Episode 16 – From Law Enforcement to Global Influence: A Security Leader’s Journey

Welcome to Executive Checkpoint, the live podcast for security professionals. Each week, we explore industry trends, challenges, and insights with leading experts. This is your insider access to the minds driving change in our industry.

Welcome to Executive Checkpoint, where security professionals connect, learn, and lead. I'm your host, Tino Urbina, and today's guest is someone who has literally helped shape our foundational industry. Chuck Andrews— Chuck Andrews, apologies— has done all from law enforcement, corporate security, global consulting, take advising, and he's been in the industry for a little over 40 years. I'll let him tell you the story about that, uh, you know, like getting and leading our industry and connecting worldwide. You might know him as the founder of Friends of Chalk, or as many of us recognize nowadays, as a global influencer. And it's been a great honor to have him, uh, over in the show to to connect, mentor, and guide us through his journey. Chuck, welcome to the show.

Glad you're here. And, uh, let's see.

There we go. There we go.

Hey, good, good to see you, Tino. Glad to be on the show. Glad to be here. Been traveling in London and Ireland. Just got back after a month book-long signing ASIS International's European Conference as well as United Kingdom's Home Office, Department of Homeland Security Policing and Security Conference.

So it's been busy.

The industry has really been busy. I'm happy to be here and be a part of your show. I'm a big fan, always enjoy learning and listening to your guests on the show, and thank you for having me today.

Absolutely. So, you know, I'm sure most people know your, your, your background, but for the few that might be joining the industry early on, can you expand, tell us a little bit about your beginnings, where you started, and What's Chuck's history?

So it's a— I'll give you the short version. So there's so much. We have time, so you can. So I guess technically I've been hanging around the law enforcement security industry, starting in law enforcement and then, you know, natural organic migration into the security industry with a period of time of overlapping and doing both of those things. back in the '70s. I started as a law enforcement police explorer. A lot of people know this story but don't, but exploring is a division of the Boy Scouts of America. You have Boy Scouts.

Okay.

I was a Cub Scout and then a Webelo, and then the next one is, you know, you actually become a Boy Scout. That didn't appeal to me when I found out about career awareness-focused training In what's called the branch of exploring. And literally it's career-focused. And a friend of mine, Pete, was going down the road on his bicycle, his Schwinn bicycle one day. I think I was 13 years old. And I said, Pete, where are you going? He goes, I'm going to the police station. I said, well, what did you do wrong?

That was how it was.

Yeah, it's like, you know, If you say police, right, it has this natural attachment or connotation to something negative. He goes, no, no, no, I'm going to a Police Explorer meeting. I said, come here, what is that? He told me about it. He goes, you get to wear a uniform and your Sam Brown belt and handcuffs and go out on patrol with police and you get to learn and hang out with the cops. I said, oh. So I went inside, told my mom. She goes, no, that's for juvenile delinquents. I go, no, no, Mom, it's not for juvenile delinquents. I laid out my best business case to her. She threw me in the wood panel station wagon, Country Squire, and drove me to the police station and dropped me off. And the rest is history. So for the next 6 years, I rode around in a police car and I was a big kid. So back then in the '70s and early '80s, as a law enforcement police explorer, if you were bigger than the cops, The rules, just to say, of rules of engagement were much more lenient. So the cops would tell you, get out of the car and help me, right? So a lot of fights and helped arrest a lot of people. And there's actually a law in the state of Texas under the Texas Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure that says— it's called disobedience to a peace officer. So we kind of naturally leverage that. You're riding shotgun, the officer says, come help me. If I don't, he could take me to jail.

So how old were you at that time? A teenager?

Yeah, as a teenager, right? I did this until I was 18, 19 years old. Logged 4,000 hours in a police car, made homicide scenes, sexual assaults, aggravated robberies, domestic violence fatalities, suicides. I got to see it all. So I started very early. You know, a lot of— we talk about mental health and law enforcement and PTSD and that kind of thing. I attribute my time as a law enforcement explorer being indoctrinated at such a young impressionable age as maybe helping curtail all that because I've never experienced PTSD or any mental health issues. But I have a lot of colleagues, even colleagues who have committed suicide as a result of the pressures of the industry. And so I never experienced that. So I attribute that to my time as an explorer and having officers that helped me understand the business and how to work with people and that kind of thing. And I became a commissioned officer. I think I was 19 years old. It was the last year you could do that, that young under what was referred to as TCLOSE. It's an acronym, Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education. Now it's called TCOLE. And so I think this is my 41st year as a Texas Master Peace Officer. I maintain my government credentials in Texas. As long as an agency carries your credentials, then you can carry your gun and enforce laws in the state of Texas. There's no distinction between full-time paid officers and full-time non-paid officers. Same responsibilities. You just have to follow departmental policy, and it's good for the community, right? For people like me. I go down to Home Depot when shopping crime occurs. I can legally intervene, effect an arrest, and/or use the necessary force in a violent situation to help protect the community. There's lots of us whose agencies carry our legal credentials and continue to do that. I continue to do that in the public service of the community. It also keeps me tied in with the law enforcement community. Uh, as well, which is a huge part of our industry, right?

A lot of— there's always a transition, seems to me, from law enforcement into, um, security. Security. So, uh, where did you carry— I mean, what, what was the last portion of your career? You, you obviously as a teenager, then patrol.

Yeah, so I worked patrol operations, but the majority of my career, I mean, I, you know, I got to be a, a, um, You know, a sergeant and, you know, command rank. And then most of my career is spent in crime prevention, and that's what got me into security.

I see.

I went to Colorado and did my law enforcement career, left Texas law enforcement, and had the opportunity to become the director of crime prevention there to oversee everything crime prevention. And that was in the heydays in the '80s and '90s when we had community policing. Right? Crime prevention through environmental design, neighborhood watch operation ID, operation identification, marking your Social Security number, McGruff the Crime Dog, D.A.R.E. program, great program, on and on. We got to do all this stuff and I got to coordinate that with the community. Well, you can't work with the business community if you don't understand their problems. We call it crime and law enforcement. They called it loss prevention or shrinkage. or hot checks. That's what— that's right, right, what it was. So I had to get involved. So in order to do a better job of serving the business community as a law enforcement official, as the crime prevention director for the police department, I needed to learn their language, their problems, their issues, and from a security perspective. So the Denver Mile High chapter of ASIS International was the first one I joined, and I'm— as a police officer In Colorado, I got my CPP back, right, back in the '80s and needed to understand. So that was my transition. And then while I was in law enforcement in Colorado, I started understanding the problems of the retail community, the banking community, financial crimes and fraud and credit card fraud, and then crimes that were occurring in the parking lots. All these issues that we address as risk Right around assets of a company. So I had an opportunity for one company that wanted to hire me and said, hey, would you come help us in the pawn shop industry? It's kind of weird. And they hired me and I actually worked for them for a long time. They paid me very well. And I became their fraction— we say fractional, acting like part-time security director while I was working in law enforcement. So in law enforcement, you can work off-duty jobs in uniform.

I only—

One off-duty job for 10 years with the University of Colorado Police Department with the CU football team. I did that for 10 years, got to go to one of the Orange Bowls. When we played Notre Dame and worked security there, that was a uniform position. Otherwise, I was starting this thing called consulting.

It was brand new back then, right?

There's the answer to your question. There's the transition. So I got to run in parallel and do some really cool stuff. If you know my personality, I don't mind asking and, and, and I'm all about getting stuff done to a point sometimes where I find myself in trouble. Uh, I did have a couple of internal affairs investigations about my aggressiveness about getting things done, but I, I came out okay.

Nice.

But that's something you have to push the envelope, right? It's part of it. So I got to do a ton of stuff as a law enforcement officer in the security industry, to answer your question.

Great. Well, let me ask you, so taking that experience, how, how did your mind, uh, your mindset change into more strategic, uh, consultancy? Because obviously you're talking about getting things done, but obviously as a consultant, right?

Sorry about that. Yeah, Chuck Bobblehead has a tendency to show. I told you not now. This is ISC West coming up next week. You'll have plenty of time.

We will see you in the United States, I'm sure, right?

Yeah, yeah, I'll be there, be there April 1st. We'll have a, we'll have a little event at Gilly's getting some networking, some— I call it security, epic security networking, right? An opportunity, right, to power network with, with people. Sorry, I want to go back to your question. Chuck Bobblehead, very rude and interrupted our interview. I apologize for that. He's now contained. Uh, what were you saying again, Tino? I'm so sorry.

You're good. So, well, let me ask you, so, you know, shifting a little bit, you, you mentioned wearing a lot of different hats. Uh, you know, having that experience, how that shifted your mindset to your strategy from, you know, being a doer hands-on to basically designing and being a consultant for a corporation?

Yes, it was easy for me, and let me tell you why. And when I explain it, it'll become very clear to you and your viewers. Remember, I was a crime prevention officer. It made complete sense to me to focus on prevention of crimes because in law enforcement we're really good about being ex post facto. Somebody's dead, we show up, it's a crime scene. We're so enthralled with crime scenes that we have five TV shows called CSI. It's like right or 48 hours. You got 48 hours to find your suspect and make probable cause arrest. I mean, we're so enamored, but they're dead.

This is bad.

So my whole life as a crime prevention officer shifted. It's like all our energy, all our focus, all our tools, all our training needs to be focused in law enforcement. That's how I feel about it today in prevention, because we're really good at responding with tactical team and working a crime scene, right? So you got to get super creative using technology today. I'm a huge advocate of that. But that— how did security came into all this? Because they look at it— we look at it as crime, they look at it as risk, right? And they want to prevent shrinkage, right? Retail theft, loss prevention. Organized retail crime wasn't even a thing back then, right? Now it's been huge for years. So we need to address it. So that brought out in me that transition on to think How we can prevent it cost-effectively. And that's, that's what we do in the security industry is address risk with a methodology and a process and contingencies and policies and good practices and standards and yada, yada, yada. Right. Effectively at a great cost by actually moving the needle. And I'm big on that. Right. The friends of Chuck mantra. Right. Dream big. Why dream small, right? Have a great time at anything that you do, right? And get shit done.

There you go. Well, and let me ask you, you were just named the number 1 global security influencer. Uh, let's talk about that for a second. What does influence really mean to you, and how do you feel you're driving that message in a positive way?

So there's a responsibility that comes with that. I mean, I didn't know they were going to do this. I had no idea. This was like, I don't know, 2 or 3, 4 years ago when they came out with this designation. It was flattering. It's nice. I've been doing my Friends of Chuck thing. I've always been, you know, here to help people. I spend 33% of my time working on helping other people, other initiatives, 501s, career mentoring. Uh, coaching, helping someone find a job. That's why I built Friends of Chuck, right? And, and that's my organic way in a model that I think is lifelong and, and with good credibility. And that's, that's why, that's why I built that. It's very, you know, very specific to that.

And, you know, we talked about a couple of times of Friends of Chuck, but, uh, I don't know if, um, many of us know the actual story of the foundation of Friends of Chuck, how the idea came about. And tell us a little more about what, what it means from individuals to companies.

So it really— so the way it started was in here in Houston, we would meet up on a monthly basis, all the movers and shakers, chief security officers. And I was the chief security officer at the time. And we would get together, have dinner, and solve the world's problems. Well, everybody would go out, you know, the month, travel, do their thing. When they would come back in and we would sit down and have dinner, someone would say, Chuck, I was in Dubai and I was in a bar at 1 o'clock in the morning, Texas time. And they would text me or something and say, I'd have a conversation with somebody. And like, like this really happened. This is one of the things that they would say. And hey, hey, I'm from Houston. And the guy sitting next to him would say, oh, hey, you know that Chuck Andrews guy, the one with the hat? That guy, you know that guy? And I got asked about this every month wherever people travel because my hat is something that's indelible and memorable, right, with people. And then you add my Texas personality to that and people don't forget me, right? So that's how it kind of started. So at the table, a friend of mine, Mike, goes, hey man, you got so many friends, Chuck. Friends Truck. And then another guy, Frank, says, hey, we always call our boss because he has so many people, Friends of Frank. You should do Friends of Truck. So literally it bore out of that dinner meeting. And then within 48 hours, the logo that you see, my friend Mike came up with, his son designed the logo and said, you gotta do something with this because this is a great way for networking, sharing information, getting things done, you know, all of this stuff that I kind of built a mantra around. So that's how it happened.

That's great. And so it sounds to me that it's a way also to influence the industry, right, in a positive way. And what else did you guys do? I mean, is it primarily a networking relationship and growing the industry with networking, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So it's an informal network. It's not like other security associations where they charge you a fee. I didn't want any of that to play into this at all. I wanted it to be informal and approachable and where everyone would benefit, even competitors, by helping people with relationships, you know, doing the right thing, engaging with people. So every— my life is about connecting people. With successful people and successful projects, finding them a job, helping them find a job. You know, it's been, and it's been really amazing. The journey has been really amazing because when you have a grown man that's 60 years old who can't find a job in security and they call you on the phone and they're embarrassed to call you on the phone, this is the humanity piece of it. And they're crying on the phone. And because they can't send their kids to college, can't pay their bills, they've lost their position in our own little security culture and society. And this is, you know, very meaningful to them. And then you help them find that job, though, you know, you're just doing the right thing.

Right.

And you have a friend for life. And so, yeah, yeah, it, it, it, it really, it really is. And I have lots of, lots of stories like that, Tino, over—

Well, I think, I think, you know, to this day, I believe a lot of people find networking a mystery in our industry. And so if you were to give one piece of advice to someone either that has a long career in this, in this industry, like The fellow that you described that was neat, what are the, what are the things that they should be looking to do as far as networking, connecting with others? I mean, we have different associations, events, but from, from an expert networker, what would you say is the biggest draw, drive, and benefit of networking?

So a couple ways to answer that. Number one, so here's the simplest: you want to win, show up. It's hard work. Right? Only 20% of the people ever show up, and then when they get there, they don't have a strategy. They have no intel and they have no relationships. You're going to build on that as you get there. So you got to show up, right? You physically have to show up. I'm still old school in that respect, right? I still have business cards and I still utilize business cards. On my wall here are like 20,000 business cards, literally. On this 15-foot ceiling in my podcast room. So there's a reminder about the relationships. So that's that is the one piece of advice I would tell you: want to win? Show up.

That's that's it's hard work, right?

Listen, people invent products and intellectual property, and they start this, and they come up with great ideas, and. They find a new relationship. That's when the work begins. And the book that I wrote, Yes Sir, talks about maintenance. The work is in maintenance. Humans, businesses, everybody fails at maintenance. If you— and I figured out maintenance a long time ago. My dad worked in maintenance, so I grew up under that culture and expectation. He was an engineer. So maintenance is the hardest thing to do.

It's expensive.

There's operating discipline that has to take place in that, requires contingencies. And I would tell people, man, maintenance, maintenance, maintenance.

You—

it's hard. I have, I have 200,000 names in the, in the Friends of Truck World, right? Literally one degree of separation. I have to maintain those, all their information.

Mm-hmm.

It is a whole lot of work. The work only starts when you begin the new relationship. Those are my—

it's only growing right now. It's global now. You haven't extended that, that networking event in London.

Yeah, no, seriously, I have 18 companies that want me to help them, and I only get involved in things as a rule— and this is some wisdom I will impart— only get involved in things where you can bring value. Not, not get out of this mind frame just to make money, but you have to bring value, and that value has to be real and perceived both on the part of the person writing you a check to do the things that you need them to do.

Right.

So I've built a very nice business model, and that I, that I like. It allows me to travel the world with my wife and do the things that I want to do.

But I'm so happy about that.

Listen, in Texas, let me tell you, as an entrepreneur— and that's what I am, and I'm a business guy, security guy, I'm a cop, I'm an operating discipline management guy, I'm a technology guy— it is hard work. You get to eat what you kill, bottom line. And this isn't— this doing— listen, I work for the government. I was a chief security officer and then I went on my own. There are huge risks, but the day that I left, I was flying high and now I'm flying higher in this space because I work hard. I don't work less than 60 hours a week.

Heavy discipline, right? Maintenance, right? You were talking about that. Well, let me ask you, security tech is moving real fast from AI to automation analytics. What's your take? What's, what's coming down the pipe? that you feel is gonna have the largest influence in our industry?

Yeah, that's easy. 2 letters. One starts with the beginning of the alphabet and the other one is down the road. AI, artificial intelligence, which I'm heavily invested in right now. You are going to see some crazy things from friends that Chuck launched. I'm gonna say in before GSX for sure. ASIS GSX in New Orleans. Um, that are going to be mind-blowing. The world is already starting to experience, have experienced, and it will only get worse. That tool will be used in so much fraud and misuse and misrepresentation. You will not be able to discern what you see visually and what you hear audibly, right? And so the problem is, is people will be making decisions based on intentional false or fraudulent information.

Right.

The bad guys are going to want— this is going to be a huge problem that needs to be addressed through software and cognitive review. So I'm working on that, let's just say, as well as outside of the security industry. It's a, it's a, it's a great It's going to be a great tool if you know what you're doing.

That's fantastic. Now, having that shift from global links, having these conversations internationally, what do you think are the gaps or opportunities for an international collaboration in security?

Well, this is one of the reasons I was in Europe for a month. You want to win, you got to show up. You have to build personal relationships with people in other countries, other languages, and other cultures. You can't Zoom your way to success or Google Meet your way to success. Depending on what you're doing, obviously COVID force-majored all of us to build those relationships. But if you want to really have that collaborative effort, you have to actually go there and meet the people, understand the product services and the collaboration from a network perspective. Look, look at what's going on in Germany and Russia and Ukraine, all these countries. And this is going to be a volatile another 3 and a half years in our country and maybe going forward forever. So the security industry is going to be called upon in a very big way to help mitigate some of these risks. I mean, like, look, the United Kingdom, you— it's, it's, it's not a visa, but I think it's called something like an EEOS. You have to file, right, to go over, and you have to register yourself. And apparently it's been that way in the U.S. if the folks from the UK wanted to come over here. You're going to see more regular regulation more requirements. I think you're at a high level of accountabilities. So, you know, a year from now, I think it might be harder, you know, for folks to get together. But the security industry is going to be called up to help out, right, along with every country's respective government to address risk and terrorism and threats, right, to their particular communities.

Um, yeah, it's pretty quick. Well, let me ask you, and, and, you know, you have, you know, 40-plus years in the industry. Um, looking at yourself when you were younger, what would be the one advice you will give to people just getting in the industry, maybe in that transition from law enforcement to the corporate side? What will be the thing that the advice you will give Those incoming transitions from law enforcement to security.

Sure.

A couple of things. One, you need to find a mentor in the security industry. And I would tell people, if you know, if you know you're going to retire with— so the last 3 years of your service, you need to go join different organizations and associations in the security business, start learning the nomenclature. Language expectations and understanding that world. And the only way you can do that— show up. You want to win? Show up. Go to the meetings, go to the network events, go get some certifications from these various security associations, and get yourself indoctrinated into the world that you want to go into before you leave the world. I did it for like 15 to 18 years. I worked in security as a law enforcement person. So there really was very little transition for me when I— because I did all those things. I was fortunate to have a chief of police that allowed me to do that without conflict of interest. And that's usually what happens in departmental policy.

A little planning and learning the language, right? Learning the lingo.

Before you leave, right? And change— look, if you're in law enforcement, And you're allowed to do off-duty work, go do it in the security industry so you understand, right, what post orders are, protocols are, what the laws are. Texas Private Security Board, the TPSB, regulated by the Texas Department of Public Safety. You need to understand the rules, uh, before you leave law enforcement, and you will expedite yourself to a new W-2 in the corporate world very easily.

Yeah, I mean, get paid while you're at it, right?

Yeah, exactly. I tell them this all the time.

I think this has been a powerful conversation about mentorship, networking, working hard. You know, I think there's a lot of soundbites that we, we're going to be able to share later on, but I genuinely want to thank you for being with us today and continue the good work. And our side will, you know, make sure that if someone wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way before we go?

So I tell people LinkedIn is usually the very best way to find me. You can send me a message. My email is available on there, very specific to LinkedIn. It's a great tool. I've been using it since day one. It's a very powerful, very powerful tool. And, um, and then yeah, people can reach out or through my book, Yes Sir, on Amazon. You can find me. I'm, I'm easy to find, Tino.

As we know. Yes, sir. Appreciate it. Well, again, thank you so much for your time today. It was great. Time just disappeared real quick. All right, so for everyone else, we thank you for watching the show. Uh, leave your comments, uh, like and share. Until next time, stay informed and stay secure, and we'll see you at the next checkpoint. Thank you, Chuck.

You're welcome.