How to Move Your Safety Teams from Reactive Firefighters to Proactive Fire Marshals: Insights from Jesse Marano

Speaker A: One of the things I always say to my team is, how can we move from firefighters to fire marshals? I think when you say the day to day, unfortunately, and I think this will change with time and maturity. But right now we're responding to fires and we're kind of reacting, and to some degree, that's our job, right? It's warranted, but that can't be the only things we do.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Canary Report, the podcast where risk leaders, safety professionals, and operational executives come for real world stories and smarter strategies to keep people safe. I'm your host, Michael Zhao. In each episode, I sit down with exceptional leaders who are transforming how risk

Speaker C: and safety are managed. Whether you're a leader of a nationwide

Speaker B: EH&S program in a high risk industry, or you champion workplace safety across 200 retail locations, this podcast is for you. Let's get into it.

Speaker C: Welcome to the Canary Report. I am your host, Michael Zell, founder and CEO of yellowbird, the most trusted solution for delivering safety programs nationwide. Joining us today is Jesse Marano. Jesse is the director of Global EHS at evapco, Global, manufacturer of heat transfer and industrial refrigeration systems. With more than 3,700 employees crossing 28 facilities in 13 countries, Jesse brings an amazing background, and I am so delighted to have you today. So thank you, Jesse, for joining us this morning, this afternoon.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me, Michael.

Speaker C: Well, first and foremost, I have to comment that we do not get a lot of ties on this podcast. And when we kicked off today, you asked me a great question and it was, what do I see when I look at that tie? Now, for anybody who's listening today, it happens to also be St. Patrick's Day. And so I'm wearing my green shirt here, and I believe that tie has green in it. It's hard to tell sometimes through cameras, but he asked me what it was and what these things on his tie were, and I was looking hard, trying to figure it out, and I said croissant. Uh, maybe because I'm hungry, I don't know. But Jesse, being the head of safety for vapco, says they are hard hats, so very cool.

Speaker A: Or potentially tacos as well.

Speaker C: Yes, tacos as well, which, by the way, it's also Tuesday, so would also apply.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker C: So thank you again, man, for being on the podcast with us today. I am recording this from my home, which I normally don't do. And so this is a little bit different lighting and a little bit different scene than I'm used to. But I appreciate everybody tolerating the change in locale. So you have an incredible background. Jesse and I always try to start this podcast by saying that we are a human being based industry doing human things for the safety of humans. And so I want to find out more about the human that is Jesse Marana. So tell us a little bit about your home life today and then maybe a little bit about your upbringing, where you came from, and a little bit about that kind of stuff.

Speaker A: Sure. Well, hey, thanks again for having me. So my home life, it's busy. It's myself, my darling wife, Portia and our three children. I have two boys, 6 and 3. And we just had our baby girl and she's just over one, so I'm, um, smitten over her. Our first girl, you know, so we were thrilled about that. But yeah, she's the apple of my eye. So our days are filled with running kids between sports and late nights, early mornings. You're a father, you know how that goes. But it's busy and exhausting. But you know, you got to enjoy the season of life while you can.

Speaker C: Six, three and one. So your hands were definitely full. I look back to those times and I didn't really appreciate how special that they were. It's really hard to do. In fact, almost impossible to do. But when you go back through your pictures and your camera reel and all these things even going only a couple of years back, you'll realize that you're having great moments and well, good for you, man. And you got your little girl and two older brothers that will certain protectors. I have a little girl with an older brother. It's a good thing, man. So where are you? Where is home for your family?

Speaker A: So we live in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, just outside of Taneytown, uh, Maryland, where our evapco headquarters is. So I'm broadcasting here live from our evapco headquarters in beautiful Taneytown, Maryland.

Speaker B: Awesome.

Speaker C: Uh, how far is it? Is it a long commute to get to work?

Speaker A: 20 minutes or so. So a lot of people live on the PA side and commute in to Maryland.

Speaker C: That's awesome. So tell us a little bit about evapco. Just as a company, big organization, lots of places, lots of moving parts. Can you tell us a little bit about the various facilities and things that you all do?

Speaker A: Yeah, certainly. So we got our start about 50 years ago. We're actually celebrating our 50 year anniversary here in June. But we got our start in evaporative cooling, hence the name evapco. So we started with cooling towers and have just grown since then. And we are now kind of a global company going from H vac evaporative cooling through industrial refrigeration and even cooling on a power generation scale. So field directed cooling towers as well. And so we service the data center market heavily and our, uh, industrial refrigeration, large scale freezers, you know, food and beverage type industries as well as just general H vac, commercial cooling, industrial cooling.

Speaker C: That's fantastic. It's funny you bring up data centers. It's one of the things that I think there isn't a conversation that any of us have in this world does not have some kind of a linkage to data centers and being in that space. I know in, uh, the little research that I did that you do, uh, aerospace and biotech and electrical distribution, but now with all this computing power generates heat and then generating heat means that you need to vo to cool it. So you're in a good space, man. Good for you. So when I was reading your background a little bit, there was a word that you used to describe yourself which was a strategical leader. And I thought that was a pretty neat way of describing both your hands on and execution, but also strategic blend. Is that something that you've kind of been developing over time? Like, tell me how you view the strategical leadership principles.

Speaker A: Yeah, certainly. I think it does come with time and it comes with experience. I think as ehs people, you know, especially when you start early on in your career, you know, you're focused on the very tactical, right? Go do this task, right? Usually working for someone else and you're the task, grab it. Uh, right, you're learning, you're executing. As you grow and as opportunities come to you, your scale starts to change, right? So instead of working on one particular workstation, right. You're supporting the plant, right. And then you go from a plant to maybe multiple plants, then to a division into a region and a national and a global, right? So you're, you know, in your career, your scales consistently changing and usually growing. And with that you have to toggle your tacticalness and balance that with your strategy and thinking at scale. And so having a good background and starting from the ground up and being that execution task oriented person, especially early on in the career, balance that with the strategy that you develop as you scale up in your career. I think that kind of blends and breeds that word strategical, where you know, you want someone that doesn't just know strategy, but also knows the pain points of executing that strategy. So I think that's where having a little blend of Both is makes you ah, a more effective EHS leader today.

Speaker C: Yeah. So you're in 13 countries, not just in, you know, all your 28 facilities, but give us, you don't to go through all the countries but are you manufacturing in all these countries or are they distribution? What kind of headcount and things are you dealing with as you cover all these facilities all over the place?

Speaker A: Yeah, certainly. So we deal primarily manufacturing. So we have uh, two sites in Brazil and outside of Sao Paulo, we have two sites in Italy, Belgium, Denmark, three sites in China, site in Australia, Canada, 10 sites across the US but primarily manufacturing. And uh, Evapco likes to be somewhat vertically integrated. So we'll acquire businesses that fit our supply chain and our value chain. So you know, a lot of sites that do really core things for our product. Our bread and butter. Right. The cooling towers and our evaporators and condensers. And then we'll buy a fan company because we need fans. And so we have one site that just builds fans for us and for the market. But yeah, you have kind of these one off operations as well that are really unique to evapco as well.

Speaker C: Now how many acquisitions have you had to oversee in your role? Have you had a lot of those integrations and acquisition processes and how does that affect kind of your EHS program as you're taking these cultures and these different companies and integrating them?

Speaker A: Sure. You know, and I'm um, relatively new to Graphco, so I'm just about two years in. So during my tenure I had not personally kind of been a part of an integration. A lot of these companies have been purchased years prior to me coming on board. But I'm sure there will be more in the future as evapco grows. But I think with any integration it has to be the right fit and there has to be support for that company coming in. I don't think, you know, it's always value added to be too heavy handed. Right. Coming out the gate you have another organization with its own culture and its own way of doing things and you're trying to marry that up with another organization with its own way of doing things. And hopefully there's a good fit. But I think it's about time and prioritizing what needs to happen and when. And so you bring them along kind of in stages is kind um, of my philosophy. And you kind of hold their hand along the way and make sure they're supported. But it can't just be, hey, you're part of us now. Here's the evapco book and you need to buy that book on day one. And that gets be challenging.

Speaker C: Yeah, I hear you. It's funny. And by the way, full disclosure to our listeners, I have no idea if you guys are a customer. I often don't know if you are, you aren't. And it doesn't matter to me. I love having these conversations with great leaders and so it doesn't matter to me whether we do business together right now or not. But a lot of folks are using us to do a level setting where we do surveys and we go around and we do a third party assessment of just everybody so we can kind of level set so demand isn't coming in. And I can see how that could be a helpful, useful, uh, tool, uh, for you all at some point as you're trying to assess, you know, in all these places. And you've got 13 countries and you mentioned European languages, you mentioned, obviously you're in Brazil, so you got Portuguese and then you've got Spanish and Spain. So yeah, you also have to deal with the governance of these different countries and all that stuff. Have you found that to be challenging just understanding all the, just the requirements and how to run a cohesive program?

Speaker A: Definitely. I think it's that balance of how much corporate oversight needs to come out of kind of our EHS office from a corporate level and how much autonomy does a site have to manage their day to day independently. So that's a balancing act. We're always juggling. We don't want to be too overbearing. Right. Because there's value in allowing the sites to do what they need to do. So but yet you also want standardization across your operation. So that's a balancing act. It's an art, not a science, I think, and one that we're still working through. But nowadays with technology and software that exists out there, I don't have to know all the Brazilian requirements for stormwater regulations. Right. But I can point our Brazilian team to that with some markets that are available out, um, in the market, some solutions.

Speaker C: That's fantastic. And you said dead on. I mean you acquire these, you either acquire or start or whatever for a reason. And you don't want to take that magic away. You want to kind of understand they did things really well and you need to respect that and also understand why they do things. It's easy to say, oh, that's not the way it should be done. Well, maybe it is in their cultures. So going to your background, going way back, where were you born and bred and tell us A little bit about you. I take it Jesse didn't wake up as a three year old saying you wanted to be an EHS Global Manager. So what were your dreams early on and how did you end up along the way getting in this role?

Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So born and raised in Miami, Florida originally. And I kind of got the interest in environmental science in high school, actually took an advanced placement course and had a great high school teacher and kind of got the interest in environmental stewardship and what I could do. I said, hey, I want to study that. And studying environmental studies in college led to internships with United Technologies and great corporation to kind of learn from and get some really good foundational kind of EHS practices under my belt. And that just continued to breed, you know, after those internships for multiple summers and to future opportunities, you know, after graduation and the rest is history.

Speaker C: So where did you go to college initially and then tell us about the travel and, you know, you're a long way from home up in pa, so. Well, what did the geography do?

Speaker A: Yeah. So being born and raised in Miami, I went to school in Rollins College, which is in Orlando, Florida. So about three hours or so away after college, I relocated to a small town called Horseheads, New York. And it's in upstate New York, just about 45 minutes south of Rochester. So I went from south beach to Horseheads, freezing. So there's quite the climate shock. That was the transition, but also just the social shock. Right. I went from a very large metropolitan area to a very, very, very small town. But it was great in terms of meeting people. Right. I was able to focus on my career path and go to school and get my master's degree and met my wife up there and so got a lot of good things out of that experience and then bounced around with various roles as I eventually joined Eaton Corporation and, you know, been up and down the east coast and here we are now in evapco.

Speaker C: That's fantastic. I mean, I tell you, that's the American dream right there. I mean, it really is. That is what you want. If I think of what I want for my children, that journey and learning and moving and it's a beautiful thing. My family, my wife's family is actually from upstate, from Syracuse area and so we've driven through. I may have stopped there near Horsehead, but I wouldn't have known it if I had.

Speaker A: We actually went to Syracuse and we wanted a night out or go to a comedy club or, you know, have some social life. We would go to Syracuse. Yeah.

Speaker C: Oh, that's great. Yeah, I mean, I love Syracuse. I spent summers there for years and years, especially when grandma was alive kind of a thing. And what did your family do? Your mom and dad and siblings and so forth? Did you have any siblings?

Speaker A: Only child. My mom got it right the first time and just stopped after that. You know, she knew she set the bar high, but no, she worked hard. She was actually a receptionist, a legal secretary for a long time. She eventually became town councilwoman in our small town in Miami there for a little bit and she's now since passed on. And my father, he was actually a musician, so he was a drummer in Miami his whole life. And he actually toured with Casey in the Sunshine Band and expose in the 80s. So he lived the rock star life as well. But unfortunately he's passed on as well. So they're both in a better place. But had some good role models growing up.

Speaker C: Oh, uh, that's fantastic. I'm sorry about having lost them, but you know, you're very blessed to have had them, so I can relate. My wife has lost both of her parents as well and I'm counting my blessings because mine are still around. They're getting older, but they're still around, so. Well, very, very good. So getting onto the business side of the house when you were at Eaton, which was your role prior to coming to where you are today, I believe, correct? I mean, is that your last priority?

Speaker A: I was actually with, uh, Emergent Biosolutions and Biotech prior to coming to evapco.

Speaker C: So we'll stick with Eaton. Just for a moment. You said you moved around with them. Um, what were you doing in the role? I mean, everybody in the HS knows, which is one of the things I'm trying to solve for, is that you live on airplanes and in cars, trying to get from site to site to site. But what was your role there and how. Kind of give me some of the logistical things that you worked on.

Speaker A: So I had a couple different roles in Eaton. So I started out with them, um, managing one of their plants in Horseheads, New York. It was a set of about 250 people or so. And so I kind of started with them as a EHS manager for that plant. After a few years that, you know, there was an opportunity to run one of their larger plants down in South Carolina, down in Sumter, South Carolina. So I relocated there and did that for a few years. And then there was another opportunity to run one of their business units as a division. And we had 17 kind of small manufacturing sites across the country, our satellite operations. So ran that kind of division or business unit for a few years as well. And so, yeah, a lot of travel associated with that, uh, role specifically, I imagine.

Speaker C: So what were the primary risk factors that you guys were focused on in that? Like, what were the things that kept you up at night? Without going into details, we don't need to have any. No gotchas here. It's just a matter of. It's interesting to hear what kind of different businesses contend with and what the things are, whatever the things happen to be.

Speaker A: Well, Eaton does a lot of things that what we were doing specifically, and I'll use our satellite operations, and our plants were making. We're in the electrical sector, so we're making steel boxes with components in them. And a lot of those components had to be tested. So you can imagine a lot of heavy machinery, steel fabrication, assembly operations, sharp metal, heavy things, and then electrical testing, which was one of our bigger risks. So high voltage, 480 volt. I say high voltage, it's really low voltage in the industry, but it's enough to really hurt you and kill you.

Speaker C: Not 120. It's enough to really hurt you.

Speaker A: Exactly. So those are the kind of a risk. And to give you an idea of a risk profile for those operations.

Speaker C: It's funny, one of my interviews said once I was in this environment where everything was trying to kill me. And it was funny that, you know, but it's true. Uh, and you just described that you've got cuts and lacerations, heavy things, metals, electrical. Like these are what our industry is made to try and help people do safely. And then you went to a biotech firm in there. I imagine you were dealing with more clean room kind of environments. Right.

Speaker A: Vastly different. There was not a single press break, no laser cutters. Right. But it had its own unique risk. Right. You had biohazard risks. You still had some machine guarding with some of the automation equipment that were in some of those operations. Ergonomics is a challenge. You got people putting labels on tiny bottles, you know, hunched over, doing thousands. So that could be its own unique challenge. So I wouldn't say zero risk, but certainly different risk profile than some of the heavy manufacturing that I've been in.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's ironic that people outside of our industry and I consider safety to be an industry. And if people outside of the safety industry say, oh, well, I have a safety guy or I know the guy or gal I can turn to for. I'm like, there is no one person that knows all of this Stuff, it does not happen. I mean, you've given such interesting examples of the range that you had to get versatile in. You know, I guarantee you, since you haven't worked in a mine shaft, if I said, okay, I need you to put a mine shaft safety program together, you'd be like, whoa, that's very different than a clean room or a manufacturing facility. So then you ended up at ah, evapco with the dynamic. Now you're at your global headquarters where you are close to it. And it's a US founded company.

Speaker A: Yes, US Private company.

Speaker C: Great. So are you like involved with the board and the senior executives kind of going through what the programs are and the risk factors and all that kind of stuff? Is that part of your dynamic?

Speaker A: I work with our, uh, senior vice president of global operations. You know, I report to him and he handles most of that interaction. M. But I do kind of manage all of our global EHS programs and set the strategy and really kind of oversee and M responsible for corporate performance that he will report to the board of directors.

Speaker C: Right. Thank God. I mean, you're lucky. I don't know if you want that role. So does he also have requirements for like insurance and loss control and things like that, or does that go through a different area of the business?

Speaker A: We certainly have insurance. A lot of that's handled by our CFO and our financial group and our legal teams. On the insurance side, I'm involved in some of those conversations, but it's not part of my day to day.

Speaker C: Yeah, you know, it's funny because we tend to be the lagging indicator, unfortunately, when it comes to risk profiles and mod rates and where people are getting injured. And it always comes back to the EHS team at some point in time, whether you want it to or not. Not.

Speaker A: Yeah, we keep a close eye on EMR for sure.

Speaker C: Absolutely. So you've got all these countries, you've got all these things that you guys have acquired and you have the whole ecosystem. What software do you all, uh, use? Or is it internal or how have you developed kind of your scorecard of success for the company?

Speaker A: We are on the cusp of integrating software not really sold yet on the software provider. So I won't use any product names or endorse any products just yet. Honestly, at evatco's history and our EHS function, we've operated on, I'd say the more basic tools, you know, Microsoft Office, Excel sheets, SharePoint. That's how we've operated up until this point. I think there's an acknowledgement now, as we continue to grow and expectations rise and demand for information and metrics is ever more present, I think we need to grow into a true software platform and I think we're going to be there soon. We're not there yet, but certainly I think it's a need that's been recognized by the company.

Speaker C: Yeah. And it's very difficult. You have, you're a 50 year old company in June you said so there's a lot of history and a lot of paper and it's not an easy ask if you were starting. People always say, well, who's your competition? And when they talk about Yellowbird and I say, well, there's a lot of professional services companies, very good companies, very large companies that have been doing this a really long time, but they have legacy of just these processes that are just old and it's not their fault. They've been around a long time. There's lots of paper and lots of spreadsheets. And lots of spreadsheets. They don't even know where they are. And when you have the gift of being able to start for fresh. Five years ago we came along at the right time. So I imagine that's going to be part of your challenge, is finding a system that will take all the data that you have, right?

Speaker A: Yeah. And there's pros and cons. We've tried some systems and it's like, well, wait a minute, our Excel sheet works way better than this system. So finding that balance of what you want to put in an enterprise level system and the pros and cons and best of breed versus best of suite and what you're going to go get and how integrated you want it to be. It's a whole ecosystem that needs to be kind of managed.

Speaker C: Absolutely. I find it to be easy to describe and really hard to implement. It's so easy to describe what you want and then all of a sudden you realize there's a lot of people that have to have commitment to this. And that is not all.

Speaker A: We're going through it right now.

Speaker C: Yeah, I imagine so. Now what do you do on the training side of the house? Are you, do you have internal trainers? Do you use third parties? Do you do online? How is safety is uh, a training industry. So how do you keep people up to date on their various uh, required and just best practices?

Speaker A: I think it's a mixture. There's certainly some content that is delivered online, content that's classroom instructor led, some developed in house. We certainly leverage third parties where necessary. Right. There's Some, I think it depends a little bit on the EHS leader themselves. I have some team members that are really confident on certain subjects and they're like, I'm going to host a class for my site. Some folks say, hey, it's not my area expertise, I'm going to call someone in to do it. And that's fine. I think I don't mind either way. As long as the content's being delivered effectively, we're compliant. But we certainly use, I would say a mixture of instructor led, internally instructor led, third party resources, online, self paced. I think it's hard to find, you know, one size that fits all. So I think you have to have a multifaceted approach.

Speaker C: Well yeah, I mean I think you're very wise for understanding that uh, there is no one size fits all. It's a lot more efficient to use a network of trainers if you're going to do forklift training because you can find forklift trainings in all kinds of places and you tying up resources for that kind of thing. But there's also areas that are specific to you and it's going to be hard to get somebody to do that type of very specific training. And so, you know, I think you're wise in doing that. By the way, you're also, I'm going to let you brag for a moment, but you have never stopped going to school. When I read your bio, you have more certifications and schooling. Do you love the educational process? I mean I have to ask because it was impressive.

Speaker A: Well, thank you, I appreciate that. You know, the last real schooling I got was when before we had our first child at uh, Harvard University of a great night school extension school program where I went for corporate sustainability. And that was a great experience. But man, after having children, the timing was great, right? Our uh, kid was born right after I graduated from the certificate program and I'm done. I'm not going not put back now. I think now don't get me wrong, learning and development is continuous lifelong learning. But going through a structured degree program, I think I'm done with that.

Speaker C: There is a time in life it gets more and more difficult to continue. Not to mention you have to think of is the juice worth the squeeze. And that's part of the whole journey. That's why I tell my kids, get highly educated, as much education as you can because there will be a point where the trade off is just too

Speaker A: extreme and there's so much more to be learned from professional networks, seminars, workshops. I mean there's a lot of professional, I'll say in our trade, the EHS trade that you can go and get that is, you know, equally, if not more effective sometimes than, say, degree from a particular school.

Speaker C: I had a guy on the platform, he was on the Oliver platform, and he said that he gets called all around the country to do the same conversational speech, but he's one of three or four people that does nuclear safety, regulatory compliance, so he can deal with hot uranium. And I'm like, you're the perfect now. I can't build a whole business around that. I go out of business. Forklifts are a lot more prevalent than that. But that, ah, being said, I can see a world where that skill, that unique skill is just super valuable. And making it available to folks is kind of a cool thing. So does your wife stay home with kids now or does she also work for now?

Speaker A: She was working and she's now stopped. I mean, with three children and one of them's always sick, one of them's always leaving daycare early and needs to get picked up from the bus. It gets difficult to juggle. So she's staying home for now, and that could change as time goes on. But for now, I'm thinking this season of life, that's what she wants to do. And I think it's the best for our family.

Speaker C: That's awesome. My wife did the same thing. And my daughter, my youngest is now 16, she's driving. And my wife just went back to work and is very fulfilled and very happy doing it. But she was concerned because she was out of the mix for quite some time. But she jumped right back in and did a great thing.

Speaker A: It's a hard job.

Speaker C: Yeah. And it's a wonderful thing that if people can do that and sometimes, you know, life situations don't allow you to do that. So either way is all good by me. So a couple of other minor questions, then we'll wrap up. But, um, I'm just enjoying this conversation, so want to make sure we make the most of it. So on your team, you've got all these facilities, everything else, what does your team look like and kind of, what's your management cadence like? What is the organizational structure? I got your senior vice president. That goes to the board above you, but what does it look like underneath you? And how do you kind of manage over the program?

Speaker A: Our corporate team is actually pretty small, so it's myself and I have one other gentleman who just started about a year ago, and he oversees. He's our EHS programs manager. So as we develop standards. His role is focused on kind of packaging those and in a way where we have SOPs and appropriate training material and forms and templates and it's communicated well. Right. That whole package, I think is important. So he does a fantastic job with that. Beyond that, it's just the two of us for now. And we have uh, essentially EHS resources at the sites who are dotted line into me, but were poured up through the operation and through the operations teams locally.

Speaker C: So they basically work as safety coordinators as a secondary role, kind of, uh, a function.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: We have coordinators, we have some sites that are larger.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Warrant managers and coordinators. I think it just depends on the scope and complexity and risk profile of the sites. But yeah, typically all of our sites are supported in sunlight.

Speaker C: Interesting. That's really cool. So you obviously have the general manager of the general administration at each of the facilities. And so what's the day job of the average safety manager or coordinator and the non dotted line? What is their traditional primary role look like? Is there some role that you really look for to become the safety advocate as their dotted line role?

Speaker A: One of the things I always say to my team is how can we move from firefighters to fire marshals? I think when you say the day to day, unfortunately, and I think this will change with time and maturity. But right now we're responding to fires and we're kind of reacting and to some degree that's our job. Right. It's warranted, but that can't be the only things we do. And so as an organization we're kind of moving and growing and maturing to a way that we're more proactive. So our day to day, hopefully two years from now, looks very different than our day to day today.

Speaker C: It's so interesting. I actually, the analogy, uh, I use is I'm trying to make people into air traffic control instead of being pilots. When they look at why one would use the Yellowbird platform, it's like, well, you can control your program and use us to go and deploy the tactics because your air traffic control control. It's funny because it all kind of goes back to that same hierarchical, you know, are you using systems and processes to be better every day? And I think that's fantastic. So as you've gone through all these various roles and all these different positions and locations, what's been the most difficult piece of as you're trying to kind of assess and put a program for improvement, what are the things that you find to be just a constant challenge? Just in Operationally, I think the most

Speaker A: difficult thing sometimes is. Sounds easy, but it can be challenging, is getting the buy in. And on one hand, everyone can get behind. Let's be safe. But when you break that down into what actually needs to be done, we got to roll out this training, we got to do these inspections, we got to invest in this capital, you know, expense. And, oh, uh, by the way, there's these checklists that now need to be deployed. It's like, whoa, that's a lot of stuff we gotta do. Right. And altruistically, people want to do that. But when you deploy a program and have to convince folks as to kind of why we're doing it, here's the value in it. You have to sell it. I think that can sometimes be a challenge because it's like, wait a minute, now you're stepping on my shoes a little bit. And yeah, I want to be safe, but not at the expense of X, Y and Z productivity.

Speaker C: I'm bonused on units out the door. I'm not bonused on, you know. Right.

Speaker A: Uh, and EHS should really be integrated. And our production supervisor, this industry, vapco, it's kind of everywhere across my career. Right. Our production leaders want to be safe, they want their people to be safe. But you're always going to have competing priorities. And so having them bought into the mission and I think is kind of one of the challenges that can be overcome. But every organization you go to, there's cultural change and there's these kind of barriers to overcome initially. Once you get past that, then you kind of get that momentum and things go a lot easier depending on what initiatives you're pushing. But that first hurdle is kind of, hey, we're all ready to march. We're all good. Right? We're all bought in, and you really got to sell it.

Speaker C: Sometimes I find it to be interesting because as I've talked to hundreds of people now and had these various conversations, there's a visceral response to HOP and human operational procedures and processes. And reality is, is that the only way to sell safety is to integrate hop. Because if you're not making the business more efficient while making it safer, there's just no way you're going to get buy in. And like, whenever somebody pushes up against it, I always say, how do you possibly convince somebody who is judged on units out the door or efficiency per X or hours per Y, that they need to take a pause and they need to do this? It goes against their goals. And so you have to integrate. It's just an option like you will not be successful otherwise.

Speaker A: Unfortunately, safety has a reputation. Sometimes when I say safety guy or safety guy, what does that come to mind? Right? And usually you think of checklists. You think of, you're going to slow me down, you're going to think of more rules, more red tape, right? It doesn't come with, oh, operational efficiency. When you see your ehs, uh, you don't think that. So how do we as EHS professionals, right? We can cite OSHA codes and we can point to things that are wrong. But the challenge, I think, for EHS professionals, sometimes we have to sell it and show them the value, Speak in their language. Your production supervisors, your CFOs, your CEOs, your operations managers, they all care about different things. So you got to know your customer, know what their pain points are, know what their gain points are. Right? Hey, uh, you know we're going to help you do this, right? If we do this, we're going to have less lost times, right? We're going to save money here. And we can't just cite the OSHA code. Sometimes we got to put our sales habits on.

Speaker C: Um, well, we all do it. We look at these codes and we question their. Are they really valuable? Like, at the end of the day, if you can't describe the value, you're sunk. There's nowhere to go. Like, if it's, do it because I said so when I was seven, I couldn't do that. I certainly can't do it now. Well, Jesse, I have enjoyed this so much, man. Thank you for joining us today. Is there anything that you wanted to cover today that you thought might be interesting that we didn't cover? I just want to make sure you got the most out of our conversation.

Speaker A: You know, the one thing I shared with Josh, I think it was, was around when we were talking sales, there was a great example around New York City garbage. So if I told you how much would you pay me for a handful of garbage, what would you say? You'd say nothing, right?

Speaker C: Nothing. Yeah, right.

Speaker A: Right. What if I told you I'm going to put that garbage and, uh, it's going to be hand picked? Would you pay me anything more? Probably.

Speaker C: No, not necessarily.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: What if I put it in a cube and said it was organically sourced? You probably wouldn't pay me much, right?

Speaker C: Nope.

Speaker A: What if I told you there was a guy doing just that, making thousands of dollars selling garbage. And this is a metaphor for packaging safety. Not that safety is garbage. Right? It's value. But the Way you package your product, the way you market your product, right? There's this guy, Justin Gignac, and he did just that and did a test, and he legitimately picked up garbage, put in a cube, organically sourced from the streets of New York City when the Giants won the super bowl, right? You picked up garbage that day. So you can buy, if you're Giants fan, right, you can get some real garbage. And they're selling these cubes for a hundred dollars a cube, but it's genius. And it just goes to show you the power of packaging and selling and the product. That product could be a checklist, it could be more ppe, but if you package it, show that individual the value of it. You know, I think you can get anyone to buy into anything as long as it's well packaged and show them the value.

Speaker C: It's fascinating. Thank you. I'm glad you continued our conversation. I often say that, garbage in, garbage out. But in all I'm, um, doing so. It's funny, but we often are asked to go do a training or go do a survey or assessment, and they say, oh, your people will know what to do. And I always say, no, we won't know what is important to you. You need to give us guidance. I can make sure that every pro on the platform meets your expectation and they execute and we follow the rules, and you're going to get the report you want. It's going to look like you want, but you need to set that standard of what the beautiful garbage looks like, and you really do. You need what the framework of importance is. And I think people do a disservice to the importance of packaging and explaining why consistency matters, why it really does count, that it's not just a checklist. So it's a wonderful thing. Well, Jesse, thank you again, man. This was fantastic. I was going to ask you before we leave, do you have any hobbies or sports? I found there's a through line by many of our safety professionals that is a little bit unusual. So I was going to ask, are you into anything that may or may not even be the safest thing in the world that you do for a hobby?

Speaker A: You know, I've listened to your podcast and I've heard skydivers and shark divers and all kinds of things. I don't have anything that cool, especially in this stage of my life. Right now. I'm pretty, pretty low risk other than basketball and that type of stuff and golf maybe, but that's certainly not as risky as, or exciting as some of your other podcasters.

Speaker C: Well, I'm glad that you've listened. Thank you for doing that. And yeah, I'm always surprised every now and then somebody will come up with, you're right, they've had some crazy answers. And so I start asking the question, I'm still restoring. I've got a 67 Bronco and I'm still restoring it and doing things like lifting engines and replacing axles. And there's some dangerous stuff that I contend with in that environment and think about my work every single day and think I need to make sure I live the practice that I preach here because it's so easy to cut corners and to add danger to it, and I certainly wouldn't do that to my family. So we'll have a wonderful afternoon. Thank you again for being with us. And I hope that everybody continues to buy Avco products so they can support your company and the, uh, good work. You all do great.

Speaker A: Thanks again, Michael.

Speaker B: That's it for today's episode of the Canary Report. If this conversation helped you reframe how you think about risk and safety, please do me a favor. Hit, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with somebody who needs to hear it. We're building a new category of safety and risk leadership, one that's faster and smarter leaders who aren't just empowered by tech, but whose wisdom is accelerated by it. To learn more about how Yellowbird's cutting edge platform is empowering leaders to solve workplace safety and risk challenges faster, smarter, and at scale, visit goyellowbird.com don't forget to subscribe to our Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Yellowbird pages to stay up to date. Until next time, lead with clarity. Know first and act fast.