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Bodyguard Careers is an informational site with the purpose of providing bodyguards with all the information and tools necessary to succeed in the executive protection industry.

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Important BG Goals for 2012

Doc Rogers, Featured Articles

By Doc Rogers

Here are a few tips for making 2012 a success both personally and professionally.

Help Others. Bodyguard Careers, the President; Harlan “Hucky” Austin and I feel it’s an honor and a pleasure to help others in the industry. It always makes us feel good to know that we are providing solid information to improve the personal and professional lives of our readers. We encourage all our readers to do the same.

You should help others in the industry with your time, EP experience and skills. A little assistance and advice goes a long way. The more you help others, the more kindness you will receive from others in the industry accordingly from the law of reciprocity.

Learn Something New. Make a promise to learn something new in the industry. This trade of ours’ calls for lifelong learning; if you are not learning you are rusting.  I’ve been in the industry 20 plus years and have my list of learning activities for 2012 include; learn a new language, write a new book and take a course in the scientific pursuit of stalking. What are your learning activities for 2012?

Keep Accountable. Accountability starts with writing down your personal and career goals and checking off the progress you have made on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.  This will make a huge difference in boosting your accountability for goal accomplishment.

Goal Achievement. Make your personal and professional goals realistic so you will have a good chance of achieving all of them. Stay ambitious, but break each of your goals down into small workable ones to help you reach them more easily and in a timely manner.  Keep safe and God speed.


 

5 Professional Observations in the BG Industry

Doc Rogers, Featured Articles

By Doc Rogers

2011 was an incredible year; Bodyguard Careers, the President Harlan “Hucky” Austin and I want to personally thank you all for your support and friendship.  We hope that you all accomplished great things in 2011 and that Bodyguard Careers was instrumental in your career growth.  Here are 5 professional observations gleaned from looking back from the previous year and forward to the new one ahead.

1.    Sacrifice. Nothing worthy within the BG industry ever comes without sacrifice.  The harder we work to improve our careers, the more we will reap the rewards and value the outcome.

2.    Keep Busy. Nothing good ever comes from standing still; get busy and do something every day towards your professional career development and toward its achievement.

3.    Strive for Excellence. Mediocrity is the enemy of greatness and acceptable is the foe of excellence. The sooner we understand these realities and go beyond these common parameters, the sooner we will achieve our greatest career growth and obtain the highest degree of professional satisfaction.

4.    Have a Plan. Many people in the BG industry dream of having a long list of clients and a successful career. But few are willing to make the proper plans to see their dreams come true. Make a plan and start following it to get positive and get lasting professional career results.

5.    Get Motivated. As professional BGs it’s our duty to keep motivated so that we can reach our professional goals, training, education, networking, career development, etc.  But we should also enjoy what we have in our life at present.  Start enjoying what you do now while you make professional plans for the future, this way our personal and professional life becomes worth living and we will become more productive.  Keep safe and God speed.


Clients Like to Work with BG Professionals

Doc Rogers, Featured Articles

By Doc Rogers

Whether you’re guarding a top CEO or A-list Hollywood actor it’s the same story; clients, their chief of staff or their managers don’t like amateurs or problems.  They want to work with professionals.

They want you to show up on time, be dressed appropriately and act professionally. Not only treating the principal with respect, but also treating the rest of the staff well.

Prior to getting to this stage step back and take a good close look at yourself. How professional do you come across?  Before you go to the BG interview you need to know with certainly.

The BG industry is very unforgiving. Take the time to smooth out any rough edges you may have and enhance your resume. Make sure your resume and cover letter screams “I am much better trained than the other guys, experienced, more professional, more dependable”.

If your goal is to make it to the top of the BG industry, it has to begin by becoming highly professional at this moment. Before anybody interviews you or chooses to hire you for a BG assignment. You need to decide immediately that it’s something you want enough to be willing to make the effort to really be prepared when the time comes.

Once you get that call that asks if you’re able for a BG assignment, it’ll be too late to start getting ready. They say in the industry you haven’t really reached the point of being worthy of the title “professional” until you welcome constructive criticism.

And you aren’t really ready to grow and become successful if you have a chip on your shoulder. Now is the time to establish yourself as a professional.

To become more professional put your ego aside and get down to business.  Learn to take constructive criticism well; it aims to show you that the purpose of something is better served by an alternate approach or that the same goal could be better attained taking a different route.

Learn from this type of criticism. Polish your resume and cover letter and get additional BG training to fill in any skill gaps you may have. This way once that big moment comes along, you’ll be ready. Best of luck and God speed.

Is Being a Freelance BG the Right Choice for You?

Doc Rogers, Featured Articles

 

By Doc Rogers

If you’re eager to put in the work promoting, marketing and selling your BG services, then the freelance BG route may be the right way for you to go. But you have to be willing to do the work. BG skill is important, as well is ambition. But if skill and ambition were all it took, then every graduate BG coming out of the academy would be making a full-time living as a professional BG.

To turn the freelance BG route into a career requires work.  It’s called the BG industry for a reason, because before there can be any bodyguarding, there has to be a client. You have to be able to effectively retain clients to generate BG assignments and revenue. You have to wear two hats; one as a professional BG and the other as a businessman thinking about the business side of things.

If you work for a corporation as a BG employee this does not come into the picture. If you decide to go it alone as a freelance BG, you are the one who has to make sure that the bills get paid and you have money to put food on the table. The freelance BG route takes commitment and a whole lot of work. But it is incredibly satisfying. If this sounds interesting to you, then you should take control of your BG career and get busy as a freelancer.

Become the best freelance BG you can be and then continue to get better. Keep your freelance BG goals in sight and keep heading in that direction. Take a few minutes to write down your and start progressing towards your ultimate goal. Having professional goals will give you a direction to head for and a way to get back on course if you head towards a roadblock.

Like any business, it takes time to put together your BG services, develop your clientele and start making some money. If you’re willing to work hard, invest your profits back into your freelance BG business you’ll reach your goals much faster. Only you can decide if being a freelance BG is the right choice for you.  Best of luck and God speed.


I Need a Job now! Finding work in Executive Protection

Bodyguard Careers Staff, Featured Articles

How to get a Job now
Bodyguard Salary

I need a job now please help me!

So you need a job now! Well, this article is about finding work in the executive protection industry. Having executive protection training and experience are assets that would enable you to do your job right. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the nature of the beast is that you are faced with an enormous amount of competitors targeting a very select market. Allow me to give you an example that perhaps will help you see this point from a different perspective.

For the sake of the argument let’s say that you are in a room with two hundred other people the same gender as you and you are all dressed the same way; remember, your physical appearance doesn’t matter and you all possess the same or very similar qualifications, experience, and executive protection training.

From a distance, you all look the same; the question is how you will make the potential employer pick you over everybody else? Sure, you can be the court jester, start jumping around yelling “pick me, pick me.” Realistically that approach will not get you the job, so making a fool out of yourself is not recommended.

I need a job now in Executive Protection.

What you need is to understand that the niche of executive protection employers you are targeting is specialized and has very specific needs. It’s your job, and yours only to find work. If your idea of executive protection job hunting is that the employer will come and knock on your door while you are in your pajamas at home browsing the internet, tweeting how you spent your night or playing Farmville games on Facebook, you are severely deceived.

The reality is that it is up to you, and only you to make yourself available, find and utilize resources to get you where you are envisioning yourself to be. There is no genie that will jump out of the oil lamp and will inform you that you have three wishes available at your disposal. In other words, you need a plan.

Having orientation as to where you are and where you are heading is a vital factor to your success. By now you understand that nobody will take you by the hand and place you in the job site; you are in terms with the fact that you have a lot of work ahead of you. Great! That’s half the battle right there.

Then what? You will hear many people in several different industries talking about networking. Indeed networking is a vital component of your plan. Now you say, “That’s all fine and dandy, but how do I contact people?” Here’s where your executive protection research of resources and reading material comes handy. You made an excellent decision to read this article on executive protection which will get you started in the right direction. Is that enough? I will let you answer this question on your own later. In the meanwhile, let’s go back to our plan.

Earlier I gave you a scenario that you are in the same room with two hundred other people that look exactly like you. How do you differentiate yourself? The only way to make you stand out from the crowd is to be creative. You have to think outside of the box in order to attract positive attention to your executive protection skills, your intelligence, and make the employer offer YOU the job and not any one of the other one hundred and ninety-nine candidates.

The most boring part of your job hunting experience, but yet another vital took to your professional survival is writing that “killer” resume and cover letter that will get you the interview. Yes it is a tedious process to write resumes, but its part of the process and undeniably you
have to be able to represent yourself as best you can via a sheet of A4 size paper.

Employers will see your resume before they see you, remember that! Your resume should give them a good reason to invite you for an interview and your creativity should not stop now. Be professional, attentive to the slightest of details, and always keep in mind that your goal is to impress them before you even get there.

Then comes the deal breaker moment: the interview. Adequate research of your employer, an advance perhaps about your employer will speak volumes about you. You care enough to do your research prior to getting to the interview.

Picture this scenario: You arrive for an interview with a CEO of a major financial institution. The media has reported stories that he is followed by a stalker. The first “official” interview question is: “What do you know about me or the company I represent?” If your answer is, “not much really,” you might as well show yourself out the door because you just failed your interview miserably. The moral of the story: arrive at your interview prepared.

Use social media to keep up with information about potential employers, networking opportunities, celebrities, and high-end executive gossip. I know it sounds silly to read the tabloids, but think about it: if the paparazzi know about a potential threat of a celebrity you are soliciting your services to, you better know as well. After all, those celebrities are your future clientele.

Finally, use executive protection recruiters to help you get in touch with employment opportunities. Leave no stone left unturned; if you don’t ask the right people the right questions, you will never get the right answers and chances are you will spend more time looking for work than actually working. So here’s a parting bit of advice, do the work, and success is guaranteed.

The Thinking Man’s Bodyguard

Doc Rogers, Featured Articles, Featured Bloggers



By Doc Rogers

Although we may be called bodyguards we utilize our mind more often on the job for client protection than actual physical action.  As professional executive protection specialist we need rational judgment and intelligent to be “a thinking man’s protection specialist.  Here are some recommendations to achieve this goal.

1.    Remain cool under pressure and always businesslike.

2.    Realize the value of your experience; be willing to give advice to the team. Be a ready point of contact.

3.    Assemble a team of well trained, organized, and equipped BGs for your mission.

4.    Employ BG tactics that suits your means and operational area. Become a master of the basic BG techniques and procedures.

5.    BG operations should be planned in detail and based upon careful reconnaissance and up-to-date intelligence.

6.    No route or venue is one hundred percent secure therefore; precautionary measures must always be taken in advance and security must be maintained at all times.

7.    The use of motorcade route maps showing the location of chokepoints in an area is a valuable aid in motorcade planning therefore; make a detailed motorcade route map study.

8.    Brief and rehearse all BGs on their individual responsibilities and duties at arrival and departure points as well as in the event of ambush.

9.    Keep cautious of people watching your BG team, attempting to predict the movements or activities of your client. Stay alert and vary BG formations.

10.    While on BG assignments keep vigilant and ready to react with your BG skills.

11.    You are responsible for your official BG and personal actions. Keep discreet; do not attract attention by rude or unusual behavior. Reflect upon yourself and the BG team with respect at all times.

Stay focused, positive and take action. Visualize goals daily and strive to become a top-notch BG and a capable operator.  Your success will ultimately depend on the effectiveness training, determination and the proper use of the mind. Keep safe and God speed.

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