Olu Johnson is a personal security officer to the stars in the United Kingdom. It’s a rough and tough job, but one that he wouldn’t trade for anything else in the world.
On July 13 this year, Johnson watched in shock as the news unfolded of the attempted assassination of President-elect Donald Trump.
“I remember every news station and website was playing on repeat the image of Trump with blood running down his face as security agents scurried him off the stage. It was surreal,” recalls Johnson.
But Johnson, perhaps more so than most people who watched the news, knows all too well the importance of personal security for someone so high-profile. As a close protection officer, Johnson has built a reputation as one of the go-to personal security officers in the United Kingdom (U.K.) counting high-profile celebrities like Prince, Naomi Campbell, Burna Boy and Wizkid as some of his clients.
After watching the news, Johnson explains that his training immediately kicked in as he started to examine where the potential security breaches could have happened.
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The world of a close protection officer is not for the faint-hearted.
Characterized by average working hours of about 10 to 20 per shift, unpredictable scenarios at every turn and a lack of ample personal time, it takes a person who is truly dedicated to the craft to succeed. Johnson is the first point of contact for every venue his clients visit, and ensures he knows the security layout and exit strategy of each venue.
Unfortunately, the better you are at your job as a close protection officer, the higher the toll on your personal life.
“The first setback is separation from your family or those you love. This is not a career you will do well in if you are not present and being present means lots of late nights, lots of travel, lots of last-minute calls. You will miss birthdays, anniversaries and important moments and it is almost a lose-lose, because, if you don’t miss it and you choose your family, your work will lose and if you choose your work, it will have some adverse effect on your family unless you are single,” says Johnson.
The second setback, he adds, is the physical drain this type of work takes on you.
“This is very long hours. A four-hour day can turn into a 20-hour day and I have two young children and they ask, ‘when are you coming back from work?’ Once I stare at them, they say, ‘oh, you don’t know’, and that is because I don’t know. A quick dinner trip with a client can turn into a club night and that turns into an after-party and that turns into ‘let’s go to a studio’.
“I had a job once where a client finished shopping and asked if I had my passport with me and that turned into a trip to a private airport and then another country. I didn’t get back for two days. It is exciting but it is harsh because you are physically tired – you are the first to wake up and the last to go to sleep.”
But it’s a career path that Johnson would not trade for the world. And it took him a while to find it.
“Both my parents are strong academics from Nigeria so I was expected to be the lawyer of the family and that is exactly what I did after we moved to the U.K. when I was seven because people were looking to do serious harm to my dad,” recalls Johnson.
Facing that danger from an early age planted the seed of safety and security in Johnson’s mind. He toed the professional line as a lawyer, graduating from the University of Hertfordshire with a law degree and completing his LPC at the College of Law in London.
For the next three years, Johnson would practise as a lawyer until a chance encounter with a fitness buddy derailed his legal trajectory and transformed that seed of security from his younger days into a calling that could no longer be ignored.
“My interest in fitness and weight training got me connected to my former business partner who has passed away. He wanted me to do the close protection training course with him. I didn’t initially want to do it but he showed me how lucrative the industry could be. He said to me, ‘I cannot match how much of a people person you are so I will do the admin and you deal with the people and I promise you we can make a lot of money’,” says Johnson.
His business partner was not wrong.
According to Fortune Business Insights, the global private security market size was valued at $235.37 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow from $247.75 billion in 2024 to $385.32 billion by 2032.
After securing his license from a U.K. security agency, Johnson began the uphill struggle of securing his first booking.
“It took about two years to get anyone to [allow me to] work with them. I used to be a semi-professional musician and I played bass guitar for a lot of celebrities. It was so difficult to convince them to allow me to protect them instead of play music with them. I had to move away from people I knew and I started networking vigorously, away from music in general,” says Johnson.
His breakthrough finally happened when a promoter friend offered him a job to protect American singer and dancer, Omarion, during a 10-year club anniversary in London.
“It takes so long to get ahead in the industry because it is a trust business. It is [easier] to get someone who is already in the business than to get someone new because if anything goes wrong, it is you that has to explain. So Omarion was my first one and once you get that one, you have that reference.
“It was a slow burn but the two-year period allowed me to experience all the other aspects of the security world from retail, events, clubs, asset protection and so on. All those things add to the value of how you understand protecting high-net-worth individuals. Looking after $10,000 worth of goods is different from looking after someone that might make $100,000 an hour or make $200,000 for singing four minutes at a time,” says Johnson.
In those days, the money was not great. Johnson explains that he would earn anything from a £100 ($129) for a day’s work. Today, he averages £1,000 ($1,291) for a 10-hour shift. As Johnson established his brand, he could also outsource other close protection officers who represent his brand to jobs he cannot attend to. However, each client’s price is dependent on a number of variables.
“Some of the obvious variables that affect the pricing: is it at home or abroad? Do you have any known threats against you? If you have someone who has made an attempt that you know about, that changes things. The more obvious the risk, the higher the rate,” says Johnson.
Former client Patrick Nnaemeka Okorie, known by his stage name, Patoranking, a Nigerian singer-songwriter, speaks about the importance of personal security: “Every time I travel to another country with my team, we always hire a personal bodyguard. It has become a fixed cost in our travel itinerary because of the safety concerns we have. Before we started using personal bodyguards we had a couple [of] robbery attempts which made it imperative to be protected at all times.”
For Johnson, this is no longer a job or just about the money. Close protection has a much bigger purpose.
“I realize the importance and the value of what we do. We are not just protecting these individuals, we are protecting a heritage, we are protecting culture and music, we are protecting their creativity,” he says.
“If we look at incidents where celebrities have died or gone to jail, the world now loses out on their talent. So many people are impacted by one person’s talent – the fans, make-up artists and the team behind the scenes. Should something happen to these people, the culture loses something very important and so our role is more than safety. It is about protecting [something] much bigger.”
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