From Operator to Owner

The real numbers behind launching a protection company, and the one assumption that turns a great operator into an exhausted one.

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In December 2024, a single shooting outside a Manhattan hotel changed the math for thousands of operators. The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson put executive protection on the agenda of every board that had been treating it as optional, and the demand line has not come back down. In the most recent ASIS executive protection survey, 42 percent of security professionals said EP is getting significantly more emphasis than two years ago, and the market for protective services is growing at a steady clip. For the operator who has spent ten years on someone else's detail, the temptation is obvious: stop renting out your own day rate and build the company that rents out everyone else's.

The temptation is right. The execution is where most people break. This piece is the financial and operational reality of that jump, written for the operator thinking about it and the founder already one or two years in and wondering why they have less free time than they did as an employee. We put hard numbers on what it actually costs to open the doors, what a protection company can charge and keep, and the specific point in the first year where undercapitalized firms quietly run out of cash and fold. We name the mistake that sinks more new security businesses than any contract loss, and we map the difference between owning a company and owning yourself a harder job.

Inside:

Plus: a downloadable year-one operating model that turns all of it into your own numbers: startup cash, pricing, and the month your cash flow turns positive.