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Advice for finding work in Executive Protection

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of mentorships for current and retired law enforcement officers looking to transition into private sector executive protection roles. This is primarily due to my position as the head of the Law Enforcement/Military Liaison committee in the ASIS Executive Protection Community, of which our very own Jerry Heying is the Chair of that community. Also, it’s because I’ve made that transition myself. After spending almost 27 years working for the California Highway Patrol, I was lucky enough to retire and almost immediately find a job as a corporate executive protection manager. A lot of my former colleagues, nearing retirement, reach out to me for advice, which I happily do. I do it for LEO, Military, my fellow NLA members, or any decent person that is considering this line of work. We need good people in this business.

Here’s the advice I share. I believe it’s universally applicable to all candidates, not just LEO or Military.

Find Your Way

I always wanted to be a policeman (law enforcement officer was not even a title back then). I had all the cop toys and guns, watched all the cop tv shows, played cops and robbers with my friends. I never wavered. Never wanted to be anything else. All that changed on November 22, 1963.

I was 7. The whole world changed that day. Our President had been assassinated. I watched every one of the 3 or 4 tv stations we had back then flipped the channels by hand. I was devastated and fascinated by the whole thing. I learned what a Secret Service agent was and what they did and decided that was the kind of cop I wanted to be. I knew they were cops because their cars had red lights.

Mindset is Everything

Starting with a personal experience that changed how I look at networking and building your resume. I took a volunteer assignment back in 2010 with Black Ice Security in the Virginia area. They have been supporting the GI Film Festival for years providing volunteer pro bono EP support. I was working in the Indiana area for a Healthcare company and had wrapped up and headed to Washington DC to support the Film Festival. People were like you drove from where! Shortly after that detail I was asked to provide support for worst environmental disaster our country has ever seen. When they asked for additional staffing support for that detail and if I knew anyone who would be good guess where I went? I asked 2 agents from the pro bono detail I had just worked. Both agents were assigned to that team for almost 2 years. Working that pro bono assignment changed how I look at everything in my field today when it comes to developing your network.

Change the way you view defensive tactics training

When I developed the Protection Response Tactics Program for the Executive Protection Institute, I focused on creating techniques to learn and concepts and tools specifically designed to be applied in the environments and situations faced by personal protection agents. My goal was to be able to provide students with a new way to look at protection situations, a way to train concepts, and a way of evaluating the information they get in the future. One of the best ways to do that is not to look at techniques from different martial arts systems but to break down physical interactions to their most basic concepts and components. When developing programs like PRT, I must study the rules and environment that the client works in, then filter through my knowledge and experience to expand the program. I’ve been studying martial arts for over 40 years. I’ve developed my own system for learning and exploring the science of fighting and utilizing filters to run new information through throughout the years. Today I am going to share one of those filters with you, 360 Degrees of Destructive Force.