For PI agencies and PIs
Detective agencies and private detectives
After retirement I was immediately offered the chief of security position at a medium sized bank. I sat there a little less than a year before realizing - this isn’t for me! I can’t wear out the seat of my pants just pushing buttons on my computer. The truth is, I can't live without fieldwork, like a pilot can't live without getting up in the air. Investigations are my life. No matter how good a salary is, money is not the main thing, the main thing is to do in life what the Lord has laid out for you. So I put in my paperwork and struck out on my own, deciding to open up my own detective agency. I’d kept my connections with key authorities, and I considered myself still capable of many things. So after I got the private detective license, I started working. But everything turned out to be not so simple. In short, to do this, it's not enough to be a good detective.
How do you get cases? You need to create your own website, promote it, advertise it. To be a designer, a marketer, a programmer, a journalist, a…... And I don't understand anything at all about this. Advertising ate my money, more than my clients brought in.
How do you talk to customers? There's a whole science to it. And I’m not commercial, I don't have the instincts for it. The first couple of times I did everything for free, or for a nominal fee; I didn’t have the heart to ask for the right price.
How do you work without a badge? In the service you always represent the state. You can show up anywhere, flash your credentials, and then you're allowed to go where you want and get what you need. In private investigation everything is different. I had no badge to get me where I needed to go, and it seemed that there was tape stretched out in front of me everywhere I went. Working in these conditions was incomprehensible.
It turned out that everything in the field of detective services was far from simple. But I have a wife, children, grandchildren. I needed to help out, not just live on. It was at this difficult moment for me that I got acquainted with the management of the "Legion" agency. Actually, to be honest, I went to meet with them without hoping that they could help me out at all. In this field of work there are either scam artists who maintain clientele by pulling the wool over their eyes, or retired agents who don’t cheat people and are forced out of business because of it. But these guys were different. Their work is well established. The staff is big, but friendly. Iron discipline. People come to work from a wide range of spheres: journalists, psychologists, lawyers ...
And of course the basis are agents, as I myself am. They offered me a trial task: find a man who fled to another city to avoid paying off his debts. I felt like a fish back in water. In less than three days, I brought his address in to the office, with a picture of the guy in his driveway. From there they gave me more tasks, and I delivered. They paid. And the pay was good, and it was on time. And before I knew it I had a desk in their office and I become one of them, and I couldn’t be more satisfied. Now I do what I love and I am well compensated for it.
