The 2024 SDM Systems Integrator of the Year excels at its three top priorities: employee & community connection; a customer approach with cutting-edge technology; and financial success that feeds directly back into the company and the communities it serves.

For a relatively young company, this year’s SDM Systems Integrator of the Year has a lot of collective experience in the security industry — and a string of successes to show for it. What’s more surprising is the seemingly ad hoc way in which they have gone about it — from starting a business in a former tattoo parlor and running it from the road thousands of miles away, to routinely recommending what many integrators would consider “bleeding edge” technologies to their customers. But there is a method to their madness and a decidedly unconventional approach that is clearly working for them.

Company President Casey White will be the first to admit he is not a planner. And, indeed, the founding of Chimera Integrations in 2017 grew out of an unfortunate business relationship. When the situation at his former company became untenable and attempts to buy the company went south, White knew it was time to act.

“Overnight I was ready and I knew I had to start Chimera,” he explains. Determined to do it differently, White founded the company with the intent to create an experience for security technicians to have a better place to work — a service-based business that would not be risk-averse but focus on the right solutions for the client.

“When you look at the leadership in our organization, many of us have a similar story,” Stearns explains. “All of our Northern (New York) offices were born out of a similar story of just not being able to accomplish what they needed to and needing a fresh start and Casey opened up the door with an open mind, not being risk averse and believing in people. And it was that belief, I think, that really skyrocketed us to where we are today.”

Which ties back to the company name, Stearns says. “A chimera, in mythology, is a creature composed of parts from different animals, symbolizing the strength and synergy that comes from diverse elements working together as one. The name Chimera was chosen to reflect our belief that true greatness in security can only be achieved through the integration of various expertise and technologies, working seamlessly as a unified entity.”

This is also reflected in the Chimera’s three core values as well: employee success, customer success and financial success.

The company is solidly on track with all three. Since 2021, the company has grown from one office to five; 13 employees to 52; purchased and opened a new headquarters and separate warehouse; acquired a cybersecurity company and offered it as a white label service to both manufacturers and fellow integrators; and is on route to grow its revenue by 900 percent since 2021 — all organically. This record, in addition to the company’s innovative approach to community engagement, hiring and technology are why Chimera Integrations has been named the 2024 SDM Systems Integrator of the Year.

Community & ‘Eulogy’ Values Drive Company Culture

The Chimera concept of “heads of many, body of one” carries through to its company culture, hiring and training practices as well. Chimera prides itself on its diversity of experience when it comes to its workforce.

“It’s huge for me when I interview people that I’m not just bringing in another tool for the toolbox or another cog in the machine,” White says. “I’m bringing in a bunch of intelligent people with different experiences that will not only add skills from their past, but also other things that are going to make this not only a highly skilled place to work, but a highly enjoyable place to work.”

In order to get that diversity, White and Stearns say they like to hire on “eulogy values” not “resume values.” In fact, White boasts that he throws resumes away, relying instead on other means of evaluating candidates. One of these metrics is a candidate’s passion about their community and what they do in their free time. As Stearns notes, “We work to live here, not live to work.”

It all starts with that initial hire, White explains. “You are trying to get the person on the other side of the table to understand that this is more than just a paycheck. It’s more than just a transaction. Typically when you find somebody that loves giving back to the community at their own expense of time, that’s a great start to finding somebody that’s going to mold well into our family.

“It’s very important for us to know that you are a good person more so than you are good at what you used to do at your old company,” White adds. “What is it that you like to do outside of work? I don’t think the right answer is ‘All I ever do is work.’ To me that's actually a red flag, despite the intention to appear hardworking. Because if you don’t have a life outside of work, what is it that you’re doing all the time? I think having the ability to have a good life and a happy life — whether that’s playing video games or whatever it is — and having a passion for something other than work says that you’re capable of having a passion at work.”

Stearns calls this hiring on gut, giving an example of one of his own unconventional hires. “I met a guy playing a game of pool and I jokingly cheated against him and then started talking to this guy and found out he had a great mind for tinkering and problem solving. He loved fixing cars in his free time. And his full-time job was ripping apart and selling the parts of computers and rebuilding computers.” Noting his knack for learning and just fixing things, Stearns had him come in for an interview and ultimately offered him a job. “He’s become one of our best technicians,” he says.

Another thing White is passionate about is not requiring a college degree, no matter what the position in the company.

“I don’t really see a lot of value in the four years I spent at college other than personal and social growth,” White says. “So if I go to school for a bachelor’s degree, and I ultimately don’t gain much from that, why would I be silly enough to assume that somebody who shows up with a bachelor’s degree knows anything more than the person who started in business right out of high school and was operating and balancing a checkbook and doing things that I wasn’t even able to do when I was in college? The skillset that we need isn’t taught in college. So what would be the purpose of hiring somebody or forcing somebody to have a degree just in order to show up and get a chance to show who they are?”

Beyond asking potential employees about their passions, White also asks another key question: “If you were to choose a not-for-profit of your choice that means something to you, what would it be?”

This question reflects the intense focus that Chimera puts on the community it serves. When an employee identifies a community service projects that is meaningful to them, they are then frequently put in charge of leading that initiative, White says. “I think anybody in the world can agree that when they give back to their community, it makes them feel good. And without this awesome community that we live in we wouldn’t have a business.”

For Stearns, his passion in giving back is to help other businesses, giving free classes to local businesses on skills such as marketing, process automation and workforce development. “I have a real soft spot for small business in general,” he explains. “I’m only where I am because of a mentor who was doing about $700 million a year in revenue and had no reason to talk to this 24-year-old punk that was doing $100,000 in revenue, and was covered in tattoos. He told me to fire all the consultants I hired and just started mentoring me. He’s still a very close friend of mine today.

“So, similarly, that’s my community service. I’ve got a couple classes coming up in October and November where I’m teaching small businesses the new age of technology for themselves and not as it pertains to Chimera at all. I’m talking about social media marketing.”

Other forms of community outreach pay more direct dividends, such as teaching and mentoring middle and high school students.

Ryan O’Donnell, Chimera’s sales manager, says the best way to find new technical talent is to look for it in all pockets of the community. “We’ve been participating in workforce development programs that start educating students as young as middle school. My colleague and I taught middle school kids how to terminate Cat 6 cable and we plugged it in and watched to see if they could pull up a camera as an activity.”

At the high school level, they are showing students a career path that doesn’t necessarily involve an investment in college, White adds. “We show them that right out of high school they could be making money and building a career for themselves that’s going to continue to grow and change over time.”

The program has led to several direct hires, Stearns adds. “We were teaching about technology and a woman in the school immediately referred her brother to us because he was similar to me and couldn’t fit the [college] mold. But he had the right mind so there was an immediate return on that investment.” Stearns is quick to say that is not the primary focus of the program, however.

Still, like most of their integrator peers, finding and attracting talent is a challenge and programs like this are a win-win for both the community and Chimera.

The non-traditional Chimera approach also extends to training, once a new employee is hired. The first part of onboarding includes challenging the new employee to learn a little bit from everyone, O’Donnell says. “We typically want to try and set up time between that new employee and every person at the company to help them understand, ‘Hey, who are my experts and who can I lean on if I have a question in this area?’

“Our training program is getting people experience both with the individuals they work with but also in the different aspects of the business. My first two weeks on the job here was spent in the field. I got hired to be a salesperson. I’m thinking I’m going to hit the phones as soon as I get here. Instead, Casey told me to strap my boots on to go out with our technicians and just understand what our guys are doing in the field. Then I came back and I spent a day learning how we procure items and what that process looks like. So I think making sure that each of our trainees gets the opportunity to not only meet the people they work with but understand what their task is and what their role is at the company gives them a better under idea of how everyone works together.”

Of course, as the company has grown, the need for more organized training has become apparent. A number of Chimera employees have multiple certifications from vendors and associations, but Stearns admits he “legitimately gave up trying to even name all of them,” when asked about specifics. That is something Thomas Quant, Northern manager and systems design engineer, has taken on as one of his responsibilities.

With nearly 40 years of experience working for security companies, Quant — the mutual friend who connected Justin and Casey — started working for Chimera in 2021, even as he plans for his retirement in a few years. This need to essentially train his own replacement got him thinking about a more formal plan for the company overall.

“Training for us is a pretty big deal,” he says. Usually the employee’s area of interest and goals will determine the training path for the individual. But Quant, with the help of his wife (who also worked with him at his former company) is developing a training matrix to organize and formalize the process. “We are putting that matrix together so, based on their passions — whether that is access control, video or fire — we will be able track it on an excel sheet.” Quant anticipates this will be available by the end of the year.

Customer Approach: The Case for Bleeding-Edge

There is a familiar saying in the security industry that customers want leading-edge not bleeding edge technology. Chimera frequently flips the script on that approach. In part, this is a natural outgrowth of Chimera’s origins.

“Our newness brings a fresh perspective and a willingness to embrace cutting-edge technologies and methodologies,” Stearns says. “We are not constrained by legacy systems or outdated practices, which allows us to innovate freely and adopt the latest advancements in security. This agility enables us to provide our clients with state-of-the-art solutions that are both effective and future-proof.”

White credits the company’s “start with zero customers” founding as allowing Chimera to pick and choose from the beginning. This was particularly useful for one type of technology Chimera set out to offer: cloud-based remote managed services.

“Every new client was set up in a way that we could remotely service them,” White explains. “I set us up in a way that allowed us to do more with fewer technicians on the road having to respond to minor software changes and little things that cost the customer a lot of money. From the start, we designed our security offerings to be managed remotely. Additionally, we benefited from emerging technology; unlike companies with 25 years of experience in analog systems, we entered the industry during the digital age. This meant we didn’t have to adapt from older technology, allowing us to focus on discovering and providing cutting-edge innovations to our customers..”

This kind of outside-the-box thinking does take a somewhat different approach to customer selling.

“We start most people with a site walk,” White says. “We’ll determine what they aim to achieve and understand their initial ideas about what they believe they need. Then that’s where things start taking a turn and where Chimera is a little different. We ask a lot of probing questions that don’t necessarily have anything to do with security. We ask about resources. We ask about traffic flow. We ask, ‘What is the single most expensive or biggest headache you deal with on a day-to-day basis regardless of what the origin is?’

“A long time ago I realized that security was always a bottom line hit that rarely provided a return on investment. So it was always the first thing cut when budgets were tight. I didn’t want to be a bottom line hit to somebody. I wanted to create value and I wanted to solve problems that would make what we do that much more desirable. So over time we crafted our message to ‘Let’s solve problems. Let’s create a return on investment so we can be more than just a cost to our customers.’ So I think that’s really what differentiates us a lot from who we compete with — the problem solving approach. And in order to do that we have to get other entities involved other than the maintenance and security directors; we try to have meetings and discussions with more of the stakeholders of the organization than you typically would see in a security meeting.”

Stearns credits Chimera’s strong presence in the community with helping convince potential customers to trust them when it comes to new technology.

“This is why I think the community work is so important philanthropically but also from just a business development perspective,” he says. “Our communities trust us and it’s not because of our marketing department. It’s because we’re part of the community and we do so much more than just sell widgets and install them. We’re on boards. We’re volunteers. They know that we’re going to take care of them because we show them in other ways how much we take care of them.”

This approach often also means offering a customer a risk-free demonstration, White adds. “We’ll go out at no cost to the customer and install one of our pieces of technology that we know is so good that it will exceed the customer’s expectations. When they are at a point where 90 percent of that risk is now mitigated, they are able to say, ‘I know I like it. I know I want more of it. And that has resulted in nearly a 100 percent close rates. Taking a little bit of cost up front to prove who we are and what we offer is a really easy way for us to take away that risk for the customer.”

Focusing on the bleeding edge isn’t without risks for Chimera, however. “If you were to come to our office today, you would see my desk covered in different new technologies that I’ve plugged into my network and have tested myself,” White says of the company’s vetting process. “We have a dedicated technical area with benches equipped with locks, cameras, and various other items that we test ourselves. This allows us to fully understand the functionality and performance of the products beyond what the salesperson has described.”

But even the most thorough vetting doesn’t prevent things sometimes going wrong. Chimera always seeks to sell solutions that could be turned into something else if the customer doesn’t like it, or if they stop paying a license fee it won’t become a paperweight, Stearns explains. And when all else fails, the company commits to make it right.

“I’ll tell you a story of us taking on a new technology and presenting it to a new customer,” White says. “We trusted the manufacturer’s claims and proceeded with the installation at a clinic specializing in elderly healthcare. We installed it per spec and started training them. They were having issues and we invited the manufacturer out to figure out what’s going on and they stated that the technology can’t work in a facility that has hard floors instead of carpeting. Now, we’re removing all the equipment and replacing it with a more reliable (and more costly) manufacturer. We’re covering the entire upgrade at no charge to the customer, despite the significant expense to Chimera. But that does not matter to us because we can’t sleep at night knowing we have an unhappy customer that didn’t get what they asked for.”

Keeping Their Foot on the Gas

With a mission to “create world-class solutions that bring synergy to all aspects of security, delivering the most holistic and comprehensive security solution available,” Chimera recently stepped into the cybersecurity space with the acquisition of a company it rebranded as AlchemyCore. This acquisition happened, Stearns said, “because Casey and I have our foot on the gas pedal.”

White adds, “We’ve embraced the role of a one-stop shop for our clients, and they appreciate the comprehensive services and creativity we provide. This approach not only strengthens our offerings and ensures our systems don’t contribute to potential cyber breaches, but it also allows us to safeguard the entire infrastructure of our customers through internal cybersecurity, external perimeter cameras, and access control. Adding these services as an extension of what we already provide was a logical step.” For more on this see the sidebar, “Turning a Threat Into an Asset.”

And that is just one way Chimera plans to keep moving forward at a fast pace. But first, the company needed a home base. With its rapid expansion over three years, incorporating several state-wide branch offices, White knew it was time for a permanent home — both for his business and for himself. After an impromptu trip back to New York that led to him finding a home to buy, White moved back to the state in August 2023 and simultaneously began looking for a property that could serve as the company’s official headquarters.

“We started as a small tattoo shop that we turned into a two-person office and we operated up to 10 people out of that office,” White recalls. “Eventually we were in three separate spaces in the same building having to walk outside and back inside a different door just to have a conversation with one of our own teammates. It became very frustrating for everybody working out of that space. So last year, when we discovered this large, open space where we could all have ample room, private areas for conversations, and the convenience of walking down the hall to speak with someone, it just created an unbelievable amount of camaraderie and efficiency. And quite honestly we’re just much more proud of this space because bringing in customers isn’t embarrassing anymore.”

So what is next for Chimera? White and Stearns don’t rule out more acquisitions, or expanding outside of New York, but they aren’t actively looking either.

“One of my skillsets — I would call it that but Justin would say the opposite — is the lack of planning,” White jokes. “I had no plans of having five offices at this point and I don’t have plans currently of brick and mortar offices outside of New York state; but I could get a phone call today where the opportunity was too hard to pass up and that answer can change at any moment.”

Stearns adds, “Our acquisition strategy is focused on complimenting/fortifying our existing capabilities and expanding our reach into new markets that in turn strengthen our overall market approach. Truthfully we don’t have a ratio in mind for organic versus acquisition growth. If our core values align and cashflow allows for it we will acquire new businesses as quickly as our lawyers will allow.”

White’s philosophy on success isn’t based on size or even profit, but on efficiency and happiness between customers and employees, he says.

“A lot of companies focus on profit but to us that doesn’t even reach the top 10,” White adds. “If we all work together to create a better place to work, provide a better offering and give back to the community, then everything will improve together. Rising tides lift all boats. So if we lead the business community by giving back and by creating an amazing place to work, we can inspire other industries and businesses to do the same. Our small company can make a significant impact by demonstrating that these practices lead to success.” SDM