Blue Collar Safety Solutions with Eric Wick

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Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

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Speaker 2
Welcome everybody to Blue Collar Start Up, the podcast where hard work meets big ideas. This is your home for real talk, real stories and real strategies from the frontlines of life and the business of the trades. I’m your host, Derek Foster, a bagel cleaning systems here in Albany, New York. I’m actually filling in today for our co-host, Michael Nelson of, Five Towers Media.

00;00;37;06 – 00;00;49;18
Speaker 2
He’s got some personal things he’s taking care of today. So, you all are stuck with me. So, without further ado, I want to introduce our guest, Eric Wick. We’re very honored to have him on. So thank you for joining us, Eric.

00;00;49;21 – 00;00;52;07
Speaker 1
Yeah. My pleasure. Derek, I’m happy to be here.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. Awesome. And I know, you know, I think the value in the conversation, you know, here is, support for a lot of our listeners. I think they’ll find a lot of value. So why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about what you do and and your background and, we’ll go from there.

00;01;09;20 – 00;01;40;10
Speaker 1
Yeah. Happy to do that. Thank you. Derek. So, yeah, I’m currently the founder and CEO of a company called Safety Team Technologies. And real quick, it’s just a fully automated done for you solution that’s digital for safety compliance. But I’ll tell you a little bit about how I got there. So I, you know, when I, when I was in college and I’m here in California, which is, you know, a state that’s known for having a lot of red, red tape, a lot of regulations.

00;01;40;12 – 00;02;04;10
Speaker 1
Not exactly the easiest environment for businesses. And I learned that in my my first job out of college, so I, I went to school thinking I’m going to be a finance guy. And I graduated right when the tech bubble burst. You know, so no one’s hiring finance guys, and everyone hated anyone to do with financial advising or stock stockbroking at the time.

00;02;04;10 – 00;02;25;04
Speaker 1
Because, you know, people’s for in one case had been cut in half at that time. So ended up getting a job with a company ADP. I was an outside sales guy. They stuck me in a territory sales territory, which was in East Oakland, California. Which, you know, I stuck out like a sore thumb out there, man.

00;02;25;04 – 00;02;49;09
Speaker 1
It’s a it’s a tough spot. They’re like, just make sure you leave town before 4:00. That’s when the gun gunshots start ringing out. But, I what I liked about that job is that I. I worked closely with blue collar business owners. It’s a very industrial town. There’s still a lot of manufacturing going on there. There’s a lot of, you know, distributors, trucking companies and contractors.

00;02;49;11 – 00;03;17;13
Speaker 1
So I worked with them to help them with their their payroll problems. After that, I did a short stint in medical device, realized I was pretty unhappy. You know, working in hospitals, working with with doctors, who aren’t exactly as down to earth as, like, your typical blue collar business owner. So, ended up going back into, you know, the services field servicing blue collar businesses as an insurance broker.

00;03;17;16 – 00;03;32;20
Speaker 1
And I realized very soon that it’s such a competitive, environment as an insurance broker. I mean, you as a business owner, you probably get when your renewal is coming up. You’re probably getting 10 or 15 calls a day from brokers who want to quote your insurance.

00;03;32;22 – 00;03;35;28
Speaker 2
No, that doesn’t happen.

00;03;36;00 – 00;04;02;05
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, in California it’s common, but so I wanted to differentiate myself. So I decided I’m going to become an OSHA compliance expert. And I’m an anyone who’s going to make me their insurance broker. I’m going to partner with them to make sure all their safety program are in place and prepared for, you know, what could happen with OSHA or if an injured worker hires an attorney.

00;04;02;07 – 00;04;26;06
Speaker 1
So I, you know, I became the OSHA expert and after five, six years of working with my clients, getting referrals into other clients to help with their OSHA compliance, I was stretched far too thin. You know, I’m I mean, imagine me pulling up to a construction site with a Bluetooth speaker, my laptop, a projector screen, like a 100ft extension cord.

00;04;26;13 – 00;04;48;27
Speaker 1
And I’m playing Spanish, safety videos, then passing around a clipboard for guys to sign. And my clients loved it. You know, they they were very loyal. They referred me to other businesses, but I was stretched far too thin. And then that’s when the idea came, like, hey, is it possible to create a software solution that can just make this a set it and forget it?

00;04;49;00 – 00;05;07;14
Speaker 1
Solution for for safety training, compliance and other aspects of safety training. And so that was about three years ago when we started it. And I hired some software engineers, found some investors that believed in the idea. And, sorry for the long winded story, but that’s how we got here today.

00;05;07;17 – 00;05;26;19
Speaker 2
Listen, man. That’s amazing. You know, you you pivoted a couple times from what it sounds like, and, you know, going through and helping other business owners, you’re going through it yourself, which is, which is awesome, I’m sure. Did that help? You know, you be able to relate to a lot of the businesses you were working with?

00;05;26;21 – 00;05;54;05
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It’s like you, you know, you come in with this mindset that you’ve got a great service that you offer, whether it’s, you know, you’re in construction or you’re, you know, a machine shop in manufacturing and you’ve got these plans to, to grow this company. And then somewhere along the line you get bogged down with red tape, unforeseen issues such as, you know, safety, compliance, that could really drive a business owner crazy.

00;05;54;07 – 00;05;59;15
Speaker 1
And, you know, so you end up dealing with that, but you find ways to overcome it.

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Speaker 2
So, you know, how does it work? Obviously, there’s, you know, especially here in New York. And, you know, I was I was laughing because we do get a lot of insurance brokers that are breathing down our, our next to, you know, renewal time. And in New York State, you know, has some, some very strict, laws to scaffold on, you know, there’s a lot of compliance that needs to be done, obviously, by construction companies where we are.

00;06;24;15 – 00;06;41;25
Speaker 2
And I’m sure it’s the same across the country. So what is, what is the process look like for you guys when you come into, you know, a blue collar business to help them with their safety program? How does that look from first conversation to rollout? And what different products and services do you guys offer?

00;06;41;27 – 00;07;13;02
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, there’s there’s two aspects primarily when it comes to OSHA compliance. So there’s the written compliance. Having all your written programs in place, which that’s not really an area where a lot of companies struggle, you know, because you could put together a template or you could work with a safety consultant who can customize an IEP for you, write injury illness prevention program, put together your heat illness prevention program in New York.

00;07;13;02 – 00;07;27;21
Speaker 1
You probably have, you know, save a safety program for working in cold weather conditions as well. Hearing conservation. You could get all the written programs in place. That’s not very challenging. The tough part is implementing the safety program.

00;07;27;27 – 00;07;28;28
Speaker 2
Sure.

00;07;29;01 – 00;07;50;20
Speaker 1
And when I say implementing, I mean the recurring aspects of it. You’re supposed to host tailgate safety trainings in California every ten business days, which is biweekly. I assume it’s probably similar in New York. Yeah. And a lot of companies struggle, right? Getting all the employees together. If you have some employees speak Spanish. Right. So you got to be bilingual.

00;07;50;25 – 00;08;10;01
Speaker 1
You got to make sure they understand, the material you’re presenting to them. And then you’ve got to document it. And it’s like, how do you keep track of thousands of pieces of paper with the employees names on it over time, if you need it? Five years later when OSHA comes in to audit you, it’s a logistical nightmare.

00;08;10;04 – 00;08;32;18
Speaker 1
And then you have, you know, you’re supposed to be doing jobsite safety assessments periodically. Other hazard assessments. You know, if you have a facility, you’re supposed to at least quarterly go through with the checklist and see if you can identify any hazards. You know, I, you know, observe the employees as they’re as they’re working, see if they’re doing anything unsafe.

00;08;32;21 – 00;09;04;29
Speaker 1
And then if you identify something, you you create another report with the identified hazards, that you, that you spotted. So with our platform, we’re just giving business owners and their team a way to complete these requirements digitally. The tailgate trainings are a set it and forget it solution. So you choose the industry you’re in and then we’ve got hundreds of safety videos, that are actually produced by a company out there on the East Coast.

00;09;04;29 – 00;09;24;28
Speaker 1
And they’re micro video. So they’re short, they’re precise. They cover a specific topic in 3 to 4 minutes. The employees watch these videos on on a mobile device. It could be a tablet or their mobile phone. So it could be done anywhere, right? They could be out at a job site. They don’t have to come into an office for for the safety meeting.

00;09;25;01 – 00;09;47;01
Speaker 1
And then after the video, they take a short quiz which tests whether or not they were paying attention to the safety video. And then the most effective. What makes this the most effective is that the quiz is gamified so the employees can see a leaderboard and they know who’s getting the the questions correct and getting points for that.

00;09;47;03 – 00;10;05;07
Speaker 1
And the ones that aren’t paying attention are at the bottom of the leaderboard. So because no employee wants to be at the bottom, they’re, they’re actually paying attention to the videos and it’s making an impact on, the frequency of claims that a lot of our, our clients have. They’re seeing it go down.

00;10;05;09 – 00;10;15;12
Speaker 2
That’s so, so yeah. So essentially it’s a it’s an investment for really any business to help save and reduce their insurance burden over time.

00;10;15;15 – 00;10;37;14
Speaker 1
Yeah. The goal is to reduce, you know, workers comp premium also to reduce the legal compliance issues. You know, I mean it happens all the time out here in California. You got an employee who was hurt at work. They’re on disability. So they’re sitting at home watching TV. And all they see are these commercials. You know, every other commercial is some attorney.

00;10;37;16 – 00;10;56;17
Speaker 1
Hey, re injured on the job or, you know, give our office a call. We’ll make sure that you’re maximizing your your benefits and your payout. And then the, the attorney start asking, hey, were you trained on the safe way to do your job? Does your employer seem to have any concern for your safety and for the employee?

00;10;56;22 – 00;11;13;28
Speaker 1
And if they say, no, no, we weren’t having safety training, then you hope your company gets exposed to these other lawsuits that are not covered by worker’s comp. So yeah, it’s we try to protect our clients from that. You know, in addition to reducing claims.

00;11;14;01 – 00;11;32;16
Speaker 2
Now, do you guys have conversations on a regular basis with like some of the actual insurance carriers and those guys to see, like what some of the trends in the industry are and, you know, tailor your platform or your content to help offset those things, that is yeah, you know.

00;11;32;18 – 00;11;56;08
Speaker 1
You know, I mean, but every industry has, like their most common claims, right? Like in the, in the cleaning business, it’s a lot of slip trip and fall. Yeah. And I’ve got a few clients that are in the commercial cleaning and janitorial business and slip trip and fall, you see, you know, wrist, hand, wrist and finger injuries, lower back injuries, you know, from lifting.

00;11;56;10 – 00;12;34;23
Speaker 1
And so it’s different in every industry. But we partnered with this video production company that has something like 1500 different safety videos. So we’ll customize a lineup of videos for each industry. So it’s it’s giving training to the employees in the the risks that they’re most exposed to. So we customize it as much as possible. Yeah. And the insurance companies, I mean, they try to offer something similar, but what they do is they say, hey, if you’re a client of a policyholder from our insurance company, we’ll give you access to this whole library of videos, which is great.

00;12;34;25 – 00;12;53;23
Speaker 1
But then you still have the issue of had. How do you logistically get all the employees together at once to play a video for them? And then if they’re, you know, some of them speak Spanish or a different language, it’s like then you got to play multiple video. It’s just it’s really tough to do it and stay productive.

00;12;53;25 – 00;13;16;13
Speaker 2
That’s awesome. Yeah. And again, that could that file could sit in the owner’s, the owner’s computer and never go anywhere. And right now, nothing ever be done with it I would assume. So you’re not actually solving the problem. So very interesting. I took a look at your website. I mean, it’s very well done. You know, it’s a very cool platform that you built and, you know, very cool idea.

00;13;16;19 – 00;13;34;00
Speaker 2
And, you know, definitely some of that is extremely important what we’re and as a business owner, I guess, what are some of the challenges that you faced along the way, you know, from when you had the idea for this concept? You know, to to get to the point where you had all this content and these videos made, what did that process look like for you?

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Speaker 2
I would imagine it had to be a huge lift.

00;13;37;12 – 00;13;57;02
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, it’s tough first, vetting out a software company that you trust, because they have so much control over, the quality of our platform. So if there’s a bug that pops up, it’s like, are they going to be there in the middle of the night to fix it? So things are working correctly the next day?

00;13;57;04 – 00;14;25;07
Speaker 1
So I was fortunate to partner up with a great software and engineering team that understood what I was trying to accomplish and is also there for me. You know, if there is an unexpected bug that pops up in the software or some issue we need to resolve, like today, the server, I think, temporarily went down and some employees were trying to watch a safety video, but it kept buffering and loading and pausing.

00;14;25;10 – 00;14;47;20
Speaker 1
So they let me know this issue was happening. And I heard it from another client, too. And it’s great. I could, you know, get on the phone, call the engineer, and like, within ten minutes, they had the issue resolved. But yeah. And then another tough part was, you know, finding the best safety video company to partner with because there’s no shortage of companies that make these safety videos.

00;14;47;20 – 00;15;11;00
Speaker 1
But, you know, as your audience probably knows, there’s nothing sexy and fun really about safety and safety videos. So we tried to find, you know, the provider that had the most entertaining videos that use live actors, that can kind of replicate the risks and, you know, dangerous work environments that some of our clients have employees working in.

00;15;11;03 – 00;15;30;15
Speaker 1
And so, yeah, we’re just fortunate that in this day and age, there’s so many options out there that you can if you take the time to vet everyone out, you’re going to find what you feel is the best fit. And, so far everything’s worked out great. Yeah, we’ve been at it two years and have a little over 100 clients.

00;15;30;15 – 00;15;37;19
Speaker 1
And, you know, it’s mostly just me and one other, lead development sales guy who’s helping me out.

00;15;37;21 – 00;15;38;27
Speaker 2
To make a lot.

00;15;39;00 – 00;15;42;19
Speaker 1
Yeah, a lot of it. A lot of the new business comes from client referral.

00;15;42;21 – 00;15;50;25
Speaker 2
Okay. And you guys can. I mean, your model, obviously, you can, reach anybody throughout the country. I would imagine.

00;15;50;28 – 00;16;12;04
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, we tend to focus, in California quite a bit because that’s where, you know, regulations and OSHA compliance officers are most aggressive. But we do have clients in New York and, Oregon, Arizona, other states that are known for having active OSHA in the state.

00;16;12;06 – 00;16;15;19
Speaker 2
Yeah. Would you say New York is number two on that list?

00;16;15;21 – 00;16;20;00
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. Yeah. In some cases it’s, you know, worse than California.

00;16;20;03 – 00;16;21;06
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;16;21;09 – 00;16;41;28
Speaker 1
Especially if you’re doing work down in New York City. I mean, that’s strictly, strictly regulated. And you got a lot of union, jobs, union contractors that have strict safety requirements that, you know, make it tougher for businesses that aren’t used to having to meet all the, compliance criteria.

00;16;42;01 – 00;16;51;08
Speaker 2
So what does the the future look like for, for your business? And where are you looking to? I guess to take it.

00;16;51;10 – 00;17;17;02
Speaker 1
Yeah. You know, we’re just looking to continue growing organically. I’m not going to be finding any investors that want to take half of our company equity. So they could give us a couple million dollars and then, you know, tell us what to do and expect that we grow at some, you know, un maintainable, pace. So it’s kind of nice just growing at our own pace for now.

00;17;17;05 – 00;17;39;18
Speaker 1
And we don’t have any huge goals that we set. But we I mean, because things are going just, well, just fine the way they are now, you know, taking in the client referrals, calling companies that have a workers comp experience mod problem where their their ex mod keeps going up and they just feel that their claims are out of control and there’s nothing they can do about it.

00;17;39;21 – 00;18;02;25
Speaker 1
And when we come in, you know, over time they see that having recurring safety training with your employees and holding them accountable for, you know, paying attention, performing on the quiz will have an impact in the frequency of your workplace injuries, which will bring down your experience mod, which will bring down your worker’s comp premium and make you more competitive.

00;18;02;27 – 00;18;04;16
Speaker 1
In your market.

00;18;04;18 – 00;18;12;23
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. No, it’s, it’s one of the biggest expenses, that’s for sure. And it never goes down. At least it seems that way. Yeah.

00;18;12;25 – 00;18;33;25
Speaker 1
No, I’ve got, a janitorial, business that I worked closely with here in San Jose, California. They’ve got 100 or so employees. And when I first started working with them, you know, he hadn’t had any claims injuries in the prior three years. So his experience mod and should I explain maybe real quick what the experience model.

00;18;33;27 – 00;18;40;02
Speaker 2
If you don’t mind. That’s always, a tricky subject. I’ve learned it over the years, but yeah, if you would, that’d be great.

00;18;40;04 – 00;19;09;18
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, so to keep it simple, it’s it’s it’s either gonna punish you or reward you for having, bad claims history or for having a good claims record. So if you’ve got employees getting hurt on a regular basis, you’re going to have a high experience mod, which is going to exponentially increase your worker’s comp premium. And then you’ve got companies that haven’t had a claim ever, or yeah, at least in the past 3 or 4 years.

00;19;09;20 – 00;19;36;06
Speaker 1
So they’re going to have a discount on their worker’s comp which give them gives them a competitive edge against their, their peers. So this one guy in particular, his janitorial company had a, a 69 experience mod, which means he was getting a 31% discount compared to the average company in his industry. If you’re at a 100 or a 1.0, you’re right there at the average.

00;19;36;09 – 00;19;55;20
Speaker 1
What the state would expect in terms of how many claims you you’ve got on your record. So he was at a 69. So that’s the lowest he could go for the size of his company. And that’s great right. He’s instead of paying 100 grand a year, let’s say he had a 10% rate, for his payroll, which is common in California.

00;19;55;20 – 00;20;19;17
Speaker 1
Hopefully it’s lower for you guys. So he’s paying 69,000 a year instead of 100 grand. But then he had an employee say that they they hurt their back. I mean, there is no way to to confirm whether or not they really hurt their back at work because it was one of those scenarios where they’re saying their back hurts, but they get an X-ray, they get an MRI, everything looks perfectly fine.

00;20;19;20 – 00;20;49;19
Speaker 1
But they’ve got bad pain and they can’t work. So anyways, after that got filed, let’s say it was a $40,000 claim. It knocked his experience mod up to a 94. So now he’s paying, you know, 25,000 or so more per year, and it hits his mod for three years. So over the course of three years, he’s paying 75,000 more than he would have without that claim.

00;20;49;22 – 00;21;10;29
Speaker 1
And so he ended up paying more than what the claim actually cost, which, you know, that that’s why a lot of people hate insurance so much, because it’s like the insurance company ends up profiting no matter what. Unless you’ve got one of those really large claims, they call it a shock loss. Let’s say an employee ends up in the hospital for a long time where they’re permanently disabled.

00;21;10;29 – 00;21;30;27
Speaker 1
It could be half 1 million or $1 million claim. That’s, you know, you’re glad you have insurance to cover those, and it’s not going to hit your mod that hard. But this janitorial guy I was just talking about. So he ended up having another claim after that, the year after bumped his experience mod to a 120.

00;21;31;00 – 00;21;46;03
Speaker 1
So now he’s paying 120 grand a year, let’s say for two claims, right? When he was paying 69,000 originally. So that’s like a $50,000 increase just because he had two bad claims. Yeah.

00;21;46;06 – 00;21;49;02
Speaker 2
And that’s over the course of how long a year.

00;21;49;05 – 00;22;21;24
Speaker 1
Yeah. It was one after the other. So in two years he had one claim after the other, maybe a couple other real small ones. But these were the ones that hurt his experience. Mod. So when that happens, that’s when you start to really consider implementing a robust safety program that’s going to sure, hopefully help reduce these claims. Because if you could just prevent one, I mean, the ROI on whatever time it took you to implement a safety program, preventing one claim is going to have a huge impact on your bottom line.

00;22;21;27 – 00;22;42;00
Speaker 2
What does that, structure look like? I mean, so, you know, it makes total sense, you know, for and I’ve been down that road as well. I’ve had to, you know, deal with that and implement some internal safety things that, you know, we’ve done. But what does that look like for, you know, a company that comes to you and they say, hey, we want to implement a safety program.

00;22;42;03 – 00;22;56;10
Speaker 2
How do you onboard them onto your platform? And, you know, what does that look like? Do you have custom solutions for, you know, different sizes of companies? I know you have them for different industries. But how does that how does that work?

00;22;56;12 – 00;23;28;10
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, just to clarify, so our, our platform is going to help them implement their recurring safety trainings, using the mobile app or any computer. If employees that have access, they can watch the videos. So you get your tailgate training done, or you can conduct your hazard assessments and incident reporting digitally through our app. So those are what, from what I found in my 15 years of helping companies with this, those were the two areas that companies struggle with the most.

00;23;28;12 – 00;23;56;17
Speaker 1
But doing, just doing those two, like through our platform, that’s not 100% of your compliance. So we’re not really doing 100%. You still have to have the written programs in place. If you’re doing real high risk type work, like your guys are up on on scaffolds every day, you probably need to give them some sort of like specialized scaffolding safety training, or they may need an OSHA ten certificate or an OSHA 30.

00;23;56;20 – 00;24;20;02
Speaker 1
So we’re not providing those like one off, safety certifications that a lot of companies need. But we are helping them with the most time consuming and burdensome part of it, which is the the recurring training and the hazard assessment. And so we we introduce them by first we schedule a quick demo. Our website is our safety team.com.

00;24;20;06 – 00;24;44;13
Speaker 1
Oh you are safety team.com. You can go there and download a free OSHA compliance checklist. If you just want to see you know where your company is at now compared to what OSHA would look at if they audited you, or on our website, you could just book a demo. So that’s normally how it gets started. So a company will will meet with me or another sales guy online for a quick demo.

00;24;44;16 – 00;25;04;04
Speaker 1
I’ll do a screen share and walk them through, what an account looks like. All they have to do is add their employees into their account and their employees phone numbers. And then all of their employees will get a text from us automatically to to download our free app. Which and there’s a link included in that text.

00;25;04;07 – 00;25;39;15
Speaker 1
And then on the morning of every scheduled safety training, they’re going to get a text from us letting them know, hey, Derrick, you have a mandatory safety video to watch today. Don’t forget to open the Safety Team app. Watch the video, sign your name, complete the quiz. So they get that periodically till they’re complete. And then inside our portal, I show our clients where they if they want to do a jobsite safety assessment or hazard assessment checklist, they could pull it up, in the mobile app and I walk them through quickly how to do it.

00;25;39;18 – 00;25;55;15
Speaker 1
Or they could pull it up, you know, on the computer and complete it there. But once they complete, whether it’s a safety training or a hazard assessment checklist, all those records saved digitally in their account so they can access them anytime they need them.

00;25;55;17 – 00;26;15;01
Speaker 2
Gotcha. That’s awesome. And I got to ask, with all of, you know, the talk around, you know, insurance and you know, your background in the insurance industry and then going off and helping to solve a problem that you identified. Yeah. What’s the craziest claim that you’ve either had to deal with or have seen in you in your career?

00;26;15;03 – 00;26;17;26
Speaker 2
Being in the insurance world?

00;26;17;29 – 00;26;43;29
Speaker 1
Yeah. Good question. Just last year, man, this guy, he was a he was always like a problem client because he would never take my advice on anything. He had a roof tear off company and I say had in past tense because he’s not in business anymore. He he ended up having a I think it was a $5 million claim and no insurance company would take because he had a history of 1 or 2 claims a year.

00;26;44;01 – 00;27;09;07
Speaker 1
He would hire, you know, the lowest skilled employees he could find. He’d pay them the bare minimum. And these guys are up on roofs, you know, six, seven, eight hours a day in the hot sun, just tearing off, you know, roofing materials and getting it ready for the skilled crew to come in and install a roof. And, you know, he had no regard for safety, no regard for his employees.

00;27;09;07 – 00;27;33;16
Speaker 1
It was a toxic culture. And usually these are the types of companies I want to target, because I could come in and I can make the biggest difference with a company like this. But if a business owners attitude is a certain way and a stubborn and he’s not willing to listen to you and consider that there’s alternatives to the, you know, the way he’s running his program and his company.

00;27;33;18 – 00;27;59;16
Speaker 1
Then it’s just tough. So, yeah, he had a, an incident occur that was just bound to happen where he hired a young guy, like a 22 year old, guy who had lied to him and said that he had a lot of roofing experience. But they found out quickly that wasn’t the case. So he had just gotten awarded a job at a school in San Jose, and he had the 22 year old kid was up there.

00;27;59;16 – 00;28;23;11
Speaker 1
It was his first day on the job. I think he was only like on a six foot roof, that it had a little slope to it. But he apparently tripped over a metal pipe coming out of the roof, fell off the roof and went, you know, headfirst into the concrete. And apparently he was still conscious. My client called me because he was there.

00;28;23;14 – 00;28;45;23
Speaker 1
Eric, what do I do? You know, I just had a guy fall off the roof, but he seems fine. He’s talking to me. I said, taken to the hospital right away, because if he just fell on his head off the roof, there’s a good chance he might seem like he’s okay. But something bad can happen soon. So he said he was talking to the kid on the way there, that he drove him to the hospital and he seemed coherent.

00;28;45;25 – 00;29;05;03
Speaker 1
He was conscious. He was fine. But they put him in to the CT scan when he got to the hospital and sure enough, you know, his brain was hemorrhaging. They could tell that he needed to go into the emergency room for a surgery right away. They ended up doing, you know, a craniotomy where they had to remove part of his skull.

00;29;05;09 – 00;29;21;01
Speaker 1
He was in a coma for a month. Just horrible. I mean, this kid’s life is permanently affected. Such a sad story. And and just from my perspective, knowing that this guy was just due for something like this to happen.

00;29;21;04 – 00;29;22;24
Speaker 2
Yeah, could have been prevented.

00;29;22;26 – 00;29;47;18
Speaker 1
It could have been prevented. Yeah. So no insurance after that happened. Like no insurance company is going to look at his claim history and say, sure, we’re going to offer him coverage. Then I mean, he had lawyers, you know, coming after him the week after this happened. He had OSHA was there the next day. And he’s got nothing, no safety training records, no injury illness prevention program.

00;29;47;18 – 00;30;22;27
Speaker 1
He just never cared about it. So I mean, this is the reason why OSHA is important, right? To to most businesses, they’re just a pain. They make life harder. They’re really tough to deal with. But you can’t have reckless business owners out there who have no regard for their employees safety. So that’s like the the best example I can, you know, come up with on why safety is important and what can go wrong if you really just have no regard for it at all.

00;30;23;00 – 00;30;40;29
Speaker 2
So what would you say? Because, you know, our listeners, they they vary in, you know, size of companies that they either own or work in. But for, you know, folks that are listening that are newer business owners are just starting on their own, or even an employee who, you know, is just starting with a new company.

00;30;40;29 – 00;30;51;15
Speaker 2
What are some of the top things that, you know, they should avoid in order to either be compliant, or remain safe on the job site?

00;30;51;17 – 00;31;16;00
Speaker 1
You know, in this day and age now with all the new technology, we have it. It’s really not that time consuming or difficult to get like a beginner level safety program in place and start implementing it right away. So your company at least is meeting some of the compliance and responsibilities for your state, but also showing the employees that, hey, you care about their safety.

00;31;16;02 – 00;31;51;04
Speaker 1
You want them to get back home to their family at the end of the night in one piece and not get hurt. And you want to keep your your insurance costs down. So the easiest thing you can do now, honestly, is ChatGPT. I hate to say it, but I was playing around with the new version of it and I said I typed into the prompt exactly what industry a client of mine worked in, how many employees they have, what state we’re in, and I said, create an injury illness prevention program, which is normally like it’s like a 30 page document.

00;31;51;07 – 00;32;06;24
Speaker 1
And inside of it, it has a lot of these other sections like emergency evacuation plan, first aid program. You know, what the standards are for each industry. And it created it in like eight seconds or something.

00;32;06;25 – 00;32;08;07
Speaker 2
It’s amazing. Yeah.

00;32;08;09 – 00;32;33;00
Speaker 1
Yeah, you still have to read through it and make sure, you know, it didn’t have any mistakes or confuse anything. But for the most part, the new version of ChatGPT is pretty good. So you can go in, create that, customize it, save it on your computer or print it out and you’ve got a good IEP. And then the next step is just implementing the IEP in in.

00;32;33;01 – 00;32;57;22
Speaker 1
And when I say that I mean like hosting safety trainings. So just you can go into your calendar and choose to do a once a month, safety meeting with your worker. So schedule a date that you think is going to work and a time and put it on a recurring series in your calendar. So it’s like every Friday morning at 8 a.m., we’re going to have the guys meet and we’re going to talk about a safety topic.

00;32;57;24 – 00;33;11;04
Speaker 1
Then we’re going to take attendance and put the attendance in the IEP. And if you’re just doing that, I mean, you’re probably ahead of like 80 to 90% of a lot of companies out there if you’re doing it consistently.

00;33;11;07 – 00;33;12;22
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;33;12;24 – 00;33;34;01
Speaker 1
And once a quarter do yeah. Do a hazard assessment just like once a quarter. You could go online and print a hazard assessment checklist and put some of those in your binder. And then put a reminder in your calendar. Once a quarter, walk around your facility with the checklist and see if you spot any hazards. And if not, then just put the checklist back in the binder.

00;33;34;04 – 00;33;55;20
Speaker 2
Yeah, so funny, said ChatGPT. None of that stuff was around when when we were first starting, 15 years ago. But it just it does. It makes things so much easier, even just to just put a simple plan together. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So, you know, I guess I know we’re we’re starting to get a little bit short on time here, and I want to make sure we’re, respectful of your time.

00;33;55;20 – 00;34;20;29
Speaker 2
And, I could talk about this all day. It’s, It’s very fascinating to me, but what do you think the, future outlook, looks like in terms of, states and legislation and, you know, enforcement of the safety programs. Do you see it? Continuing to tighten up or do you see it pulling back down the road?

00;34;21;02 – 00;34;51;14
Speaker 1
Well, I mean, it’s really tough to answer because it just depends on it depends on like, the leadership. So who’s in charge and what do they find important where they want to prioritize their funding. Because right now, with Donald Trump, you know, there’s a lot of good things he’s doing to help businesses. But with OSHA and, I mean, they consider that extra regulation, extra compliance, they’re not putting any extra funding into OSHA right now.

00;34;51;16 – 00;35;15;01
Speaker 1
So if you’re in a state like I think Florida, Texas are are examples of states that don’t have their own state OSHA program, they are. I mean, it’s going to be probably a lot less regulation and OSHA auditors out in those states just because the federal government isn’t putting a lot of emphasis into it right now in a funding.

00;35;15;03 – 00;35;54;03
Speaker 1
And even the states that do have their own OSHA programs, a lot of the funding for those does come from the federal level, too. So it just seems like, at least for the next three years and for the past year, that it OSHA is less of a threat and a risk than it was before. But if the pendulum’s pendulum swings back the other way, let’s say Kamala Harris gets elected next time, you know, or another liberal, then I mean, it could definitely go back to more money going into OSHA, then hiring, more funding for hiring more field auditors and that sort of thing.

00;35;54;03 – 00;36;19;06
Speaker 1
So yeah, it all comes from the federal level. So it’s a it’s politically, you know, motivated. But what they decide to do California is tough. And I think New York, it’s still there’s always going to be OSHA there in those states. But you’re probably seeing less field inspections than you did before. And I mean, but safety is still important just to keep your insurance costs down.

00;36;19;08 – 00;36;39;16
Speaker 1
And you still have insurance companies that you’ve got to deal with, and you want to look like a profitable company in their eyes. And so they’re looking at, you know, do you care enough to have a safety program? Are you implementing it? And if you are, you’re going to get better rates. You’re going to get better. You know, you’re going to have more carriers that want to quote you.

00;36;39;19 – 00;36;50;29
Speaker 1
They’re going to get competitive with each other, and you end up really helping your business and doing yourself a big favor by having a good safety program in place.

00;36;51;01 – 00;37;20;09
Speaker 2
One more question for you. So you know from your perspective now and, you know, having the experience in the insurance world and now on the compliance side and helping businesses to, you know, reduce risk and, and, you know, lower their insurance, insurance premiums, what would you, tell a young business owner who is maybe shopping for an insurance policy or a broker, what are some of the questions that they should ask those folks when they’re when they’re talking to them before they sign up?

00;37;20;11 – 00;37;43;07
Speaker 1
Yeah. Try to get an idea for which which insurance companies they prefer working with and why. Because there’s insurance carriers out there that will lure you in with a really low rate. But then when you have a claim they don’t want to support you, you might, like, have evidence that a an employee is not injured at all, right?

00;37;43;07 – 00;38;03;13
Speaker 1
They’re helping their friends move. They’re playing soccer on the weekend. You’ve got it on video and you’re like, hey, tell the underwriter I’ll send them the video. And some insurance underwriters are like, no, we don’t want to have to go to court and fight this or, you know, the employee’s going to hire an attorney, too. So we’re just going to settle for 40 grand or 50 grand or whatever it is.

00;38;03;15 – 00;38;29;23
Speaker 1
So you don’t want a broker who’s just going to settle with those options. Like at least they shouldn’t have a story on how they’re going to help you. What are they going to do? The broker to earn their commission that they get from the insurance company. So that’s what I used to tell prospective clients that I would want to build a wedge between them and their current broker, because I want to become the broker.

00;38;29;25 – 00;38;53;03
Speaker 1
So I’d say, tell me what? So your policy’s $100,000 a year and premium, your broker is making like 10 or 15,000 of that and commission. What do they do to earn it? Are they just shopping the policy? Are they really even shopping it? But are they doing anything to help prevent claims? To, you know, contribute to your safety compliance?

00;38;53;06 – 00;39;14;22
Speaker 1
And if they’re just like, no, I, I hear from him once a year, him or her, when they have a new quote and they send it to me and I don’t know if they got other quotes. So, you know, just be aware if you’re new and you’re starting out that there’s a lot of insurance companies out there, there’s a lot of options and there’s brokers that can offer you a lot of extra support beyond just quoting your insurance.

00;39;14;24 – 00;39;36;01
Speaker 1
They should be able to help you with your safety program. They should be able to put together like a fleet safety program for you when your insurance, sends their friendly, you know, risk survey guy out to your business, which everyone hates. Those meetings your your broker should be there with you just to kind of help guide along, you know, guide you through the process.

00;39;36;01 – 00;39;52;20
Speaker 1
And if they say, well, we want you to put this together, your broker should support you and help put something some whether it’s a, you know, fall prevention program binder. It’s something that brokers should offer. So so they’re earning their commission for you every year.

00;39;52;22 – 00;40;14;14
Speaker 2
I can tell you that’s awesome advice because I’ve learned the hard way on, a lot of that. So, we appreciate that. And, you know, I, I appreciate you joining us. And, and for all of your insight, if our listeners want to find you and, explore your, your website and, your safety compliance, program, where can they find it?

00;40;14;16 – 00;40;37;00
Speaker 1
Yeah, I’d say check out our website, our safety team.com. It’s. Oh, you are safety team. And on the top left corner there’s a green box. It says schedule ten minute demo. You could just schedule a call with me or one of my associates. And, you know, we’ll hear about your current situation and we’ll show you our platform. It’s very quick and straightforward.

00;40;37;02 – 00;40;58;09
Speaker 1
I think you’ll love how simple to use it is. And yeah, it’s that easy. Go to our safety team, A.com. You can book a demo, or if you’ve already been convinced, after you know what you’ve heard and what you’ve seen on our website, you can you could just sign up straight through the website as well. But it’s always good to see a walk through first.

00;40;58;11 – 00;41;18;18
Speaker 2
Awesome. Well, thank you again, Eric. And, it’s been a pleasure to join you. Have you join us on the podcast? And, I want to, before we wrap up, give a shout out to our sponsors, police, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Binotto Construction, Michaels Group, Catamount Consulting was our team. Diego cleaning Systems and Five Towers Media.

00;41;18;20 – 00;41;21;16
Speaker 2
So thank you, everybody. And, we’ll catch you on the next one.

00;41;21;16 – 00;41;49;15
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Bio or email us at hardhat Dot CSU at gmail.com.

00;41;49;15 – 00;42;01;26
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building. Keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

00;42;01;26 – 00;42;17;06
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.