6 min read · Written by Grant Rayner on 15 Feb 2023
Share by emailThere are a host of different benefits to setting up your own company as an independent security professional. In this article, I’ll break these benefits down into two aspects: professional and personal. You’ll find in practice that professional and personal benefits overlap to a degree. Any tangible benefit in your professional life is likely to also have a corresponding benefit in your personal life.
I’ll also share my own motivations for setting out alone, which may be useful as you assess your own motivations.
Professional benefits
Let’s look at the professional benefits first. As an independent security professional, you should be able to realise the following benefits:
Looking at this list, it should be evident that you’re going to have a high level of job satisfaction just by working in areas you enjoy with clients you actually like. Most security professionals don’t have this luxury. In fact, the vast majority of people working in companies in any role don’t have this luxury.
Let’s now turn to the personal benefits.
In addition to professional benefits, there are also a number of important personal benefits associated with working as an independent security professional. Here’s the main benefits:
Of course, I’m sure there are many more personal benefits to setting up your own company as an independent security professional. A lot of these benefits will come down to what you want out of your life.
In my experience, what these benefits boil down to is control over your time and energy. There’s nothing more valuable than that.
I’ll discuss my own motivations shortly. Before that, it’s worth highlighting a few issues you should factor into your decision-making process.
For people who are accustomed to a relatively structured work environment, the sudden loss of structure can be disorientating and can lead to a drop in performance. While it may seem nice in theory to have this new found autonomy and independence, in practice, it can work against you. Once you’re in a situation where you can literally do anything you like, you may find it difficult to know exactly what to do. If you’re not careful, you may find yourself in a state of ‘paralysis’. I’ll be addressing this challenge in future articles.
It’s important to remember that we become aware of our potential at different times in our careers. It’s easy, particularly if you’re in a relatively high-paying corporate security role, just to continue. There’s a degree of inertia in these roles that’s difficult to escape from. However, I’d urge you to do an occasional check in with yourself to assess your own motivations for staying. At some point, your argument for leaving will be stronger than your argument for staying.
Or not. It will depend on your motivations and appetite for risk.
What are my motivations? What made me set off on the path of becoming an independent security professional?
Initially, my motivations for setting off alone could be described as ‘artistic freedom’. I wanted an opportunity to explore areas of specific interest to me as a professional.
Following from the points listed above, I didn’t want to continue to deliver projects that I didn’t enjoy, for clients that I didn’t really enjoy working with. As I built my experience, I became more aware of how I was spending my time. Of course, while working in a larger company, I didn’t have the luxury of picking and choosing which projects I worked on. These companies took on everything offered to them. In fact, I’d suggest they took on work they’re not best placed to deliver (it’s very hard to reject work, particularly if that drives your client to a competitor). Over time, and as my level of competency and experience developed, I found myself working on relatively basic projects that weren’t aligned with my interests and didn’t really advance my professional capabilities.
As my career and life progressed, I also wanted control over my time. It’s incredibly disruptive to be told “you need to be in [insert random city] tomorrow”. It was exciting in the beginning to get these types of projects (and a great way to build experience), but the excitement quickly wears off once you realise you simply can’t plan personal activities just in case you’re not available when needed. While I still do the occasional piece of short-notice work, it’s rare and I make a conscious decision to accept that work, balancing personal and professional commitments. It’s now a choice.
In short, I wanted a level of control and autonomy that I couldn’t realistically expect to have if working for a larger security consulting company.
In addition to the points above, there’s a few other key factors that influenced my decision-making process.
One aspect that I’ve always struggled with is the idea of working for someone else. Effectively, I’m committing my life (time = life) to someone else’s success in return for a salary and the occasional pat on the back. I’ve never been entirely comfortable with this dynamic. Over time, I also found myself increasingly dissatisfied with the idea that other people or companies are benefiting from my ideas and innovations.
I have to be honest and say that I don’t particularly like corporate life (either in a large consulting firm or in a traditional company). I’m somewhat allergic to administration and corporate life is full of what I view to be non-critical activities. Aside from administration, I find corporate politics to be tiresome and neither interesting or motivational.
I also don’t like to ask permission to do things. I want to have full control over the products and services I deliver. I want to be able to work on anything I want, wherever I want, without needing to get approval or agreement from anyone else.
Aside from job context, there are other motivations. A central motivation that has driven me for my entire adult life my desire to help people. Travel security, security evacuations and crisis management provide me with the means to help people at scale.
At the same time, I also want to lead a generally adventurous life.
And it certainly has been an adventure.
Perhaps a little too much adventure at times.
So, that’s why I made the move.
Maybe some of my motivations will resonate with you?
It’s difficult to know when to take the leap and leave the relative safety of a full-time position for the somewhat less safe life of an independent security professional. When is the right time?
This is a question I’ll be addressing in more detail in later posts. For me, I found I got to the point where I was being paid (significantly) less than the value I was bringing to the company I was working for at the time. Value in this context was a combination of my skill set and experience, plus the revenue I was bringing into the company. At the same time, I came to the realisation that I wasn’t reliant on support from the company to achieve these results. I was selling and delivering services within my region without support (aside from paying my salary and processing my expenses). These statements aren’t mean to be critical of the company I was with at the time. Most companies are the same.
In any case, there was a clear point in time when I realised that I had all the necessary skills and experience to be successful on my own terms. Once I reached this realisation, it felt as though the easier path forward was to leave the company.
I may be completely wrong here, but I’ve always believed that people are drawn to the security field because they have a fundamental urge to help others. That’s why we do what we do, which can often involve considerable risks to our safety.
Remember this point when you’re designing your company. While you should certainly be aiming to build a profitable and sustainable business, what you’re doing can’t just be about the money. That’s not enough to get you out of bed in the morning. Instead, it’s about who you help, the benefits to your health and wellbeing, and the additional time you’re able to spend with your family.
So, there’s a long list of reasons why you should go out alone and set up your own company. Given there are so many advantages, why isn’t everyone doing it?
In the next article, I’ll provide some fairly compelling reasons not to set out on your own as an independent security professional.