Provo-based Vivint CEO becomes an ‘Undercover Boss’

When Todd Pedersen was approached about appearing on "Undercover Boss," he thought he was being punked.

"I thought they were joking around, to tell you the truth," said Pedersen, the founder and CEO of Vivint Inc. "And they said, 'No, we're serious. Are you willing to do it?'

"I had to think about it a bit, mainly because I don't like being on camera."

Not that Pedersen, who co-founded (with Keith Nelleson) the residential security and home technology company in 1999, is shy. He's a Type A personality who has built the Provo-based company from 10 employees to more than 7,000 — with another 2,500-plus in Vivint Solar, a solar-energy company.

And he decided that going undercover and meeting some of those employees while, at the same time, promoting Vivint was worth it.

"I thought through it a bit and thought, 'That's an interesting situation to be able to go out and work directly with employees in the field that I never really would have the time to do,' " Pedersen said. "It was super intriguing."

The format of "Undercover Boss" is relatively simple. The head of a company — in this case, Pedersen — is disguised and presented to various employees as someone who is applying for a job. (It's not explained on air, but some sort of story is concocted to explain the presence of a camera crew.)

Pedersen undertook a variety of positions — from dealing with paperwork to climbing up on a steep roof during an installation — and, like all of the CEOs, struggled with the tasks at hand.

"Some of the jobs I did, honestly, you have to be very professional and very quick mentally and very trained, and yet keep your calmness about you when you're interacting with customers in different situations," said Pedersen, who admits he found it "pretty difficult. I mean, there are a few things that maybe I was pretty decent at, and others that it took a bit of time to understand. And there were a few jobs that it would have taken me, seriously, weeks to become decent at. Not great, but just decent.

"And it made me really appreciate how great the employees are at Vivint and how hard they work and how important their jobs are to the success of the business."

Pedersen wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth; he didn't have trust-fund money to start the company. He dropped out of college to start the company, originally called APX Alarm Security Solutions.

Yes, he sold the company for $2 billion in 2012, but he knows what it's like to be a working man. He acknowledged it's impossible for the CEO of a company to keep in close contact with the employees when there are nearly 10,000 of them and the company operates in 97 percent of the ZIP codes in America, all but one of the Canadian provinces and New Zealand.

"It's easy to get so busy that you forget there are jobs being done that can be overlooked a bit," he said.

"And being around people that are just trying to do the best job possible — even in spite of the fact that there are things or processes that we have that maybe weren't perfectly thought through to the Nth degree — and yet the employees just have the biggest hearts and the best intentions and the willingness to do their best every single day, it's amazing. It was really fun."

It was also transformative for the company. Several times while he was shooting the episode, Pedersen got the other executives of Vivint together on a conference call to "talk through" situations he encountered on the job and ways to improve things for the employees. Not major issues, but ""small things to make people's jobs easier, and then feel happier doing their jobs and more appreciated by the company."

The payoff to each episode of "Undercover Boss" comes in the final segment, when the employees featured earlier in the hour are introduced to Pedersen without his disguise and he addresses their individual issues. That's hush-hush until the episode airs, but the CEO readily admitted it was emotional for him — and that he wishes he could have done more for more employees.

"Here's the tough thing. We interacted with a very few people in the company, and there are a lot of people with a lot of circumstances," he said. "And you can't just solve all of them, for sure. You can't fix everyone's problems financially. But it was amazing in those circumstances. The people we were able to help — honestly, they deserved it."

He also admits he's a bit anxious to see the finished product when it airs on Friday, but however it turns out, he has no regrets.

"This is great for the company because we'll get, hopefully, some good media attention and press," he said. "But the reality is it was great for the organization because those are the moments that help you make decisions going forward, at least if you learn from it as an executive.

"Honestly, I would suggest anyone that's running a company of any size that's gotten the executives — the CEO, the founder — away from the core of their company's employee base, to go out and spend time like I did. It was awesome."

spierce@sltrib.com

Twitter: @ScottDPierce

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On TV

"Undercover Boss" airs Friday at 7 p.m. on CBS/Ch. 2.