"Passion and timing have to be just right" with Taylor Smith
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Taylor Smith is the Co-Founder and Vice President of Guardian Defense. She oversees and is responsible for the daily operations of the company. Taylor has a background in mental health services and has a true passion for any programs that enhance youth’s lives, and improve the safety of others. She holds a BS in Psychology and an MA in Cross-Disciplinary Studies from Nova Southeastern University.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
While working on my master’s degree, I was hired for my first career job as a mental health counselor at a non-profit organization in South Florida. I served as a therapeutic counselor in an after-school program for low-income children. After being promoted to a team leader, my colleague and I oversaw 12 different sites that served youth who met at least one of the following qualifiers: at-risk, physical disabilities, and/or mental health diagnoses. During this time, I continued to provide mental health services, while managing the counselors and various aspects of the grant.
When I gave birth to my first child, I decided to leave my job. This decision was intended to be temporary. When my son was a few months old, I began interviewing in the non-profit field. Discouraged with justifying the pay for the time away from my son, I abandoned my search and settled into a stay-at-home mom. This ended up being one of the best blessings in my life, as I realized just how grateful I was to be able to experience this.
A few months after my second son was born, a tragedy hit our nation. The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School took place on December 14, 2012. This is where the early concepts of Guardian Defense began.
What inspired you to start your business?
The Sandy Hook tragedy changed my husband, Steve’s, and my life. We watched the news unfold on the TV for hours and were horrified at the thought of innocent first-graders being executed at the hands of a deranged individual. We tried to wrap our heads around it. The “why?”. The “how?”. To us, it was a level of evil, unlike anything we could process. We felt for that community. And as parents, selfishly, we knew our infant and toddler would be in the school system before we knew it. I remember vividly Steve turning to me and telling me that something needed to be done in our schools. He said he would create a program to help teachers learn what to do if a gunman entered the school. As a law enforcement officer, he knew he had the tactical training needed. He also had previously taken a special interest in this type of threat and had studied prior incidents, like the Beslan School Massacre in Russia in 2004. He knew he could take concepts he has learned as an officer, his experiences, and his passion as a father and community member, to create a tangible program for civilians to understand and implement. When Steve put action behind his words, I knew he was on to something meaningful. After implementing the program to several schools within the city that he worked in 2013, we knew we had to reach more schools. Within that same year, Guardian Defense became an official company.
Where is your business based?
Guardian Defense is located in Boca Raton, Florida. We offer services both locally and also travel throughout the country. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we have expanded our services to offer live webinars and pre-recordings of specific training modules.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
When we first began, we had a business partner who was an attorney. Neither Steve nor myself really knew where to begin with paperwork, so that original partner was paramount in getting us off the ground and running. Once we had the legal end of things squared away, I hit the ground running building connections and educating the south Florida community about this unique type of service that we were offering.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
A few things have “worked” for our business; one being word of mouth. The repeat business and referrals from our past clients have been fantastic.
Second, our SEO specialist for our website. She’s terrific at making sure we have content-rich pages on our site. She also works with us to provide articles utilizing keywords our future customers are searching for.
Third, as unfortunate as it is, each time a tragedy happens in a school, workplace, mall, church, synagogue, or movie theater, people are quickly reminded of how ill-prepared they are. We want to be in front of that and make sure individuals are prepared (and even hopefully preventing something) before it happens.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
My biggest challenge as a business owner has been how the coronavirus changed the way we do business. Prior to the pandemic, 90% of our work was conducted in person. We’ve now had to get creative in the way we deliver our training and consulting. Our biggest concern was ensuring we were able to deliver the same quality teaching virtually.
We overcame this challenge by really spending time discussing and brainstorming how we would do this. We also expanded our services to reach clientele that we had not previously marketed to, and that was the security officer field.
How do you stay focused?
I believe I am a very disciplined worker, and I’m not sure what it would take to make me give up. It’s not just that we invested so much of our time and energy into this. It’s because we KNOW this is a need. We KNOW that safety training and emergency management will ALWAYS be a need. Some of the larger threats we have today may change or look different in the future, but those threats will never fully go away no matter the preventative measures we take.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
From a competitive standpoint, there aren’t too many companies out there that offer the niche of active shooter/ active threat response training. This is a benefit as we don’t have to deal with multiple companies in the same city or area sending in proposals. It is also a disadvantage as a majority of organizations do not even know our type of services exists.
What I do to differentiate ourselves is to be straightforward with our teaching methods and give thorough explanations into why we do things the way we do. Because many individuals don’t even know what to expect from our services, I educate them on what they need and what they are missing.
There have been potential clients who have other proposals or have had conversations with similar companies, and a few things set us apart. One of the most noteworthy is our instructors. They have incredible knowledge and experience to back up what they are teaching. The instructors are all either current law enforcement officers, and/or recently retired officers or military personnel. They are selected for not only their experience, but their compassion and passion to teach this delicate topic. Many of our instructors have also personally responded as officers to active shooter incidents in the past.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Investing in an SEO expert who really knows what they are doing. It’s important we get the traffic to our website so we have the opportunity to talk about our services.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
I really believe passion and timing have to be just right. You may have a great idea or true motivation to do something, but the timing may be off. Vice versa, you may be in a good place in your life to start something, but you don’t have the fire behind your idea. I believe once you get these two aligned, it creates a formula for success!
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
Believe it or not, I’m personally not much of a reader. When my children were young; however, I really enjoyed reading articles, books, and blogs about positive and healthy parenting styles.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
Reading books and after-action reports about prior active shooter incidents is very interesting and helps me make sure I am on top of my game when it comes to my business. As someone who handles the business operations end of things, it is imperative I know as much as I can about our teachings- and not just expect the instructors to hold all of the knowledge.
Who is your business role model? Why?
My late grandmother, Theresa, and late great aunt, Lucia, are definitely an inspiration for me. It took me until after I was already established to figure this out, but it truly sank in for me when thinking about them one day. The two sisters opened a dress shop when they were both young parents and wives in the mid-1900s. My grandmother and aunt were first-generation immigrants from Italy and were impoverished as children. Their parents did not understand the value of education and my grandmother recalls barely graduating from high school. When my grandmother shared stories about her business, she never mentioned obstacles. I can imagine obstacles existed; particularly as women during that time period, who had little education, and little financial backing. However, I always admired my grandmother’s confidence and my aunt’s kindheartedness which I attribute to their success as businesswomen.
How do you balance work and life?
I can’t say I have mastered the work/life balance! One thing will always suffer a bit more. Currently, my business suffers more than my life as a mom. It is important to me that most afternoons I stop work for some time to pick them up from school, help them with their homework, and give them one-on-one attention. If it means I need to work in the evening when they go to bed, I do that. I do feel guilty at times because I know I can propel my business further, but I try not to have regrets as I know my children will only be young for a short time.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
Doing activities with Steve and my children is the best! I love watching them play competitive sports, going places with them, or taking vacations. I also enjoy playing sports myself and doing outdoor activities.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
The next six months is dedicated to 2 things:
1. Marketing. We will continue to market our new programs (and even not so new programs) by updating our website so past clients and potential new clients are aware of all the services we offer.
2. Campaigns. We will work on our campaign for February, which is dedicated to the victims and survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida. Since this incident occurred in our own backyard in 2018, we’ve dedicated each year’s anniversary to our community. Every mass casualty incident that has occurred is important to us and hits us deeply. We decided to focus specifically on this one because it happened so close to us, several of our team members responded to the incident as law enforcement officers, and some team members were personally affected by the tragedy. Because of these reasons, we have further insight into the actual event and the aftermath. Our dedication to MSD specifically is meant to be inclusive of all the victims and survivors of past mass casualty incidents.
How can our readers connect with you?
Glad you asked! Please:
· call our office at 561-419-8869,
· visit our website at www.guardiandefenseplan.com, or
· check out our social media:
o https://www.facebook.com/GuardianDefense/
o https://twitter.com/GuardianDefens
o https://www.instagram.com/activeshootertraining/