Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Security Guard Built a 8000 Monthly Side Hustle in Physical Security Consulting
Transcript
- Lucas: So this episode, I want to talk about a side hustle that surprised me. A guy named Marcus worked as a security guard for a big retail chain for about four years. He was on the night shift, walking through empty stores, checking locks, alarms, cameras. And he realized something: most small businesses — the kind he was guarding — had terrible security setups after hours. Luna: What do you mean, terrible? Like, doors unlocked? Lucas: Exactly that, and worse. He'd find back doors propped open, cameras pointed at blank walls, alarm codes taped to the keypad. Things that would make any security pro cringe. And it wasn't just one store — it was every location he worked at. So he started thinking, if I could offer a simple audit service for small businesses, I could fix this and make money on the side. Luna: Okay, so what did he do first? He's working full-time, night shifts. How does he even start? Lucas: He started small. He created a one-page checklist of the most common physical security gaps he saw. Things like door hinge alignment, lock strike plate screws, camera blind spots, lighting coverage in parking lots. It wasn't fancy — just a Google Doc with bullet points. Then he offered to do a free walkthrough for a local laundromat that he noticed had a broken gate every night. Luna: And the owner said yes? Lucas: He did, because it was free. Marcus spent about 45 minutes walking the property, took photos, and then typed up a two-page report with five recommendations. The owner implemented three of them — cost him maybe $200 in hardware. A month later, the laundromat had zero break-ins after averaging one a month. The owner was thrilled and paid Marcus $300 for the audit. That was his first client. Luna: So the proof of concept was a break-in reduction. That's powerful. How did he get from that one client to eight thousand a month? Lucas: He refined his process. After that first job, he built a proper audit template. He started charging $500 per audit for small businesses — laundromats, convenience stores, liquor stores. He did about ten of those in his first three months, mostly by word of mouth from the laundromat owner. Then he realized the bigger opportunity wasn't individual stores, it was small chains. Think a regional gas station chain with twenty locations. If you audit all of them, that's ten thousand dollars of work. Luna: Right, so he moved from B2C to B2B. Did he have to change his pitch? Lucas: Completely. For individual owners, he pitched peace of mind. For chains, he pitched loss prevention and insurance savings. He did a two-store pilot for a five-store convenience store chain. After the pilot, he showed them that the fixes paid for themselves in reduced theft within three months. They signed him for all five stores at $600 each. Luna: That's the kind of math that sells. So he's doing this after his night shifts? How does he find the time? Lucas: That's the thing — he scheduled his audits during his day. He was off by 7 a.m., so he'd do a site visit at 8 a.m., write up the report in the afternoon, sleep, then go back to his guard shift at 11 p.m. He kept his full-time job for nearly 18 months because the side hustle income was growing but not yet stable. By month 12, he was averaging $6,000 a month. At month 18, he hit $8,000 and quit his security job. Luna: Wow. And he built that entirely on a skill he learned on the job. I mean, he wasn't a certified security consultant — he was a guard who paid attention. That's really inspiring. Lucas: Exactly. And honestly, that's the kind of thing that makes this show worth doing. If today's episode helped you think about your own job differently — maybe you see a gap you could fill — then it was worth a coffee to you. And if so, you can find the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to keep this ad-free. And we appreciate it. But back to Marcus — what was the biggest challenge he faced scaling? Lucas: Consistency. Every location is different. He had to resist the urge to just copy-paste reports. The value was in the specifics — pointing out that the camera at the back door of store #3 was angled wrong because of a new shelving unit. That kind of detail. He trained himself to spend at least 30 minutes at each site, no matter what. And he built a simple CRM in Airtable to track follow-ups. Luna: So the key was not scaling by cutting corners, but by systematizing the quality. Did he ever consider selling his checklist or template as a product? Lucas: He did. Actually, about a year in, he created a digital toolkit — the audit checklist, the report template, a pricing guide — and sold it for $97. That brought in another $1,500 a month passively. But his main focus stayed on the consulting. The toolkit just gave him a way to help people who couldn't afford a full audit. Luna: That's smart. So his revenue mix ended up being about 80% consulting, 20% digital products. What's he doing now? Lucas: He's been full-time for about a year now. He has a roster of about 15 regular chain clients and does maybe 8 to 10 audits a month. He also subcontracts to two other former guards he trained. They do the site visits, he reviews the reports. He's scaled to about $15,000 a month gross, but he pays them $500 per audit, so net is around $11,000. Luna: So he went from a security guard to running a small security consulting firm. All because he noticed a gap on his night shift. I love that. Lucas: Yeah, and the key takeaway for listeners is: you don't need a fancy certification to start. You need a specific observation — something you see every day that others miss — and the willingness to offer a small, free fix. That's how Marcus got his first client. That's how anyone could start. Luna: What would you say to someone listening who works a job where they see waste or inefficiency every day, but they think 'that's just how it is'? Lucas: I'd say: write it down. For one week, keep a log of every small inefficiency you notice. Then ask yourself: if someone paid me $100 to fix this, could I? If the answer is yes, you have a side hustle idea. Marcus's first fix was literally 'replace the screws on the door strike plate' — a three-dollar fix that took five minutes. People pay for that because they don't know what they don't know. Luna: That's such a good point. So the first step is just noticing. Alright, next episode, we're going to talk about a former landscaper who built a side hustle in green roof consulting. That should be a good one. Lucas: Looking forward to it. Thanks for listening, everyone.