Breaking Through Stagnant Growth with a Customer-Centric, Process-Driven Approach | WYE?

Today’s episode explores the transformation of a legacy business in the fire protection industry, a sector that is highly regulated, fiercely competitive, and faces ongoing price pressure and low barriers to entry. Perhaps some of you can relate. This is also an industry where many companies experience long periods of stagnant growth or workflow. It’s not because demand disappears, but because differentiation erodes and internal complexity quietly increases.

Our conversation is with Shawn Mullen, President and Chief Energy Officer at Protex Central. The company has been serving mission-critical facilities for 60 years. When Shawn took the helm in 2017, the company’s revenue trajectory was flat. Essentially, a parked car in an industry where standing still means falling behind. What’s especially interesting is that the market itself was growing; yet Protex Central wasn’t. That gap between market opportunity and company performance became the catalyst for change.

Fast forward to 2025: revenues have doubled, margins are up, and project overruns are down. Let’s find out how Shawn accomplished these results.

Shawn, welcome to What’s Your Edge?

Industry Challenge: Why Growth Stalls in Mature Markets

Let’s begin by framing the fire protection industry. The U.S. Fire Protection System Market is set to grow from USD 25.94 billion in 2024 to USD 32.26 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 3.60%. Even so, it is considered an established industry marked by intense competition, thin margins, and constant regulatory scrutiny.

This combination often creates a false sense of momentum, where the market grows, but individual companies struggle to translate that growth into improved performance. Shawn, when you took over Protex Central in 2017, what did you see as the biggest challenges? Was there a specific moment or insight that made you realize the company needed a fundamentally new approach?

Laura, thanks for the opportunity to visit with you and your listeners today.  It truly is an honor.  When I bought the majority interest from my dad, I had been with the company for over 32 years.

We all knew our single biggest challenge was sales.  But no one on the leadership team, at that time, had a solution to move us forward.  For too long, our corporate mindset was “we wanted what we got” instead of “going and getting what we wanted.”

At that time, I didn’t know how I was going reverse that mindset, but I knew this:  I must get outside of my current echo-chamber and expose