Levi Rock turned a three-week COVID layoff into Red Seal Fire Protection, growing from a solo sprinkler fitter to 17 employees in five years. He joins Drew to talk service-first growth, 48-hour deficiency turnarounds, a recurring-revenue membership model, and using social media to educate his market and recruit his next techs.
Levi Rock got laid off for three weeks when COVID hit, and it changed how he thought about job security. In 2020 he started Red Seal Fire Protection in Windsor, Ontario, and grew it to 17 employees in five years by keeping it simple: show up when you say you will, turn reports and deficiency quotes around within 48 hours, and get out of the way so customers never have to think about their fire protection.
In this episode, Levi joins Drew Slocum to talk about building a service-first fire protection business. They cover the recurring-revenue membership model behind it, why he says no to most new-installation work, how Red Seal uses social media to educate property managers and recruit fitters, and how Inspect Point replaced their PDF forms with consistent, faster reporting. They also get into the gap between NFPA 25 and the Ontario Fire Code, why contractors and AHJs need to communicate more, and why human expertise still beats generic AI on fire code.
Episode #95. The Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:31 Welcome and why Levi's on the show
02:56 From sprinkler fitter to founder during COVID
07:50 The edge: speed, communication, 48-hour turnarounds
11:30 Moving off PDF forms to Inspect Point
13:35 Capturing asset data to power AI tools
15:42 The membership model and predictable budgets
20:02 Marketing fire protection and recruiting techs
23:32 The AI content problem and fire code accuracy
25:54 The fire protection education gap and training AHJs
28:34 NFPA 25 vs the Ontario Fire Code (and ULC 536/537)
33:11 Training the next generation
34:13 What's next for Red Seal
37:19 Wrap-up