Why I built Guard Select

Tonight, somewhere in New Zealand, a security guard is standing alone at a door.

Before the police arrive, before the ambulance, before anyone with a badge or a siren, that guard is the response. They will talk down someone having the worst night of their life. They will step between a drunk and a stranger. They will find the person who has collapsed in the car park and do what needs doing until help comes. Then they will write it up at 3am and drive home.

For that, most of them are paid within a few dollars of the minimum wage.

I know, because I have been that guard. I have also been the company owner writing the roster and the client signing the invoice. I have sat in every seat this industry has, and from every one of them the view is the same. The person taking the risk is the person getting the least.

Guard Select is my answer to that.

My name is Tarquyn Read. My iwi is NgāiTakoto, in the Far North. I live in Ōtautahi Christchurch, and Guard Select is built for every region of New Zealand.

I did not finish school, and I left home at 13. Security was one of the few doors open to me, and I have worked in it since 1999. I have guarded doors, run a guard company and hired guards as a client. I still work shifts on Guard Select myself, because I will not ask guards to trust something I would not use.

I hold a Certificate of Approval in all classes and a Private Investigator licence. I work for the New Zealand Defence Force as an Assistant Defensive Tactics Instructor and High-Fidelity Role Player, and the tactical options framework I teach there is the one built into the Guard Select Academy. I also worked on the Security Providers Accreditation Panel in Canterbury, on the standards behind the Certificate of Approval. I have fought Muay Thai in Thailand and represented New Zealand in shooting sports. None of that makes me special. It means that when I talk about what a guard faces and what a guard is worth, I am not guessing.

I built Guard Select myself. Every screen, every workflow, every policy, more than 4,700 hours since May 2026, with no hired team. It is a New Zealand company, licensed by the Ministry of Justice in all classes, and it exists for one reason: to put the guard first.

Here is how the money has always worked in this industry.

The client is under pressure, especially in a hard economy, so they want security for less. The security company needs its margin to survive, so it bids lower to win the contract. The only number left to squeeze is the guard’s pay. So that is where every saving comes from, every time.

It is not one bad company. It is the model. Big firms, several of them multinationals, bid each other down to the last dollar, and the guard at the bottom pays for every dollar they shave. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment found that six in ten security guards in New Zealand earn within 20 per cent of the minimum wage, and one in four regularly works more than 40 hours a week. The chief executive of the industry’s own association has put the average company margin at around 20 per cent, and from what I have seen as a company owner and as a client it runs as high as 33 per cent on some contracts. The person at the door gets what is left.

So the good ones leave. They go to the police, to corrections, to a trade, to driving a truck, because the truck pays better and nobody swings at you. The community loses the calm head that would have handled tonight well. The client loses the guard who knew their site. And the public keeps its low picture of the job, because the industry never gave its best people a reason to stay and prove that picture wrong.

None of that is the guard’s fault.

Some of the best guards I have ever worked beside did not finish school. I was one of them. That is often how people end up in security, and it is why the industry has never valued what they bring.

But watch them work. They read a room in seconds. They see the fight before it starts, and the kid about to do something stupid before he knows it himself. They can calm the person nobody else can get near, with nothing but their voice and their presence. That is emotional intelligence of the highest order, and it keeps people safe every single night.

No certificate measures it. No roster records it. No pay rate in this industry has ever reflected it. It is one of the most undervalued skills in New Zealand, and the people who have it are told they are unskilled.

On Guard Select that skill has a name on it, a rating beside it and a rate attached to it.

On paper, Guard Select is a security company like any other. We hold the same Ministry of Justice licence (PSPLA 26-141664, all classes), carry the same duties under the law, verify every guard’s Certificate of Approval before they can be booked, and stand behind every shift. We work everywhere in New Zealand, from Invercargill to Whangārei, and it works the same way in a small town as it does in a city.

The difference is what happens to the money, and who holds the reputation.

A client books a named guard, not an anonymous body in a uniform. They see the guard’s verified profile, training badges and track record, and they choose. The guard sets their own rate above our floor of $34 an hour, takes the jobs that suit them and declines the ones that do not, with no penalty. The client pays up front. The money is held until the shift is confirmed complete, and then it goes to the guard.

Every guard on Guard Select is free to work for any other licensed security company. Your profile is yours. Your record is yours. Build a reputation here and it travels with you.

No algorithm removes a guard. If a low rating or a dispute comes in, I read it myself and hear the guard’s side before anything stands. Guards who turn up get paid. That is written into our dispute policy.

Take a $35 an hour booking.

That is 3 per cent from the guard and 3 per cent from the client. Six cents in the dollar, in total, to run the whole thing: the licence, the verification, the payment system, the training, the support, and me on the phone to every guard before their first shift. The rest is the guard’s.

Compare that with a model where the layer above the guard keeps between 20 and 33 per cent, and the guard is paid near the floor out of what is left.

Our pay ladder runs from $34 an hour for a Standard Operator to $44 for an Elite Operator. Experience pays. Training pays. Reliability pays. And because we take so little, the client pays about what they pay now.

If you ask us to, we deduct tax at the rate you elect and send it to Inland Revenue, so there is no lump sum waiting for you at the end of the year.

Paying people properly is half of it. The other half is giving them the tools to be worth every cent, and the proof to show it.

The Guard Select Academy is free, and it is open to guards, clients and anyone who registers. The Foundation series covers Personal Safety and Responsibility, Perceived Cumulative Assessment, Threat Exposure Necessity Response, AWOCA (Ask, Why, Options, Confirm, Act), New Zealand Security Industry Law and Tactical Options Reporting. These are the same decision-making frameworks used by New Zealand Police and the New Zealand Army, taught in plain language for the front line. Radio Communications sits on top, and an Advanced Guard Certificate shows clients which guards hold higher-level skills.

Every completed course earns a badge on your profile, where clients can see it. Certificates are yours to keep. Clients do the courses too, so they understand exactly what they are looking at when they choose you.

That is the operating system for a profession: the training, the record, the rate and the reputation, all held by the guard.

Guard Select is New Zealand owned and New Zealand run. We are a verified Māori-owned supplier on Amotai and an affiliate member of Hospitality New Zealand, and we have published our commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi because it means something to me and to the people this platform is for.

Some of the largest security companies operating in New Zealand are multinationals, owned overseas. Book one, and part of what you pay leaves the country. We are not a multinational. There is no head office overseas taking its cut of a guard’s Saturday night in Invercargill or Whangārei. What we earn stays in New Zealand, and the plan for it is to train New Zealand security professionals, because the mission is to make security in this country a career people are proud of.

Guard Select is also about keeping security work local.

For too long, local security companies have had no real power in this industry. The large companies hold the guard share. They have the rosters, so they win the contracts, and a good local operator who knows the town and the people loses out. Not because they are worse, but because they cannot guarantee the numbers on their own.

Guard Select changes that. If you run a small licensed security company, you can take on a big contract and fill it with Guard Select guards: verified, trained, rated and paid properly. You keep the client. The guards keep their rate. The work stays in your region instead of flowing to a head office somewhere else. Local security companies are already signing up to Guard Select for exactly this, and we add capacity to the industry rather than taking it away.

A marketplace should give the small operator the same reach as the big one. That is what this is.

When you book a Guard Select guard, you are not buying a line in a compliance plan. You are paying a person directly for professional work, and you chose that person yourself. You are also booking a New Zealand-owned company that keeps the money in New Zealand.

You get a guard who is trained, who is building a record they care about, and who has a reason to be at your site next week, next month and next year. You get a guard who has not been squeezed down to a number by three layers of management. Guards are first responders. They have families. They have lives. The money you spend goes to someone who will train, who will stay in the industry, and who will be there when it matters.

Book a Guard Select guard today and you are helping someone build a career.

This platform was built for you, and it only works if you are on it.

Joining is free during launch. There is no obligation to take any job. Keep your existing work if you want to. Set your rate. Build your profile. Do the Academy. Then bring the guard working next to you, because one guard asking for a fair rate is easy to ignore, and a thousand of us is a market.

Encourage your friends in the industry to sign up. Every guard who joins makes the next contract easier to win locally, the next rate easier to hold and the next client easier to convince. When a booking lands in an area where we are short, the app asks the guards nearby to bring in people they trust, because good guards know other good guards.

The more guards we have, the more power we have, and the more that power sits with the people. Support your brothers and sisters. Get on board today.

For too long we have believed that the big security companies hold this industry together, that they are needed, that they set the rate and we take it. They are not needed. The guards are. A security company is the people on its roster. Take the guards away and there is nothing left but a logo.

That is why Guard Select is not just another security company. Here, the guards hold the reputation. The guards hold the pride. Every reliable guard makes every other guard more trusted, and every good decision made at a door makes a community safer.

The long-term goal is simple: raise pay standards across New Zealand security, and keep raising them. The power has always been the people. Guard Select just hands it back.

Nāku te rourou, nāu te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi.
With my basket and your basket, the people will thrive.

Be the change. Join the movement.

Tarquyn Read
Founder, Guard Select
NgāiTakoto