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It was K-9's fault, really.
The new and improved K-9 left for her by the Doctor (so different from the ones she'd travelled with, but his hearts were still in the right place, even if his eyes were so much older). This K-9 included three terribly useful additions: he had a USB slot, a recharger for her mobile, and quite a good printer. She'd come to depend on him to print out business cards (both real and, um, diversionary) for her work as an investigative reporter.
After quitting the paper, Tim tossed some jobs her way. She was following up some leads for Tim -- on a strictly unofficial cash-under-the-table basis -- and even got Rose to help her a bit. They were quite good at this sort of thing. Having a bit of a chat with one person, Googling a company, seeing if the deposit slips in the trash matched up with the totals in the ledger, and making sense of it all. And all the time, Sarah was handing out those cards, the ones that should have said, "Sarah Jane Smith, reporter" on them.
That's when the phone calls started. Yes, Sarah Jane would be happy to meet the caller over tea at Harrods although Sarah Jane wasn't quite sure what this was about. And when the caller pushed the card across the tiny table, it read, "S.J. Smith, Investigator, Smith&Tyler Investigations".
Sarah Jane accepted the job, because the cash on the table was a good start toward's next month's rent, and then she went home to grill K-9. He, predictably, denied all knowledge of the change. But by the next morning, he'd printed out a sheet of rates for different types of jobs, the licencing requirements for investigators, some potential office spaces, and very similar cards for Rose.
Mickey, when he heard about this, was enthusiastic -- so enthusiastic that they briefly suspected him of collusion with K-9. But in the end, it didn't matter. Business was booming, and they simply didn't have time to worry about who had provided that first nudge.
"Smith&Tyler Investigations," Rose said one evening. They were sitting side-by-side on the edge of the big old bathtub in their flat, sharing a bottle of wine and soaking their sore feet from an afternoon of chasing an embezzler through Bloomsbury. Unfortunately for them, the embezzler was also a marathoner and had been wearing more appropriate footwear for a multi-hour chase. But in the end, with K-9's download of Google maps, they'd chased him into a dead end formed by road construction at the University Library. Rose had taken a blow to the face before she'd twisted his arm behind his back and K-9 stunned him.
Rose felt around the bruise. "D'you reckon we ought to carry guns?"
"Guns!" Sarah Jane replied, "No! We have K-9 for that. Besides, I don't want one."
"Why not?"
"I don't want to shoot anybody."