best examples of that innovation was our guaranteed five-minute alarm response service. No verification phone calls. No assumption that an alarm was false. We built a company around providing a service that nobody else offered and we delivered it in a unique way.