Working PIby Isaac Peck, Publisher
“Just because you’re doing it fast, doesn’t mean you’re doing it right. You could be running in place and not making progress.”
That’s just one of many insights offered by Jay Marin, whose private investigation firm, Specialized Investigations Consultants (SIC), has taken the greater Miami area by storm. Marin might be a private investigator thoroughly cut from the mold of law enforcement, but he is also very much his own person—analytic, exacting, and deliberative—with an eye towards growth. He has meticulously built the credibility of his firm, thoughtfully honed his own skills and practices, and is careful not to over-claim himself or to say yes to everyone.
“I don’t want to take on too many clients and not be able to give them the service that they want,” Marin told me when I asked him how large he wanted his business to eventually grow. Jay Marin is in business, but he is not of business. He’s a go-getter who sets limits. “Accepting and/or turning down work is very important because my reputation is very important,” he said. “My reputation and our company philosophy is ‘always to run smoothly’, not just say ‘hey I’m going to take all this work.’ A marathon, not a sprint.”
But what a marathon it has been. The firm has grown from three people in 2016 to 17 full-time employees plus subcontractors 10 years later. The scope of their work is impressive: the firm’s website lists and offers details on asset searches, business litigation investigation, child custody/family law, corporate investigations, cruise ship and hotel cases, finding missing people, surveillance, and more.
One specialty the firm centers on is executive protection, tailored to “the unique requirements of individuals holding positions of power or high net-worth status.”
Not bad for a PI who doesn’t want to “do too much.”
Setting Limits is Good
We hear a lot about ignoring limits as a prerequisite to success: “don’t let anything hold you back,” the advice says. “Don’t let anyone tell you no, remember you can do anything you want, anything you put your mind to do,” and so on. Transcending limits, breaking rules, doubling down; these are the mantras of business growth advice.
Jay Marin begs to differ. Determining that there were things he couldn’t or wouldn’t do was part of the reason he became a private investigator. Not setting limits in his prior work life had been a mistake. Marin had been injured on the job multiple times while serving as a police officer. He’d taken risks and repeatedly put himself in danger—a prospect that became true. As a law enforcement officer (LEO), he investigated robberies, homicides, and gang violence in a high-crime region in South Florida. He’d been in shootouts and been injured on the job. He’d received death threats and had to repeatedly move.
In the years prior to his retirement as a LEO, Marin had started to attend PI conferences during his time off. He thought that with his talents in investigation, research, documentation, and his understanding of criminality (he has a degree in Criminal Justice Management), he might be able to do well as a private investigator.
The hazards of policing in an unpredictable metropolitan area like Miami would have been enough by themselves to drive many people away from policing, but to top it off, in the 2010s, Marin had started a family. He had come to realize that his family needed him to do something safer and less intense. He incorporated SIC in 2013 but continued to serve as a police detective. In 2014, Marin’s third police-involved shooting was his personal last straw. And he’d begun to develop some heart problems. Still, he continued to set up the business. He earned a degree in Criminal Justice Management in 2013 and was officially certified as a Criminal Defense Investigator by The Criminal Defense Investigation Council in 2016.
10 years later, the SIC team has served as security detail to a U.S. President, provided private security to high-end jewelry distributors, protected foreign embassies, served as the security detail to political figures as well as ultra-high net-worth individuals. For the past two years, the firm has been honored as the “Best of Florida” Winner in the Private Investigation Firms category by The Guide to Florida.
Starting a new career, even when it’s in a crossover field from your old one, is challenging and requires humility and determination. While others at a similar career stage might opt for shortcuts, Marin chose to attend PI trainings and conferences, establishing valuable contacts in the process. The goal, he told me, was to surround himself “with a certain skill set and talent in the profession. I was trying to learn from them. Why would I reinvent the wheel when these professionals have already done it?”
Marin’s firm ran with three employees at first and landed some larger corporate clients in 2017 and 2018. He began getting law firms as clients and they gave the firm consistent business. As those clients and relationships grew, “I grew with them,” Marin explains.
Giving and taking, holding on and letting go, and openness to intellectual growth all cluster around Jay Marin’s business philosophy. He’s not afraid to say we should do some things the old-fashioned way—like reading. Marin says he loves to read about marketing, finance, team building, and more. His favorite books include Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins, David Schwartz’s The Magic of Thinking Big, and The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone.
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A Set of Values
Marin’s grounding goes deeper than business self-help books, though. As a practicing Christian, Marin believes “the only reason I’m here is God.” But he also believes that “Nothing is out of reach or out of control.” Between that humility and that optimism, you find a career like Marin’s.
“Being genuine, being yourself” is a state of mind that has earned Marin hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts. This is a gutsy position in the private sector, where he acknowledges that constant business development and a willingness to push oneself to the limit are at a premium. “Sometimes you need to meet someone five times. You can assist somebody in that specific moment. That can lead you to another thing.” The real key to growth is to be “mentally prepared. Reading these books, associating myself with other people in this industry, other business owners, all of these things helped me develop into a solid individual that can grow a company.”
Credibility also enhances the investigator’s reputation, leading to more referrals and repeat business. To maintain credibility, private investigators must adhere to ethical standards, provide accurate and timely reports, and demonstrate professionalism in all interactions. Building and maintaining credibility ensures that private investigators can effectively serve their clients and achieve successful outcomes in their investigations.
Taking the growth mindset a step further—and a step outside of the box of traditions—leads to another of Marin’s action items. “If you want to grow your business,” Marin said, “you’ve got to treat your staff right. You’ve got to do extraordinary things for your staff so they can appreciate you.” Marin means performance, generosity to staff, all of it. Like so many successful founders, he’s emphasizing the critical importance of a synergistic team.
“Reward your staff when they do great work. If you develop a sense of appreciation for your staff, your staff will appreciate you. There’s always time for work; there’s always time to play. But when it’s time to work, all hands are on deck. I appreciate what they do for me, if it wasn’t for them, I couldn’t be at the level we’re at now.” Marin advised taking the staff for an occasional night out or encouraging people to take a paid day off. And because he is willing to do these things, he said, he knows that “as soon as something happens at my office, I make a phone call and say ‘hey, we’ve got to address this now,’ everybody comes in and puts the effort in.” That mutual appreciation pays off when it matters most.
It hadn’t always been this flush for a big staff. “In 2017 and 2018, when I landed large clients, I had to hire people. I hired in-house staff, some part-time staff. But clients came and went, and I had to keep that number real tight for a while,” Marin said. But over the past three years, he’s hired administrative support, more investigators, and other specialists. And just this last year, the firm added eight people. “Because I’ve been able to have the reputation I have, have the network I have, have the clients I have that I’ve grown with, all this has given me an opportunity to step back from being so involved in the day-to-day stuff.” This has given Marin the opportunity to work on business development, growth, and quality control. He’s still dealing with clients, but he’s also taking a step back and looking at the big picture; being careful and deliberate again.
Even superstars need the team, Marin pointed out. “Michael Jordan can be the Face of The Bulls, but he still needs the team. Everybody’s goal is to replicate themselves. But that’s never going to happen. Other people will need to do a part of that.”
The Adventure Continues
SIC is a rising firm in the greater Miami area, and that’s an adventure unlike any other. The city’s beauty, energy, and diverse array of industries and activities make it a hotspot for unique cases—the kind of cases that SIC works, from tracking down missing people to uncovering fraud, from providing security detail to elected officials and celebrities to cruise ship and hotel investigations. Every day brings new challenges. SIC is a force and personality in the Miami community.
Marin and colleagues attended the National Association of Legal Investigators’ Mid-Winter Conference in January, where they heard speakers discuss document investigations, building rapport with clients, taking statements, and advice on specific investigative techniques as well as running a PI firm.
This year, the firm will open offices in Indiana and Las Vegas, NV, in addition to the Lakeland, FL office they opened in 2023. Candidates for new hires include an ex-military cybersecurity specialist, and the field of cybersecurity might open a whole new world for the firm. “The industry itself is leaning heavily into OSINT (open-source intelligence) and cybersecurity,” Marin points out. This past year, Marin received an OSINT Certification through OSMOSIS, and he will pay for others on staff to obtain training.
OSINT involves collecting and analyzing publicly available information from various sources, such as social media, websites, forums, and news outlets. PIs can use that data to uncover information about potential threats, vulnerabilities, and individuals involved in cyber incidents. This means that a great deal of investigative work remains unambiguously legal and ethical while using processing tools that maximize the value of that publicly available information.
Finally, Marin told me that Specialized Investigation Consultants will be “bringing on a full-time business development specialist to go to the bigger law firms. Miami is built for it: it’s a financial hub which is going to take over New York in large law firms over the next 3 years. Our plan is to lock in a lot of these large law firms. My goal is to be at least 45-50 employees full-time.” Watching Marin and studying his careful-but-meteoric rise, it’s hard not to root for him.
“Short steps, long vision,” Jay Marin says, smiling.
About the Author
Isaac Peck is the Publisher of Working PI magazine and the President and Senior Broker of OREP.org, a leading provider of liability insurance for PI professionals. Working PI is the most widely read print magazine for investigators nationwide, reaching over 25,000 PIs. Investigators who become OREP Members enjoy two CE courses (15 hours of education) at no charge (Visit for details). Isaac brings over 10 years of experience leading teams in Professional Liability insurance underwriting, operations, technology, and marketing—with a focus on E&O and general liability insurance for professionals. He holds a Master’s Degree in Accounting. Reach Isaac by phone at (888) 347-5273 or email at isaac@orep.org. CA License #4116465.
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