IAM2669 – CEO Helps Law Enforcement Agencies Administer Extra Duty Programs

Rich Milliman, the CEO of Extra Duty Solutions, co-founded the company with Adam Brian after recognizing a significant inefficiency in how law enforcement agencies administered their extra duty programs. Before starting the company, Rich's professional background included working as a management consultant for McKinsey and Company, where he learned the principle of over-serving clients by delivering X plus 10% more. He also held roles in portfolio marketing and operations at Bank One's credit card unit and ran several emerging and mid-sized business services firms. His later experience included playing an active role in operational risk, security, and back-office operations at the world's largest hedge fund, where he became acquainted with the concept of using extra duty officers for various security needs, which sparked the business idea.

Shifting Focus: From Corporate Clients to Law Enforcement

The initial idea for Extra Duty Solutions was to serve the corporate side by acting as a one-stop shop for large companies, like Walmart, to hire officers across multiple jurisdictions, replacing the need to call 300 different police departments. However, in the beginning, while calling police departments for clients, Rich and his partner soon realized that the police departments were the ones with the greater need. Government agencies often weren't properly staffed to handle the administrative burden or think through the financial risks of these extra duty programs. This led the company to shift gears and exit the corporate market to work exclusively with law enforcement agencies, helping them by administering the entire extra duty program, eliminating administrative work, and taking on the financial risk.

Core Philosophy and CEO Responsibility

Rich defines his “secret sauce” as a combination of being the first mover in this niche market, with nearly 70 departments served, consistently over-serving his clients by giving 110% of what's expected, and maintaining a singular focus on law enforcement, which avoids conflicts of interest. He believes his core business philosophy for success is driven by a focus on what he's passionate about and advises aspiring entrepreneurs to be honest about the immense responsibility that comes with being a CEO. He views being a CEO as working for and being relied upon by all the people who work for you, as their livelihoods are dependent on the CEO's decisions.

Website: https://extradutysolutions.com/

Twitter- @extradutysolved
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/ExtraDutySolutions
YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDwZkwY_5k4Fh_oaW8ObxVA
Instagram- @extradutysolutions
LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/extra-duty-solutions
LinkedIn (Rich)- https://www.linkedin.com/in/richmilliman/

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Transcription:

Rich Milliman (00:00)

You hear a lot of people say I want to be an entrepreneur or I want to be a CEO. And I've always, when I've somebody has come up to me and said that, I've always said, you know, you should really be saying is I want to take on tremendous responsibility and work on a higher wire without a net.

Gresham Harkless (00:45

) Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I Am CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Rich Milliman of Extra Duty Solutions. Rich, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Rich Milliman (00:54)

Nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless (00:56)

No problem. Super excited to have you on and what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Rich so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing and and Rich is the CEO of Extra Duty Solutions, a service that helps law enforcement agencies administer their extra duty programs. Rich's professional background includes focuses on business services and operations. After serving as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company, Rich ran a portfolio marketing and operations at Bank One's credit card unit. He then ran several emerging and mid sized business services firms for a European family office. Prior to co founding Extra Duty Solutions, Rich played an active role in operational risk, security and back office operations at the world's largest hedge fund. Before Extra Duty Solutions, no service specifically helped law enforcement agencies with their Extra duty programs. In 2015, Rich realized that there was an inefficiency in the way extra duty was being administered and started Extra Duty Solutions with his colleague Adam Bryant. It has grown to be the largest extra duty service company in the United States and is now active in over 60 departments across the these services include handling client interaction, scheduling, client invoicing and collections officer payment feedback, all aspects of the Extra Duty program Administration Law enforcement agencies maintain control of all management decisions associated with their program. Extra Duty does the work and eliminates the financial risk. Are you ready to speak to the IMCO communityRich?

Rich Milliman (02:21)

I am

Gresham Harkless (02:22)

Awesome. Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I know I touched on it a little bit in your bio, but I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to get started.

Rich Milliman (02:29)

Sure. So, as you mentioned before, Extra Duty Solutions, my partner Adam and I worked at a large financial services firm. He was in physical security. I was head of parts of risk, operational risk, and physical security and operational risk tend to work together a lot. And so we used to utilize extra duty officers for various security needs that we had in different cities. That was where I actually became acquainted with the concept of extra duty. When we left the organization, we realized there's really, as you mentioned, an inefficiency in the market. If you're the head of chief security officer at Walmart and you want to hire officers in 300 Walmarts around the country on Saturday night, you have to call 300 different police departments. So we thought, well, we'll be the one stop shop. Walmart just calls us and then we'll deal with it. And so that's how we started in 2015. We started on what we call the corporate side, and we had a lot of large corporate clients. And in the beginning, we didn't have a large staff yet. So it was really myself and a few other folks that were calling police departments. And it was there we realized that the police departments have a need, a large corporation, they can throw money at problems. When you're a government agency, you really can't do that. So they weren't properly staffed, handle the administrative burden, or think through the financial risks that come with these types of programs. So we shifted gears and started working more with the law enforcement agencies, helping them, and exited the corporate market. So we only work with law enforcement agencies now. But that's how. That's how we got into this Business.

Gresham Harkless (04:10)

Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate that. And I definitely appreciate, you know, I think a lot of times when, you know, someone wants to start a business or start an organization, always looking and looking and looking, you know, for a reason to start it. But a lot of times you, I think, and you can definitely correct me if you feel the same way, that a lot of the best businesses are solving some type of problem, and they're usually sometimes right in front of our face or something. That's sometimes Frustrating.

Rich Milliman (04:33)

Usually if you just open your eyes, you know, what makes you kick your chair, what makes you frustrated, what annoys you. And if you really think through that, you come back with one or two things. Either a really good comedy sketch or an idea for a Business.

Gresham Harkless (04:47)

Exactly. One or the other. He's busy laughing, so I know you touched on it a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit more on like, exactly what extra duty Solutions is and serving Clients.

Rich Milliman (05:00)

So let me tell you a little bit about what extra duty is because a lot of people aren't real familiar with it. So a lot of times, you know, if you're a law abiding citizen, a lot of times when you see police, they're working in what's called an extra duty capacity. This is also called off duty or secondary employment. So if you go to a movie theater and Saturday night and there's a uniformed officer there, or if you're driving down the highway, there's a construction site and Verizon is ripping up the road and putting in pipes and there's a cruiser there with an officer. Those officers are working what is called extra duty. So at that moment in time, they're being paid by the movie theater chain or Verizon to be there to provide security or be there in case something goes wrong for public safety. Those programs called extra duty programs that police department and sheriff's organizations have can be very burdensome on the organization. So you have vendors or customers, as they're called, calling the organization and asking, what are the rates and how do I hire somebody and what do I need to do? Or it's raining this morning. I'm not going to do my job today because it involved outdoor work. I'm going to do it tomorrow. I need to shift everything to tomorrow or you know, it's Black Friday. I need four officers instead of just so there's a lot of interaction. Then you have to schedule the officers, you know, who's not working active duty, who's able to work, who wants to work. You have to figure out the rates. There's a lot of times, financial considerations, you have to pay the officers now because they work, but the customer doesn't pay for three weeks or three months or whatever. You have to go chase down bad debts. I mean, you're doing a lot of work basically running a security firm inside an agency. And so what we do is we eliminate that whole administrative burden for the agency and take over all the financial risk. We eliminate that and we eliminate some of the legal risk too. And we just make it a much smoother interaction between the corporations or the individuals trying to hire the officers and the department itself, but all the while leaving the decision making the management of the program. You will, if you will, with the department. We're administering it, we're doing all the work, we're taking all the risk, but the department is still managing the program. They decide the rules, they decide how should the details be divvied. Up amongst the officers. What should the rates be? We're just doing all the work. We work for Them.

Gresham Harkless (07:25)

Right. I definitely appreciate that. And I know that there's kind of like this phrase, I think it's used more for individuals, but kind of like a zone of genius. And I think that a lot of times it sounds like what you're doing is also helping organizations have and work in their zones of geniuses, the things that they do best so they don't have to worry about all those different aspects. Because like you said, sometimes when you're doing, you know, 70 different things, when you really know you do one or two things well, you're one or two things aren't as well done because you're stretched in doing so many Things.

Rich Milliman (07:56)

Yeah, that. And the other issue too is, is, you know, there's this notion of pushing tasks down to the lowest level that they can be done at in an organization. So you don't want the chairman of the board doing the typing. Right. You know, nobody goes into law enforcement so they can answer the phone and answer questions from customers to how much is it to hire two officers or change a road job from today to tomorrow. It's not while you go into that field. So, you know, we, we sort of pitched it as like, you guys do what you do and we'll do what we do and it works out well for Everybody.

Gresham Harkless (08:28)

Yeah, it creates that win, win, win Situation.

Rich Milliman (08:30)

Right, right.

Gresham Harkless (08:32)

Right. Nice. And, and you might have already kind of touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And it could be for you personally or it could be for your organization, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you Unique?

Rich Milliman (08:42)

Well, I think one thing, as you pointed out, we kind of started this industry so we were first. So that there's always a bit of a first mover advantage. Yeah. And you know, we, our first department in law enforcement started with us in January 2016 and now three and a half years later, we have almost 70 departments and the word we're the biggest one in this, in this field. And as a result of that, the word of mouth gets around and you get some, you know, you get some win behind the sales a little bit. So we have that advantage. I think the other thing, you know, you mentioned, I was at McKinsey & Co. And one of the things I learned there earlier in my career is when you're serving a client, you serve them 110%. So if the client is expecting X, give X + 10%. More. Right. And we. We try to carry that through into what we do here. And we. We routinely get a lot of accolades from our departments that we serve because we try to overserve them. You know, when we're asked for references, we give all 70 departments, we call them all. We get two or three, call everybody, call into the department, call the patrolman. You know, so we try to overserve. And so there, you know, there's a huge benefit to overserving. There's a cost to it, too. But that cost plays out in the long run because you're keeping your customers happier and that generates more customers and so on. I think a third secret sauce is this is all we do. Right. So we're not doing something else during the day and doing this at night. We're not serving both the corporate side, as we used to serve, and the law enforcement side. We're not trying to play both sides of the fence. All we do is work for law enforcement agencies and serve their best interest. So we're never kind of conflicted. Right. And then finally, when we do, do try to expand or go into something new, it's highly related to what we're doing. So we had a software company that built all of our scheduling software that we use, and we bought that company. And they also have what's called active duty scheduling software. So now we can offer that too. And if you need one, you need the other. So. So we, you know, I see a lot of companies that try to buy other companies and expand, and usually it doesn't work out that well or as well as you thought. So we try to be very, very careful about that and stick to Our knitting.

Gresham Harkless (10:55)

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And it kind of goes to. I guess, I don't know if this is the correct financial term, but kind of building a moat where you have different aspects of your company, you have your core competency, and then you start to add on related things. And as you start to add on more and more those things, your secret sauce, so to speak, gets even bigger and larger and you can do even more. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective And efficient.

Rich Milliman (11:24)

I try to do what I'm passionate about. Right. And I've learned early on. Right. I mean, in. In life, you compete against people. You go to school, and only. Only so many kids get A's. Only so many kids get into Harvard. Only so many kids get jobs at Goldman Sachs. You know, it's, you're competing, right? So if you're com. If everybody's competing, you, you have certain grades, you have certain educational background, you have a certain drive. You are who you are. You're competing against people who are equal to you. The one with who's more passionate will win at the end of the day because they have a big Leg up.

Gresham Harkless (11:55)

Nice. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger Business self?

Rich Milliman (12:05)

That's a good one. You know, a lot of people, you hear a lot of people say, I want to be an entrepreneur or I want to be CEO. And I've always, when I've, somebody's come up to me and said that, I've always said, you know, you should really be saying is I want to take on tremendous responsibility and work on a high wire without a net. Because that's what I mean, it sounds, it's seductive, right? It sounds cool. It sounds like, hey, this is something where I can make a ton of money and not work for anybody else, man. Between here and there, there's a lot of walking on a high wire without debt. And you, tremendous responsibility. And you got nobody above you to reach up to and say, help me out on this one. Right? So again, I come back to this theme. It's within you, is that's not right for everybody. You know, that's, that's right for some people. And if it's right for you and you can think of a good idea and you can go for it, then God bless you. It's a great, it's a great thing. But you got to be honest with yourself about do you really want to take on that level of responsibility without a net? Because you know, when you fall, you can use one person that I spoke to one time, he had a physical retail outlet and he said, oh, I don't take two big vacations because if I did, I come back and the store would be gone. All right, so you want that level of responsibility. If you work for Amazon, you take a two week vacation, you Come back, your job's there,

Gresham Harkless (13:24)

and Amazon's still there too. Absolutely. Absolutely. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote unquote CEOs on this show, and I know you touched on this, but, Rich, what does being a CEO means?

Rich Milliman (13:39)

being a CEO means that you're really working for a lot of other people, right? So people think of a CEO, you're the top and you don't have a boss and all that, but reality. You're working for everybody who works for you, right? So as a CEO, if you screw the whole thing up, other people are dependent upon you, right. For, you know, to pay their mortgages and to afford food and so on. Right? So if you make some really bad decisions and have to lay off 20 people, well, those people were dependent upon you. So in a sense, you're working for that right now. I realize that's cliche a little bit, but it really is true. And I think you realize it when you are a CEO and you have a staff of people. I come in every morning and I see people are here before me and they're working. That's when it really strikes me that they're not here for their house. And if I do something really insane or careless, reckless, risk taking, you know, it can end up bad for them. So in a sense, you know, they're relying upon me and I'm working for them. And to me, that's really what it means. There's all the good stuff. There's, you know, there's all the, you know, nobody. If I. If I want to come in late, I don't have to report to anybody, right? If I want to make a business decision, I don't have to ask anybody else. And there's all that. The benefit. Right. But at the end of the day, there's tremendous responsibility, and that responsibility outweighs a lot of the other things. In terms of what do I think about most. You know, I don't think about most all the fun and sexy and seductive stuff about being a CEO. I think about the responsibility Of it.

Gresham Harkless (15:19)

Yeah, absolutely. I think that makes perfect sense. And they're understanding, you know, that clients and customers and some people have investors, and all those people are all, you know, kind of entrenched in everything you do, every decision that you make. So understanding that that is an incredible responsibility. And, you know, every decision that you make, you should just, like, you bounce it off. Is it in line with what and who you are? Also, is it in line with, you know, helping everybody else out? So I think that is incredible, kind of holistic definition to what being a CEO is, and I definitely.

Rich Milliman (15:49)

Appreciate that. Yeah, no, I appreciate it, too. It's been fun talking About this.

Gresham Harkless (15:53)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Rich, I definitely appreciate you and appreciate your time. I wanted to pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and then of course how best they can get out Of you.

Rich Milliman (16:04)

Oh yeah. Well it's been great talking to you and we're online at extradutysolutions.com all1word.com and if anybody wants to email and ask questions, the best way is info@extradutysolutions.com.

Gresham Harkless (16:23)

Awesome. Awesome, awesome. We'll make sure to have those links and that information in the show notes as well so that everybody can follow up with you guys, see all the awesome things that you're doing. Again, I appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of The day.

Rich Milliman (16:33)

Thanks. It's been a pleasure being.