Topics include how countries outside the US often adopt NFPA codes faster than US states, the differences between European EN standards and NFPA/UL requirements, Europe's mandatory smoke detector replacement cycles, the new 40-foot ceiling allowance for smoke detectors in NFPA 72, remote and automated inspection technology and its UL listing challenges, how UL and NFPA standards push each other forward, the birth of NFPA 3 and NFPA 4 for integrated testing (now showing up in building codes), Canada's ULC certification model, and the history of carbon monoxide detection moving from NFPA 720 into NFPA 72.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Cold open
0:27 - Episode intro
1:36 - Drew and Roger connect
2:14 - Global adoption of NFPA codes
3:39 - How aggressively other countries adopt new editions
5:03 - Why US states are slow to adopt
7:51 - Roger's career: Simplex technician to JCI liaison
10:15 - European standards (EN) vs NFPA
11:39 - Europe's smoke detector replacement requirements
14:15 - Smoke detector placement at 40-foot ceilings
17:08 - Remote and automated inspection technology
20:34 - UL listing challenges for remote testing
23:45 - Mass notification: UL 864 to UL 2572
24:34 - The 2010 NFPA 72 scope change
26:00 - NFPA 3 and NFPA 4 for integrated testing
29:49 - Canada's ULC standards vs US
32:13 - Carbon monoxide detection in NFPA 72
36:52 - How CO detectors are tested
39:11 - Wrap-up

Learn more about Inspect Point: https://www.inspectpoint.com

Request a demo: https://www.inspectpoint.com/get-a-demo

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/inspect-point

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@inspectpoint

• How Ting takes 30 million electrical measurements per second from a single outlet
• The on-device and cloud AI that detects electrical arcing using image recognition
• 26,000+ hazards identified (and growing at 30 per day)
• Real data from Hurricane Helene, the LA wildfires, and Winter Storm Fern
• Why outlets, extension cords, and holiday lights are the most common hazards
• How 35+ insurance partners provide Ting to homeowners for free
• The 1.3 million sensor network monitoring the entire U.S. utility grid
• What this means for the fire protection industry and commercial applications 

Bob also shares the personal story behind founding Whisker Labs and how their fire safety team works directly with homeowners and electricians to find and fix problems before they cause fires.

04:59 - Deficiencies are not a gotcha game

8:47 - Ontario Fire Code limits and NFPA 25 enforcement gaps

15:23 - Strategic planning and involving Al

20:20 - 2025 highlights, consistency, and "what I'd do differently"

24:05 - Current state of the fire protection industry

40:27 - Notable fire incidents & what we learned from real sprinkler activations

46:20 - Closing thoughts and Chris's podcast

00:00 Why 2025 fire protection data matters

02:47 2025 fire protection industry report preview

06:28 Why fire protection businesses need a tech stack

08:42 Inspection dollars vs service proposals

11:46 Deficiency approvals and compliance platforms

17:05 Common fire inspection deficiencies

24:53 NFPA questions and inspection data quality

29:42 Growth of regional fire protection companies

36:40 2026 outlook and Al in fire inspection

00:00 - Introducing today's guest

01:57 - Launching the first Al agent

04:19 - How AI adoption changes business processes

06:58 - Code complexity in fire protection

09:30 - Generative Al vs agentic Al explained

12:10 - How data supports better decisions

14:39 - FireCAD design assistant and design workflow gains

18:56 - Passion, innovation, and industry growth

19:49 - OEMs, contractors, and AI-enabled data flow

25:24 - Using AI for simple tasks and avoiding hallucinations

29:45 - The rapid shift toward AI in fire protection

32:02- Favorite Al-themed films

34:35 - Closing thoughts and future direction

Grant shares insights on Dyne’s acquisition by NFPA Global Solutions and how this new initiative supports NFPA’s life safety mission. The conversation takes a serious turn as Drew and Grant unpack the tragic Fall River, Massachusetts fire, where recalled O-ring sprinkler heads failed to activate—an incident underscoring the critical importance of regular inspection, testing, and maintenance under NFPA 25.

They also dive into the new partnership between Inspect Point and Dyne, designed to streamline how contractors and building owners identify, test, and replace aging or defective sprinklers. The episode closes with updates from Dyne’s lab on the transition from fluorinated foams to fluorine-free alternatives, and what that means for contractors navigating environmental regulations and system performance.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro and Episode Overview

02:21 Meet Grant Lobdell and Dyne Labs

07:32 O-Ring Recalls and Failure Rates

11:15 NFPA 25 Testing Requirements

18:00 Simplifying Inspections Through Partnerships

21:07 Testing Cycles and Code Changes

23:42 Interpreting Results and Owner Duties

27:21 Foam Systems and Regulatory Updates

34:48 Closing Remarks

02:15 Jason’s Background and GEM Systems

03:40 Integrating Design, Engineering, and Distribution

07:47 Navigating COVID-19 and Supply Chain Shifts

12:06 Expanding into Sprinkler Design

15:20 AI, Data Centers & Code Shifts

17:44 Connectivity, Safety & Working Together

22:17 Codes, Compliance, and Public Safety

23:58 Efficiency, Software, and Real-Time Solutions

26:22 From Soccer Fields to Fire Systems

28:05 Business Growth, ERP, and Integration Challenges

32:10 Training, Partnerships, and Future Initiatives

34:25 Where to Find GEM Systems and Closing Remarks

00:00 Welcome & Introduction

02:35 Karsten’s Journey into Fire Protection

07:26 Why Recurring Revenue Matters

09:32 Turning Installs into Service Contracts

11:13 Customer Service as a Growth Driver

13:09 AHJ Compliance Platforms & Industry Shifts

14:28 Navigating Local Jurisdiction Challenges

18:18 Risk Management and System Types

19:33 Karsten’s Favorite Systems to Work On

24:45 Suppression Systems & Market Competition

26:19 Restaurant Stories from the Field

28:15 Embracing Technology and AI in Fire Protection

33:02 Private Equity & The Industry’s Future

34:48 ACE Fire’s Online Presence

35:41 Closing Takeaways

00:00 Introducing Rob Stewart and Fire Tech

02:51 Real-World Fire Protection Stories

06:36 Rob’s Background and Industry Goals

09:10 Fire Protection Training Needs & Demographics

11:48 Cross-Training Between Sprinkler & Alarm Disciplines

14:35 Documentation Challenges & The Role of the Back Office

20:00 Evolving Codes, Jurisdictional Differences, and AHJ Influence

22:24 Updating Training to NFPA & NICET Standards

24:16 Regional Code Variations

25:37 Digital Documentation vs. Static Forms

29:12 Building a Company-Wide Training Plan

33:13 The ROI of Training: Real Cost-Savings Examples

40:50 Personal Reflections: Lake Havasu & Industry Insights

42:13 Closing Thoughts

02:20 Dakota’s Background & Apprenticeship Path

04:34 Motivation to Start a Business

06:30 Identifying a Niche in the Fire Industry

08:39 Learning Design and Troubleshooting

09:35 Teaching Himself FireCAD + Early Wins

14:33 Balancing Install, Design & Multiple Projects

18:02 Favorite Systems & What Works Best

21:05 The Problem with Proprietary Equipment

22:26 Customer-First, No-Contract Philosophy

28:28 Work-Life Balance & Being a Present Dad

30:44 Technology and Business Efficiency

32:35 Dakota’s Passion for Golfing

33:11 NFPA Involvement & Final Words

Connect with Drew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-slocum-65aa4233/

Inspect Point is a cloud-based solution that supports fire and life safety professionals in their mission to make the world more secure. The web-based backend and a powerful mobile application enable companies to run their entire business from inspection to collection with one platform. Featuring a library of built-in NFPA & UL-C templates, Inspect Point is the most comprehensive fire protection platform on the market today. As technology advances, Inspect Point will support the fire protection industry each step of the way. Learn more about Inspect Point: 

https://www.inspectpoint.com

AGF Manufacturing: https://agfmfg.com/

Follow Jim McHugh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-mchugh-agf/

Connect with Drew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-slocum-65aa4233/

Inspect Point is a cloud-based solution that supports fire and life safety professionals in their mission to make the world more secure. The web-based backend and a powerful mobile application enable companies to run their entire business from inspection to collection with one platform. Featuring a library of built-in NFPA & UL-C templates, Inspect Point is the most comprehensive fire protection platform on the market today. As technology advances, Inspect Point will support the fire protection industry each step of the way. Learn more about Inspect Point: https://www.inspectpoint.com

FirstDue: https://www.firstdue.com/

Follow Andreas Huber: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreas-huber-797ba618/

Connect with Drew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-slocum-65aa4233/

Inspect Point is a cloud-based solution that supports fire and life safety professionals in their mission to make the world more secure. The web-based backend and a powerful mobile application enable companies to run their entire business from inspection to collection with one platform. Featuring a library of built-in NFPA & UL-C templates, Inspect Point is the most comprehensive fire protection platform on the market today. As technology advances, Inspect Point will support the fire protection industry each step of the way. Learn more about Inspect Point: https://www.inspectpoint.com

Follow Brad Dempsey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/braddempsey/

Connect with Drew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-slocum-65aa4233/

Inspect Point is a cloud-based solution that supports fire and life safety professionals in their mission to make the world more secure. The web-based backend and a powerful mobile application enable companies to run their entire business from inspection to collection with one platform. Featuring a library of built-in NFPA & UL-C templates, Inspect Point is the most comprehensive fire protection platform on the market today. As technology advances, Inspect Point will support the fire protection industry each step of the way. Learn more about Inspect Point: https://www.inspectpoint.com

Connect with Drew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-slocum-65aa4233/

Inspect Point is a cloud-based solution that supports fire and life safety professionals in their mission to make the world more secure. The web-based backend and a powerful mobile application enable companies to run their entire business from inspection to collection with one platform. Featuring a library of built-in NFPA & UL-C templates, Inspect Point is the most comprehensive fire protection platform on the market today. As technology advances, Inspect Point will support the fire protection industry each step of the way. Learn more about Inspect Point: https://www.inspectpoint.com

Connect with Drew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-slocum-65aa4233/

Inspect Point is a cloud-based solution that supports fire and life safety professionals in their mission to make the world more secure. The web-based backend and a powerful mobile application enable companies to run their entire business from inspection to collection with one platform. Featuring a library of built-in NFPA & UL-C templates, Inspect Point is the most comprehensive fire protection platform on the market today. As technology advances, Inspect Point will support the fire protection industry each step of the way. Learn more about Inspect Point: 

https://www.inspectpoint.com

Inspect Point is a cloud-based solution that supports fire and life safety professionals in their mission to make the world more secure. The web-based backend and a powerful mobile application enable companies to run their entire business from inspection to collection with one platform. Featuring a library of built-in NFPA & UL-C templates, Inspect Point is the most comprehensive fire protection platform on the market today. As technology advances, Inspect Point will support the fire protection industry each step of the way. Learn more about Inspect Point: https://www.inspectpoint.com

Inspect Point is a cloud-based solution that supports fire and life safety professionals in their mission to make the world more secure. The web-based backend and a powerful mobile application enable companies to run their entire business from inspection to collection with one platform. Featuring a library of built-in NFPA & UL-C templates, Inspect Point is the most comprehensive fire protection platform on the market today. As technology advances, Inspect Point will support the fire protection industry each step of the way. Learn more about Inspect Point: 

https://www.inspectpoint.com

Follow Shawn Mahoney: linkedin.com/in/shawn-mahoney-p-e-18269a48/

Antifreeze Requirements Fact Sheet: nfpa.org/forms/antifreeze-requirements-for-sprinkler-systems-fact-sheet

NFPA Conference and Expo: nfpa.org/conference

Connect with Drew on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drew-slocum-65aa4233/

Inspect Point is a cloud-based solution that supports fire and life safety professionals in their mission to make the world more secure. The web-based backend and a powerful mobile application enable companies to run their entire business from inspection to collection with one platform. Featuring a library of built-in NFPA & UL-C templates, Inspect Point is the most comprehensive fire protection platform on the market today. As technology advances, Inspect Point will support the fire protection industry each step of the way. Learn more about Inspect Point: inspectpoint.com

Learn more about Fire Rover: https://firerover.com/

Connect with Drew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-slocum-65aa4233/

Inspect Point is a cloud-based solution that supports fire and life safety professionals in their mission to make the world more secure. The web-based backend and a powerful mobile application enable companies to run their entire business from inspection to collection with one platform. Featuring a library of built-in NFPA & UL-C templates, Inspect Point is the most comprehensive fire protection platform on the market today. As technology advances, Inspect Point will support the fire protection industry each step of the way. Learn more about Inspect Point: 

https://www.inspectpoint.com/

Troy Life & Fire Safety Ltd. is a private corporation established in 1979. It focuses on customer service, offering Canada's comprehensive lineup of fire alarms, fire suppression, and security products.

For over 60 years, NOTIFIER has been in a leadership position in the fire alarm industry. Today we are the largest manufacturer of engineered fire alarm systems, with over 400 distributors worldwide and regional support operations on every continent, helping to ensure we provide the flexibility and options your business needs. Our commitment to products and partnerships propels NOTIFIER to stand proudly above the rest.

Inspect Point is a software platform that helps fire & life safety professionals run their business from inspection to collection. With Inspect Point, companies like yours can ensure efficient and profitable operations while better-protecting customers’ properties and communities.

Inspect Point is a software platform that helps fire & life safety professionals run their business from inspection to collection. With Inspect Point, businesses like yours can ensure efficient and profitable operations while better-protecting customers’ properties and communities.

See you at NFPA!

4:14 - Code Updates

6:58 - Louisiana: From Tags to QR Codes

12:55 - Consolidation in the Industry

17:03 - Success of Fire Protection in 2021

18:50 - A Recession-Proof Industry 

20:30 - Final Thoughts on NFPA Boston

23:41 - Upcoming Shows

25:30 - Closing Thoughts

3:35 - COVID in Fire Protection

6:26 - Engagement in the Industry

8:45 - Adoption Among Jurisdictions

11:58 - Shortage of Engineers / Technicians

16:25 - Active-Resume.com & Skilled Labor

19:40 - New Detection Technology

24:30 - Tesla & Lithium Ion Battery Fires

28:24 - Latest From Potter

TIMELINE:

Intro (:01)
Setting Up (1:09)
Drew Sets the Agenda for the Episode  (1:55)
Who is Hampshire Fire Protection?  (2:09)
Hampshire Fire History (2:16)
Starting in Sprinklers (3:20)
Purchasing and Integrating a Fire Extinguisher Company (3:48)
Purchasing and Integrating a Fire Alarm Company (3:03)
Jimmy Joins (4:08)
Different Divisions in a Family Owned Company (4:38)
One-Stop Shop... (5:14)
We Don't Clean Kitchen Hoods!  (6:08)
We Won't do your Taxes or Clean your Suits, either  (6:38)
We Only Want to Do What We Do Best (6:58)
From Larry Thibodeau and his Truck to 180 Employees in Various Divisions (7:12)
Before and After (8:29)
Higher Margin (9:00)
No Massive Risk (9:10)
Before Inspect Point, We used Paper and Homemade PDF forms (9:38)
PDF Forms Were A Pain in the A@@  (11:18)
We Had to do Something Better (12:24)
Tried to Do Their own Software (12:52)
Was Still in Development and Incorporated Hampshire Fire's Suggestions into the Software (13:28)
Inspect Point Respects the Voice of the Customer (13:48)
Inspect Point Became more Powerful in two years : Great Evolution! (14:18)
Amerex and Other Partnerships (12:20)
Viking (15:33)
Proposals for Deficiencies and Regular Service Work and Solely for All Sprinkler Service (16:01)
Inspect Point is Always Adding Great New Features (16:52)
Anything powerful has a Learning Curve, but it is worth it (17:03)
You can Make Inspect Point What you Want it to Be - Great Options (17:57)
Inspect Point Gives You Bay 10x's What you Put into It (17:55) 
Can Put information All over the Place! (19:31)
Primary Metric - Deficiency Quote Estimator, and it had more than Doubled the 1st year  (20:38)
In August, the Deficiency Estimator Reached Their Goal For the Year! (20:58)
With All the Info into Inspect Point you can track all these ROIs (21:53)
Inspect Point Has Connected all our Various Divisions (22:40)
Inspect Point Has Streamlined Our Ability to Get Quotes out & Service Work Done  (24:09) 
Everything in One Place (24:33)
Can Get All the Business on the Table (25:18)
What Feature Would Hampshire Fire Like Added? (26:37)
Balancing Adding Features With Overdoing it (29:53)
Inspect Point is Great at Voice of the Customer (31:08)
Customer Success and Tech Support People Are Enthusiastic and Patient (31:44)
Go Jennifer! (32:53)
How to Convey to the Industry How much Inspect Point can Transform Their Business (33:53)
Double Service Sales in One Year - Hampshire is the Second Company to say this (34:20)
Get  into the Nooks and Crannies (35:02)
After the First Year it Was Plug and Play (35:08)
We Do All Dry Trips this Summer (35:38)
Techs LOVE it (36:48)
Facebook Groups Give Great Feedback (37:08)
If its not Usable on the Ground, its not Usable (37:48)
A Professionally Made Program Makes everything Look Better  - Adds a Sense of Pride (38:08)
Psyched About Amerex (39:08)
With QR Codes, We sped up the Inspection Process of Fire Extinguishers From 5 minutes to 20 Seconds (40:54)
Wrap Up (41:08)
 

Also, The Fire Protection Podcast will be coming to you LIVE on June 3rd from the NAFED Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas!

NAFED LIVE!

https://youtu.be/PJIywJzSk_w -  Live Stream

https://www.youtube.com/c/Inspectpoint/videos - YouTube Channel 

https://riverside.fm/studio/live-at-nafed---las-vegas?t=67254b559a1bd1af4ae3  -  Riverside FM

TIMELINE:
Introduction (0:16)
Catch The Fire Protection Podcast LIVE at NAFED! (1:29)
Matt Rice and Andreas Huber Introduce Themselves (2:34)
Love Talkin' Fire Protection Systems, Compliance, Jurisdictions, & 1st Responders (4:47)
First of its Kind! (6:16)
Getting Important Information to 1st Responders (8:30)
Operational Information Gap (9:14)
Is Their Fire Protection System Even Working? (11:30)
1st Responders Would Like to Know What They are Getting into (12:10)
1st Responders Dashboard (13:11)
Gray Area: What is Given to His About Fire Protection System Conditions? (16:29)
How Many Jurisdictions Using Both Tools? (17:50)
What About 2020 and So Far in 2021? (19:00)
The "Gift" of Covid (28:56)
Who Owns the Data? (36:38)
Hurdles for 2021? (42:21)
What About Insurance Agencies? (47:40)
Hurdles are Opportunities (48:49)
It's A Lot of Work to get Good Data (50:19)
It Has to be More Than Just Technology - Be A Problem Solver (53:20)
Quick Round - Golf Version! (59:40)
Matt Throws Down! (59:47)
 

TIMELINE:
Introductions (2:34)
Meet Victoria Hutchinson (2:46)
Meet Bart van Leeuwen (4:20)
Smart Fire Fighting (6:04)
Software Platforms & Solutions for AHJs in US (7:28)
What is the NFPA Research Foundation? (8:26)
Four People Covering 50 Topics at Once (9:30)
Bringing Research Into Practice (10:10)
Projects the NFPA Research Foundation is Working On (11:36)
Anyone Can Get Involved --- like YOU!  (12:29)
What does ITM Stand For? (15:51)
Why is This Needed? (16:08)
Did This All Stem From Fire Pumps? (17:48)
Everyone Wants the Analytics (20:25)
Fire Pump Churn Testing (22:48)
Why Are NFPA 25 Meetings Funny? (23:42)
Data Grabbing Is Tough (27:46)
Who Owns the Data? (30:49)
Sharing the Data (35:09)
Performance Based ITM (36:46)
Collected Data from 40,000 Fire Inspections (40:32)
Will the Results of that Data Analysis be Game Changing? (43:05)
Report of Project (43:10)
Next Steps (43:43)
Can We Create a Uniform Data Model From Diverse Streams of Data? (44:26)
Will the NFPA25 Update in May '21 Use This Data? (46:34)
Get Involved! (47:40)
New Direction Coming  (48:41)
The Data Drinking Game! (48:48)
Quick Response Round! (49:30)
Nerd Question Alert (50:39)
Shout Out to Jeff Norton!(51:25)
NFPA Bedtime Stories for Victoria (52:40)
Novec 1230 Systems (54:05)
There Will Never Be A Fire At A "Normal" Person's House (55:10)
Fire Captain Bart Has Great Stories Not Suitable for Podcasts! (55:35)
Where Can People Find You? (55:40)
Wrap Ups (57:28)

Discussed in this Episode: NFPA Research Foundation, NFPA Codes and Standards, Inspection Data Collection, Fire Fighting, Emerging Technology in Fire Protection, Inspection, Testing, and Maintenance, Fire Pump Performance, Analytics, Fair Data Practices

www.johnsoncontrols.com

https://www.johnsoncontrols.com/services-and-support/fire-maintenance-and-support/smart-connected-fire-sprinkler-monitoring

https://www.johnsoncontrols.com/fire-suppression/connected-fire-container-monitoring
 

Intro - 3:00

Cause Marketing - 5:00

Coffee Connoisseur - 7:30

Coffee Blending - 10:30

Coffee Grinding - 12:10

Fire Department Chronicles - 13:55

Friends of Firefighters - 15:30

Comedy & 1st Responders - 17:35

Hollywood & Firefighting - 18:30

Banyan Treatment Centers - 24:15

Comedy CPR - 25:45

Social Media / Comedy - 31:00

Coffee Blends - 33:00

Quick Response Round - 35:00

Best TV show about fire fighting - 40:00

Where can we find you? - 42:20

Discussed in the episode:

firedepartmentcoffee.com

Instagram - @firedepartmentchronicles

Facebook - Fire Department Chronicles

YouTube - Fire Dept. Coffee

In Episode 26, Drew sits down with Joshua and Lindsey Brackett, co-founders of Legacy FM, to discuss facility management and fire protection in healthcare facilities.  Both have deep backgrounds in the facility management world and sit on various committees with ASHE and NFPA.   Legacy FM has started empowering through specific strategies for facility needs.  

2:30 - Introductions

5:45 - Legacy FM

11:00 - NICET

16:10 - Fire Protection Contractors / Bidding

21:00 - Healthcare codes / Joint Commission

27:30 - NFPA 4

28:30 - Technical Blip (Sorry)

29:00 - NFPA 4 / ASHE

33:00 - Data in Fire Protection / NFPA Research Foundation

37:55 - Book with ASHE

42:25 - Legacy FM and ASHE - YouTube Channel

50:45 - Quick Response Round

Discussed in the Episode:

energytocare.org

Legacy-FM.com

Contact Information:

jbrackett@legacy-fm.com

lbrackett@legagy-fm.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-brackett/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsey-brackett/

Later in the conversation, they talk about the organization’s influence on the 2020 Judd Apatow comedy movie, The King of Staten Island.

Nancy started this non-profit venture back on September 11th, 2001 and has never looked back.  Their board of advisors includes a cast of FDNY officials and other industry leaders.  Steve Buscemi and Gary Sinise round out the board among many important names in the first industry.

2:30 - Introductions

3:56 - History / What they do

8:18 - Helping out the families

11:00 - September 11th Sicknesses / Suicides

13:18 - Separation from the FDNY

14:32 - Vincent Dunn

18:12 - Outreach Team

19:10 - COVID effects

23:46 - Back to School initiative

28:20 - NY Fire Sprinkler Contractor's Association

29:20 - Steve Buscemi (Board of Advisors)

31:30 - NYC Comedy-Drama, The King of Staten Island Movie

33:20 - Pete Davidson

38:46 - Friends of Firefighters beyond NYC

40:46 - Contact Info

Discussed in the Episode:

FriendsOfFirefighters.org

InspectPoint.com

Intro - 4:15

Data about COVID times - 6:55

Faster Food vs Dining - 9:50

City vs Suburb vs Rural - 14:20

Ghost Kitchens - 15:30

NFPA and Food Trucks - 21:30

More Ghost Kitchens - 24:40

Electronic Detection Fire Suppression - 27:55

Internet of Things - 32:15

Industrial Chemical / Paint Booths - 38:00

Gas Station / Pemall Exit - 42:20

NAFED / How are the Fire Equipment Distributors doing? - 45:10

Incentives for techs - 47:50

Quick Response Round - 50:40

Contact Info - 54:50

Discussed in the Episode:
Amerex-fire.com

InspectPoint.com

Introduction - 4:05

Commercial Fire business - 8:00

Riding through downtimes with ITM / Service - 10:05

Why did you choose Inspect Point - 11:40

Moving out of the paper age - 15:45

Service / Work Order module - 18:50

Involvement in the Beta Process - 20:25

Uploading Material lists - 24:10

Emergency Service calls - 28:05

Where does Commercial Fire Protection go from here- 31:00

3rd Party Compliance software - 33:25

Quick Response Round - 36:05

Commercial Fire Contact Info - 42:30

Discussed in the Episode:
InspectPoint.com
CommercialFire.net

2:55 - Background of Joe

5:10 - Going with a digital business model as an engineer

9:15 - Key to blogging

13:40 - MeyerFire tools

17:15 - Sprinkler selection tool

24:00 - Exam Prep

35:35 - BIM / Rivit

40:15 - Quick Response Round  

Discussed in the Episode:
MeyerFire.com
CodeCalls.org

7:25 - Fire Vision

11:50 - QuakeTech

16:30 - How does the Augmented Reality work

19:40 - How the cloud is helping Augmented Reality

20:40 - Cities being 3D mapped

22:25 - Augmented Reality devices

24:35 - Remote Inspections - NFPA 915

28:20 - Future of fire detection

32:40 - PFAS - Foam Fire Fighting Protection

39:45 - Quick Response Round
 

Discussed in the Episode:
firesolutionsgroup.com

arfirevision.com

https://www.qwake.tech/

jlynch@firesolutionsgroup.com

John Mackey

john@mackeygroupllc.com

mackeygroupllc.com

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Drew Slocum: (00:08):

This is episode 20 of the Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point. Today, my guest is John Mackey. John is the owner of the Mackey Group, l l c. It's a fire protection consulting business. Um, I actually had John on about a year ago. Uh, he was on the second podcast and went really well. A lot of listens to that. Um, John started his consulting business, uh, pretty recently. Uh, formally he was with the Hiller Group, um, head of their digital, uh, and just different technologies for the Hiller group. He's, he's done a lot to improve different businesses out there, uh, heavily involved in some mergers, mergers and acquisitions as well. So, uh, John's new role is, is looking at different fire protection companies, uh, both big and small, and trying to get their, you know, day-to-day operations, their business plans in line. Um, so it's just kind of a, it's a good topic to talk about with all the, the crazy pandemic talks out there, the looming recession if it's, if it's not already here.

(01:11)
So making sure your fire protection business is up to snuff with reoccurring revenue. Um, I think that him and I thought it was a, it is a great opportunity to really improve your business operations to when we come out the other side of this to really be rolling. So, uh, we got talking about that. And, you know, this podcast is really gonna coincide with, uh, a webinar we have in spec points, hosting a, a live webinar tomorrow, March 31st at 11:00 AM with our VP of Customer Success, uh, Jennifer Doyle, who's heavily and entrenched in a lot of day-to-day operations for different contractors. So she's gonna have a lot of tips and tricks out there to, to help improve your businesses. I will make sure to add the link in the podcast notes, as well as this post on social media. So, uh, make sure to subscribe and please enjoy. All right, we go. Um, thanks John for, uh, joining me. It's been about, uh, was it, it's been, been almost a year now since I put the first one out there, and thank you. Were that first one. So it's, uh, one year anniversary. We'll do it, we'll do, do it a little early at least.

John Mackey: (02:24):

Uh, hey, I appreciate you always, uh, look forward to opportunity to talk to you and share perspectives of, uh, what we're both seeing in the industry and, and, um, just offer my, uh, my insight for the listeners and, and, um, help out where I can.

Drew Slocum: (02:38):

Yeah, no, thanks. Uh, John, John was out about, uh, about a year ago. He was with the, the Hiller group at the time. He, he recently, uh, it's kind of out in his own venture now, the Mackey group. And I, I guess what is, I guess, tell the listeners what, what you're up to and kind of what your vision is.

John Mackey: (02:56):

Yeah, so, thank you. The, uh, yeah, the objective of the Mackey Group is to, um, really help investors understand the fire protection space. Um, what we see going on right now is, um, a lot of PE firms and investors coming in that don't necessarily understand our market. And, uh, what I'm concerned about is, as they go through their buying cycles, is, um, I wanna make sure that we've got good sustainable processes and practices in place with regard to how, how we acquire, how we integrate those companies, which I think is vitally important. And then, number three, how do we operate 'em with the use of software and technology? Because I wanna make sure that it maintains the structure, um, of our channels. Um, our industry has been built around those channels, and, um, we need to make sure that, um, the processes themselves are, are solid and, and, uh, sustainable, uh, so that, uh, the performance of our contractor base, uh, continue to operate at a high level. So that's the objective of the Mackey group and, and, uh, making sure that, uh, you know, uh, all the parties, um, really understand what it takes to, uh, to do this. Right.

Drew Slocum: (04:07):

Yeah,

John Mackey: (04:08):

No, so far so good. Got a contract in place and, and, um, helping my first client down that pass. And, uh, we'll see where this thing goes.

Drew Slocum: (04:16):

Yeah. Well, uh, I know the last five to maybe even seven years now, it's been, uh, you know, the, the industry's kind of contracting a little bit on the con on the fire protection contracting side, and there's acquisition out there. There's still a lot of new companies. I see 'em every day. But, um, what, let's get right to it. What happens moving forward from here? You know, with all the , I know we haven't talked, we'll get right into it. There's a lot of craziness happening, and I think there's a lot of stuff in flux, but there's potential opportunity out there too. So

John Mackey: (04:54):

I completely agree. I think, you know, it, it is, you know, timing's never perfect, right? I think that, you know, personally, as you go through the process to, uh, to leave a, um, a good company like Hiller and, uh, try to venture out on your own, um, there's never a perfect time to do it. There's a good time, but no one had a crystal ball to, to see that, uh, COVID 19 was gonna come to the US with such a, um, a powerful impact. And, um, you know, so that's part of the learning process. I think we're all learning on how to deal with that. Um, but, uh, it is what it is. And, um, we're gonna get through it just like everybody else. Uh, we're gonna learn, um, in my case, I'm helping my client really understand, um, the resources available to, to get through this, uh, with regard to, you know, what is the Fire Suppression Systems Association, say, uh, what is N F B A saying, uh, what are we hearing from, uh, local authorities? And, uh, just helping to, to navigate, um, that information. As you know, it is changing minute by minute in every market we're in. Um, you've got, you know, the epicenter right now, or, you know, this week or today is in New York City. Um, but then you've got impacts in California and Michigan and Pennsylvania and, um, you know, other parts of the country. And, and I think it's gonna continue to ebb and flow.

Drew Slocum: (06:20):

Yeah, I saw Louisiana had a big, big spike yesterday. I've been, I've been tracking, uh, you know, I don't know if I should be tracking stats daily, but I, I am. And, um, I've had to keep on top of it for New York City safe cuz of the, the New York Fire Sprinkler Contractors Association trying to, trying to help out down there. But, you know, governor Cuomo's gotta quite the task he's up against. So

John Mackey: (06:43):

He, he really does, I think most states do you know, again, there's, is there a rhyme or reason why, you know, uh, new Orleans has been hit so hard? I think some people are speculating that it has to deal with Mardi Gras, which just happened a month ago. Um, you know, so obviously I'm, it's gonna have some influence on it, um, in New York because the, the concentration of, uh, people, right? And in such a small, you know, relatively unquote small space. So, um, it's, um, it surely is a challenging time. Um, is this the right time to start a business? I don't know. Um, but on the positive side, I do think that there's plenty of opportunity out there. One, how do you help companies na nav navigate through the market right now? Uh, and then two, um, if you are an investor looking to, uh, to, you know, buy in this space, what does that look like? Because I do think that there are, uh, currently a number of good opportunities to, uh, to buy. And then secondly is that as we do come out of this, uh, there's gonna be even more opportunities, uh, to buy the right companies, uh, going forward.

Drew Slocum: (07:47):

Yeah, I've actually gotten a, a, a few calls on these random people in the industry saying, Hey, uh, you know, when we come out of this, if, if anybody's looking to get out, uh, I've been , I've been hedging, I've got some cash, you know, ready to go. So I think you're right there. Think there's going, you know, I don't think it's, it might, I think new construction is definitely gonna take a, a pretty big hit. Um, I, I talked to my brother-in-law today. He's been, he files a lot of the markets and the, uh, unemployment number that came out today was three point. It was crazy. 3.3 million or something. Um, more than doubled at what they projected. And, uh, a lot of that he said, was obviously the service industry, but some of it, um, a big chunk of it was, um, real estate, commercial real estate and warehousing. So if that's taken a hit, I don't know, that's, that's essentially new construction, right? I

John Mackey: (08:45):

Don't know it, yeah, again, I think it's, it's in pockets, right? Um, and, um, I think that, uh, yeah, the construction market is taking a hit right now. I, and you know, I think we're gonna get into it when we talk about what this means for fire protection contractors, but when you look on, um, the overall construction market is that, you know, essential work, um, in our, in our cities. Yep. And, um, most of the states have come back and said, that is not, and we're gonna, you know, ask that those job sites shut down. Um, so, which is impacting us as a, as an industry.

Drew Slocum: (09:18):

Oh, yeah. So yeah, Boston, uh, just read an article today, and it obviously could change, but Boston's gonna make it indefinite. It was supposed to. Maybe they put a two week stop to construction and we're one of the, one of the first cities, but they're gonna keep that going, which is, uh, you know, it's, I talked to a bunch of companies up there, their new construction stop, but their inspection and service has continued it. It's tough to get into some of the, the buildings they say, but, uh, I know N F P A, like you said before, and, and some of the other associations put out, um, actually put out some pretty good bulletins for the industry. And you've, if, if you're on social media, um, they're all over the place, but N FPA put out a good one, and they actually have a good landing page that I'll, I'll, I'll put it in the podcast notes for this when I post it. But, um, it's a good, if you're, if you're going into an inspection, going into the service, uh, it essentially says that fire protection's essential and, uh, tries to help out AHJs as well, uh, determine that too. So, yeah,

John Mackey: (10:25):

I think in, in today's climate, we need that clarity, uh, because, you know, you look at, uh, the information coming from fire chiefs and fire marshals, there was a posting today on LinkedIn, um, that reminded the readers to say, listen, you know, year to date there's 630 fires in the United States just in the last three months. Wow. Right On pace for 2,500. And that's just in the residential market.

Drew Slocum: (10:49):

Yep.

John Mackey: (10:50):

Right. So it highlights the need, uh, for us to continue to test and inspect and maintain these systems. Yep. Uh, residential or commercial, uh, cuz fires still occur. And so, uh, you know, I think that, you know, FSSA and n FBA and, and other associations, getting that information out is vitally important to one, help our industry navigate this, and then two, ultimately help our customers through it. Um, because the customers are dealing with a lot of different issues. You know, um, who's, who's in their facility, if it's still open, um, if it's not physically open, but they still have a facility engineer or, or maybe, you know, core employees in the building, you know, what needs to be maintained. Does that fire sprinkler system need to be inspected? Um, and the, the code says yes. Yep. Right. So, you know, let's, let's get in there and take care of it right now.

Drew Slocum: (11:40):

Um, yeah. Yeah. There's nobody in there. I, I, I might have mentioned this the other day on the other podcast, but there was a, uh, you know, we talked to somebody in Vegas the other day that does all the casinos fire alarm wise, or does a lot of them. And, um, you know, they're shut down for 30 days and he's like, my business is booming right now because they wanna get me in there. They don't like me doing tests anyway, so this is perfect time. Um, you know, so I think there are some, there's some pockets, like you said, that this, it will then fire protection will might even increase in some cases. So

John Mackey: (12:17):

I agree. You know, I think that, uh, I, I talked to one contractor yesterday that says they're pro, they're operating at about 80% capacity right now. Um, all service, all their installation work has stopped, but, uh, their service work is keeping their, um, their organization busy. Not at a hundred percent obviously what you wanna be, but, right. Uh, I'll take it. I'll take 80% in this market right now.

Drew Slocum: (12:39):

Yeah, right. . Yeah. Right. That's pretty good.

John Mackey: (12:44):

But then there's, there's a caveat to that. They're also saying they're looking at it week to week. Sure. Right. Because that will continue to change mm-hmm. , um, in fact, to my earlier point that, you know, this, this issue continues to, you know, change minute to minute.

Drew Slocum: (12:57):

So you talked to, you talked to a lot of contractors, obviously, probably even more now, because you're, you're in a more of a consulting role, um, around the us. Are, are, is everybody doing remote work or are they, obviously you have techs in the field and construction that that continues, but are there operations and, and all that? Do they, are they still in the offices or are they remote working, or is it all over the place?

John Mackey: (13:22):

It depends. Um, I think first and foremost, the companies have made the commitments to software and technology over the last, um, three to five years Yep. Are able to work remotely. And, um, I think those that have done that, um, already had that skillset to be able to understand how do you schedule, how do you let your dispatcher work from, you know, outside the office and schedule technicians. Um, so the, the resources are in place, the business processes are understood. Um, I think that today they're learning more and more about it, but, um, those companies that made that investment, um, over the last three to five years are, are really able to take advantage of the ability to work remote. Yeah. And, um, it's, I think those companies are the ones that are gonna continue to, uh, to work through this. Right? Sure. What the CDC say, you know, your technician comes, you know, to a customer's place, you know, they have to have a mask, they have to have probably latex gloves, they have to maintain distance. Right. Um, you know, minimize any personal interaction, uh, and go do the work. Well with technology today, if the technician's working that inspection on his tablet, his or her tablet, then, you know, they're able to, um, send that, you know, that completely form to the customer electronically.

Drew Slocum: (14:36):

Right.

John Mackey: (14:37):

And, um, and, and everyone works or everyone's safe in that environment. Uh, so I think that, uh, um, most companies, if they have the ability to work remote, they're doing it. Um, if they can't and have to have fit people physically in the office, I've heard stories that, um, instead of putting a person in every cubicle that's a person in every other cubicle, instead of putting two technicians in a truck, it's one technician in that truck. Right. Um, you know, it's, uh, just being, doing what you can to be creative to, uh, uh, to get, uh, to get the work done.

Drew Slocum: (15:11):

Yeah. You're, you're right about those, those companies with the, then the software side and, and it'll probably even push cloud computing even. Like, it's already been on a huge increase in the last five, 10 years anyway. So, I mean, if, if you're on a cloud software, whether it's QuickBooks, Gmail, office 365, you know, our, our platform and some of the others, you know, if you have all your office staff essentially could work from home or wherever, um, and then your techs would be in the field. So, uh, yeah. It'd be, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens coming out of this. I think there's, you know, we're putting out a bunch of webinars to, to try to help, uh, I think we just sent one out last night. We're doing a, a live webinar to, to try to help different, not even our customers, just the industry in general to understand what's, what's happening. And if, if there are some improvements out there, uh, might as well take some time while, while we have a little, uh, my team doesn't like calling it downtime because they, they talk about, they think it's my, our software going down. I'm like, our software's not going down. It's, you know, personal downtime, .

(16:22)
So it was a joke on last night's call.

John Mackey: (16:26):

, you know, it's, uh, every, everything has its own context. Right. Um, but I, I do think that, you know, we are gonna learn a lot about how we work, um, and I don't care what industry it's in. I mean, you know, specific to fire though, I, you know, can you make an argument, um, that supports, you know, do I need to have my entire staff in my building every day of the week? And I think that, you know, because of, you know, the situation with Covid 19, we're learning that you don't necessarily have to be in the office all the time.

Drew Slocum: (17:01):

No. Right.

John Mackey: (17:02):

Create that flexibility. Um, and I even think that, you know, the, the, the younger workforce, you know, um, millennials and those that are coming in behind them, you know, are used to being able to, to work, you know, wherever they may be, you know, at home, you know, in a coffee shop, you know, in a library, um, because we're able to connect through technology Yeah. Through the tablet, through the internet, off a phone, whatever it might be. And I think that's just gonna continue to accelerate, you know, how we get work done. And, um, you know, I think hopefully we become more efficient through it.

Drew Slocum: (17:38):

I even think, like, even the design side, like cad, I mean, caddy needed a powerful, powerful machine before. I think a lot of that you can run from a laptop now. And, um, I don't know how many, like Auto, auto, spring, spring, CAD, and Hydro cad, I mean, are they, I think some of 'em might, may even be cloud based at this point. I don't know if any of them are, but, um, why can't it be, I mean, you're right, a lot of designs done virtual anyway.

John Mackey: (18:06):

Exactly. I it's just tried and true. Right. So, um, I was talking to one of my neighbors, uh, the other night as I was walking through the neighborhood. Uh, he's an engineer. Uh, he had a bid that's due today. And, um, he, he's like, I gotta go in the office and go get it and, you know, so I can print it off and see it . And I said, do you really need to, do you really need to do that? And he goes, well, that's, that's how I get my work done. I said, yeah, don't you trust your technology, your technology. Right. You could see the PDF and you can see the d the drawing, then I need to touch it. Right. So, you know, he drove into his office and, and, um, you know, printed it off and then took it to FedEx to, to ship it

Drew Slocum: (18:47):

. Gosh.

John Mackey: (18:48):

Right. But I think that again, there's, you know, this is gonna teach us a different way. Oh yeah. Right. It's behavior. Right. And, and, you know, you just gotta expose yourself to that behavior. And I think the human reaction, or human human reaction, human nature, is that we follow that path of least resistance. Right. Right. And whatever has been normal for us over time prior to, you know, covid is, you know, that's our normal. And so now this is changing how we have to do that. And so, you know, in my case, I've been, you know, saying really close to home for the last two weeks. And so, um, I'm getting better and better and more efficient every day with how I'm getting my work done, how I'm, how I'm talking to people, more video calls and, you know, a lot more, you know, chatting through, you know, Microsoft teams and some other platforms, um, and not necessarily picking up the phone because everyone's busy. Yep. Um, and or, you know, leaving my house to go print something off and ship it. Right. Right. I can send it electronically. So let's just do that.

Drew Slocum: (19:48):

Yeah. It's

John Mackey: (19:50):

Funny. I, but it's new behaviors, new behaviors for all of us. And we, I think this is creating an environment where we're gonna learn how to do it differently.

Drew Slocum: (19:55):

Yeah. I think we will. I mean, uh, I talked to an association yesterday that's, that's trying to, you know, just get, uh, virtual, you know, GoToMeeting, zoom, Microsoft team set up one of those platforms. And, uh, they made the comment that I think a lot of any business is gonna realize, do they really need brick and mortar store or brick and mortar office space? So, you know, a lot of that's gonna potentially, I don't know, maybe go by the wayside and people will work more remotely or work in, uh, you know, we work in, um, we work, we work in, we work style spaces and, you know, coworking spaces where you don't really need, uh, an office and, uh, you can kind of bounce around. Sales guys a lot of, a lot of times do that anyway. But, um, yeah, it's gonna be interesting where, where we come out of this. So

John Mackey: (20:48):

Agree, agree.

Drew Slocum: (20:51):

Well, well, I had another comment from, I, I've been talking to a lot of people cuz that's, you know, I wanna, I want to get the feel for the market out there. Um, one said, I, it's the healthiest they've been in and in a few years, because they're at home, they're out now, they're not out entertaining clients and they get a mini workout in, you know, halfway through the day. So I was like, all right, gotta take the positives when you can. Right. Yeah.

John Mackey: (21:16):

little benefit there, I guess. Yeah.

Drew Slocum: (21:22):

Um, so what, I guess, what, what is your, uh, what is your strategy? Has your strategy changed with, uh, giving advice a little bit? Um, and giving consultation advice to different, to different clients?

John Mackey: (21:37):

Yeah, I think it gets very, uh, specific. Um, because we're all trying to learn, trying to understand, you know, what, you know, sharing ideas and best practices and, you know, and what we're hearing from others. Uh, so those are the conversations I've been having over the last couple weeks. Um, you know, it's not about the longer term perspective to say, you know, Hey, we want to, you know, acquire company A, B, and C and, you know, help us, you know, with an introduction or whatever it might be. Um, those introductions just aren't gonna happen. You're not gonna be able to, right. Obviously we can't go physically see people, so, right. You know, and, and those, those business owners are focusing on what they have right in front of 'em right now. And I completely, completely understand why we're focusing where they need to. Um, so yeah, the, the, uh, the objective is still the same over time. Um, the timeline itself is just getting extended a little bit just because of, uh, everything else. You know, everyone's focus right now needs to be in on covid 19. And, um, those are the conversations that I'm having as it relates to, you know, how do we do this and how do we do that?

Drew Slocum: (22:43):

Yeah. No, I think, I think, you know, there's gonna be, obviously there's a lot of investment money out there, and since a lot of it's gonna be leaving the stock market soon, I think there is some potential for, you know, fire protection companies that have good reoccurring revenue, uh, models that, you know, it's gonna be a good place for some in invest investment money, investor money, um, to get it out of the stock market for six months to a year. Cause I think it's gonna be rocky for at least that time.

John Mackey: (23:14):

I heard, um, someone said one, some, one of the major bankers said, uh, two nights ago, uh, it's gonna be a two year window for the markets to get back to where they're at. Right. So put that in perspective, right. And then, um, look at what's going on with the bond market and, and quantitative easing and, um, that's typically where the hedge funds played. Right. And so now that the bond market's headed negative.

Drew Slocum: (23:39):

Yep.

John Mackey: (23:39):

So, uh, so you've got hedge fund cash sitting out there and going into this, this, this, uh, covid situation. There was 1.2 trillion at play in the private equity

Drew Slocum: (23:51):

Market. Wow.

John Mackey: (23:53):

Right. So, and now to your point, and I, I agree with you, I think that you're gonna see more money move to private equity. Yep. Uh, staying away if staying away from the banks. Yep. Um, in its traditional context, moving away from the stock market because of the volatility there and the longer term plays, or the big time plays in, in, um, hedge funds, um, the market's not there to support it. So, um, I think that you're gonna see more and more, uh, activity in the PE space. Um, it's gonna impact a lot of verticals, um, healthcare, uh, services. Mm-hmm. , um, you know, construction, um, what, what are the airlines? I heard, you know, one of the airlines is owned by a PE firm. Wow. Uh, never, never didn't know that in front end. But all that said, that also does have an impact on, on fire because the, the consolidation over the last, you know, five, six years is, uh, you know, primarily backed by PE Yep. And, um, it's just gonna put more, more money at play.

Drew Slocum: (24:52):

Yeah. Right.

John Mackey: (24:54):

So, and, and along those same lines, unfortunately for what's going on right now with the market, um, those companies that, you know, were, were ripe to sell six months ago, as they ride this market, their, their, their profits are gonna be hit. Right. They're, they're, you know, the value on paper, uh, and the multiple that a PE firm will pay today is gonna be less Oh, yeah. Than what they would've paid six months ago, just because the, the numbers, you know, or so are telling a different story.

Drew Slocum: (25:22):

Yeah. They're not, they're not there. Right. Um, right. Yeah. Yeah. It was in interesting, we were both at that, uh, um, that, uh, the F ss a, uh, trade show, which was, which was great and luck, luckily they got it in right before all this stuff happened, uh, down in Florida. But the, the one keynote speaker, uh, was it Jonathan? I forgot his name, I had it up here a second ago. ,

John Mackey: (25:49):

Jonathan Slain.

Drew Slocum: (25:50):

Jonathan Slain.

John Mackey: (25:52):

Um, and

Drew Slocum: (25:53):

Yeah, so he has a book, rock the Recession, um, and gave a whole keynote speech about recession. I don't say recession proofing your company to me, just make sure you're ready for a recession. And literally two weeks later, we're in this situation. It's kind of weird. I,

John Mackey: (26:13):

It, it it's crazy timing. Right. I mean, his, his whole message was, you know, prepare. Right. And he took you through his model on, on all the, you know, key things to think about, um, planning, uh, gearing up for it, putting things in motion, uh, being able to hit the brakes. We need to hit the brakes and well, here we are. . Yeah. Uh, and, uh, you know, I think it still highlights the number of the practices that, uh, a lot of successful companies have done over the last, you know, five years, especially since, you know, oh 8, 0 9, I think we learned this through the last great recession. Mm-hmm. was how do you, how do you navigate through this? And one is, you know, moving off that long-term, um, low margin, when we say low term, long-term, long timeline, low margin install work, which is still very important.

(26:58)
And a lot of our, our contractors in our market do it. Um, and moving more of your portfolio over to that recurring, you know, year over year service that test, inspect, maintain market is a very strong lucrative market. Uh, essentially creating an annuity for your business every year. Yep. Uh, to generate cash at a much higher margin. Right. And so, um, that's what the, the rock the recession approach was all about to say, you know, what are you doing, uh, to improve operational efficiency? Um, what are you doing to develop those new markets, i e service or going deep into the some key broker markets that are right in your, um, uh, local backyard, um, and then being able to identify other assets, other, other services that you wanna bolt onto to your, uh, existing business to add more value for your customers. Yep. Right.

(27:52)
And I think that, you know, that's the play. Uh, and if you're able to execute across those, then, uh, you're positioned to, uh, to deal with the next recession. And of course, in his presentation, he gave some examples of some companies able, able to do it and, you know, sell it, you know? Yeah. 70 times. Yeah. That's multiple, not multiple 70 times with the original investments and Right. Um, you know, really, you know, you know, generate some rain. So, um, I think that, uh, the timing was perfect. Unfortunately, we didn't, the, the timing of the presentation was perfect. The, the amount of time that people had to get ready for this was, uh, uh, yeah. Cuz it's right here, right in front of us right

Drew Slocum: (28:34):

Now. Well, we, you know, and spec point see a big influx in, in, uh, people interested in the last two weeks. I don't know, I think it's a little that people are a little bit, you know, it's maybe those shelter in place states, and it seems to be where it is, but, uh, a lot of it's, they, some of those companies understand that, all right, install's gonna get hit. Let's, let's convert over and let's make some efficiencies with the platform. So it's been, you know, I don't wanna say it's been great for us, but it's, you, you can see kind of the interest coming back around a little bit just through what, what's happened. So

John Mackey: (29:13):

It's a proven model. Yeah. I mean, you know, you guys have a great platform. There's other, uh, really good platforms out there as well that, you know, it's about, you know, one, how do you drive that operational efficiency in the office? Right. And Excel spreads. You can't manage your service schedule off an Excel spreadsheet and Google Calendar or Outlook calendar. Um, you have to be able to, one, make it systematic mm-hmm. so that you can see the recurring services on a, on a month to month, week to week basis. And then the ability to arm the technician, um, with the tools and resources to get the work done more efficiently in the field. Right. Generate that repair, generate that, excuse me, identify that deficiency, generate the repair quote and, and get back out there and take care of it. Uh, one to drive compliance to help the customer keep their doors open and run their business.

(30:07)
Um, and then, you know, the last piece of it is invoicing. You know, I think it's very important, especially in this market today, um, using the technology you have in front of you to be able to invoice preferably every day. Oh, yeah. Um, at the end of the business day. Um, I think realistically most businesses are, are, are invoicing weekly. Um, but the technology allows you to do it. So let's maximize your cash flow and, and, and, and use those, you know, use that time to do it, uh, to, uh, to truly, uh, become efficient with how you get the work done.

Drew Slocum: (30:40):

Are they really, I didn't know that. Is it mostly weekly?

John Mackey: (30:45):

I think so. I think that, uh, we all, we all talk about trying to, to get that invoice out. Right. Um, but I think it's just, there's limited resources and I think the work itself, um, um, office to office Sure. We get distracted, uh, customer calls and they of course take first priority.

Drew Slocum: (31:03):

Right.

John Mackey: (31:04):

Um, and I think one of the processes that kind of falls to the wayside is

Drew Slocum: (31:08):

The building. Is the invoicing. Yeah. The, the workflow of all the different steps between, you know, doing the work and actually sending it out.

John Mackey: (31:16):

Yep. Yeah. Interesting. But again, I think it highlights again, how do you automate, not shouldn, you automate that, but how do you, how do you make it systematic? So rather than printing off that invoice and stick it in an envelope and you know, mail it out, you know how the ability to, uh, email, um, your customers an invoice, how about the fact that you used to go to automatic billing? Right. So a credit card is attached to the, the account so that at the time of invoice, boom, it's automatic, you know, paid for off a credit card

Drew Slocum: (31:43):

Yeah. Right away.

John Mackey: (31:44):

Oh, I know. Or ACH transfers. I mean, let's think of how you can continue to just become better and better. Imagine that cash flow. Yeah. Um, and make it easier for the customer. Um, I think, you know, you and I have talked about some other concepts of programs that, that ideas that we've, we've shared about, you know, technology. But, you know, at the end of the day, uh, um, easy to use, easy to buy, easy to pay

Drew Slocum: (32:11):

. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

John Mackey: (32:12):

Yeah. So, you know, if you're, you're the contractor, what, what, what technology do you have in place that makes it easy for your customers to follow those three steps?

Drew Slocum: (32:23):

Yep. No, it, it, it's, uh, I, you know, we do, I I just enacted a new piece of salt. We, you know, coming into the business, I, you know, I, you know, the basic programs out there, obviously email and, you know, the Google programs, but we utilize so many different pieces of software to make it easier. And I just, uh, I just introduced another one for proposals. Like, you know, we have one in our platform, but what, what do I use for my customers before I would send out a pdf? Now it's an interactive dynamic, uh, uh, proposal where the, the customer can work through it, they can put in their credit card and boom, they're off and running like the next day, essentially with our platform. So it's, there's a lot of stuff out there. And, um, yeah, it's gonna continue to, I I think it's gonna continue to keep happening cuz with this whole situation, there'll be some new stuff out there.

John Mackey: (33:20):

I agree. I agree.

Drew Slocum: (33:24):

Um, have you uh, talked to Dave Brown recently?

John Mackey: (33:30):

I have not. He is one of the guys I want to call in the next, uh, next couple times. He

Drew Slocum: (33:34):

Is, he is slammed. I'm gonna give him a plug here cuz he, he's helped us out a lot. He is slammed because everybody's trying to go remote and, you know, a lot of 'em are last minute and they have to do this. And I, it it's kind of, it's kind of wild. He's, he's, uh, he's actually helped a couple of my customers out in the last week to, to even just cut some fat out of their operate operation Bill. Um, so he is able to hook a, a, a bunch of 'em up with, you know, better plans and, and everybody's gotta tighten up these days. So he's, uh, he's a great guy.

John Mackey: (34:11):

Dave. Dave is great. Um, you know, truly love, uh, you know, his, his story, um, and what Novo Solutions brings to the table for the industry, um, previous life, um, we were a strong advocate of, of Dave and his company. Um, you know, they managed, um, all the, uh, field technology for, for Hiller and, uh, just did a great, great job and, and, and first his, his focus on customers, um, and making sure that, um, they're getting the right tools and resources they need, but then the services that his company provides with regard to, you know, not only fire, but just the broader service space. Sure. And, um, helping companies manage their, their mobile spend and, and, um, the bills and everything associated with it. Uh, um, he's really built a nice organization and, and, uh, uh, love to see the journey, uh, he's on and, and, uh, be a part of it and help 'em where, where it

Drew Slocum: (35:11):

Can Yeah. No, it's, uh, he's, he's been giving us updates on just on just devices themselves. Like, you know, apple, apple's in a little, you know, we're tied to, tied to Apple pretty good. And, you know, he's like, Hey, iPhones are fine. Which we we're coming out with a new iPhone app here, uh, you know, kind of combined with our service application, but iPads, it's like a two, three week. He, he's like, you can't find any right now because everybody's going remote. Same thing with Wow. Chromebooks, same thing with a lot of laptops. Like I bet if you go to Best Buy right now, , they're gonna be, they're gonna be picked over. So

John Mackey: (35:54):

Kinda wild a sign of the times. I mean, I think again, it's uh, it is, it surely is wild, but it, uh, um, again, highlights the importance of, you know, being prepared for, um, marketing conditions that change in this case. You know, how do you allow, you know, create an environment for your technicians and your employees to work remote. And, uh, it's a different set of technology that allows to do it.

Drew Slocum: (36:18):

So a little lighter to know. Do you have, uh, are you stocked up on toilet paper,

John Mackey: (36:22):

? Uh, we are. So, uh, funny story. Uh, so two weeks ago, um, my son and, and, um, uh, his friends were supposed to go on spring break, of course, that got canceled. Uh, he goes to school up in northern Alabama. And so, um, him and, um, a couple of his friends ended up coming down to, uh, our place and we live in lower Alabama. And, um, one of his friends, uh, for staying with us for three days, four days, brought a, uh, uh, four pack or six pack of, uh, toilet paper, and, uh, , a container of, uh, GermX hand sanitizer as, as a thank you. So,

Drew Slocum: (37:02):

Oh, no way.

John Mackey: (37:03):

Yes. So, uh, uh, very appropriate work very well. But yes, we are, we are think at this point we're, we're set on, uh, on toilet paper. Our college aged kids, um, are, are back at home with us, uh, for the time being. And, uh, so that's been a little bit of adjustment. Um,

Drew Slocum: (37:22):

Yeah, I'm

John Mackey: (37:23):

Sure my wife and I, yeah, my, my wife and I have been empty nesters for, um, almost two years and, you know, living, uh, without kids and, and, and now they're back and they're like, wait, , you know, where's all of our food going? Where's, you know, where's this and where's that? And who left this mess in the room? , uh, you know, it's, uh, rather in this situation, we're glad they're home and, and, um, I see it's been, it's been good. Yeah.

Drew Slocum: (37:51):

Yeah. It's, it's interesting. I talked a lot of, I'm, I'm having to work the same thing. I have two young kids and, um, my wife works as well as I do. So we're having, and I've heard a lot of people in the same boat where whether they're older kids coming back in or the younger kids are that are in school are coming back home and now, you know, we've gotta entertain them. So, you know, there's a lot of stress on the families trying to make sure they're, they're, uh, kids are watched during the daytime, so, you know, we flip-flop different hours. We have to actually meet the night before to see, Hey, I need this, this block and this block. Um, yeah. It's, uh, we're learning as a, as a family even with that, so Oh, yeah.

John Mackey: (38:36):

A lot more coordination, that's for sure. .

Drew Slocum: (38:39):

But, um, anything else you wanna chat about? I know we're, we're kind of getting a little informed. No, I,

John Mackey: (38:48):

Yeah, I, I think we're good. I, I, you know, um, I think we covered a lot of the topics. I think right now everyone's mind is on, on Covid 19 and how to navigate this thing. The challenge is how long does it last? Um, you know, I think some of the optimists are saying, Hey, this thing could be, you know, uh, working its way back to normal by Easter. Um, I think some of the, many of the other states or markets are saying that, you know, hey, this is more, you know, a May 1st, early may thing. And you know, I think the worst case scenario, some people are saying, Hey, this can carry all the way through the summer. Um, I think that's the unknown. And I think that, you know, most business owners today are just trying to figure out, how do I get through this week?

(39:27)
Um, how do I, you know, pay my workforce, uh, for this week? And then, um, you know, how much longer can I, you know, sure. Stretch it out and make sure that they continue to, um, be able to provide for their families, uh, cause they still need food, they still need, you know, to pay the bills, et cetera, et cetera. Pay the mortgage . Yeah. Um, you know, and so, um, right now it's a pretty short term focus and rightfully so until we, we really understand what this new normal looks like and, and, um, um, then we can make longer term plans. But, you know, right now everyone's focused on the, the challenges that we have. And it's crazy. Every state's a little bit different, you know, um, you know, I live in lower Alabama and, you know, Alabama is obviously much more spread out than New York.

(40:13)
Obviously we don't have the population that New York does. Um, but, you know, we've got social distancing in place, the beaches are closed and the restaurants and bars are closed. Um, but they're encouraging people to go out and walk around and, and get fresh air and um, and, and what have you. So, uh, in New York, not necessarily the case. So I think every state's a little bit different in how we do it. Um, that may change in a week when that moves from New York and into, you know, other parts of the country. But Yep. Um, I think that's everyone's focus.

Drew Slocum: (40:43):

Yeah, it is. And it should be, you know, the health, the health, the health is the main focus. People get, you know, bogged down with the economy and all that, but the quicker we get this thing outta here, the quicker, the quicker we get back on track, which I think, we'll, we will have a recession, uh, uh, and potentially greater coming out of this anyway. But there's, like you said, there's a lot of opportunity and hey, there's some, I'm gonna say it again, team, uh, there's some downtime personally for us. So let's, uh, reevaluate our, you know, personally and, and, and business wise as well. There's some things agreed you can, we can do out there. And I've been doing it. Yeah, it sounds like you've been doing it and talking to a lot of people, so

John Mackey: (41:26):

It's an opportunity for all of us to reset, that's for sure.

Drew Slocum: (41:28):

Yeah, definitely. Well, uh, thanks John for, uh, for coming on. Do you wanna, uh, any, any plug? I mean, uh, how do, how, how should we reach you?

John Mackey: (41:39):

Uh, so I think, um, probably the best way my website's still in development so that, that's not up and running yet. That's again, one of the things I'll have done here in the next week and a half. Um, I think email's probably gonna be best, and that's John, j o h n@mackeygroupllc.com. Um, and, um, you know, fire off an email and then from there we can, um, move the conversation to phone and, and, uh, I'll help out wherever I can and, um, uh, share ideas and, and, uh, help solve problems.

Drew Slocum: (42:12):

Great. Great. Thanks John. Thanks for coming on. This has been episode 20 of the Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point. Wanna, again, thank my guest, John Mackey. It's always great to talk to John. He's got a great perspective on the industry and, um, especially what's, what's happened right now. So, again, a lot of opportunity out there. Um, there's a lot of sad news, obviously, of what's happening both with the economy and the, the health of the country. But, you know, keep your heads up. I think, uh, again, we only can get stronger through this. And, um, yeah, stay tuned. There's gonna be a lot more of this coming. Talk to you soon.

Drew Slocum: (00:09):

This is episode 19 of the Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point. Today I sit down with Chris Logan of the Fire Sprinkler Podcast, so it's actually brought to you by the Fire Sprinkler Podcast as well. Um, Chris and I did a dual podcast on Friday. Try to make it a little bit fun since we're, we're, we've been stuck in, uh, uh, containment for, uh, uh, the last, uh, week and coming up on two weeks here. So, uh, no new news since Friday. Luckily, um, people continue to stay in businesses, continue to shut down, especially in the Northeast Canada, on the West Coast. And, uh, yeah, a lot of, lot of troublesome times out there, but we'll definitely get through it. Um, we try to, uh, have fun on the podcast as well as, uh, get into some, uh, some tough questions. So anyway, hope you enjoy. Again, it's a, a little informal podcast, and, uh, Chris and I decided to do one together to keep it light. Enjoy. Yeah.

Chris Logan: (01:13):

We'll cross up.

Drew Slocum: (01:14):

Cool. All right. We're off. We are off. So, uh, yeah, let's do a post this thing.

Chris Logan: (01:25):

Yeah. So, Drew, Drew Slocum Inspect Point Fire Protection Podcast, Chris Logan Fire Sprinkler podcast. Uh, we started talking years ago when I started my podcast. And, uh, you know, when, when you launched yours, we kind of got into it together and, you know, you, you reached out to me and said, Hey, I'm gonna be starting one. What do you think? And I said, please do. Because I'm sick of listening to myself in the car. I'm gonna drive to work. Right. How's everything working out for you?

Drew Slocum: (01:52):

Uh, that's great. Um, you, you know, we've got some extra time on our hands these days, so, uh, unfortunately. So, uh, I've got a couple, uh, getting ready to record next week. Um, Inspect Point's, doing really well. I don't, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty out there, obviously, so, uh, I'm sure we'll get into that. But, uh, no, it's going well. This podcast is, it's a fun, it's a fun thing to do, and, uh, I'm glad you got it kicked off. And then , everything was right after, it's been almost a year, I think for, it was last, April was the first episode.

Chris Logan: (02:27):

Yeah, I was gonna say, you're coming up on a year. I'm coming up on two and quarter, something like that. The end of February of 2018 is when I started mine. Yeah. And, uh, fun. Like, uh, never ever would I get the chance to talk to people in the industry that I've gotten the chance to talk to. So it's worked out a lot, you know, it's worked out in my favor a hundred percent. Cause it kinda, it got other people interested in creating content like you. Yeah. Like, I, this, this is exactly what my game plan was, is hopefully I could do it long enough where somebody else would want to do it, and then I would've something to listen to.

Drew Slocum: (03:01):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's a, there's enough, there's a, there's only one, one other that popped up that I know of. It's the Life Safety podcast, so I'll give him a plug. Okay. But, uh, I haven't, I haven't listened to too many of them. Yeah. Um, yeah, Ruben Garcia's done it, it, it's more on the, the passive, passive fire protection, like fire doors. Uh, maybe I should probably listen to the podcast more . But no, it's been fun. I've talked to a lot of people that I really respect in the industry, and, um, you know, there's a lot of people reaching out from, from all over the country, all over the world. It's weird. You see the analytics of the, of the podcast come in and who's listening to it, and the majority of it's North America, Canada, and the us, but then there'll be like, random spots in like New Zealand or Southeast Asia or it, yeah, it's kind of wild.

Chris Logan: (03:55):

It's neat to see. I've got, I've got like a, I've got a decent following of about 30 or 40 people in Australia, like spread across Australia that, that download religiously listen to the podcast, and it's awesome. Like, it's cool. I've hit every, every content now except for Antarctica , which is, uh, I'm just waiting, waiting for somebody down in Antarctica to give me at least one download so that I can stay. I'm on every content so that my buddies, cause I told my buddy, yeah, I'm on every, I'm on every continent. They're like, oh yeah, listen to Antarctica. I'm like,

Drew Slocum: (04:26):

There's gotta be a firefighter or a fire official down there somewhere.

Chris Logan: (04:30):

Yeah. I'm gonna have to link up, go through my contact and see if I have any business cards.

Drew Slocum: (04:36):

That's funny. So let, let, let's get, let's get to it. People don't wanna hear us chat, right? Yeah.

Chris Logan: (04:43):

. It's nice talking to you again. Yes. But yeah, um, you, you reached out to me. You wanted to kind of talk about everything that's going on now. If you are unaware of what's going on now, you've been living under a rock. Um, and, and I think actually it's safe to say that most people out there have been living under a rock just because of the situation that's going on. Nobody's traveling, nobody's going out. And about, um, how are things in, uh, in New York?

Drew Slocum: (05:12):

Well, I'm, I'm in, I'm in Connecticut, so I, uh, I, I'm glad I'm, you know, New York City's. We, we moved to Connecticut about a, a year ago now. Um, lived there for about 11 years, but still staying, uh, quite attached to it because, uh, I'm headed the fire sprinkler, uh, contractors association there. So that is, it's, it's changing by the hour, I feel like. So every day, uh, mayor de Blassio as well as, uh, governor Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo are having just press conferences on what's going on. Um, you know, I gotta stay on top of construction there because they're, they're threatening to shut down all construction. Um, which is, it's kind of crazy if you shut down all construction in the largest city in North America. Right. Um, yeah.

(06:04)
So how does that not just hurt, does it construction, but fire sprinkler, everything? How does that, how does the whole money flow going on with development and all that? Um, fire safety, luckily enough, is an essential, um, it's categorized an essential business, so mm-hmm. , all those workers, construction workers and, um, service and inspection workers are still, are still going at it. But, you know, that could change. And I don't, I don't think, you know, I think service of the buildings with fire protection is gonna stay there. It's just, I think some of the new construction is gonna get hit either way, whether it's a job site shutdown or just funding of the prediction. It's, it's kind of wild

Chris Logan: (06:47):

As a, as a, as a sprinkler contractor as well. That's what I'm waiting for. It's not waiting, like with my fingers crossed, but, uh, you know, materials getting harder and harder to get delivery. Guys don't wanna come out and send out material if there's anybody on site. Um, I'm waiting for being in Canada and being in Ontario. I'm waiting for the Premier to just say, we're doing this provincial shutdown, shutting down all construction. And, um, just like in the States, I'm sure there's been, you know, two or three press conferences a day. And, uh, you know, it's, it's fascinating to watch how they're reacting to something that's never been, it's never been an issue before. This is something that we've never experienced in my lifetime. And I, I mean, pretty young, not to suit my own horn, but, uh, you know, there's never been a situation that's affected literally everybody in the

Drew Slocum: (07:37):

World. In the world. Yeah.

Chris Logan: (07:39):

It's not just a, oh, there's a little bit of a financial crunch in southwestern Ontario or an out west or in the state? No, it is like a, a pandemic. It's a little, it's a worldwide pandemic, and it's, uh, you know, it's, it's, it sucks to see, but it's also, I think it is bringing out a lot of good in people For the most part. For the most part. There are still people that aren't understanding exactly what needs to be, uh, what needs to be done. Um, but I mean, it's a time thing, right? Like it's, it's gonna hit, I think it's gonna hit everybody, and I think it's gonna be bad for a little while. And I, I just hope construction in general is, is able to adapt to the situation.

Drew Slocum: (08:22):

Yeah. You're gonna, I, I think e I think either way it's, it, it's gonna take a hit to the economy. You know, there's a few things, obviously the health risks, that's, that's number one. But, um, right. Uh, personal and, and family and all that. But it, it's gonna, the healthcare systems are gonna be influx for months and maybe, hopefully not years to come, but, um, potentially just influx of how, how things are handled. But, uh, and then the, the economic, which is huge as well, because every, everything, every little thing that gets shut down is just gonna be a ripple effect. So, uh, construction, I think, you know, if we go into a recession or even beyond that, um, deep recession, you know, construction companies are gonna have to adapt. Fire protection companies, fire sprinkler companies. So, um, you know, I'm gonna plug in spec point right now, but we're trying to work on some, you know, now we have some time and people are at home. We're gonna work on some just, just video, um, webinars to try to keep people positive for one. But, hey, while you're indoors, let's, let's focus on your business and see if we can do anything to kind of come out of this a little better. So

Chris Logan: (09:36):

Mm-hmm. , it has, it has given a lot of people the opportunity to, uh, you know, maybe not. It sucks because the cash flow is essentially, you're not gonna feel it now. You're gonna feel it in 30 days or whatever your payment terms are, the contractor, right. If you're payment terms in 10 days or 15 days, or 30 or 60 days for maybe some out there, I hope not. But, you know, people are gonna feel it in 30 days from now when all the invoices for the inspections that were done in the past week get rolled out and the payments don't flow in, that's when everybody's gonna start seeing it. Yeah. And they're starting to know it. Like they're starting to see it now, you're starting to see the layoffs and stuff like that. Um, it's, it's, it's a different animal. Um, I am happy to see that the government has stepped up to offer financial assistance, at least in Canada. I'm sure they're doing it in the states as well. Um, you know, they typically in Canada, when you apply for unemployment insurance, um, there's a two week waiting period where you don't get paid for two weeks and then your money starts. They waived that. So if I'm off, you know, if I decide Monday I'm laid off, uh, I will get paid for that week, the following week, et cetera, et cetera.

Drew Slocum: (10:45):

Oh, nice. That's nice. I, yeah, there's something going on in the states. I, you know, we'll see what happens. I think they're trying to do the best, but a lot of this is unknown too. So there, there maybe have to be multiple stimulus packages or whatever. Uh, I know, uh, I just got alerted that tax day moved, uh, three months out. So that's, that's great for us here in the States, .

Chris Logan: (11:07):

Yeah, that's right. We got, uh, ours, ours as well was just pushed to, we have until June 1st. And, um, uh, as well for renewing license plates and, and, uh, you know, driver's license, health cards, things like that. All renewing, all those just got pushed back to at least June 1st.

Drew Slocum: (11:22):

Wow. Yeah. It's, it's unprecedented man. It, it's, it's weird every day, you know, cuz we've, you know, I've been stuck inside here. I went to the grocery store last night, which was, that was, it was fine. I got enough food, but it, it, it's just a weird, it's a weird feeling being out there with nobody's talking to each other. I don't know. Mm-hmm. , it's, it's odd. So,

Chris Logan: (11:46):

Uh, yeah, so I'm, I live in a small town in Canada, obviously, so it's pretty friendly, pretty friendly country for the most part. Um, people are still, you know, everybody for the most part is keeping that six foot distance,

Drew Slocum: (12:00):

Right?

Chris Logan: (12:01):

Know everybody's still, oh, hey, how's it going? Uh, everybody, you know, every once I'm, I'm a handshake guy, I'll shake anybody's hand, uh, reaches you or says hello to me, Hey, how's it going? Uh, so that was a huge, for a day or two, I'd reach out and then automatically, uh, go back to the like, oh, multi elbow, here we go. Let's, uh, kinda switch gears here. We're not touching anymore. We'll do the elbow bump, but nowadays it's even . How's it going?

Drew Slocum: (12:28):

At least you get eye contact, right? Little wave

Chris Logan: (12:32):

. Yeah, that's, hi, how you doing today? ?

Drew Slocum: (12:36):

But yeah, it's, uh, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. No, no, you go. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna open up a beer, Chris. Cause I, I had one sitting here. Yep.

Chris Logan: (12:47):

Oh wow. What a nice, what a nice, I

Drew Slocum: (12:49):

Know, right? I got my lobster and Eric ett, you know, hometown. Wow. I open this up. So, and I, circumstances I have as well, so, well,

Chris Logan: (13:01):

Goodness. That's nice. Actually, you know what, um, last Thursday was a, uh, career fair in industry dinner at Seneca College in Toronto. Mm-hmm. . And I fi I finally, after a year and a half, got rid of my last cozy,

Drew Slocum: (13:16):

Ah,

Chris Logan: (13:18):

I, I ordered, I think I ordered 1500 of them. Uh, maybe it wasn't a year and a half, it was probably eight months. But, uh, between N FSA was what I ordered them for. I ordered 1500 for N fsa and then I brought to N F D A and just different small trade shows in the area. And I finally got rid of my last 150 I had left. And I was so pumped to just finally not have a thousand ies, or not cozies, but, um, uh, coasters in my basement. So in case anybody out there right now is going to my website to buy some,

Drew Slocum: (13:53):

Well, I, I've got some over here in my office. I've got about 20 so I can put 'em on eBay for you.

Chris Logan: (13:59):

You know what, the price just went up collector's items.

Drew Slocum: (14:02):

So how are you seeing up, you know, I haven't talked to a lot of Canadian companies. You know, I've been, we've been trying to reach out to all of our customers contractor, you know, fire sprinkler and beyond. But, um, how is, I mean, has, has construction stopped? Is inspection testing kind of going or are people still waiting?

Chris Logan: (14:21):

You know, so for, for right now, large contract is still on the go. Us as a, as a small family owned and operated co uh, company, we're taking it very serious as far as, you know, maintaining distances. If we have an inspection that's not, you know, if it's a, if it's an annual inspection, as long as we're within three months of nfpa, we'll try to push it back for three months. We're not going into buildings that we don't have to. We've pushed all, um, non-essential work at nursing homes and care facilities shut down. Um, right. Essentially, if we don't in a building, we're not just gonna, we're not just gonna maintain our existing schedule. Um, we service a lot of chemical refineries here in Sarnia. Um, we've told them, you know, it's not you, me not going into your plant. Right. But most of the refineries have shut down operations as well to a skeleton who's not a central personnel are working from home. Right. So it's, everybody's been meeting us with No, that's exactly what we want you to do.

Drew Slocum: (15:24):

That's

Chris Logan: (15:25):

Good. I mean, large contract, it's large contract is different because then you get into the situation where if I simply refuse to show up to a job site, I'm technically in breach of contract. And that's something that I haven't heard any of the government officials talking about yet, um, is, you know, I have a contract to provide a service. If I don't provide that service without any reason other than, you know, me saying, no, it's no good. Am I in breaching contract?

Drew Slocum: (15:52):

Right.

Chris Logan: (15:53):

So

Drew Slocum: (15:54):

The other thing you have to think about, and I, I guess I'm not a contractor, but I, you know, talk to 'em all the time and represent them. But, um, what, what happens, you know, the economy's gonna take a hit either way here. Um, yep. Hey, Chris, your, your, uh, brightness just went up, so

Chris Logan: (16:14):

Yeah, I saw that. She just, I dunno what happened.

Drew Slocum: (16:17):

You're good. Um, what happens if the, you know, because money flows down from the investors to the developer, to the general contractor or cm, whatever that is, then down to the sub. So say you send your guys the last couple weeks, if, if that goes under, are you even gonna get paid for that? Like there's a huge risk there. I would, I would feel too, I don't know.

Chris Logan: (16:42):

So the Ontario, like the, sorry, Trudeau the prime minister of Canada, uh, people have a love hate relationship with him. He's either very loved or absolutely hated. Um, I dunno if, uh, the guy in the States has a similar kinda relationship with his people, , um, people either love him or hate

Drew Slocum: (17:01):

Him, wouldn't want his job tell you that much.

Chris Logan: (17:04):

Yeah, I'll say that.

Drew Slocum: (17:05):

Especially right now.

Chris Logan: (17:07):

Uh, you know what, there's a lot of people on social media that think they can do his job substantially better. Uh, but I digress. Um, they, they have announced a lot of assistance for small businesses, large businesses, et cetera, et cetera. The, the Canadian government has, has set aside 83 billion in financial assistance specifically for Covid-19. Um, so that, those kind of things are good to see. I haven't dug too, too much into how I get my hands on 83 billion yet. Right. Um, but it is something, you know, as a company we've been looking at, uh, just trying to figure it out. Just trying to keep everybody going as long as possible as well as keeping everybody safe. Uh, I'm not gonna force my employees if they would, if they don't feel safe at work, I'm not gonna force them. Sure. So it's the balancing act of, you know, help me maintain my contract. But at the same time, you know, if you, if family wants you home, be home, you should be home with family.

Drew Slocum: (18:08):

Yep, yep. Yeah. So it's

Chris Logan: (18:12):

Just hoping the government sees that and is eventually like, you know what, let's take a, a two to three week time out here. Let's just pause everything, push everything back for you.

Drew Slocum: (18:23):

That's if's If everybody's on the same page though, I I, if everybody got on the same page, I feel like this would, you know, I don't know. We're gonna look back at this podcast and, and it might be, uh, obviously different in a few weeks. So hopefully, hopefully it's a lot better and we're out of this, but

Chris Logan: (18:39):

It could be different tomorrow.

Drew Slocum: (18:40):

Yeah.

Chris Logan: (18:41):

That's how fast things have been evolving is that it's, it's changing day by day. Like I said, it's something we've never, we've never seen before as an industry and as a, you know, as a country, as a, as a pop general world population, something we haven't experienced.

Drew Slocum: (18:58):

Sure.

Chris Logan: (18:59):

Curious to see how, uh, you know, Italy's getting decimated right now. China was decimated. They're supposed to be on the swing, but

Drew Slocum: (19:09):

Yeah, it's all about stats, right. You know, and Yeah. Yeah. I dunno, it's, it's wild.

Chris Logan: (19:17):

Any confirmed cases in your area?

Drew Slocum: (19:19):

Um, it was weird, you know, the, um, in the rival daycare that my, that my boys go to, uh, a little kid had it there, which is crazy. It's right down the street. Yeah. Um, they caught it from the NBA place. Did you hold on

Chris Logan: (19:36):

Up here? Did you call it a rival business?

Drew Slocum: (19:41):

Uh, rival, whatever. It's the, it's the other daycare in town, . They're battling for a

Chris Logan: (19:47):

Rival daycare. There's flight every other week on the way to school.

Drew Slocum: (19:51):

. Yeah.

Chris Logan: (19:52):

Come on. Trying to make, trying to keep it light. We'll try to keep it. I know,

Drew Slocum: (19:55):

Right. Uh, they, uh, the night or a few days before, they got an autograph from the NBA player that, um, came down with it from the Utah Jets Wild. So the whole daycare is now in quarantine, self quarantine for whatever, 18 days. And that's literally right down the street from us. So, I don't know, but nothing in, nothing in eastern Connecticut where we're at. But, uh, that's in Western Rhode Island, which we're on the border of. So, um, right. Yeah, it's, I don't know. It's, uh, luckily I, I have some friends, a lot of friends in New York City and some in Boston, and, um, you know, New York City, it's, you know, people, a lot of people can work from home there, but mo most people are in the indu in industry or service industry. So I don't know anything tied to restaurants is, is, uh, it's tough.

Chris Logan: (20:51):

Yep.

Drew Slocum: (20:52):

So

Chris Logan: (20:53):

It's, uh, even like small town, I live in small town, like 32, 3300 people. Uh, there's two major restaurants in town. They're doing takeout only. And actually the big one, I think just said, you know what, they're sending our people home closed. There's no takeout or anything.

Drew Slocum: (21:10):

And I, I, I've heard, you know, in our industry, or not the sprinkler side, but the fire protection side is tied to that because you have all these suppression, these Ansel, sorry, Ansel Amax, whatever the, you know, uh, wet and dry chemical systems that are, that are tied to these restaurants. So, you know, those businesses are, you know, within a day disrupted across the us Yep. It's, it's, it's not hopefully, hopefully diversified. And, uh, I, I have heard some great stories from this though. We, we had a, um, one of our customers sent us a note the other day that they, um, they have a, uh, some, one of their, one of their kids has a, a severe respiratory problem. And, um, because of inspect point, they're able to work from home and able to continue on their business. So it was, it was a really good, you know, there's a lot of positives, like you said, are coming out of this. So, um, yeah, crazy. It's a

Chris Logan: (22:13):

Balance. It's gonna be a balancing act for everybody over the next, the next six weeks I think is gonna be crucial for our industry. Um, trying to figure out how to, not manipulate, but try to adjust and try to make it so that our, we, we have newer, better systems in place to prevent future, uh, illnesses from spreading across the community. Um, as well as just gives everybody trying to pause, right? Everybody just kinda look at the way we're doing things. Is there a way that we can do things better? Yep. And that's what I've, that's what I've been doing for my company, just kinda looking at things and how can, how can we take this slow down to improve our processes and operations?

Drew Slocum: (22:58):

Oh yeah. Yep. Yeah. I I, it is funny, uh, three weeks ago, I think it's this point, there was an FS F S S A conference, fire Suppression Systems Association down in, uh, down near Disney World. And it was a great, great show. Got to see a lot of clean agent, a lot of different, and they do everything. There was a, there's some Canadian companies there, Troy, Troy, life and Fire Safety were there. They there maybe a couple others as well. But, um, anyway, um, the keynote speaker wrote a book called Rock the Recession, and this is literally like two and a half weeks ago. So I'm, I'm like reading this book now, rock the Recession to get your business. And a lot of it's geared toward contractors. And if you don't have a good plan ready, um, and you don't have to have it all always written down, but at least in your mind of what, what do you do? What do you do if your largest customer all of a sudden or your largest income stream just leaves? So, um, I don't know. It's, it, it, it's really eerie that that happened like two and a half weeks ago and now we're in the, we're in the boat where it's definitely a recession, but how, how deep is it gonna go?

Chris Logan: (24:10):

Right. Where do you see it as a, um, technology provider? Like, uh, essentially you're an industry, I won't say an industry assisting cause you help out the fire protection industry. How do you see a lot of the smaller contractors like myself as well as the bigger contractors, uh, getting to the other side of the hill?

Drew Slocum: (24:32):

Well, I'm, I'm gonna reference some of the book here, but, um, you know, the biggest thing that, uh, so construction's heavily tied to new construction in fire, sprinkler alarm, and even on the suppression. And definitely on the suppression side too, what'll get you through the other side is the inspection and service. So if you have a good balance in your portfolio, that's what, yes, you're gonna have to downsize on the other side, but that's what pays the bills and what's gonna keep money coming in, revamp your business in the process. And then you come out when that, when that new construction picks up again, you're, you're coming out and you have a bigger platform on, on your service side. Um, and generally that's higher profit as well. So, um, cuz you're not dealing with a gc, you're dealing more with an owner getting, you know, emergency services and, and things like that. So, um, if you have that good balance right now, perfect it if, you know, if you've gotta, you've gotta scale up. But if, if you're 90% new construction, 10%, you know, service, it's gonna, it's gonna be a big hit, I think. Mm-hmm. .

(25:44)
So, but the other side of that sales marketing, that's what they said, you know, is well in the book, is a lot of money gets taken out of the, uh, you know, taken out of, uh, different businesses. So they, they pull back on anything they don't need. Sales and marketing could be potential to, to really, to really drive that, you know, and it's not, it's not right away, you know, recessions last, if I had a crystal ball, I'd be a, a billionaire, but , I don't, I don't think this one's going any, uh, way anytime soon.

Chris Logan: (26:18):

No, it's, its, you know, we've said it a couple times an now already. It's day to day. Yeah. We have no idea where it's gonna be in the week. We have no idea where it's gonna be in months. We have, you know, it's, uh, it's crazy times we've been using, um, you know, all our office staff is working from home, all of our office staff. That's

Drew Slocum: (26:37):

Great. That's great. You're geared up for that. What I've been hearing in a lot of contractors, uh, what I've, I've talked, I've been talking to a lot of them. A lot of them didn't even, some of 'em didn't even have laptops for their employees. So it's like, oh man, you know, and then I talked to my cousin who's in, who's in like digital technology, sales and laptops and everything are back ordered, like beyond where anything's ever been.

Chris Logan: (27:04):

I haven't been to Best Buy because I've been trying to stay home as often as possible. I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's bare, right?

Drew Slocum: (27:10):

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Logan: (27:14):

So it's, uh, it's crazy times. The only thing we can tell everybody is to, it's, uh, you know, wash your damn hands, , stay at home. Yeah. Keep your family safe. But really the, do we have any specific advice for fire protection people right now? No. Just stay safe and, uh, you know, just pay attention.

Drew Slocum: (27:34):

It's stay safe. But like you said before, like what you're doing is taking some time to reflect and see what, what you need to do in the short term and what you need to do in the medium term. And you're gonna have, I think everybody's gonna have some time on their hands in the next couple weeks, so, you know, you have some time to reflect on that. Don't, and stay positive. Wash your damn hands. Yes, definitely. But I think positivity will, um, will get you out of it, right?

Chris Logan: (28:02):

Yep. Exactly. Um, what else, uh, do you have anything else you wanna, you wanna talk about before we get off here? Like you just, you know, you reached out, you wanted to talk generally about the situation with Covid 19 and how the industry is gonna, you know, potentially get through this, but, uh, I don't think neither of us have an answer for how the industry's gonna get through this or what we can do other than just, you know, stick it out. I

Drew Slocum: (28:29):

Mean, we're, try fire and life safety I think is pretty safe industry being, um, a new, new, new commercial construction and residential construction. It'll take a, it'll take a dip, but it'll definitely come back. So,

Chris Logan: (28:42):

Right.

Drew Slocum: (28:43):

You take, say, you know, you're gonna put out some podcasts right in the next

Chris Logan: (28:47):

I'm, I'm planning on, you know, there's gonna be a lot of industry people that aren't out or aren't are working, so I'm assuming there's gonna be a lot of people that want to talk sprinkler. And that's, uh, you know, that's my bread and butter. I'll talk sprinkler all day. Yeah. So if there's anybody out there again that wants to come on and, and talk about a new product or talk about a new procedure or, or an idea or anything, any suggestions for anybody out there that's kinda losing their mind with this lockdown, uh, reach out to me or, I'm sure Drew's looking for people to talk to as well. Oh yeah. Yep. Uh, reach out to either of us, your preferred podcast. Maybe we'll say that, man, , let, let's get content out there for people in the industry to, you know, stay involved and not kinda, not fall off the map, but fall off the map, but keep everybody interested.

Drew Slocum: (29:35):

Yeah. I've got two geared up. I think for next week. We have a bunch of webinars that we're doing internally to, to try to keep people not in touch or even progress. So stay in tune with that. But I would, I would love any ideas. And again, we're all, uh, we're all in the same boat. And the quicker we do this, I think the quicker this thing is over and we're back. We're

Chris Logan: (29:56):

Back

Drew Slocum: (29:56):

Strong times.

Chris Logan: (29:57):

Stay wash your dam hands. Let's get back to work here as soon as we can.

Drew Slocum: (30:00):

Yeah. All right.

Chris Logan: (30:03):

Awesome.

Drew Slocum: (30:04):

Cheers, Chris. All right.

Chris Logan: (30:05):

True. Yep. We'll talk again soon here. Look at,

Drew Slocum: (30:08):

Look at that. There you go,

Chris Logan: (30:10):

. Have a good one. Uh, as soon as we get off fun, go wash your damn hands.

Drew Slocum: (30:15):

Sounds good. Thanks for listening to episode 19 of the Fire Protection Podcast. Chris Logan from the Fire Sprinkler podcast, and I had a, had a great time on Friday and wanted to, uh, thank all, all the listeners out there that have been supporting us over, over the last couple years and about a year with us. But Chris has been doing this the longest. So, uh, yeah, big shout out to him. And again, stay in touch. Feel free to reach out to either of us. Uh, we're always willing to talk about whatever topic, especially we have some, uh, downtime the next couple weeks. So again, hope you enjoyed and come back soon.

Drew Slocum: (00:10):

This is episode 18 of the Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point. Today, my guests are Lisa Saltzman and Tom Doty of Fire Tech or Fire Tech Productions. It's a training tool for fire protection, both online, in person. Uh, they do a bunch of nice set prep as well. Very intrigued of what they're doing. Um, you know, there's a lot of different manufacturers out there that do training, but, uh, fire tech is kind of a, a, a virtual or in person way to do it. Obviously, virtual is gonna be a little easier the next, uh, next month or so with all the stuff, uh, happening currently in, in the world. So, uh, yeah, stay tuned to fire tech.com. They have a bunch of free courses, uh, mess Message them, fire Tech product, uh, fire Tech Productions, F P P Code for Fire Protection Podcasts to get access to some of those free courses.

(01:06)
Just want to give a shout-out on the inspect Point side of things before we get things kicked off here. I know it's, uh, a pretty crazy time. Not sure where we're going, but, uh, please be safe out there. Uh, stay positive. We will get through this. It's just a little blip. Um, Inspect Point's. Gonna be doing some things. Uh, obviously we, we do a lot of things virtually, so we're gonna put a lot of content out, including, um, uh, webinars to help your fire protection business, uh, just personal webinars to, to try to be, uh, more mobile, um, as well as remote working. And then finally, I'm gonna be doing, uh, a bunch more podcasts over the next couple weeks, uh, potentially even one with a Fire sprinkler podcast. So please stay tuned and, uh, give me any feedback, InspectPoint.com and drew@inspectpoint.com as well. Talk soon. Enjoy. Yeah. Tha thanks Lisa and Tom for joining. And, uh, Lisa. Lisa, uh, Salzman. I'll, uh, she's with, uh, CEO Fire Protection. Uh, are you CEO or president?

Lisa Salzman: (02:12):

Uh, my title is CEO O Yes.

Drew Slocum: (02:15):

Okay. Of Fire Tech Productions. And, uh, I'll give you a little bit to chat about what fire protection, uh, fire Tech Productions is all about.

Lisa Salzman: (02:24):

Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, really big thank you, uh, for having us on. We really appreciate it. Um, and Fire Tech is a, and it is Fire Tech Productions, but we refer to Fire Tech Productions as fire tech. So bear with me there. And, um, we've been in the industry since 1987 and we started out in nysci certification exam prep training, um, myself and another partner joined in in 19, or excuse me, in 2007. And since then, we've taken what a tape cassette program and run it into the online world and hands-on workshops, as well as a few other, um, reference text products and fire taps.

Drew Slocum: (03:11):

Great. What is your background in Lisa?

Lisa Salzman: (03:15):

So, my background is actually computer science. So when I joined with, um, joined into fire tech, that was really what allowed us to grow our website and the online world. Now, in my background also, I had done a fair amount of training, so just a huge advocate of training for everybody and anybody in any field they're in.

Drew Slocum: (03:39):

That's, that's great. Is, it sounds similar to kind of my background. I'm, I'm the, I'm kind of like Tom, I'm the fire protection piece, and I had some smart, uh, software developers on the other side, and we kind of put our heads together.

Lisa Salzman: (03:53):

Yes, there you go. Very nice. Yeah.

Drew Slocum: (03:56):

Well, thanks, Lisa. Tom, uh, I guess give us a little spiel about who you are and where you've been and what you're doing.

Tom Doty: (04:03):

You know, um, let's see. I, um, I've been in the industry for about 43 years now, and, um, got into it running heavy equipment and installing underground piping and worked my way up from there to doing the inside installations and became a foreman and, um, moved around a little bit. So I'd done it in full Florida and California and Missouri and, um, you know, different parts of the country to see how they do it different and whatnot. Sure, sure. And, um, um, pretty much do all types of fire protection. We do fire extinguishers, um, fire extinguishers, kitchen hoods, um, suppression systems, sprinkler systems, fire pumps, the whole, the whole night yards.

Drew Slocum: (04:57):

That's great. Yeah, it's kind of a wide variety of, I, you know, I've done done a little research and, and obviously you're, uh, it's funny, I was doing all the research, uh, for, for this podcast today and, uh, found out that Tom and his company, uh, crane and, uh, fire Protection is, is a customer of Inspect Point, which is always good to see. Um, that was kind of random. Um, but, uh, yeah. Great, great thing about that and I glad to have you on. Thanks.

Tom Doty: (05:27):

Yeah, no problem.

Drew Slocum: (05:29):

So let's get, let's kinda get right into it. I'll, uh, I'll kind of leave it for, for up for discussion for both of you. Um, I guess what you wanna explain what fire tech is all about, what you're doing, what you will be doing, kind of what you're growing into, um, over the next, last few years, and then into the future?

Lisa Salzman: (05:50):

Uh, sure. I can take a stab at that. And, uh, drew, just to comment on the, excuse me, the last, you know, we joke in our hands-on workshops that we're gonna have a, um, stump Tom Doty question section cuz he's, he's been doing this a long time and he really knows just about everything. And if he doesn't know it, he has like a phone, a friend quick line that he can find out in minutes, so, right. Anyway, it, it's always enjoyable. So, like I said, um, we've been around since 1987, started specifically as nice at exam prep and the, the work, the hands-on workshops. Have we started doing those, oh gosh, I think in about 2009, 2010. And then, you know, had a few of those and then they really took off in 20 13, 20 14. And I would say for us, drew, as we grow and as we are able to, uh, one of the things that I, one of my big initiatives that I wanna do is just being able to get more content out there that is open to everybody, right?

(06:57)
So obviously we're a business, we have to, you know, bring in revenue to, to run the business, but as profit increases, just to be able to do, you know, I love, I love podcast, right? You can learn so much from a podcast, um, daily email tips, you know, I want to, and we have a fire tech tip that's monthly, you know, I wanna increase that and have a tip for the fire alarm side and a tip for the fire sprinkler side. I'd also like to have some email tips and video formats. So we're just working to really increase just those 1, 2, 3 minute lessons that, you know, could kind of make somebody pause and think, oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense because I, I'm a true believer that you can hear the same thing, you know, now in a year from now, and it might resonate with you a completely different way a year from now. You know, we all learn as we go and we're a product of product of our experiences. So I just think that continued learning is such an important piece.

Drew Slocum: (07:56):

No, no, I agree. I agree. Now, you, you did mention, um, you know, online versus versus like hands-on training. What, has there been the transition to more hands-on? Or is it kind of moving more online? What, what have you seen in your experience?

Lisa Salzman: (08:16):

So, you know, for us as a company, obviously when we first started it was all online. So just looking at our, at our revenue, um, it's, we kind of swung from online to hands-on workshops and, you know, our goal really is to have a 50 50 split. Yep. The online, we think the online piece is so, so important for anybody, for example, studying, whether it be a state exam or a, uh, Nici exam because you just, you have to know the codes and, uh, we're gonna be starting in April having nici workshops as well. So a two day classroom experience. But I, I just don't think it's realistic to go into a two day classroom and walk outta there and think, okay, I'm gonna go pass the test. You, you gotta get in those standards and, and you gotta know 'em. Yeah. So we think the online piece is critical for that.

(09:08)
It will be a part of the nice at workshop. So when you purchase the Nice at Workshop, it's gonna come along with the online piece as well. But, you know, online you can study at your pace, you can study wherever you want. Um, and then if you wanna segment that with the workshop, you know, in a hands-on workshop, you're putting your hands on the system. Uh, one of the things we do is we try, uh, toys have two instructors in a workshop. I'm a firm believer that, you know, two people can tell you the exact same thing, but sometimes the way somebody says it is just resonates with you more. So, right. Just for the student teacher ratio and just hearing different voices, uh, really like two instructors. We bring in a lot of industry experts too. So sometimes they're hearing it from the manufacturer's voice as well as the technician. So, you know, and then the workshops also bring in the networking aspect, which is, is real big.

Drew Slocum: (10:01):

Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've been, you know, I've been, I used to work for Tyco before this and Viking after that. Um, and Tyco's got a great training facility, uh, up in Rhode Island, which I've been doing multiple times. I actually did a podcast there talking about training. But, um, you know, they, it seems like in the last three or so years there's been a lot of, um, more hands-on training facilities kind of opening up. I know Viking just opened up theirs, uh, general Air out in Philadelphia. And then you have Right, right. You have a lot of the local sprinkler fitters, uh, that, you know, the unions and, uh, that are training their apprentices all over the US as well. Um, and then you have Sprinkler madd down in South Florida. They've been, they've been doing a lot. So it seems like hands-on training's making a little kind of surge. Um, now do you have your own facility or do you utilize other, other facilities? How do you, how do you go to market there?

Lisa Salzman: (10:59):

Yeah, so we, we partner, we a variety of facilities. So we've been with Viking and we'll be up at their new location, our first one at the new location in April. We've been out to General Air. We've been down to Sprinkler Madock. Uh, we partner with s p P out of Atlanta, Georgia, uh, Grundfos as well up in Indy. And then there's a individual contractor who we had started with up in the Indianapolis area. Great. And um, so tho those are just a sample of some of the labs we've used.

Drew Slocum: (11:31):

Yeah. Partnerships are always, uh, great way to do it. Yep. Go ahead, Tom. Sorry,

Tom Doty: (11:36):

That's Peerless, not GR Fest.

Lisa Salzman: (11:38):

Thank you, Tom. Yes.

Tom Doty: (11:40):

.

Drew Slocum: (11:42):

Well aren't they part of, isn't Peerless part of grf?

Lisa Salzman: (11:46):

They

Tom Doty: (11:46):

Are. Grundfos owns them, but uh, they tried to switch it all over to Grundfos and it just didn't really work that well. Oh, they switch back to Peerless. So it's a standalone run

Lisa Salzman: (11:58):

Post a flip company.

Drew Slocum: (12:00):

Yeah. Oh, interesting. It's always changing industry, right? ?

Tom Doty: (12:05):

It is.

Drew Slocum: (12:06):

Um,

Tom Doty: (12:07):

It is industry updates like globe.

Drew Slocum: (12:10):

Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. There's always, there's always something going on. There's a lot of, uh, activity definitely right now with that. So, um, one question I did have for, for you, since for both of you, you know, NY a, uh, national Institute of Certified Engineered Technicians, is that correct? That was right off

Tom Doty: (12:32):

Mm-hmm.

Lisa Salzman: (12:33):

? Yes.

Drew Slocum: (12:34):

Ok. Alright. I got it. Right. All right. , um, why are they the only game in town?

Tom Doty: (12:43):

Because years ago, um, the fire sprinkler designers were PEs Sure. And, uh, there was a mix of PEs and, uh, fire Protection train designers. Right. And the PEs threw a big fit that we were the only ones that are supposed to use the steel are supposed to be college educated engineers. Oh. So the nice set kind of spun off because the engineers had kind of a big fit about the whole stamp and seal thing. So, and that became a nationally recognized agency and everybody signed up. And now you're just have to be a nice at three to be a designer. You don't have to be a technical pe.

Drew Slocum: (13:30):

Right, right, right. Yeah, it totally makes sense. And Nyad does a lot of, uh, great things out there. I would actually probably, I'm trying get 'em outta the podcast at some point, but I, I've always just Right. You know, um, you know, nice hat's great, but you almost need a class to, to fill out the paperwork. I feel like sometimes . Yeah,

Tom Doty: (13:51):

Yeah. Well,

Lisa Salzman: (13:52):

And you

Tom Doty: (13:52):

Know, I think streamline some of that now, but

Lisa Salzman: (13:56):

Yeah. And, and it's

Tom Doty: (13:58):

Been, it's been difficult.

Lisa Salzman: (13:59):

Well, and it's a nice, it has a tough job, right. Because there's always going to be people who try to circumvent the system. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So one of the things I love about Nici is it's not just, it's not just the certification piece, but it's the experience piece. You know? And that's a big deal because some people are great at testing and they can come in and take a test prep and go and test and pass and voila, but if they haven't really been out in the field and doing it, like, you know, that can be pretty scary. And these systems need to work properly.

Drew Slocum: (14:31):

No, no, I agree. I, I, I like definitely what they're doing. And, you know, you, you do have the, the testing and then you, the experience. Um, I think, uh, there's a couple other, maybe Assc is coming out with one that's, that even has a, a hands-on kind of test. I don't know if I gotta learn a little bit about it, but assc, the Association of Sanitary Engineers, I think, um,

Lisa Salzman: (14:57):

Oh, very nice

Drew Slocum: (14:58):

To combine, kind of be even equivalent to the nice, um, uh, certification. So it'd be interesting to see what they do there.

Lisa Salzman: (15:06):

Yeah.

Tom Doty: (15:07):

I heard there's somebody else trying to make a run at National Recognition, but I didn't know who it was.

Drew Slocum: (15:12):

Yeah. I think it was a sse and, and you know, I think a lot of it is, all right, great, you're, you, you know, you can, you can take a test, you have the experience, but what if you're not the best at the test? But you can, you know, you can change out a dry valve, you could change out a clapper and a dry valve like no other. So it's, I think it's a combination of all three. Um, which would be interesting. I think. I think they need a little competition to make, to make everything better. Right. So,

Tom Doty: (15:40):

Yeah.

Lisa Salzman: (15:41):

So. Right. Well, you know, and the world, the world is full of information and things are moving quicker than we can keep up with them. So Yeah. There's, you know, it's why you keep training cuz it's just things are always evolving.

Drew Slocum: (15:54):

Yeah. Speaking of that, where do, where do you see the future of, of training in, in the fire protection industry? Where do you see it going? I mean, obviously, you know, you have a lot of hands on classes online, but in five years, is it gonna look different?

Lisa Salzman: (16:11):

So my, uh, yeah. My best guess would be yes. And I think, and Tom can speak really better, this to me, but one of the things we're seeing more and more is virtual reality. You know? And so I think about our workshops and just the way we do it and we, you know, you sit in the classroom and you, you talk about the code and then you go out to the systems and you put your hands on the systems and then think about adding a virtual reality piece on that. Like, you know, the more senses you l use when you learn something, the more you're going to remember it. So, right. If you could go to a workshop and get kind of, you know, 1, 2, 3 classroom hands-on virtual reality, you know, that's gonna be a really solid training.

Drew Slocum: (16:51):

No, I agree. And I, I, I know somebody's already come up with some cool VR stuff

Lisa Salzman: (16:57):

Mm-hmm. ,

Drew Slocum: (16:58):

We'll see what's, you know, I think they're a little ahead of their times, obviously, uh, ahead of the time a little bit. But, uh, hopefully that proves out cuz I, I think that is an intriguing, uh, piece of it, you know?

Lisa Salzman: (17:11):

Right,

Tom Doty: (17:11):

Right. I think in the next five years they'll be doing testing from remote facilities.

Drew Slocum: (17:18):

Yeah. I, uh, I, I, I'm, there's, you know, nine, what is it, NFPA nine 15, which is remote inspection. And, and I know NFPA 72 and NFPA 25 and 13, um, just approve the, essentially the ability to do remote testing and remote inspection, which uh, great point Tom. Yep.

Tom Doty: (17:44):

Yeah. They're going, they're going, all the people that are big in inspection, testing and maintenance around the board, and they're leaning that way cause they can't find people.

Drew Slocum: (17:54):

Yeah. And I'm, I'm, uh, I've, I've got my, my application in and hopefully cuz we're, you know, at inspect point, obviously we have a, a software platform to help a lot with that, but why can't we couple that with some, uh, you know, remote analysis or even remote testing. Um, I don't, I don't see how, you know, there's some ideas on that right now, but I don't know if there's anything solid. So hopefully the standards help with that a little bit.

Tom Doty: (18:22):

I think they have all the pieces in place now. They just have to unite, unite 'em all together. So you'll be able to do pump testing and everything from remote if you can get cameras in the pump rooms and whatnot.

Drew Slocum: (18:32):

Correct. Yeah. I, I, uh, I, I was at NFPA 25, they were talking about that. And I know there's some technology that even, um, there's is some technology out there that'll automatically grab a lot of that, uh, fire pump data, um Right. And then spit it back to a, a software solution so you don't have to be doing your monthly or weekly churn tests. Yep. Yeah. It's, yep,

Tom Doty: (18:57):

Yep.

Drew Slocum: (18:58):

Interesting times. So

Tom Doty: (19:00):

Yes. Yes, it is very interesting. Um, everybody seems to be working on the latest cutting edge technology.

Drew Slocum: (19:08):

Yeah. Yeah. And I wish it, I wish it would happen faster in adoption. It, it's, it's funny, even, even with our platform adoption is, is still a little bit slow if few people are, are still on paper or pdf, but it, yeah, it is moving faster and faster every year, um, which is a good thing. It helps every, you know, solve some of the issues in the industry.

Tom Doty: (19:32):

Yep.

Drew Slocum: (19:33):

What, um, Tom, this is a question for you. What, um, you know, being involved for 43 or so years, you, you get involved in all different sides of fire protection. What, um, what is the toughest kind of protection, fire protection scheme or design, whether it's alarm sprinkler, suppression, extinguishers, what's, what's the toughest one to navigate when you're, when you're trying to train technicians or just conduct a business?

Tom Doty: (20:05):

Well, I think the biggest loophole out there that I've seen is probably the specialized systems like FM 200. The, the room integrity testing is, is not, um, is either not being done or the customers not being informed, or the customers coming back and cutting holes in the room. So the chemical is designed to hold in the room for 10 minutes, but the room won't hold the won't hold it. You know, they're right. They're constantly putting more holes and more devices and more, more servers. And so there's, right, they're, I, I don't know if it's a misinformation or what, but there, there needs to be something done on, on the room integrity testing. Cuz it, it seems like it's a big loophole and nobody's doing it and they think their room's protected and it's really not protected. And

Drew Slocum: (20:54):

Yeah, it's interesting point you bring up, I was, I was at fssa, which is the suppression, I was at the trade show a few weeks ago and somebody brought that up is then, I think they're gonna be discussion discussing at N F P A 2001, I believe is potentially adding a, an annual dorfan test or a rub integrity test, which I don't think is in there currently. Right.

Tom Doty: (21:19):

I don't think it is. No.

Drew Slocum: (21:21):

Which, yeah, it's, it's interesting. You think you would wanna have that? That's, that's a good, that's a good point cuz you're, you know, those server rooms are always changing.

Tom Doty: (21:31):

I mean, we, we have our own equipment and we do the room integrity testing, but a lot of places don't, you know, they don't have the equipment. They're selling the system, but they don't do the room integrity testing and they, they leave it off for the owner to have done well, who's the owner? How's the owner gonna do it? You know? Yeah. Yeah. That's at least a 500 or a thousand dollars part that you're leaving on and nobody does it cuz it's too expensive. So then they say, well, we put the system in and then the owner was supposed to do it. That's, that's just kind of like, um, you know, wow. It's like telling gentlemen, you were supposed to, you were supposed to give him a quarter for lunch and he forgot or something, you know, it's like,

Drew Slocum: (22:07):

Wow. Yeah, maybe whoever,

Tom Doty: (22:09):

It's not getting done, so

Drew Slocum: (22:10):

Whoever's selling it to him, no, it's not gonna pass. They just wanna sell him the system no matter what.

Tom Doty: (22:16):

Right.

Drew Slocum: (22:17):

Wow. Yep.

Lisa Salzman: (22:18):

Hey, drew, I hear a

Tom Doty: (22:20):

Question, I'm not sure.

Lisa Salzman: (22:21):

Oh, go ahead, Tom.

Tom Doty: (22:23):

I don't think the, the, uh, fire officials and the AHJs are familiar enough with the FM 200 systems, even though a lot of 'em are, even though they're supposed to sign up on a room integrity test, you know? Right. So anyhow.

Drew Slocum: (22:39):

Yeah, it could, it could. Yeah, you're right. Hj uh, um, training, whatever, you know, certain jurisdictions are great, I'm sure, but a lot of others are kind of in the dark on it.

Tom Doty: (22:52):

Right.

Drew Slocum: (22:53):

Lisa, what were you saying? Sorry.

Lisa Salzman: (22:56):

Uh, well, I had a question for you changing the subject a bit, but just talking about difficulties. And I know one of the things in our world is just the, you know, the codes are changing every three years, so I know for us, you know, uh, doing state prep, you know, everything's different and just trying to even nice at itself, right. Keep trying to keep track of the standards. How do you do that within spec point, like in all the customers you have?

Drew Slocum: (23:22):

Yeah. Great, great, great point. Uh, so, you know, we, we have, I think there's about probably 10 different standards in there. And a lot of it's depends on the code. Like NFPA 10, which is extinguisher is pretty basic, right? You have 10, 10 or so questions that you're gonna ask about extinguisher. Um, pretty simple. That doesn't change from every three years code cycle. So we, we stay on top of every standard, uh, and making sure all the changes, uh, that are occurring. We kind of put the templates in there, um, that are the guidelines for the different, uh, inspection schemes essentially. But once you get into the more complicated ones, like NFP 25 especially, um, you know, it's all over the place because chapters are changing, right? And it, it, it gets complicated. I wish there was a better way to do it. Um, on the code side, you know, one of the best standards in our opinion is NFPA 72 with fire alarm because it puts it all in one table.

(24:28)
It's all right there. It's in front of the technician. It's front in front of, it's also the installation and the inspection standard. So it's all together in one. Um, the changes that are made in NFPA 72 on the install, or even the inspection side, you know, it's, it's kind of incremental every three years or every code cycle. Um, what happens with NFPA 13 and 20 fives, they'll redo the, the entire thing. Um, and 25 probably needs to be redone again, . So it's, it's not easy, but that's the value we provide as in spec point is we're, you know, we kind of dive into the code and as revisions come out, we're ahead of that, um, right. And can give suggestions. Again, at the end of the day, the building owner and the contractor performing that work have the responsibility of making sure we're just kind of helping along, helping that along.

(25:24)
Um, uh, now I don't know how much you do in California, but they have an entire standard for, uh, suppression and sprinkler. Um, it's kind of like a, a side, a side, uh, standard, which, you know, California, if, if, if that's the way they wanna do it, that's great. Um, it's very similar. The one thing I don't like there, and I'm trying to get involved a little bit there, is it's all forms, which I, you know, don't always agree with forms because, uh, yes, you have to get the information, uh, for that inspection, but it should be in a data format versus a, a physical form. Um, an n FPA is actually struggling with that now because they're trying to, to look at a lot of data out there and, um, it's kind of all over the place. So,

Tom Doty: (26:18):

Well, even their fire pump form is ridiculously complicated. It's like six pages for a diesel fire pump form. It's like, yep. You know, the, the electric ones. Why do, why does the, why does the sprinkler technician need to need to figure out what the vol and amps are exactly, but the multiplication worksheet instead of just taking it off the panel, you know?

Drew Slocum: (26:40):

Yeah. I mean, take your rate out of there, but

Tom Doty: (26:43):

Some of the stuff, some of the stuff they've done out there is just trying to make it complicated so that the younger people can't get involved. I think.

Drew Slocum: (26:51):

Yeah, that's a great point. That's a very good point. Um, PE people complain all the time the size of our fire pump report, and I'm like, well, yeah, you know, it's gotta be that long. And they're like, can you take out the electrical information? I'm like, well, well, you can customize it however you want, but it's gonna come out of the box with that. So

Tom Doty: (27:12):

I don't know. Yeah. But they're wanting you to figure, like, you know, for your, if your amps are here, then how many, you know, amp you're, you're doing multiplication on that worksheet, figure out how many amps and bolts and you can take it right off the main plate of the controller or the motor. Right, right. You know, I'm like, you don't really, you don't really need to do all these formulas. That's the engineer part of whoever helped them write the code, getting their 2 cents worth in there. You know, it's like, oh, and this is, you can't make it any more complicated.

Drew Slocum: (27:41):

I know. Yeah. NFPA 25 definitely needs some simplification, but Great point, Lisa, thanks for, uh, I could go, I could go onto that for 20 minutes, .

Lisa Salzman: (27:52):

Well, it is, I mean, it's, you know, and it's, it's, we try to maintain, you know, probably three years worth of the same course, just so no matter what state somebody's in, you know, they can turn to training and it's a lot to keep up with. So Yeah. Always looking for tips there. ,

Drew Slocum: (28:09):

I mean, we have jurisdictions on And you

Tom Doty: (28:11):

Live in

Drew Slocum: (28:12):

Yeah, go ahead. You

Tom Doty: (28:14):

Live in California, drew?

Drew Slocum: (28:15):

No, I live, I actually live in the East coast, uh, in Connecticut. Um, but I spent the last 11 years. Yeah. So they, in New York City,

Tom Doty: (28:23):

They do Title 19 in California too, the five year certification and all that stuff. It's another whole book on just how to do five years.

Drew Slocum: (28:31):

Oh, I know. We, we have it. We actually have a great solution in inspect point for it. We have, um, we have every form from Title 19 embedded into our platform, , and we've automated it, so it's not a form anymore. It's actually into a database. So we've, you know, I was out in ca, California last week and people are very impressed with that solution. So

Lisa Salzman: (28:53):

Bet .

Drew Slocum: (28:54):

Yeah. Yeah. They don't make it easier.

Tom Doty: (28:56):

Anything to simplify their life. Yeah, no,

Drew Slocum: (29:01):

No. But, um, no, I mean, I've, I've seen, um, I've seen some jurisdictions that are still in the early two thousands of various N F P A codes, and then obviously the ones that are up to the 2020 editions. So it is, I mean, it's usually the last few years and they don't change too, too much, but, um, you know, they, there should be a simplification process in my opinion.

Tom Doty: (29:30):

Yeah. There should be mandatory upgrades. Like I think Indiana's 15 years old still.

Drew Slocum: (29:36):

Wow. Wow. Yeah. And then different jurisdictions have their, have their addendums or, uh, added language to it as well. Right. Um, so let's see, what else do I have here? Um, future and virtual reality. So have you, and we've, we've set one of, of, uh, ourselves as an LMS and learning management system. Is that, is, is, could that be the future of fire protection, where you guys are kind of going to set up like a learning management system for a specific, you know, contractor so they could go in and they could train all their employees that way through the,

Lisa Salzman: (30:22):

The portal? So, drew, we, we have a, a learning management system that we use. It's actually the second one in our, you know, in, in our growth in our history. And we, we recently launched in an associates program. So what that allows a company to do is say, Hey, fire tech, I wanna use you and your training and that. And then that company can really set up whatever type of learning they want. And it can be our courses, or it can be their courses, or it can be a combination. And then you get an admin account or several admin accounts Oh, wow. So that the administrator can go in and make sure that Joe and Bob and Sue are all actually doing their training. They can see how they're doing on their quizzes. They can see how much time they've set in it. So we're trying to, you know, I always say to our team, like, we wanna be, you know, there's a lot of small companies out there and large companies too.

(31:22)
You know, we wanna be their training department, you know, we wanna be able to customize for people as much, as much as they need so that they can train their team, but not have to worry about that piece of the puzzle. Yeah. So, yeah. And then if I can ask a question Sure. To the listeners, one of the things that, uh, Tom Doty's gonna laugh because I've been yaking in his ear for about three years for this. But one of the things I wanna create is like a Fire protection basics course. Like just a really basic course for anybody new to the industry, you know, so whether that's a brand new guy who's could go out in the field, or an administrator or a salesperson, like what are those questions that you would like to have known when you first started, or that you would like somebody you're hiring to know, you know, really the basic, so we have a lot of basic information throughout our courses, but I really wanna come up with that just basic course that's at a, a low price point, so anybody can use it. And, you know, it just talks about e even who are the players in the industry and the difference between fire alarms and fire sprinklers and Yeah. Things like that. So my email's, lisa fire tech.com, and if anybody would like to see a something in that course, please let me know.

Drew Slocum: (32:39):

No, that's, that's a, that's a great point. There's not, uh, you know, luckily enough, I worked for Tyco, so I got to go through their 1 0 1 kind of sprinting program. Yeah. But, you know, that was, that was kind of Tyco iced, and I learned what I needed to know for them, but there wasn't really much else out there, so,

Lisa Salzman: (32:58):

Right. And you, you know, there's YouTube and there's the internet, and those are great too. But you, you don't always know exactly what's gonna come up when you search for something. Right. So Sure. If you wanna make sure that the information's correct, just putting somebody in a, you know, having, having their fingers on information like that could be helpful.

Drew Slocum: (33:18):

No, that's great. That's great info. Um, so what I, so we discussed a few topics here, and, uh, what I'll do is I'll, uh, I'll kind of wrap it up and, and, and let you guys, uh, give your, give your spiel on fire tech here in a second. But usually toward the end of the, the podcast, I do something called the, and Tom, you haven't listened to it yet, but Lisa might've listened all the way through, but I called the Quick response round, uh, tying it back to the sprinkler industry. But I, I, I ask, I asked a couple, uh, quick questions. Some of are pertaining to the industry, some are not. So, uh, try to have a little fun with it. But, um, and I, I guess I'll ask, uh, a little bit both, both separately. Um, and we'll start off, what, what is the best way to eat Skyline Chili?

Lisa Salzman: (34:14):

Five Way

Tom Doty: (34:16):

.

Drew Slocum: (34:17):

I don't even know what that is. Can you, what, what four, what, what is, what is that five way?

Tom Doty: (34:25):

So they have, uh, three ways, four ways and five ways, and, uh, three ways spaghetti with chili and cheese, a four-way spaghetti with chili cheese and either beans or onion. And the five way has, uh, spaghetti chili cheese, onions, and beans. Oh man. So it's, uh, you say four-way bean or four-way onion if you don't want all five. And, you know, it's, um,

Drew Slocum: (34:55):

Yeah, I looked up where you guys were. I'm like, I, my, my old roommate was from, uh, uh, the Cincinnati area. So his, uh, his folks would always send him Skyline Chili, so we would always eat it. And it was, I don't know why I liked it, because it kind of looked gross, but it was great. He made, I think he

Lisa Salzman: (35:13):

Made it, it's great.

Drew Slocum: (35:14):

Four or five way . It's either

Tom Doty: (35:16):

Skyline or Gold Star.

Lisa Salzman: (35:19):

Yeah. And they say cinnamon is like one of the secret ingredients in there, but there's also a really good skyline dip, which is just cream cheese, and then the skyline chili on top, no noodles, and then cheese on top of that. And so it's a great dip. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. To take to a party. Very easy.

Drew Slocum: (35:38):

I might have to get Skyline to sponsor this podcast now.

Lisa Salzman: (35:41):

. You might.

Tom Doty: (35:43):

There you go.

Drew Slocum: (35:45):

Uh, all right, another question. This is separate as well. Um, yesterday, obviously International Women's Day, so congratulations, Lisa, on what all you've done with Fire Tech and all the stuff you've done. I like to see, you know, there's not enough, uh, women in the industry out there, so I'm glad to see a, a very progressive and upcoming company, uh, in fire protection. So thank you for all that. Thank, but what, who's your biggest, uh, mentor, I guess? Yes,

Lisa Salzman: (36:15):

Who's my biggest mentor? Who, well, I , I've told, uh, we have three Toms who I work with pretty closely. I said, someday I'm gonna write a book. What I learned from Tom. So Tom Doty has been a fabulous partner. You know, he's just, he's an advocate of the industry. He's been a long, around a long time, and he's got a great heart. Like he just does things for the right reason. So he's been great. We have another Tom in here, his name is, uh, Tom Frericks, uh, passed business owner. And he stepped in and started working with us a couple, uh, couple years ago. And so just having somebody in the office day to day with that business experience has been great. And the other Tom is, uh, Tom English, he's our IT guy. So, but I gotta say throughout, throughout my growing up, because I didn't have a business background, I mean, like you drew, I mean, you know, you go grow up in a computer science degree, there just wasn't much business to that. So, I mean, I'm always taking courses or listening to podcasts or, or doing something. So Right. Big, big advocate of always learning. She is

Tom Doty: (37:25):

Very energetic and she always is trying to learn something new. So she's done outstanding for taking courses on her own and, and moving herself along the business scale platform.

Drew Slocum: (37:40):

Yeah. That's great. Tom, what about you? What's, uh, any, any, anybody out there? And I mean, you've been doing it for 43 years, so there's some, there must have been somebody out there that pushed you forward.

Tom Doty: (37:52):

Uh, you know, I, I got into it through underground and learned how to do the overhead because there was no more underground at that time. So I took a pay cut and got into the overhead and learned how to do both things. And, and, uh, it was a sense of fulfillment for me. I mean, I liked, at the end of the day when you could get down off the lift, say, I hung all that pipe today. I liked that feeling, you know, a sense of accomplishment or whatever. And, and it, it just kind of stuck with me. And then, you know, to, to, um, add a peace, you know, how to do underground. Now we're doing fire extinguishers, now we're doing kitchen hoods, and now we're doing, I like that, uh, learning curve where you're, you're in the same industry, but you're learning something new all the time. So I like that.

Drew Slocum: (38:37):

No, that's great. That's great. Um, all right, great answers. Uh, so last question a little bit more in the industry, but, uh, how do we get more technicians in the business? I know obviously you can qualify them with your platform, our platform, whatever, whatever they're learning. But how do we get more, you know, heads as you know, in the business? I mean, there's not, there's already a shortage. Um, any ideas?

Tom Doty: (39:09):

Well, that's a million dollar question. If you can answer that, you're gonna be rich in the next 10 years. , right? Um, , uh, everywhere I go, people want to know how we get people and, um, you know, it's extremely hard to get people. I've tried all kinds of different things and, uh, you know, you can't hardly buy people. So I, I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. It's gonna get worse in the next 10 years. And, and, uh, I don't know how, how a lot of things are gonna get done. That's just simple things that we're doing now are not gonna be accomplished. Cuz there's no skilled trades. Nobody wants to be in a skilled trade anymore.

Drew Slocum: (39:46):

No, I think some of the automation will, will help that, but you're still gonna need, you know, feet on the ground.

Tom Doty: (39:53):

Well, yeah, the grandson lives with me and I keep telling the grandson, I know you don't wanna, nobody in your age group wants to work with their hands. And he goes, right, we just wanna do something clean and push buttons on the phone or something and talk or, or do the drive through or so close. I said, right, but you're still gonna want that toilet to flush. You still want the lights to come on. You still want the air conditioning to work. You still want . Right. You know, who, who in the next 10 years is gonna do that? None of you guys are getting into that. So, right. Yeah. It's just crazy,

Lisa Salzman: (40:22):

You know. Well, yeah. And it's, you know, I don't know, I think life in general ebbs and flows, right? And so we've gotten into this state of being that, so, you know, more people are getting college degrees than used to, and then what Tom was speaking to. And, and so now it's beginning to become that the technicians, uh, pay is going to increase cuz they're in short salary. So then everybody will start leaning that way. go over there, you know, it's just gonna go up and down. So, but ho you know, and then again, just education and not necessarily education that we're talking about, but educating people that, hey, this is a great, this is a, a great career choice. So, you know, I, I have five kids and I'm always talking about fire tech, but, you know, yeah. That's what mom says, right? Like, I think they gotta go out, do their own thing and then kind of, you know, and then kind of be able to step back and say, Hey, maybe that's not such a bad idea anyway. But, you know, yeah, I agree. They gotta make their own way in the world. Yeah.

Drew Slocum: (41:24):

Yeah. You gotta let 'em figure it out sometimes.

Lisa Salzman: (41:26):

Yeah.

Drew Slocum: (41:27):

Yeah. Yeah. It is the million or billion dollar question, whatever you wanna call it. .

Lisa Salzman: (41:31):

Yeah. Yeah. Trillion.

Drew Slocum: (41:34):

Well, well, I, I thank you both for coming on. Um, you know, this is a, it's, it's a nice avenue to get some different information out there. And, uh, again, we're gonna be doing more of these, uh, you know, as the year progresses. So, you know, definitely stay tuned and, uh, I guess where, where can we find fire tech? Um, you want, you can give a plug of how to find you and, um, yeah. All that.

Lisa Salzman: (42:00):

Okay. Okay. And, uh, again, drew, uh, huge thank you to you and for what you're doing for your industry, right. For the industry. So just to drive along and listen to this podcast and glean a few points is, is so key. So thank you. And, uh, fire tech.com. F i r e t e c h.com is our website. Uh, our main in email is info short for information i n Ffo or myself, Lisa at Fire Tech or Tom Doty, the expert tom@firetech.com. So anyway, give us a call, email us and we'll try to get to you what you need.

Drew Slocum: (42:39):

Great. Great. Great. Any, any, uh, any, uh, last, uh, comments, Tom, Lisa, any about anything? ?

Tom Doty: (42:48):

Uh, no. I think, you know, like, like Lisa said, you're doing a great job and, and keep up the good work and thanks for having us on.

Lisa Salzman: (42:55):

Yeah, thank

Drew Slocum: (42:56):

You very much. Alright. I appreciate it. Tha thanks. Okay, thanks Lisa. Thanks Tom. Thanks

Lisa Salzman: (43:00):

Drew. Okay, bye.

Drew Slocum: (43:02):

This has been episode 18 of the Fire of Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect point. I want to thank again, Lisa and Tom for joining the podcast. Uh, this is actually the first time I've, I've, I've had, uh, two different people, two different phone numbers call in, uh, via Skype as well. So ended up being pretty good. Uh, I know, uh, I recorded this again, like I said earlier in the intro, recorded this last week, uh, before all the craziness really ensued. Um, but yeah, reach out to Elisa or Tom at Fire Protection Productions as well as Inspect point. And, uh, yeah, please subscribe. There's gonna be a, a couple more podcasts in the next two weeks coming out. So again, thank you very much. Be safe.

Drew Slocum: (00:08):

This is episode 17 of the Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point. Today my guest is Rob Read. Rob is the president and owner of Bison Fire Protection. He's also the host of the Into the Fire, uh, video podcast on YouTube. Um, soon to be coming out on all podcast channels, but wanted to chat with Rob a little bit about his experience in the, the Fire protection podcasting world. It's a small knit group with, uh, Chris Logan, myself. And, uh, there's a new life safety podcast out there by Ruben Garcia. I talked to him the other day, so wanted to share ideas, see what Rob's doing. Uh, he's got a kind of a different style doing a lot of video, um, out of his, uh, bison Fire Protection office in, uh, uh, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Um, yeah, had a great conversation with Rob. Um, again, his podcast is a little different, talking a little bit about fire protection, but more business, uh, processes, different things and challenges in the, in the business world, running a business, uh, handling your workforce and all sorts of things. So, great conversation with Rob and, um, yeah, hope everybody enjoys. I wondered even if you had any, uh, wet sprinkler systems there.

Rob Read: (01:29):

Oh, yeah. We've got a few, yeah. . Yeah. You know, I mean, we, we do heat the odd buildings, so, uh, and keep them warm all winter . That's true. Right. But there are lots of dry systems. Don't, uh, our, sometimes our challenges aren't so much with sprinklers, but with, um, systems, you know, suppression systems and different things. Like, you know, people bring in these new, uh, wet chemical suppression for off roads and, and Oh, this is gonna be all great and it'll be fine. And then you find out that it, it gels at like minus seven Fahrenheit, and we're going, okay, but we get like minus 45 here. Right. , you know, that's no good. It doesn't work for us. You gotta make sure you got something that gets really cold.

Drew Slocum: (02:11):

Yeah. Speaking of which, I saw, saw you did a lot of vehicle systems. Is that a, uh, um, is that a big, obviously it's probably a big mining and, uh, area up there.

Rob Read: (02:24):

There is a, a lot of it, uh, in Saskatchewan. Uh, we've got offices in Saskatchewan, and they produce a lot of potash, I think there, they're either the largest or second largest producer of potash in the world.

Drew Slocum: (02:37):

Wow.

Rob Read: (02:38):

Yeah. So there's a lot of that sort of stuff. But even, you know, we've got gold mines, we've got nickel mines, we've got, uh, zinc. There's all kinds of stuff.

Drew Slocum: (02:48):

That's great. Yeah. I, I, I, you know, working for Ansel back in the day, I was always intrigued on, on the vehicle suppression systems, and it, it seemed like the neatest, I guess you just don't, I never dealt it every day, so it was like mm-hmm. , you know, I was living in New York City. You never,

Rob Read: (03:03):

Yeah. There's not a lot of mines there, .

Drew Slocum: (03:05):

No, not a lot of mines there. So. Well, uh, let's get kicking. I, I, I've actually been, I, I'm recording right now. I, we had some good conversation going, so might as well, uh, hold, hold on. Yeah,

Rob Read: (03:15):

Let's get her

Drew Slocum: (03:16):

Going. But, um, thanks for coming on the podcast today. It's, try to keep it pretty informal. I know. Um, Rob, you know, I've known you for a few months now since Chris Logan, uh, introduced us. Chris seems to be introducing everybody these days.

Rob Read: (03:31):

Yeah. He's a real connector, that guy.

Drew Slocum: (03:32):

Yeah, he is. So, uh, he's doing a good thing. And I know you've got your, uh, into the fire, uh, podcast, which you, uh, when did you start that?

Rob Read: (03:42):

Well, into the fire? We actually kicked off back in last June, and it started off as a video, uh, presentation that we were doing on YouTube and then pushing out through all the, uh, different social media things like LinkedIn and places like that. And it's easily found that way. And last year, I'm gonna say towards October, we had enough material then to go to the iPods and get it out there on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and all that. So what we did is took all of the video and lifted the audio off, and are now doing that for everything that we're doing. So we got, you know, the videos for the people that, like the YouTube show, and then those that just have time to listen in their, their vehicles or, you know, enjoy the podcasts instead. They, they can still hear the show.

Drew Slocum: (04:29):

Yeah. And I, I think, you know, we, I found that out and it, it's funny, I, I don't travel as much for work anymore cuz all the, all the stuff I do for inspect point is, uh, is virtual. But even when I'm in the car, um, I used to have a se I still have serious xm, but I, I'm, I'm converting more over to podcasts, weirdly enough, because I don't know, it's, it's more of the content that you want to hear. And hey, if, if I've got 30 minutes an hour in the car, um, might as well educate up while I'm doing it. You know?

Rob Read: (05:03):

I, I hear you. And, and I'm the same way. I'm kind of, I'll say 50 50 between my ex Sam and the podcasts because you know, like you say, you wanna listen to something that speaks to you that's, uh, whether it's, you know, the fire industry that we're both very deeply involved in or, you know, just something of, you know, personal interest so we can grow a hobby and do all those sort of fun things. It's, you know, it, it's, you're able to zero in on what you truly want to hear.

Drew Slocum: (05:29):

Yeah, no, it is. And commercial free, well, semi-commercial theory sometimes, you know, sometimes you get a podcast with, with stuff in the middle of it. Um, yeah. So I guess what is, what is the main goal of, of, into the Fire?

Rob Read: (05:45):

Well, the main goal there is, you know, we, we talk to a lot of, um, um, these days presidents and CEOs of companies. The intent is to talk about, you know, business culture, business growth, um, team building, what's your purpose. Uh, they wanna talk about some of the challenges that they've faced and, you know, from our Winnipeg point of view. Anyways, we've got some pretty prominent people coming on. You know, one of them was the, uh, CEO of the Winnipeg Airport Authority and, and what great work they do. Uh, you know, we've got the president of the World Trade Center, Winnipeg coming up. Uh, we're actually recording tomorrow and Wow. So I'm looking forward to hearing what Marriott has to say about international trade and, and all the things that go with that. The, uh, you know, how the risks and the rewards that come with it.

(06:35)
And Mary is gonna have a great story to share with us. But, you know, it's the ability to talk and tap into those minds cuz a lot of people get into business and there's a growth cycle that they need to go through, especially the startups and that's so prominent these days. Yeah. That it's an opportunity for them to be able to listen and learn and understand that some of the struggles that they're facing have been faced by others and been overcome. And this is how, you know, if that, uh, so, you know, like I say, if I, I sat here and just talked specifically about bison and what we do, you know, for fire protection, I would lose a lot of listeners very quickly, but Right. You know, and, and you know, where you've done a great job with your show is you're, you're not focusing on inspect point. You're talking about a lot of product. You're talking about, uh, the, the services that are required to do it. And, and you keep it going that way as well. So it, it's, uh, you know, really strong that instead of us having a half hour infomercial on what we do, we're actually bringing good new content to people.

Drew Slocum: (07:36):

Yeah. It, it, it, you know, I I deal with it day in out. Same, same with you. You're up at bison day in, day out and I kind of wanna learn about things, new things as well. So, um, it was always, it was always tough to learn about new things in fire protection. I feel like you have to go to the trade shows, you have to, mainly, it was like a lot of trade shows or presentations mm-hmm. .

Rob Read: (08:00):

Well, and, and keep in mind for us too, I mean, trade shows are a lot of travel usually because, you know, we're Canadian, that means across the border and dollar exchange and hotels, it gets very expensive for us to get into these shows and see those products. So for me to be able to go into a podcast like yours and hear you talking about the different reps and being very specific about it, I, I learned a lot from that and it's really appreciated. And I'm sure a lot of your listeners are doing exactly the same thing.

Drew Slocum: (08:29):

Yeah, yeah. Hopefully. And I, I, I, I'd love to, uh, share some ideas too, to try to, and even with Chris, Chris Logan, you know, how to, how to get more listeners and get it out there. I, I think it's still a new, new platform for, for both of us, for all of us

Rob Read: (08:46):

Really. Mm-hmm. for all of us really.

Drew Slocum: (08:47):

Yeah. Yeah. And, um, I, I, you mentioned something to me yesterday that, that, um, that I like the term we we're, we're not competing, we're not competitors in the podcast. We're, uh, what, what did you call it yesterday? I

Rob Read: (09:03):

Called Yeah. Co competitors.

Drew Slocum: (09:04):

Co competitors, right.

Rob Read: (09:05):

Yeah. You know, cuz we can cooperate cuz we're, you know, we're, we're not gonna be out there cutting each other's grass, so. Right. You know, we're in the same industry. Why not support each other as co competitors?

Drew Slocum: (09:14):

Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's interesting. And in the podcast world scenes like that, I, I listen to some, some, uh, golf podcasts. I list some comedy podcasts as well. And it seems like everybody has their own outlets, so they, they just join in on their other, the other outlets that talk about, you know, what whatever's, you know, pertinent that day, so. Right.

Rob Read: (09:36):

Exactly. Um, you know, just, um, with, with my show into the fire right now, one of the things I've started doing as a, uh, kind of a subsection on the YouTube page is a did you know, section? And it was interesting, I was listening to one of your recent shows, the Clear the Air episode. Yeah. And you started talking about internal investigations and how important they are. And I did the same thing. It was kind of a, did you know it's about a 45, second to a minute long? Did you know that? And, uh, you know, I I exactly the internal, um, obstruction investigations to make sure that the, the pipe is clear and working properly. Right. And I think it's so incumbent on us not to just talk about product or sell, but to be able to share with people at, on a layman's term, uh, you know, what they should be looking for from their fire protection and why it's so important. Because otherwise they're just looking at quotes on a page and they're going, this is gonna cost me a lot of money. Oh my God. And then they start learning that no, there's actually, you know, gravel or in one case as I shared a piece of two by four stuck inside their sprinkler system, preventing a valve from working like these tests and the things that we do are so important. But that's why I kind of walk through the did you knows, so that we can speak to the customers and educate them a little bit more.

Drew Slocum: (10:55):

Yeah. I think, I think education for the, the customer on whatever you're selling, you know, and especially in fire protection, cuz it, it, it is pretty confusing sometimes. So if you could

Rob Read: (11:05):

Well, and put that out there and it's so important. Right. You know, the, the life safety aspect of it. Cuz you know, I, I always push, you know, our purpose is to make the world a safer place. Well, education's a big part of that cuz we can sell all the sprinklers or all the fire alarms or extinguishers, you name it that we want. But if people don't know how to use them or, or why they're even in place, we're, we're missing the mark.

Drew Slocum: (11:29):

Sure, sure. Yeah. And unfortunately, uh, who I talked about them on the podcast yesterday, but, um, uh, you know, they're tapped into Hollywood, this new extinguisher that's coming out to the market, um, that, uh, anyway, they're tapped into Hollywood and,

Rob Read: (11:48):

You know, right. Yeah. It's that composite extinguisher.

Drew Slocum: (11:50):

Yeah. On the, on the sprinkler side of things, I wish we had some more people in Hollywood to, to help out with , just the vision of it. Cuz I feel, uh, uh, the media, media in Hollywood kind of run. Um, I don't know. They just, they don't understand, uh, fire sprinklers. They understand fire alarms to a certain extent, but,

Rob Read: (12:13):

Uh, yeah, they do. Yeah.

Drew Slocum: (12:14):

But on the sprinkler side, I, I think there needs to be some more education and if they keep pumping, pumping advertisements or movies that, uh, show negative impacts of sprinklers, it's, it, it, it gets tougher and tougher for our industry to overcome. So,

Rob Read: (12:30):

And you're right. And it's funny, uh, I recorded a, just a whole series of did you knows earlier this week, and one of them was exactly that about how in Hollywood, when one sprinkler head goes off, they all go off. And, and how that's just not the reality because there's not the sprinkler pressure, water pressure, or even water supply to accommodate that right? Now I know when the movies are setting up, so it looks all great, it's a beautiful visual effect, but reality is that's not how they work. And people need to understand that, you know that Well, if they're getting concerned that you're putting a sprinkler head in and every time it goes, you know, this thing's gonna go off, my entire building's gonna flood. No, they're not designed that way.

Drew Slocum: (13:09):

Right. Yeah. There's a, um, I think I talked about this with, uh, Chris Logan at one point, but I forgot what it is. I'm looking it up right now. But on YouTube there's a, um, there's a YouTube page out there that goes over all of the, um, different, oh, it's called Films on Fire. Okay. So I'm giving them a free plug, check it out on YouTube or whoever's

Rob Read: (13:34):

Listening, I'm writing it done as we speak,

Drew Slocum: (13:35):

Films on fire. And it's every false kind of, uh, thing about fire protection in the movies. So it, it's pretty cool. Um, you know, he doesn't get too many, I don't even him or her, I don't even know who produces it, but it'd be, you know what, maybe I should reach out to them to, to have them on as well, cuz what, whatever they're doing, they're, they're kind of cutting clips of each movie to show the, uh, the inaccuracies in it. So.

Rob Read: (14:02):

Well, and, and I agree, and sometimes it's not even just the inaccuracies, but the danger, uh, I spoke a little bit about the using a fire extinguisher and people, you see it on TV all the time, blasting each other in the face. But can you imagine hitting someone or, or, or shooting a CO2 extinguisher, which is basically liquid dry ice into somebody's face, you'd blind them. Oh yeah. Yeah. And people don't know that they think it's a big joke or, you know, I don't know if they think it's confetti coming out there, just what they're thinking. But CO2 could be really damaging, but that doesn't take away how damaging dry chemical or, or any other agent coming out of an extinguisher can be.

Drew Slocum: (14:40):

I mean, most of them are dry abc, dry camm or BC dry camm these days. So what if somebody doesn't know that's the bulk of them. Yeah. Yeah. What if somebody doesn't know that and they, they just go up and hit somebody. They think it's a CO2 extinguisher. , yeah. Covered in yellow.

Rob Read: (14:55):

Well, or you get a lung full of that stuff. Oh yeah. And let's face it, it's, it's, it's not healthy. And, uh, it always bothers me when I see it on tv. Oh God. I hope nobody does that at home. .

Drew Slocum: (15:07):

Yeah. Well that's, that's good. I'm, I'm really excited what you're doing. You know, I I, I've watched a few of them. Um, I like how you're doing the video podcast. We've only done one video and that was the, the clearing in the air, actually, that was only, we did it Facebook Live, so we, we did it at a bar in, in San Antonio and, uh, you know, had a, had some tequila and, and beer flowing to, to

Rob Read: (15:31):

Hopefully

Drew Slocum: (15:31):

Open up some of the, uh, the guests there. So, uh, but I, you know, I probably should do some more video, video podcasting. So,

Rob Read: (15:40):

Well, we, we've thought about doing some of the live things like that, and I've often wondered, you know, what the sound, the noise in the background, all that sort of stuff, how, you know, what are the other challenges that come with it? I mean, what we're doing is pretty controlled, so, you know, we know what's gonna happen in the background. Uh, we, we know that the sound isn't gonna be interrupted and Yeah. And all that sort of stuff. But if we wanted to start doing something live like that, uh, how would it truly come out? And I guess at the end of the day, that's gonna be up to the producer to fix. So, uh, Brian, if you're listening out there, sorry, buddy .

Drew Slocum: (16:10):

Yeah. A lot of it, the funny part is, I'm, I'm the producer, I'm the editor, and I think Krista's the same, so mm-hmm. , I think the day before. Um, and Chris has got some pretty good technology with him. Mine, I, you know, I have a decent podcast, Mike, but I had to find a restaurant that was, that was quiet and it, you know, it was still loud mm-hmm. . But I feel like that's what made it a little bit more authentic. And, um, you know, you, you can't do everyone like that. But, um, I think that's what people are liking these days is, you know, the authenticity, the, you know, it's kind of, it's uncut as well, you know.

Rob Read: (16:47):

Well, and, and I like that because, uh, like you say, it's that almost that raw unpolished we're, you know, we're just some guys in the field that are working hard at what we're doing and trying to share, you know, our ideas and our thoughts. I mean, we're not professional, uh, presenters by any stretch of the imagination. And, and so I think it brings that sense of, of reality that we know of what we speak. We're not just, like I say, hired actors in a commercial.

Drew Slocum: (17:13):

Yeah, exactly.

Rob Read: (17:15):

You know, so, and I, I've heard a couple of your shows where you're, you know, at trade shows and, you know, it's, it is interesting to kind of hear that background noise cuz it kind of puts you in the building as you're talking about what's going on. Right. You're hearing those sounds and, and, and it kind of helps take you there.

Drew Slocum: (17:29):

Yeah, it does. And you know, you can't, not everybody can be there. So that you, you have a great point there. And I probably mm-hmm. We probably should do a few more of those. Um, do you have any plans, uh, uh, now you said you said you might do some live ones with yours. What, I guess, um, you seem to target a lot of local people, which I, I, I really, you know, you're getting out of the fire protection realm a little bit and you're focusing on the business. You're focusing on the area that, that you're, you're operating in and there's some really good lessons and, um, ideas that you have on there. Or do you continue, are you gonna plan on continuing to do that? Are you're gonna bring in more fire protection elements in there or it's evolving

Rob Read: (18:12):

It, it's, it's, you know, what do they call it? Uh, constant and never ending improvement. Right? So the plan for the next, you know, for the bulk of this season is gonna be to kinda continue with the presidents and the CEOs and build on actually, you know, helping people build a business. And as they're doing that, learning the importance of dealing with a bad culture or how important, um, mental health days are versus sick days. That was one of the episodes we did. Um, you know, we've talked about micromanaging versus blind trust and there's all kinds of different things that can be talked about. And that's why I like the idea of bringing in, you know, the local people that I have nearby and being a video show, it's not as convenient for me to be able to do like you and I are doing, I mean, across two different countries right now.

(19:05)
Uh, the beautiful thing about PO only is you can do that. Whereas I do restrict myself with the videos to where I can either drive to or have people pull up and come see me back and forth. Cuz a lot of it we do right here in my office or in, you know, in some cases if they have an office facility, we go out and see them. But I will be definitely stretching the show out. Uh, and into season two. We've already started some preliminary discussion about what we wanna even do there. And keep in mind we've only got three of 24 episodes out so far, or four of 24 episodes out for season two. So we've got a, you know, a long way to go and a lot of planning to do. But, you know, there's just, just so much to talk about just in the business world.

(19:50)
And, and I always think about how much more there is to do. Uh, and you may or may not know this about me, but I've spent a lot of time working with our, uh, as members of our chambers of Commerce. I've sat on two different chamber boards and been very involved with that. So I talk a lot of business with a lot of different people and you start hearing where their struggles are and that gives me a lot of information as to where we wanna go with the show and what we want to talk about. Cuz people wanna do, well, you know, they wanna give her a good product, they wanna give a good service. Right. You know, they just wanna run a good business. That's why they went into it and they wanna enjoy it. But there's anyone can go to a, uh, a college and take a business course that isn't running a business. Sure. You know, it's like, it's like saying you've read the cookbooks and now you're an expert chef.

Drew Slocum: (20:37):

Right.

Rob Read: (20:38):

, you know, sooner or later you gotta get the pots and pans out and you gotta start breaking the eggs and start frying and do what you gotta do. But, um, that's where talking to the people, especially these presidents, they, they've started in the tre trenches and they're working their way up or have worked their way up into some very strong roles and they have a lot to share. And I'm so appreciative of the fact that they take the time to do that.

Drew Slocum: (21:03):

Right. Yeah. I think I, I think you, you've kind of hit on something where it can go across, you know, not only fire protection, but other people can, can listen into some of the ideals and, uh, I guess some of the problems that some of these other presidents and CEOs and managers, whoever have, have solved and mm-hmm. or, or run into the same problems that you have. So, um, I listened, what was the one I listened to? The one on the Canadian shoe company, athletic shoe company,

Rob Read: (21:33):

Right? Yeah, yeah. Brian, Brian Sharpstein over Canadian footwear.

Drew Slocum: (21:36):

Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was interesting to to talk, you know, some of the leadership skills that he was, uh, kind of alluding to and, um, kind of the current conditions that he's, he's kind of going into as well.

Rob Read: (21:49):

Um, for sure.

Drew Slocum: (21:50):

What, what do you see, you know, what are, what are the big challenges? You know, cuz we get a lot of fire protection, uh, owners and other companies. What are, what are the big challenges that, that you see not only within the business, but within the fire protection realm

Rob Read: (22:05):

In general? Well, and, and I can probably almost touch both of these at the same time, because I'm gonna say historically our industry has always hired from within because it's such a small but important industry. So what happens is you have a really good technician, uh, then you bring them from technician into supervisor, you take them from supervisor to manager and, and you keep promoting them from within. Yet we don't take the time to invest in training them into those roles. Truly as management, they kind of get the title and then they're kinda trial by fire, you know, no pun intended here, but away you go. And either it is sink or swim. You either have a lot of success, uh, as a manager. Some people just are naturally that way, but we don't necessarily invest in those supervisors and, uh, managers the way we need to.

(22:59)
And, you know, get them the more, uh, I'm gonna say official training or push uh, professional development on them because they're, they're so caught in the trenches of what they're doing every day. And, and I kind of used the analogy not long ago. Uh, you know, my wife was complaining about how much laundry there was in the house and how come it never gets done. And I said, well, teach your kids to do it. They're old enough. No, no, no. They'll wreck with my washing machine. I I don't want the kids to touch my washing machine. . I said, I wish I could. Well, okay, it, your pile isn't gonna go down. And, you know, and, and it's almost the same thing with management. Like, these guys are so used to being on the tools that they have a hard time making that transformation, uh, from technician to supervisor. Sure. And then, you know, when they finally do make that transition and they've moved up a little, you know, have they truly back trained someone to come in and support behind so that they can move up to the next level? And how much are they taking on themselves to become a good, solid, strong manager? Right. And that is, I I I think a miss in not just our industry, but in many industries where you see people are just, they struggle in that middle area.

Drew Slocum: (24:10):

Yeah.

Rob Read: (24:11):

Yeah.

Drew Slocum: (24:12):

I could, I could see that in middle manager era where, um, you know, the, the C-suite, the execs are seem to be doing well. I, I know there is an issue in, in the US with finding qualified technicians just mainly cuz a lot of younger, younger generations don't wanna do a lot of that work. That's at least mm-hmm. , that's what's happening in the us. But, um, with that, you'd have that middle middle management if you, if you, um, if you don't have that background in the, uh, the technical field or in the field, it's, it's tough to, to be, you know mm-hmm. be a great middle manager.

Rob Read: (24:48):

So Yeah. Oh, for sure. Well, no, if you haven't got the tech technical expertise, you will never be a great supervisor. Uh, but you know what? A great supervisor isn't a great manager because it's a whole different skillset and, and requirements of the jobs because you've gone from directing, uh, the people in the field to looking at spreadsheets and understanding forecasts and all the good stuff that goes with all that, that becomes that management level thing. Right. So they are just, you know, like I say, different skill sets and I think where a lot of companies fail is in that training process. But you kind of touched on the, uh, you know, attracting technicians. And just yesterday actually, I was out at our local community college cuz I go in there on an annual basis and speak to the kids that are going through their electronic technology classes and talk to them about the fire protection industry.

(25:41)
And specifically for them fire alarms, because they're in that, they're, they're going through the classes, but they don't even know our industry exists. You know, so they're looking at getting onto the, the big hydro corporations, the, you know, the, the utilities or, or some big technology, uh, type of company not even knowing the opportunities that are in front of them in fire alarm. And what a great industry it is. And by the time I've done the presentation, there's, I got 25 or 30 people that are all lining up to come work for us because there's something going, wow. You mean I'm not in a cubicle day in and day out? You mean I get to problem solve, I get to do programming, I get to troubleshoot, uh, I get to work with engineers. Sure. I get to work with contractors, uh, every day's unique, all like, all that good stuff that they just don't even know exists. And that's why I go to the schools and I'm never struggling to find new young talent. Now they're trainees. So it takes, you know, I'm playing the long game here because, you know, I started this program, I'm gonna say seven, eight years ago, but now I've got some guys that are moving into senior technician roles because we started it then and we keep going, bringing in a new kid or two every year.

Drew Slocum: (26:53):

Yeah. That's a, that's a great success story. And I wish, you know, I think you gotta play that medium to long term game a lot of times. Mm-hmm. and not all of them are gonna stick around, you

Rob Read: (27:05):

Know? No, they're not, they're not

Drew Slocum: (27:06):

All gonna work out. But if you can grab, you know, a a handful of, of qualified, uh, technicians from that and eventually get into managers and whatever else, I think that's, that's important.

Rob Read: (27:18):

It absolutely is. I mean, I look at it and go, I'm bringing the right people in that have a desire to do electronic work. So they're working in an area of their expertise that they've been trained at college for versus, uh, you know, Jimmy's cousin that doesn't like cooking french fries at McDonald's and he wants to be a fire alarm guy. So he is taking five courses and out into the field. Right. You know, , they're just, they're, they're two different people. And I've always really thought, let's get the people with the desire to even work with electronics. It's so important. You know, cuz what we're doing, you know, and making the world a safer place, a big part of that's bringing the right people in for the right reasons.

Drew Slocum: (27:57):

Right. Yeah, no, you're right. It's, uh, and I think maybe there's more, more lessons to be learned and if that's the, the big issue in the us um, with technicians is just getting the message out, getting message out to, uh, high schools or technical schools that, you know mm-hmm. , you don't, there's a lot more opportunities out there and, and fire protection seems to be a, uh, definitely a needed one out there. So,

Rob Read: (28:22):

For sure. And, and I mean, like we were talking about yesterday, I just focused on the fire alarm guys, but the same thing on the suppression side of our industry where, you know, it's, it's industry schools, you know, we send them to Ansel, we send them to Keta or or wherever we're sending them, but we, it's not a trade. And because of that we have to make sure that the training that we're giving them, the time we're spending with them, you know, all those good things we are creating and developing good technicians in the field. And one week at a, you know, a restaurant kitchen course isn't gonna do the trick. I mean, it's definitely important, but we have to also invest in them ourselves in the field, you know, with, again, those good supervisors teaching them their job properly. Sure. But it, but it takes time to find these kids and, and find the right one. Cuz as you said, not every single one of them is gonna last.

Drew Slocum: (29:15):

Now, uh, in, in your, in your days as a, you've had bison fire protection since the early two thousands, correct?

Rob Read: (29:23):

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. We opened it up back in 2001. So have

Drew Slocum: (29:27):

You, have you had any, uh, technicians or managers go out and kind of did similar to what you, you kind of started from a, a bigger company, bigger corporate company, and you broke off, did your own thing? Um, I don't know the whole history there, but, um, well,

Rob Read: (29:41):

What we did was we bought a division from another company that was wanting to get out of the suppression business and then grew it from there. But, uh, you know, have I had technicians that thought, you know what, we're smarter than the boss, so we're gonna go out and open our own place. Yeah. I've had a couple of those. Um, and I, I look at, you know, what they're doing out there right now and, um, I don't know that they're, they, I don't know that they're bringing up the level of the industry.

Drew Slocum: (30:07):

Right, right. Yep. Now, and, and probably happens, uh, maybe not as successfully as obviously what you did, but there's, there's gotta be cases out there. And, and my point to that was, you know, there's these big, big companies out there, big corporate companies and, you know, sometimes you have to take the leap and if, if you think something's better out there, you know, start, you know, I came from a big corporate, two big corporate companies and started my own adventure up. And it's, uh, sometimes you have to take that big leap in order to, to kind of push yourself forward. Again, it's not for everybody,

Rob Read: (30:46):

But no, it's not definitely not

Drew Slocum: (30:48):

For everybody.

Rob Read: (30:48):

But it's, uh, and you know what I'm gonna say, um, you know, just my observations of course, but I, I think in some cases some of the bigger corporations have kind of lost their way. You know, we always talk about people, process and tools and the people being the, the most important part of that because if you invest in your people, good people will get you through bad process and poor tools. But a lot of the big co corporations have gotten so heavy with process and tools that they've forgotten about the people. Cause they believe that they can plug people in and out and they've forgotten who's building the relationships with the customers. Uh, they've forgot who's building the relationships with their internal customers, meaning their, their, their coworkers. And because of that, their cultures have gone downhill and they are losing traction where these, these big multinationals could truly be, uh, machines in a lot of cases, at least what I'm seeing here, they struggle because the people just are so dissatisfied Sure. That they work there for a short time and leave.

Drew Slocum: (31:48):

Yeah. And the same, same thing down here in the States. And um, you know, you see that a lot and I, I always hoped for the best for some of those big corporate companies, cuz they, they have the, the cash, they have the talent, they can really grow. But

Rob Read: (32:04):

They have the products, you're right. They, they are set up to be machines .

Drew Slocum: (32:08):

They for some reason struggle. And it's, um, it's really apparent maybe in, maybe that's just in the last, I don't know, 10, 10 or so years. But, um, sometimes they can't get out of their own way, which, uh, I dunno, it, it opens opportunity to others to mm-hmm. to, to get in there. So,

Rob Read: (32:28):

Um, it, it does. And then like I say it that in my mind is all culture and all people, you know, if you take care of your people and you fiercely protect your culture, you can do all kinds of great things.

Drew Slocum: (32:42):

Yeah, no, I agree. I I I've seen a lot of kind of local, private, uh, contractors that, uh, that do right. For their employees, uh, promote within and you know, even, uh, educate, they educate more than more than a corporate company does sometimes and mm-hmm. , they, they hold onto those people. They probably have a higher profit than some of those big corporate companies. So, um, anyway, it is interesting. I mean, there, there's room for everybody, but, uh

Rob Read: (33:11):

Oh, for sure there is. Yeah. So, you know, and, and I always look at it and go, we need competition cause it forces us to be better.

Drew Slocum: (33:19):

Exactly.

Rob Read: (33:19):

Yes. You know?

Drew Slocum: (33:20):

Yep. You definitely need competition cuz that's what, that's what keeps me up at night. Uh, I want to be pushed forward and, you know, with our software and everything and whatever else we're doing, I, hopefully there's another podcast that comes out to, to push us along a little bit, right? Mm-hmm.

Rob Read: (33:35):

. Yeah, absolutely. Or you know what? We find another competitor out there and competitor, the product that we are creating online gets that much better and we're educating more people because as we said earlier, the more that the customer knows the, the safer they are. But in a lot of cases, the better conversations we can have with them about their fire protection cause they understand what they need and why they need it,

Drew Slocum: (33:59):

Right? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, more information the better. So, uh, yeah.

Rob Read: (34:05):

Uh, you know, just, uh, go

Drew Slocum: (34:08):

Ahead. Yeah, no, no, I, I uh, anything else that, uh, you wanna chat? I, I, I pretty much wanted to have you on to chat about, you know, what you learned with into the fire, kind of where you guys are going and, um, just learn a bit, little bit more about bison and, and Rob, you know. Yeah.

Rob Read: (34:27):

Well, um, I can tell you a little bit more about bison. Uh, that's the easy one to start with is, uh, like you say, we started back in 2001 and five of us with a, you know, lots of attitude and, and lots of enthusiasm and let's go. And in that amount of time, the company's grown from those five people to, uh, we're about 90 strong now. We have five or six branches spread out through, uh, Manitoba, Northwestern Ontario, and into Saskatchewan. And our business has gone from filling fire extinguishers and doing kitchen suppression systems to full on, uh, fire alarm contracts and service inspections as well as, uh, you know, sprinklers, you know, the contract service inspections, deficiency repairs. Yeah. All of the good stuff. And, you know, it's been an interesting growth path. It hasn't been without its challenges of course. Um, you know, and that's what keeps it interesting. Cause if it was easy, everyone would do it. . Yeah. But, uh, you know, we've had a lot of success, but, you know, it hasn't come without challenge for sure.

Drew Slocum: (35:29):

No, that's, that's great. I mean, I'm, I'm glad to, to see a nice success store and you guys are relatively, uh, uh, I say pretty young and medium, I don't know, maybe medium age company cuz there's a lot of old contractors out there, obviously have the big ones. So that's, that's good to see mm-hmm. , uh, that much growth in, in that, you know, 20 year timeframe.

Rob Read: (35:51):

Yeah. And you know, like I say, it's uh, it's an ongoing thing. We have a lot of plans for the future and um, you know, I would like to see that even when my time comes to retire, which isn't in the immediate future cuz uh, I'm just enjoying myself. I'm having a ball with, you know, the business, I'm having a ball with doing these, uh, the shows and you know, the podcasts and all that. And so I have no desire to go anywhere in the, the next while I, you know, I was talking to my wife, I said, nah, I'm not, I have no plans. I'm, I'm enjoying what I'm doing and it's not changing. Yeah. She, you know, I wanna go on more vacations. Well, that's okay , we can work that into, don't worry.

Drew Slocum: (36:32):

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Maybe we can combo it. You can go to a, you know, trade show and, you know, stay afterward to, to enjoy the vacation a little bit.

Rob Read: (36:41):

Yeah, exactly. We've been doing that, you know, and it's been nice, like you say, going to some of those shows and uh, you know, last year we were down in, uh, new Orleans and spent some time down there and, and just had a ball, you know, and, you know, those opportunities to kinda, like you say, combine the business with the pleasure cuz there's just a lot of great things to do in this business. And I'm sure a lot of businesses can say the same thing, but there's always something new to learn. There's always a new product. Uh, codes are always changing and trying to stay ahead of all of that and make sure that we're current. Cuz we have to be, you know, we, we are in a liability business so we have to make sure that what we're doing, we're doing, you know, not just for the right reasons, but we're also doing it correctly.

Drew Slocum: (37:23):

Right, right. Yeah. It's a big, it's fire and safety. So at the end of the day it is a business, but we're, we're saving lives.

Rob Read: (37:30):

Yeah. I mean, I take a lot of pride. You know, this, this may or may not resonate with, uh, you know, the people down in the States, but our, uh, the Winnipeg Blue bombers won the Great Cup, uh, this year. You know, for us that's our, that's our Superbowl sort of thing. Sure. And so they had it out in a, uh, smaller town and then, you know, the team was out there, some of the players were out with the Great Cup and showing it off and you know, building up the community and all the good stuff, you know, community involvement. But the hotel they were in caught fire and it was one of the ones that we've been servicing and supporting and you know, it took a lot of pride in the fact that not only did everybody get out of the building safely because the fire alarm did exactly what it was supposed to do mm-hmm. , the building was saved cuz the sprinklers did exactly what they were supposed to do. But I saved the Great Cup. Yeah,

Drew Slocum: (38:20):

You did

Rob Read: (38:21):

, you know.

Drew Slocum: (38:23):

Yeah. So, you know what, it's funny that I didn't even know about that story.

Rob Read: (38:29):

Yeah. It was, uh, yeah, just in a small city or, you know, outside of, uh, Manitoba here in northwestern Ontario called Kenora. And uh, yeah, we were just one of those really, you know, great little success stories. I'm sorry that the hotel had the fire. I truly am. But I take a lot of pride in the fact that our products did what they needed to do when they needed to do it because they were properly maintained and serviced.

Drew Slocum: (38:52):

Wow. Send, send me, send me that article. Or if you have any article or a publication, I would love to do that cuz I, I think it's, it's uh, you know, super Bowl weekend coming up. Yeah. And I think that's a nice story cuz that should get publicized more. Some of those sprinkler saves or fire alarm saves don't get publicized as much as mm-hmm. much as they should.

Rob Read: (39:12):

So Yeah, no, I'll definitely, uh, fire you a couple links and, and, uh, see where that all goes. But, uh, like I say, for me that's a point of pride that, you know, we did something, uh, special in my mind.

Drew Slocum: (39:25):

Yeah. No, that's great. That's great. Well, um, Rob, it's, uh, we're coming on the, the 40 or so minute mark here. I wanna ask you a few more questions. You've probably heard a few of my podcasts, so, uh, I have, I have , I always do something called the, the quick response round. It's never usually quick, but I, I try to, you don't know the questions coming, so, uh, uh, some of 'em are fun, some of 'em are technical, so, um,

Rob Read: (39:52):

Yeah. Okay. I'm nervous now, . Yeah. See

Drew Slocum: (39:56):

If, if I knew you better, I I would've, I would've really Got you. But, uh, you know, I know we've only talked a few times, so, um, uh, so what's your, all right. Out of these suppression methods, what, what's your, what's your most favorite to work on, I guess?

Rob Read: (40:13):

Uh, mobile suppress. Okay. I guess mobile suppression. I'm a suppression guy. Mobile suppression. Yeah. I'm a suppression guy. Well, mobile suppression's pretty cool. Uh, it, it really is. You know, the mines and all that. I mean, it is definitely up there. Um, you know, lately we've been putting in a lot of clean gas systems and foam systems. Uh, you know, we do, uh, you know, a pile of restaurants and, and paint spray booths. Uh, I don't know if there's a specific that I like, it's just, I've always said that, um, you know, suppression, you know, sprinkler has its place and it does exactly what it does, and it's, it's engineered to be there. Fire alarm's, the same suppression is the kind of the magical stuff that, uh, when I say, if you can make it burn, we can put it out.

Drew Slocum: (40:58):

Right. Yep.

Rob Read: (40:59):

And so, you know, there's so many different suppression, like I say, whether it's a, a big piece of, um, equipment in a mine or somebody's restaurant, everything's unique. And so, yeah. My, my heart's really kind of on the suppression side of it. Probably, uh, you know, my real background is in the restaurants and that sort of thing, but, you know, I've also done a lot of the off-road, uh, for the mines and forestry. So Yeah. That kind of in that area, if that answers your question.

Drew Slocum: (41:25):

Yeah, no, that does. I, it, it kind of, uh, makes me think I I, I probably should get more, uh, suppression or two podcasts down here to talk some of the, the new advancements there. So I'll, uh, maybe pick your brain after this.

Rob Read: (41:37):

Can I share a bit of a funny story with you? Yeah,

Drew Slocum: (41:39):

Go

Rob Read: (41:40):

For it. Okay. So I was out at one of our local airports not long ago where we were putting a foam system into a hangar. And so the question came back and said, well, why are you putting foam in here? You know, they're, they were afraid that, you know, if, if one airplane caught fire and we flooded the entire hangar with, uh, foam, it was gonna destroy the other airplanes and so on. And I started walking them through, well, you know, we could do this with, you know, dry chemical. The problem you're gonna run into is that dry chemicals gonna get into every part of that airplane. The engines are gonna have to be torn down whether they were involved in the fire or not. Right? I said, okay, yeah, no, no, we don't like that. And I said, we could put clean gas in here, but by the time we do all the air integrity testing and make sure that a hanger is sealed up tight enough to maintain the, uh, the levels of integrity for the clean gas, we're gonna have to put probably millions of dollars worth of, you know, Novak in here.

(42:37)
Sure. Oh yeah. No, we, no, no, we don't like that too much. Mm-hmm. , uh, I said we could put CO2 in here and would work really well, but if there's anyone in the hangar it's gonna kill 'em. And I, no, no. We really don't like that one. Right, right. . Right. You know, I said, so, you know, by the time we actually walked them through it, they came back and said, okay, you're right. Yeah. Phone was the right choice. Phone

Drew Slocum: (42:56):

Works. Yep.

Rob Read: (42:57):

Yeah, we're good with that. . That's funny. So yeah, phone, that's kind of the nice phone systems are fun. Yeah. But, but having that opportunity to kind of explain why we chose this product for this reason.

Drew Slocum: (43:08):

Yeah. No, that is nice. There's a lot of different protection schemes and those are, those are always the fun conversations to have as mm-hmm. , uh, going over that with the client and, and all that. So

Rob Read: (43:17):

Yeah, for sure. Um,

Drew Slocum: (43:20):

Curling or hockey

Rob Read: (43:23):

, my God. Okay.

Drew Slocum: (43:25):

. Sorry, I, I had to, I had to ask.

Rob Read: (43:30):

Alright, uh, where do we go with this one? I'm not old enough to curl yet, so when I get into my eighties, I'll think about it. Um, ah, that's funny. Um, and you know what? The Jets came back here a few years ago. Everyone loves the Jets and I love what the Jets do for the community, but I'm not a big hockey guy either. Yeah. Now, if you'd asked me ice fishing, we could have had different conversation snow wheeling. Yeah. Uh, but I, um, you know, not strong on either of those. Although I'll tell you, if my grandma's listening to me right now, uh, she's not gonna be too happy with me crapping on curling . And believe it or not, I've got a second cousin that was actually a gold medalist Oh, wow. Um, in the Olympics on the first year when it was still an introduction sport in, in the Olympics, and she was the alternative. Wow. And so, I mean, we've got curling into blood and, you know, a lot of cousins and, and people that have played hockey. It's, you know, it's a Canadian thing. Right. Um, either of those ice, but for me, honestly, put me on a snowmobile or put me on a lake, uh, trying to pull fish through the lake, that that's where I'd rather be.

Drew Slocum: (44:37):

No, that's great. I, I, I probably, I, I gotta get back in. I used to snowmobile when I was a kid and haven't done, there's not much snow here this winter. But, uh, anyway, I got, I used to love it. But, um, uh, final question. What, uh, okay. In, you know, I know you, you do your own podcast, you listen to a bunch. Um, what podcasts are in your queue that you wouldn't, you wouldn't think to, to mention to anybody or, or, uh, any books in your queue? What, what are you listening to? What are you reading?

Rob Read: (45:10):

Okay. What am I listening to right now? Um, you know what, I, I've been doing a lot of, uh, you know, listening to both yours and Chris's. Uh, I listen to a lot of Terry O'Reilly's, uh, podcast because he's a, a marketing guy and he tells just great marketing stories. And as I'm always trying to think about how I can be doing things differently with, with my show and what I wanna do, I'm always gleaming little nuggets out of what he's sharing. So I really enjoy Terry's podcasts. Um, what am I reading? Uh, I just finished actually, um, Victor Frankl's book, uh, kind of the, the, uh, what is it? Uh, man's, uh, search for Meaning, which was a good one. And I don't know if you're familiar with that particular book, but No. Uh, Victor, uh, spent a number of years in a Nazi concentration camp Oh, wow.

(46:01)
And how he managed to maintain his, um, inner strength, I guess, going through the, the challenges that that presented and, and things that like we would never even be able to imagine in our lives and the resilience that he created for himself doing that. And so when you're going through business challenges, you know, the opportunity to think, well, you know what, it's not that bad. That was, today we've dealt with it. We can move on and, and move on to tomorrow. And so, you know, that was a great book. Uh, right now, what am I currently pounding through is the Toyota Lean Management. Uh, wow. Boy. And, and it was kind of funny because when I was talking with, um, Barry Rempel over at the airport, he was talking about how they took lean manufacturing and, and applied it to the service that they provide. And so they use service as a product Sure. And think of it in, in, in that way, and how they've applied a lot of lean principles to that. And the other thing with the Toyota book, of course, is a lot of, uh, management development, um, uh, cis or continuing improvements Yep. And all the different things that Toyota does to remain one of the, the biggest forces out there in, in business.

Drew Slocum: (47:14):

They do. Yeah. I don't get me started on that. I, I, uh, that's, that's my, that's my degree. I have a, a six Sigma black belt, so, uh, my wife always makes fun of me, cuz I always say Six Sigma Black belt. But, uh, I had to read all those Toyota books mm-hmm. , all the, uh, lean manufacturing and actually that's what, funny enough, come, come full circle. That's, that's what Inspect Point actually provides at the end of the day. Mm-hmm. , we're trying to lean out the business to get a, a better product out to the, to the consumer. So, uh, that's interesting. You're, you're, you're, it's a pretty wide variety of, uh, of books there. That's, that's great.

Rob Read: (47:51):

Yeah. And my, my biggest problem in life, honestly, drew, is I'm interested in everything . So I sometimes suffer from, uh, shiny ball syndrome. Right. You know, someone brings in that nude toy and I go, I don't wanna play with that. I can't, you know, pass that over here, .

Drew Slocum: (48:09):

Oh, that's great. That's great. Well, um, you got any questions for me? I've, I've, I'm pretty wrapped up here. I got the quick response round done. I wanna thank you for being on, um mm-hmm. , is there any, uh, actually let the listeners know where, where to find you.

Rob Read: (48:25):

Okay. Well you can find us, uh, our website, you know, is bison fire.com mm-hmm. , or, uh, you know, if you wanna search us up on, you know, the social media, whether it's my name, uh, Rob Reed and it's r e a d, most people spell, you know, four letters and they get it wrong. So R e a d or, uh, you know, into the Fire with Rob Reed, you can find that, uh, online or you know, the Bison Fire YouTube page. We're out there, you know, a couple quick searches and you found us. It's not that in this day and age, uh, you know, similar to yourself, if I put, uh, drew locum into a search engine, you're popping up all over the place.

Drew Slocum: (49:03):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is crazy that you type your, your own name in and you pop.

Rob Read: (49:09):

Yeah. It gets a little creepy actually, . It does, it does. But

Drew Slocum: (49:12):

That's

Rob Read: (49:12):

Fine. But you know what I mean, that's why we're doing it. I want people to, to learn from what we're doing and the lessons that I'm providing. And the best way to do it is in a social media format. And that's why I want people to be able to find the end into the Fire show or, you know, if they have questions about, uh, fire protection, you know, come at us, uh, through the Bison Fire website and, and all the different things that we do out there. So, you know, if people want a new know more or learn more or just engage in the conversation. And I always talk about this, uh, you know, at the end of our shows is, you know, like share and comment cuz I just love the conversation where it can go, uh, some of the direct messages that I get and I'm sure you get the same thing. Just that ability to have that conversation after the fact. And, and I just absolutely love doing that.

Drew Slocum: (50:00):

No, it is great social and, and, uh, you know, you're getting yourself out there into the fire. So that's, I I, I, uh, hopefully everybody gets a chance to check it out on, on YouTube and, and on any podcast channel. So, uh, mm-hmm. . Yeah. Thanks Rob for coming on today. I really appreciate it. I, I'm glad we got to finally connect doing this.

Rob Read: (50:21):

Well, thank you and I really appreciated you, uh, having me on. I, I, uh, just think that the, the time that you give up for your show for me is, uh, is absolutely appreciated and you have yourself a great day. Yeah.

Drew Slocum: (50:33):

Yeah. Thanks. Thanks Rob.

Rob Read: (50:35):

Take care. Take care.

Drew Slocum: (50:37):

I want to thank Rob Reed again for joining me on today's podcast. You know, the podcasting world is, uh, coming faster and faster. A lot of new podcasts out there. I'm glad, uh, there's more people getting into it in the fire protection space and, uh, look forward to listening more, uh, ones like Rob's, Chris Logan's, and, uh, the new life safety one out there. So again, thanks for subscribing. Please pass this along, share it with, uh, other colleagues, other industry folk, and, um, yeah. See you here again soon. Thanks.

Full Transcript

Drew Slocum: (00:07):

This is episode 16 of the Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Spec Point. Today, my guests are from the Russo Eliminator Fire Extinguisher Company. It's a new product to the extinguisher market to really, uh, hopefully change some, uh, ideas in the fire extinguisher world. It's, uh, it's going against all manufacturers out there. It's a different product, uh, trying to think of different ways to, to produce a fire extinguisher to go to market. I really like what they're doing. Um, so we get into it about how they came to market, what their goals are. Um, so really excited to have them on because there hasn't been a really big innovation in the fire extinguisher world and probably 50, 50 plus years. So they're, they're really trying. Um, I'll see them again at here at naed, uh, in the next, uh, couple months. Uh, inspect point will be at naed, uh, so, we'll, so will Russo eliminator.

(01:09)
So they're, they're debuting it this year. Sore. Really excited, uh, for 2020 with the Fire Protection Podcast. A lot of, uh, good ideas trying to get, uh, more listeners obviously. So please subscribe. Uh, please, please pass the word along. Uh, today's podcast actually came from, from Chris Logan of the Fire Sprinkler Podcast. He, uh, he wanted to get, uh, this new product out there, and it thought it was a good way. Um, so thank, thank you again, Chris. Please, uh, tune into his podcast and, uh, yeah, really excited for 2020. So stay tuned and subscribe. Just want to give a quick update on the inspect point, uh, side of things. Uh, 2020 is gonna be a breakout year, another breakout year for us here at Inspect Point. Uh, a lot of cool initiatives, one being our, our big service and work order module that's coming out in, uh, early quarter two within the platform.

(02:04)
So we're really excited about that. It will transform our platform to not only include inspections and the proposal sales features that we've had for, for six to nine months. On that side, uh, it's gonna flow into the service and work order section. So not only will be able to do inspections, you'll be able to dispatch technicians out for service. So check us out, uh, this spring. We're gonna be at a few upcoming trade shows. We'll be at, uh, F S S A, uh, down in Orlando. We'll be at all three NAFA events, um, in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Chicago. Uh, plans on being at N F P A in June. And then there's some other, uh, trade shows that we do plan on attending throughout the year. So stay tuned@inspectpoint.com and all the social media channels. Enjoy the podcast. So, uh, thanks guys again for, for joining the podcast today. Um, so I, I might get this wrong a little bit. I'll probably get it right in the intro, but, um, I know, uh, we, we've got Mike Friedman, uh, Randy Rousseau and John, sorry, how do you pronounce your last name?

Mike Friedman: (03:16):

Tah-bah-kek

Drew Slocum: (03:16):

Tabacek from, uh, the Eliminator, uh, fire Extinguisher. Is there another, um, company name that I should be referencing?

Randy Rousseau: (03:26):

Uh, that's, this would be Eliminator, L L C.

Drew Slocum: (03:30):

Okay. So Eliminator, L L C. I wanted to have them on the podcast today, cuz uh, actually it was, uh, I was tagged in a social media post from, uh, Chris Logan from the Fire Sprinkler Podcast. Um, Chris, Chris and I are always talking. He's got a bunch of stuff geared up for 2020. This is our first podcast of 2020. So, uh, he, uh, tipped me off on the eliminator, and I've been looking for over a year of different, um, we always look for new technologies on the Fire Protection Podcast, but the fire extinguisher side has, has, it seems like it's always behind. It's a 50, 60 year old industry. So when, when Chris showed this to me, I was very intrigued. Um, so I did a little research, the eliminator, I'll let you guys explain it in a second, but essentially it's a, um, it's a new extinguisher to the market that, uh, it's gonna get rid of the, the issues with stored pressure.

(04:33)
Um, there's a lot of, uh, new technology that they're putting into this eliminator product, but, uh, what I liked about it most is it's making, making the industry think whether, whatever, everybody, there's a lot of different opinions that I've, uh, actually asked people about the product pros and cons. And at le at least it's getting people to think about it. So, um, you know, this 50, 60 year old, uh, uh, way we've been doing things in the fire extinguisher side, uh, is starting to change. So, um, I'll quit talking. I'll, I'll let you guys introduce yourself, uh, one by one and we'll kind of kick it off from there.

Randy Rousseau: (05:16):

This is Randy Russo, and I am the inventor and founder of the Eliminator Fire Extinguisher. And we also have, uh, Mike Friedman here.

Mike Friedman: (05:28):

Yeah. And I'm an investor in the eliminator L L C. Uh, but I spent 29 years at Procter and Gamble in a variety of roles. The last seven was in innovation, but really helping globally p and g drive its innovation agenda. And that was, uh, at the time when AG Lafley was the ceo. And we made just huge strides, so tremendous learning. Then I joined an innovation management consulting company called Calypso. So I got to take all those learnings out to other clients around the world, primarily and in consumer med device and industrial, uh, clients. And then along the way, I met Randy and we talked about his innovation. And I got to share a lot of the lessons learned I had of what drives successful innovation all the way through from inspiration to successful commercialization, as well as the things that are, uh, watchouts that cause people to fail.

(06:33)
So, became good friends and, uh, we're on this journey and it's a very exciting one. And what I, what I really liked about Randy's vision is that this is about not sales of the, uh, annual, uh, buyer extinguishers. Now in the US there's about 300 million fire extinguishers in the embedded base. The annual sales are somewhere around 10 million. It's been a barrier to innovation cuz people look at the market size of 10 million and say, well, it's big but not that big to make the investment that's needed in getting through all the certifications of UL FM Global. But Randy's vision was, the current fire extinguishers were not working as designed, and they could not be serviced as designed. And so we really needed to change the industry and reshape it. So the market in the US was really 300 million fire extinguishers. And when you look at the global marketplace of 4 billion fire extinguishers, it's a huge marketplace. And so the vision is really to change that by leveraging technology to drive a better performing product. And so, as an innovator that spent all those years working in innovation, that really had me excited. Plus he's a good person and his family are amazing,

John Tabacek: (07:55):

So thanks Mike. Yeah, this is, uh, John Ekk. Um, I'm a friend of Mike Friedman's, he and his wife for many years. And I was in the telecom industry for over 28 years. And obviously the technology, the improvements over, uh, the generations was pretty astronomical as we see. And Mike introduced me to the eliminator and the Russo team and, uh, was intrigued. So I did, you know, a little research myself, talked to a few people I had known through the telecom industry and saw a big need for innovation and the, what the eliminator brought to the table. And it really perked a lot of people's, uh, ears up. And so I've been out, you know, marketing and working with the universities, large corporations in just getting some incredible, incredibly positive feedback. And this is something, this is not gonna be a sprint, it's obviously a marathon, but you know, it took us basically 16 years to design development testing to get, you know, UL listing and overcome a lot of the regulatory hurdles. So this will take time, but I'm very impressed and the people I'm dealing with are just ecstatic about something that is new, something that actually is gonna save lives down the road.

Randy Rousseau: (09:12):

That's great. So Drew a little bit, this is Randy. Sure. Russo, again, a a little bit of my background. I own and operate in La Sierra Fire Equipment Inc for the last 35 years. And it was started for my father-in-law. And, uh, during the course of building the business, I developed relationships. And the way, the way the fire extinguisher business is structured out here in California is what type of extinguishers you can service are designated by Alphabet. And the majority of those service companies out here in California are what they call designated BC or D. And those letter designations allow you to service certain type of portable fire extinguishers. And there are over 600 licensed companies in California, but there are only 50 a licensed companies. And what that designation means as you can do halon hydrostatic test on pressurized cylinders, reclaim clean agent Sure co2, basically all types of extinguishers.

(10:19)
And when my father was running, the father-in-law was running the business. He was always just a B and a C license company. So he was basically under the thumb of an a license company. And, uh, that was one of the first things I needed to address once we took over the, uh, management and direction of the company. And that structure alone for a service company makes it very difficult to really expand that your base of business, because you can't even talk directly to the manufacturers of fire extinguishers, any of the suppression system site because they only deal with brick and mortar companies, which are the a licensed companies. So the a license companies really are in control of the market, and I know other states are, are structured similar to that. So we had to focus on that and, uh, you know, get, get a location and uh, basically get out from under and, and create our own path forward.

(11:14)
And we, we found a location and a lot of the service companies, they, they kind of, uh, they're out in the field and they're a little, sometimes a little difficult to find. And we found a location that was right up front. It, it, it has freeway frontage. So we're proud of what we do. As a matter of fact, on a lot of our marketing material, we, our statement is we love what we do because we're, we're protecting the public and the fire extinguishers are there when you strip it down, they're there for us as the public and the employees of the business. And it's very important that, uh, they work in the event you're gonna need them. So once we had had a brick and mortar, we, we set out on and getting the license to become an, a licensed company here in California, we did that about, uh, 12 years ago. And then it was time to develop the relationship with an extinguisher manufacturer. Right. And what I had found out is that the way that was fragmented, they, they didn't really like to keep a lot of other service companies on their books and carry the credit. So I had to work my way up and develop a relationship with Badger. Yep. And Badger, who is now under United Technologies, was it, was

Drew Slocum: (12:25):

It, was this, uh, before they got swiped up by utc?

Randy Rousseau: (12:30):

Yes, sir. Okay, good, good memory. Drew , that was Williams holding in, in, in, in London, England. So I had developed a relationship directly with the president and vice president, which was very unique in the, uh, for a fire extinguisher company to, I've done that and we were dealing directly with the vice president and president and we ended up landing the state of California contract. So any state business facility that would purchase a new extinguisher, hydro IT service, it, it all came through our, our fire extinguisher service company, last Sierra fire equipment. And then what what that did is it, it gave us a direct bird's eye view of what was going on for the end user. Mm-hmm. . And what we started to realize is there was a disconnect from the manufacturer to the enforcement sector to the end user. Sure. As such, I'll just take it. Every portable stored pressure extinguisher is designed for the left hander. The gauge is on the left.

Drew Slocum: (13:35):

Right, right.

Randy Rousseau: (13:36):

The pull pin is on the left, the instructions are on the left and the hose retainers on the left. And a lot of these state agencies, they will require live fire demos for their OSHA piece so that, uh, they could have the proper training. And when we would go out, we would do a little bit different than handing them the extinguisher and have 'em just put the fire out. We would actually build a temporary wall. We'd bring a temporary wall that we had built and have them remove the fire extinguisher from the bracket because that's how it would be in real world. Right. Where a majority of service companies, when they would do a fire demo, they would just hand it to you. So just that very act of having the end user remove it from the bracket of the wall, you could see the challenges of them operating the unit. And a fire now doubles in size. I'm sure you know, drew every eight seconds.

Drew Slocum: (14:27):

Yep.

Randy Rousseau: (14:28):

So you, the last thing you want on a product that's required to be in a business for public safety is some belief having some challenges or fumbling with how to operate the extinguisher. Sure. To bring the fire out. Excuse me. So, well then what we found out is the right hander reaches over, they're holding the unit with their left hand and they're reaching over and it's kinda awkward. Do you remove the pull pin? They can't read the instructions, remove the hose, or even see the gauge where a left hander comes over. They hold it with their right hand and they have their free left hand. They can freely remove the, the pull pin and activate the unit and put out the fire. So that we just started making notes of what, what our, uh, end users and our customers once were or what their needs were and identify we would go to large organizations that, uh, would ship extinguishers internally through a system that they had to get there to different dcs or, or their retail locations. And they were praying they were paying some serious shipping charges because it was a stored pressure vessel. Right. Right. And one time the charges were more than the actual cost of the extinguisher to the end user. So that was another thing that we, we wanted to make note of. And becoming an a licensed company, we, at that time, we were doing hydro and reclaiming pallon and clean agent for over 30 of our f e d fire equipment distributors.

Drew Slocum: (15:52):

Right.

Randy Rousseau: (15:53):

And in that course of the process, we would see that when they would bring the extinguishers, it was a, it was a kind of a mashup of many different manufacturers. You know, they would bring 30 of them out and there might be seven different manufacturers, all abc. But it was kinda logistically difficult when we have to hydro it. And when you, what I mean by hydro, the cylinder, because it's constantly under pressure being a stored pressure vessel every so often it is required to te to test the integrity of the cylinder.

Drew Slocum: (16:26):

It's every 12 years, right?

Randy Rousseau: (16:27):

Yes. Or if it's in a vehicle, it's every six.

Drew Slocum: (16:30):

So, uh, I, I know you're, uh, still giving your intro, but uh, just so I don't forget it, how many people actually do 12 years or they just swapping them?

Randy Rousseau: (16:42):

That's about 50 50 out here.

Drew Slocum: (16:44):

Okay. Okay.

Randy Rousseau: (16:46):

Yeah, it's about 50

Drew Slocum: (16:46):

50. Sorry, I I, I I didn't wanna forget that cuz you know, most of the times I see it is, you know, they're just swapping it 12 years. They're not doing a they're not doing a, a full hydro, which is in Interesting.

Randy Rousseau: (17:01):

Yeah. When they, when well that's, that's a whole nother topic. When they swap it, are they swapping it with one that's gonna be due for hydro again in two years? Or are they swapping it for one that's gonna be due for hydro in five years because that business owner invested in that product that was good for 12 years and we see a lot of times where they swap it out and it might be hydro again, due for hydro again in three years rather than in 12 what it should really be.

Drew Slocum: (17:24):

Exactly.

Randy Rousseau: (17:25):

So there's, there's a, there's a lot of that, uh, going on in the industry, but, uh, logistically when we would have 'em here and you say you've got seven different brands of 30 extinguishers, it is our responsibility to keep the chemical separated cuz you can't mix up different manufacturers ABC Chemical who would compromise the UL or FM listing. So then I decided, well, I can get ahead of that. I just asked, uh, fds when they bring the units, they store the chemical and bring the units empty. So then what we ran into is when they would deliver the extinguishers, there was about two to three inches of chemical left in every single unit. Right. Unanimously. And, uh, we would call them owner up and say, we asked you to empty these out. And they said, we did, we couldn't get the rest of the chemical out.

(18:12)
And that was, that was an, uh, an eye-opening moment also. Cause well, wait a minute. There's got compaction or some moisture or something had had, uh, gotten to these cylinders on the inside, which allowed a lot of, uh, taking to occur. And we literally came up with an apparatus to put on the end of a, uh, pressurized hose and then we'd have to stick it into the cylinder and, and basically scrape and grind out this hardened chemical in the base of the extinguisher. Sure. And that, that became quite the task too. So that was another thing we noted. And we noted about 16 issues on a traditional stored pressure extinguisher. And they've stood the test of time and they've been around, like you said, 60, it's almost been 70 years now. But the, this, the issue with the traditional steel stored pressure extinguisher is that stored pressure, the steel cylinder, and they're constantly under pressure.

(19:15)
And that is why the industry requires a license certified technician because they're, they potentially, they could be dangerous. Right. And I I'm sure you have stories of them exploding and Yeah. Coming apart on technicians. So with all of that together, and, uh, we had an apartment, a little side story here that was in San Bernardino, California. We got a call and they said, uh, we've got 18 extinguishers we need you to come take a look at. And we said, we don't, that's not our account. And they said, we understand that, that's why we want you to come out. So my brother who heads up the service side of the business now Sure. He went out there and my cousin was visiting from Vermont and he happened to jump on the vehicle with him and they showed up. There was, uh, ambulances, police, and a coroner.

(20:00)
Oh boy. And they hand the, they show the extinguishers where they're at and my brother starts to look at 'em. And this was probably about seven years after we no longer did an internal tag. You used to have Right. The internal tag where you put it on the siphon tube with your initials and who serviced it. And they went to the verification caller that's on the outside of the extinguisher. Well, once my brother opened up the extinguishers, he realized that these extinguishers had not been serviced for many, many years. Right. And what the, what the f e D was doing was just wiping 'em down and tagging it, which he didn't address the compaction of the, the chemical or nothing. Yeah. He wasn't

Drew Slocum: (20:39):

Yep. He wasn't actually doing an inspection.

Randy Rousseau: (20:42):

And, and in the course of my brother doing this, he watched these small body bags being carried down the steps at the apartment building and a gentleman drove up in a vehicle and he was very angry and he got out and he was the uncle that was his nephew and nieces that perished in a fire because 18 of these extinguishers did not work. So when my brother got back and he said, if I was to touch a fire extinguisher and it did not work, and that same situation happened, I don't know how I could live with myself. Right. And it was from that moment forward that we decided we needed to create a device for the end user that could be simplistic to operate. It wouldn't be stored pressure and all these other issues of why we are in the service business to maintain this system currently.

Drew Slocum: (21:36):

Right.

Randy Rousseau: (21:37):

And we, we knew we've never invented anything. We never designed anything. And basically what we did is we took the issues that we felt that we dealt with every single day. And we continued to today because I still operate my service business and put it into a device and design it for the end user. Don't design it for the code and the regulations, don't design it for manufacturing process, but actually design a product for the end user that they're required by regulations to have.

Mike Friedman: (22:09):

And Randy, if I might inject, what I think is really important here, drew, from, from our perspective, is that we didn't design the bio extinguisher to meet the code only we designed it for the end user. So it's gonna work and meet the code.

Drew Slocum: (22:27):

Correct.

Mike Friedman: (22:29):

So that, that's, that's very critical.

Drew Slocum: (22:32):

Well, and, and the, the whole code thing is, you know, and it's across N F P A as well. It's, you know, you might have a great product out there that meets the needs of fire protection and the end user, but maybe the code has to get updated, which happens a lot. And probably many of the standards out there, the code lags behind, uh, innovative technologies, which is a big issue for N F P A and um, I know they're trying to address it, but, uh, you know, it it, it takes new products and, and, uh, like this, like yours to really, uh, challenge that. I think. So.

Randy Rousseau: (23:11):

So then we, then we set off on the path of, uh, going out and working on some, some, uh, prototype designs. And we came across a, a design engineer who had had over 55 years experience in polymers. And he actually had designed a gas mask for the US military that he owned patents on and, and was, uh, building it for him. And he had come up with a nylon material and a polymer that had never been done before. That was, uh, a, a very special technique that made it very robust and in design and strong to be able to hold pressures. Mm-hmm. . And, and we basically started off with that, that would, what that did is it got us away from the steel component cuz the majority of extinguishers, or whether they're aluminum or their cold rolled steel and their welded sweat welding on the top and the bottom, this was gonna be a mold process with tooling.

(24:10)
So it could never been done in the industry before. So we, we started getting some, uh, prototypes made up, and there's a big contrast in difference between cold world steel and having a tooling and the UL piece, which was, which was another journey dealing with ul. When we originally submitted the, uh, extinguishers to ul, they were all rejected and they were rejected based on the material that they were designed of because they were made out of a polymer material. And unbeknownst to us, they had, uh, UL had tested some propane tanks or some other things and, and they, they couldn't even meet, you know, three or 400 psi. So when they, when they received these extinguishers, they just opened up the box, looked at it and rejected it. So that was, that was quite the, uh, dance to get back in with UL to even review the product.

(25:00)
And once we did, and there was a lot of dialogue back and forth, as you could imagine, they said, well, you're gonna have to meet every requirement that that steel cylinder, they pointed, I, I think we were at a restaurant, they pointed at a cylinder on the wall, but that one has to meet. We said, fine. So what they did is they, they did, they went straight to the burst test and now the burst test is exceeding what a hydrostatic test would be. Right. Right. Yep. So they wanted to do a burst test and they wanted to do the fire test and they, they, they were, uh, a little reluctant that, you know, what, what we'd be able to do. And they didn't really take into consideration of the experience and the knowledge that we had from the service industry because they only deal with large scale, huge manufacturers and fire testing Yep.

(25:49)
That know how to design a cylinder out of steel and have been doing it, you know, for seven decades. And then alone comes this small family business. And, uh, lo and behold, we started meeting the thresholds. So we started getting more and more aggressive and we, we had some shortcomings with, uh, some of the designs on flow rates and things like that. And we continued to look for a, a relationship we could have with manufacturer. And then, then we came across, uh, national Presto Industries and they had been in, uh, the business and manufacturing small appliances for nearly a hundred years. And they were out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And they came out and they met with us and they were very intrigued with the product. And they spent three days and they, they brought their whole team out here. And interesting enough, they, they had acquired a adult incontinent business along with their small appliances. And they're also in the, the, uh, ammunition business. They've been making ammunition since world wari Okay. For the US government. So they're pretty diversified. They also had an non lethal division and they had a 10 million, I think it was eight to 10 million piece of automated equipment for the, uh, adult incontinent diaper business. And it caught on fire. And guess what seven of the extinguishers did not work

Drew Slocum: (27:10):

For. Oh, what, what about the, what about the sprinkler system?

Randy Rousseau: (27:13):

Uh, I believe it's an older building. I'm not sure whether or not, I don't know about the sprinkler.

Drew Slocum: (27:18):

How, how does, how does a how does a manufacturing facility not have sprinklers in it?

Randy Rousseau: (27:24):

Prob probably a grandfathered in, but I, I'm not sure about that. I, I won't go on record whether they have it or not ,

(27:32)
But the facility where the, where I know that this, uh, adult incontinent was in, was one of the original part of the building that, so it's, it's probably 90 years old, but it had to have been retrofitted with sprinklers. Now, now I tend to think about it. But anyway, they were touched obviously with the issue of, wait a minute, these extinguishers that we have to maintain annually didn't work properly. So what is I, what I did is what I came through, I gave 'em the presentation of, of why, why the eliminator. And, uh, I just had people from the industry come through there. There was maintenance folks and chancellors from the university, people who had built large scale distribution centers and just let them ask the questions and what, what is it like to live their responsibility of maintaining fire extinguishers for their facilities and what this new technology would mean to them. Mm-hmm. . And, uh, they were very intrigued and that we ended up, uh, working out a partnership with them and they called the, uh, subsidiary that they're manufacturing the product under Russo. And that's, uh, a, a, a derivative of our last name.

Drew Slocum: (28:42):

Sure.

Randy Rousseau: (28:43):

Which is, uh, that's, uh, www.rusoh.com, which is coincidentally can be my, uh, Randy's d r and at the end of the word is h uh, for Hector, which is my father. Oh,

Drew Slocum: (28:56):

Nice.

Randy Rousseau: (28:57):

Cause we've been on this journey at this time when we met National Presto, we were about, uh, 13, 12, 13 years deep and about, uh, three and a half years deep with UL in the testing.

Drew Slocum: (29:09):

So that they got you really kicking, kicking on the Yeah, the

Randy Rousseau: (29:13):

Product National Preto, when we went back to their facility, we walked into the air engineering department and there were all these young people. And, uh, it was Dick Campbell who originally was the one, the design engineer who had all the years experience and the, and the polymers, and then, no disrespect to Dick, but he'd been a, he was, he took this challenge on, and when we walked into, uh, Presto's facility and their young engineers there, there was three or four of them and then their head engineer, they, they had two of 'em. One was, one was, uh, exiting retirement and one was coming on board and he had a lot of experience in, in him and Dick Campbell as Jeff Morgan at Presto. They, they really meshed together really good. And the dick kind of passed the torch to Jeff and all the engineers and National Presto had a 90 year relationship with ul. So you can imagine that's good. We, we were green and wet behind the ears walking into ul and then now we walk in with national Presto with all of their experience Sure, sure. With the underwriters laboratory. So that, that really gave us, uh, some wind in our sail. Good. And, uh, it continued though, and it took us

(30:28)
On the product and, uh, today it's, it's,

Drew Slocum: (30:32):

Sorry, I lost you guys. Lost you guys for a second. So let me transition a little bit. Um, you know, I, I know the product came out. You, you, you guys have partnered with Presto. Um, what is the, what is the big, why have none of the manufacturers, um, in the last 50 years pushed anything else? Uh, do you have any, uh, you probably have an idea of why that happened. What, what is your opinion? Why, why haven't the, the big, uh, Tyco jci amax utc, what, what's been stopping them from innovating in the market?

Mike Friedman: (31:13):

So I, I'll give my sense from a business side, the market, the annual sales are small, the barrier to entry is high, the cost to entry is high. Correct. And cause people are so focused on cost savings, there's a lot of pressure on costs throughout the whole our extinguisher ecosystem, right. People looked at and said, I've gotta spend $10 million to get a UL listing to sell maybe 20, 30% more than my current base on which I don't make any money, so why would I want to make the investment?

Drew Slocum: (31:54):

Yep.

Mike Friedman: (31:55):

And when you're talking about breaking through something with new codes, it it's really tough. It's really tough. So, uh, they have all these barriers to entry. They were satisfied with what they were doing, they didn't see the potential and they invested money in other things

Drew Slocum: (32:15):

To totally get it. I've seen it firsthand. So, uh, but I, I, I still question it, you know, you know, out of all the fire protection schemes, you got fire alarm, you got sprinkler, you've got suppression systems, and then you have extinguishers, which are a big piece of the market. You think there'd be some to some sort of innovation there. But, um, there hasn't been what, which I'm glad, I'm really glad you guys are, are making a push here cuz it's, um, I I think you're, you're gonna have some good traction with it as well as hopefully change some of the code and, and, and the way end users are looking at it as well. Um, there's definitely

Randy Rousseau: (32:53):

June, not to interrupt you, it's, it's, this is probably a textbook business as usual. And, and there is a disconnect. There's a disconnect from the manufacturers, from the fire authority and the enforcement and the service industry. To, to give you an example, right. Prior to us launching the product, I went to our, the president of our association here in California so that he could hear it directly from the horse's mouth why we did it, what we were doing, and what we were trying to accomplish. And then, and we're, we're not sticking our finger in the eye of the service industry or Sure. Or anyone else. What we wanted to do is just give, for the first time ever, the business owner or the homeowner an auction Right. That they've never had before in a portable fire extinguisher. Right. In the course of me, uh, opening up the case and showing it to this president of our association, he was really taken back and he said, you know, Randy, wow.

(33:59)
I mean, we're business, we're, we're all in business. And, and when you own your own business, you're busy with that. Being an entrepreneur, we all have families and we have all these other things and our hobbies that, that take up our time in our life. How did you ever come up with the time to be able to develop this in the background along with living life and, and, and I really believe that's it in a nutshell. That everybody just accepts it the way it was and goes along with it, you know? Right. And don't question it. But to me it was, we really had to do it. And, and I've been motivated and, and driven to do something since day one. When I first went out in the truck with my father-in-law, we, we serviced a circus vargos and back then you would do it with a super can, if you remember that, like a bucket in a bag.

(34:53)
And there was a hundred extinguishers, 88 o'clock at night, and I was 17 years old when we were in a tent in dirt. And he, he started to fire off these extinguishers, and it was the first time I ever was exposed to it. And I said to him, what are you doing? And he said, well, these are stored pressure I have to fire off the chemical into this canister to break up the material. And then I said, and then what? We put the material right back into the cylinder and, and way back then over almost 40 years ago, I thought, how antiquated and backwards is that?

Drew Slocum: (35:25):

Right,

Randy Rousseau: (35:26):

Right, right. And that's been driving me ever since. That just, just to come up with something like a KISS system and the, the design of the eliminator, it's never under pressure. The most wear and tear on a traditional stored pressure extinguisher is the service company. The O rings. Yep. The pressure of the cylinder, tearing it down, putting it back together, trading them out, putting 'em in a vehicle, bringing 'em back out and forth and, you know, carrying him down in a, in a large structure facility. What about just having a product that sits in its location for its life and everything can maintain right there on the spot. Very simple. The only time it's ever under pressure is in the event of a fire. So, and it's only under pressure for about 30 seconds.

Drew Slocum: (36:19):

Correct. Right. Yeah. You, you eliminated one, you know, one big challenge right there.

Randy Rousseau: (36:25):

So, and, and in any area where you're susceptible to sea or, or lakes or, or ocean water, you get a lot of corrosion and flash rusting, it's, it's made out of polymer material, it cannot rust. Right. So all that hydro, all that internal inspection, then we have to do it a six year tear down. It's all eliminated. And what happened when we were coming with the name of the product, we eliminated this, we eliminated that. We, it's the eliminator, you know, it eliminates the fire and the, and the fire and the discharge and the, the, the flow. It is absolutely phenomenal firefighting tool. Besides all, all of the features that we addressed on a traditional extinguisher. The, uh, the performance of it from, from industry that, uh, that have fired it off from, from people that are hands on, first responders. And, uh, we've already had the product out there and people be exposed to an emergency situation where they've had to have it.

(37:21)
We've had it out in a, a, a vehicle that was towing a, a trailer and a fire starting in his motorcycle in the back of the trader. He grabbed the unit, never had fired off before. Streamlined Perfect. Put the fire out. We had a, a manufacturing facility with wood and wood chips was very flammable situation. And the equipment got, uh, uh, on fire up above his head. Yep. He had to, he had to shoot it about an eight foot, uh, distance above his head, knocked the fire out. We had a, on a highway going up to the, uh, San Bernardino mountains, a brush fire, a brush fire with a portable extinguisher, a welder put the fire out. And we, we had back in Wisconsin that near, uh, Russo, the manufacturer, they had a, uh, a hay bale or something that caught on fire, wrapped the unit, put the fire out. Sure. Just in the short period of time that, uh, we've been on the market, we, we've had fantastic results.

Drew Slocum: (38:16):

So it seems like, it seems like you have a lot of great results with the actual product. I, uh, you know, talking to a bunch of people, there's, there, you know, there's a bunch of barriers to entry and I I, I've talked to a bunch of people and obviously you're in, you're in with the associations out there, what you and the, obviously the end users are, are one case, and I think, I think you're going about it the right way, is trying to get some big end users to really adopt the product. Um, a lot of different fire protections, uh, schemes, whether it's fire alarm, sprinkler suppression, that's always a great way to, to really push the point across is, is go to those end users or, um, decision makers at the, at the end of the line. But there's a lot of people in between where I feel at least the extinguisher industry, whether it's the AHA or the, um, f e d fire extinguisher distributors, um, that nor I feel like they're, they are two integral parts to the process. Do you have plans of, of going after those AHJs and, and on the other other question is of what about those eds? What, what, what have you experienced so far?

Randy Rousseau: (39:35):

Well, uh, great questions. We absolutely want to embrace both of those. And we were asked by the California State Fire Marshal once we received the, uh, official UL listing to not go out and do a large scale marketing campaign because the product was so new and the innovation, and that was to go out and do exactly that. And that was embrace not only the AHJs throughout California, but nationwide. And we actually launched the product at F D I C and, uh, Indianapolis, which is the largest firefighters convention in the world. Yep. And, and their, their response was, uh, it was unbelievable as a, we, you couldn't even walk down the aisle that there were so many of 'em there. And you can, you can imagine from there, we've got many referrals and we've embraced the National Association of State Fire Marshals, and we really have put a lot of effort into the, it's an education piece to understand why this product, what was the reasoning for, and how can we work together with both the code enforcement AHJs and state fire marshal committees.

(40:54)
And we, we've been an intricate part of that in the, in the last year and a half of working directly with them. And it, and it is a barrier of entry, but it is also an education piece. And then I think once, once we, uh, overcome that and we move forward, then we're gonna work on the, uh, f e D side of things. And usually the response that we're getting with the F EED is when, when they really understand the product and don't look at it as, as a threat and how it can streamline their entire base of business. You can, you can imagine in, in New York or Chicago with those massive buildings that you have logistically moving fire extinguishers around how this completely changes their base of business. Sure. With this type of, uh, new technology

Mike Friedman: (41:44):

And, and Drew, as you think about innovation across the board, one of the biggest challenges for any new innovation is behavior change. So you really have to change the behaviors of people Correct. To do something different. And so a big part of that is education because, uh, a lot of the AHJs are risk averse. They've had a lot of challenges with litigation and other things, and so they're very careful. And so that taking on something new requires an education, and then they've gotta be willing to change their behavior. And the same thing, there's a lot of fear, I think, by some of the service companies. This says, wait, this is my business. That's what I do. I can't have this. Instead of saying, all right, how might I use this to reframe my business? So that's a big part of our efforts of doing it. And you know, the AHJs are very fragmented. So in some states with California, like California, you've got a statewide guidance that goes down, but in New York you don't have that. So it's very fragmented to the local level.

Drew Slocum: (42:57):

Yes. That that's, that's a good point too. You know, um, there's a lot of, um, compliance. So there's AHJs, you know, across, across the US are, are starting to, um, implement third party compliance platforms to help them with their different fire protection systems out there, whether it's fire alarm, whether it's, um, uh, s sprinkler systems, whether it's suppression systems. One thing that seems to be forgotten in that is fire extinguishers. And I'm, I'm always, I've kind of asked the question, why do AHJs, um, not have compliance systems or third, you know, having a software help with, with third card party compliance on their, on their extinguisher systems? Do they know what their extinguishers are doing in a jurisdiction? Which I don't, there's not many out there that do. So it's, uh, I it was a question that I had. And why is that on the other protection schemes, they're, they're tracking it, but not on the extinguishers. Any, any thoughts there?

Mike Friedman: (44:10):

Well, I, I have one theory. So our first responders are really heroes and in California with all the fire, uh, um, that we've had here, that they've been working together across the state to pool their resources to put them out. So tremendous pressure on those people. And Randy's son-in-law a is a hero. He's been in all the big fires here. So they're focused on those big things. In other parts of the country, it's flooding, it's hurricanes, it's blizzards. So they're out doing the big things. And then the budgets are really tight. So when you're spending all this time fighting these, uh, events and fires, your budgets in the local communities get strained. So for them to be knowledgeable about the code, and one of our, our, our, um, people that did a lot of the testing told me you could put a eight by four table and stack at four feet high, and those are all the code manuals that they have to be up bottom. Yeah. Yeah. So they just don't have the capacity in my mind. And I don't, you know, no one person can know all the codes. So they do the perfunctionary testing and don't want to go deep in into the things that Randy and Rudy and his family uncovered when they were actually servicing, because they don't have the time to really deal with code compliance for fire extinguishers. That's, that's kind of my perspective.

Randy Rousseau: (45:38):

Yeah. Drew this, this is Randy. And when, when you look at it from an an f e D point of view, like I said, there's, there's nearly 600 companies here in California, so it's, it's highly competitive. And what happens when it comes to portable extinguishers, it's a race to the bottom. So there's, there's not a lot as, as Mike's mentioned, the budgetary restraints for the businesses to get into monitoring or, or, or really taking care of the portable, like it should be monitored and take and, and looked after. That's, that's the shortcomings that's happened. But then comparable to the fire panels and the standpipes and the sprinklers, there's, there's a, a budgetary flexibility there that is not there with the, uh, portable extinguishers. Oh,

Drew Slocum: (46:25):

I totally see that. I mean, uh, you know, with our, the inspect point platform, we've had a tough time, you know, showing it to eds because it's such a low cost platform and we've made big improvements to make it more efficient. Um, but if you don't make it efficient, the FDS aren't gonna use it. So, and that goes back to, it's just a, it's a low cost piece of the business, which, um, hopefully starts to change. I don't, I don't, but I think, I think you guys are bringing a product to market that hopefully will potentially start to change code around change, change, AHJs, uh, thoughts of it, and as well as end users. End users, um, you know, the big manufacturers, the big Amazons of the world, uh, they can really push change because they're the ones purchasing at the end of the day. So,

Mike Friedman: (47:23):

And, and Drew, one of the things that we're realizing is that we need to change cultures and organization to really focus on safety, quality and compliance. And it's not the dollar amount because the spending on servicing a fire extinguisher for most companies gets lost in the rounding of the company's budget overall. But if you look at companies that have tried to drive the bottom line at the cost of safety, compliance and quality, there's some big challenges there. So we're thinking about it as, and, and John and I, with, with Randy's brother Rudy went into one company, we just did an assessment and looked at and they had, uh, close to a hundred code violations for 45 extinguishers. And one of 'em was really, a couple were really obvious. One, they had the red painted on the wall for a fire extinguisher, but it wasn't there.

(48:19)
Yeah. That's the other one. They had fire extinguishers that rusted and dented, but were hanging up. So still in service. Still in service, right. And so the people that work there see that and say, well, you know what, safety really isn't important here. And when they see a dented one that's rusted, they say, quality's not important here. And when they see an another one that's hanging eight feet high, compliance to code isn't important here. But that's not just for fire extinguishers, that affects the belief systems of the organization, which puts companies at risk. So we think that's the story to tell, because people really don't know. They don't think about it, and they don't realize that they're damaging not only the safety from the fire extinguisher perspective, but how the whole organization goes about doing their work. And, and, uh, there's some very large companies now that, you know, Boeing with the 7 37 is facing a challenge as written in the Forbes because they were so focused on the bottom line that they took shortcuts that caused quality problems. And now they're, uh, uh, Dave Calhoun, who's the new CEO, is trying to change that whole culture. So we think that's a story that we need to bring to bear to help people, that it's not only the budget of the servicing, of the fire extinguishers, the buying of fire extinguishers, but it's really the culture of the organization, the safety of the employees. That's gotta be the messaging to change the behaviors to, uh, go forward.

Drew Slocum: (49:55):

Yeah. Uh, I, I think you have, I think you have something there, but if you look at the, and Randy, you know this where, where most of the fire extinguishers out there is probably in commercial, commercial buildings. And, um, I think the biggest portion is commercial. And at, at the end of the day, does, does a commercial building owner really care about, I, I'm sure they care about safety and compliance and all that, but, uh, a, um, a manufactured, you know, a big corporation is a little bit different than a, a commercial building owner. And again, I think you have to challenge it and you guys doing, going at it the right way, getting, I think ajs getting them involved and the DS is really the way to it. Um, are, are you guys heading to, to NAED this year at the, the NAED shows?

Randy Rousseau: (50:50):

Absolutely.

Drew Slocum: (50:51):

Okay. That's great. Uh, yeah, we'll be at all three. Uh, so we'll probably see you there. I, I'm interested, is this the first year you'll be at naed or have you been there before?

Randy Rousseau: (51:02):

Uh, first year with the product? We've, we have not, uh, taken the product. Like I said, we were focusing more on the fire service and, and, and code folks and AHJs.

Drew Slocum: (51:11):

Yeah, I'd be interested to see your, you know, I'd love to reconvene with you after, after May, after those, uh, NA Fed events and uh, see what the reception is cuz I, I really think that that could potentially be a more accelerated way to the market and trying to get some of their ideas. Cuz the industry definitely needs some change. It needs some new ways of thinking and this is, this is just a start of it. I, I believe

Randy Rousseau: (51:38):

So. No, we, we appreciate that. Maybe we can break some bread while we're together at, uh, those shows.

Drew Slocum: (51:45):

Yeah, I won't be in Vegas. I think it'll be in Atlantic City, in the Chicago one as well. So, uh, uh, might be doing some podcasts live from, from Na Fed. So it's always been a big, uh, it's been a big market for us that we haven't hit and, um, you know, whether the inspect point platform. So, um, so we're, we're approaching an hour here. Um, so I, I, I know we've talked a lot, a lot of different things and I'll give you guys a a couple more minutes to, to chat about your thing, but I, I usually try to, uh, at the end do a little quick response round for, uh, for the guests and, and kind of, you guys don't know what questions are coming at you. Um, so toss a few of 'em out there, trying to lighten it up a little bit. And, um, then we can chat a little bit more and we'll get out of here. Um, so this, that's a quick response round and you know, I know there's three of you on the phone there, so you know, toss, toss in whatever answers you have. So, falling on social media a lot, um, what's up with this, uh, top Gun and Rob Lowe, I saw something on Rob Low on social media. What's that all about?

Randy Rousseau: (52:57):

Well, well being out here in sunny southern California, you can imagine, uh, there's some association with, with the Hollywood and we got the opportunity to outfit their first responder vehicles with the, the Russo eliminator product, which was very exciting. The, uh, the top gun piece is still confidential.

Drew Slocum: (53:19):

Oh, sorry, .

Randy Rousseau: (53:21):

Let's just, let's just say that there's rumor that Maverick's personal hanger, uh, is outfitted with the, uh, Russo eliminator fire extinguisher. And, uh, you never know what might hit the cutting room floor by the time the film's released, but it was for, for me, per personally and professionally to, uh, go out and, and hang out on the movie set and, uh, visit with, uh, Tom Cruise and, and see the, the product there installed by the, uh, set decorators was, uh, pretty phenomenal.

Drew Slocum: (53:52):

And so was it a decorator decision or was it, uh, do you have an in with, uh, a movie produced? I that, that's very inter interesting how you, how you got the, the extinguisher in there.

Randy Rousseau: (54:02):

Hey Drew, how about we let your listeners and it'll be, uh, to be continued. How about a sequel? But I, there go, we a whole podcast about my, uh, my involvement with the ho the Hollywood industry. It's a, it's, it's a very fun and interesting story.

Drew Slocum: (54:16):

Well, I I would actually like to take you up on that because, um, I posted on somebody else's thing the other day. You know, I, I'm in heavily involved in the sprinkler world and the sprinkler world in Hollywood is so negatively portrayed that, uh, it's, it's so frustrating. And you see it in commercials, you see it in movies and there's, there's clips out there of just random sprinklers going off damaging everything but, and, and, and ruin in somebody's day cuz they're all wet, but they get out of the fire alive. So I, I'd love to pick your brain on, I know you talked to Hollywood with the eliminator. That's great. Well,

Randy Rousseau: (54:55):

I'll, I'll I'll leave you, I'll leave you with this a a little tease. Very much like National Presto and the management and the CEO who really have my back and I, I'm very in, in indebted to them. I have the same type of relationship with some pretty significant people here in Hollywood that I, that I owe a lot too. And I, I was chosen to build a rotisserie frame off restoration for Michael Bay, the director Wow. For Transformers age of extinction. And as you know, if you listen to the whole podcast, I'm in the fire extinguisher business. I don't build cars, but that doesn't mean that you can have the opportunity to do whatever you set your mind to. And, uh, I'll, I'll leave you with that little tease about how that all came together.

Drew Slocum: (55:47):

Oh, that's great. Yeah, I'll, I'll definitely, uh, I'll see you in Atlantic City in Chicago and we'll, we'll chat about it on the side.

Randy Rousseau: (55:54):

. Excellent. Looking forward

Drew Slocum: (55:55):

To it. That's great. Um, another, another question. So aside from Randy, Mike, John, I know you're involved in, in, in, you know, the eliminator specifically, what other technologies out there in fire protection do you see, um, yeah, do you see as exciting or, you know, we got to really make an impact on the industry over the next five years?

Mike Friedman: (56:24):

I think, uh, the advances in communication are gonna be really important. So people being aware of, uh, when a fire, uh, then comes up to a building that's burning, how can they have instant access to the data of where the, the building design, where everything's located, the communications with all that so that they can instantly see Yeah. And then how might they take advantage of augmented reality with their equipment. So maybe they have a mask where they can get this, they can scroll through different things to get that up there. So I think those kinds of things are valuable. And then I think sensing devices also to understand what's going on in particular hazards. Now one of the challenges that was cybersecurity. So we can get all this great stuff cuz the cost keeps going down, the technology's going down, the cost of data storage is going down, but how do we do cybersecurity? So I was at a, um, a fire service company in New York, in Brooklyn, you know, we talked about and they had a 20 pounder with a sprinkle or had nozzle on it and they wanted to automate it so that they could control it, but they decided not to cuz they're worried if, what if someone hacked the system and could have 'em blow up all at once. So I think some of these technologies are really powerful for what's possible, but then we've gotta look at the cybersecurity portion and solve that as well.

Randy Rousseau: (57:58):

Yeah. Drew, I think the, the smart connected devices, I mean, kind of like where, uh, nest was going and National Presto's also involved now with, uh, one event on the detector system side. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of exciting, uh, products coming out of one event and they're, they're also having some, some challenges with the, the buy-in with the AHJs and the code and the regulations. And as, as you know, in the industry, it, it's slow to change on the, on the fire protection side, but that, that's just been kind of the way it's been. I I think that the technology's always outpacing majority of industries and if we, we can work on that barrier, we're, we're gonna have the, the years to come are gonna be very exciting.

Mike Friedman: (58:43):

Yeah. And the build I have too on those technologies that, uh, Randy's talking about, the other one's big data and I saw example of that. I went up to one of the shows, I think it was N fpa and uh, listen in on the, um, the smoke detectors and they use big data to find out where exactly are we having problems with smoke detectors that don't work, right. So they were able to pinpoint it and stuff. So I think as we move forward here, uh, fire extinguishers for sure are lagging the whole predictive analytics, big data thing. And I think that along with the other systems as we, it connected, smart, connected devices, leveraging the data to drive change and improvements will be very powerful.

Drew Slocum: (59:28):

Yeah. Yeah. Obviously I'm heavy involved in the data and some of the N F P A conversations that are happening there and how to, how to best, uh, optimize some of the data collection to, um, you know, change code to, uh, enhance it. And, uh, I don't know if there's a good direction yet. I, I hope there is, you know, the iot, the, the connected devices that's, that's coming faster and faster. We've got some nice, uh, pretty cool devices coming out later this year that will, will kind of transform the industry on, on, uh, some of that, I believe. So, uh, yeah. That's, that's great. I'm, I'm glad, uh, I'm glad you guys are feeling the same, same thing that we are over here. So, um, one, one, uh, one more quick response. I know those weren't really quick, but, um, who do you got this weekend in the Super Bowl?

Randy Rousseau: (01:00:21):

Well, we're, we're, I'm in California, so I mean, that's, that's kind of a no-brainer. We gotta go over the California team, right? Well,

Drew Slocum: (01:00:27):

Uh, I don't know. I, I, if, if the Giants were playing, I know I'm an Eagles fan, so I can never root for the Giants, even though it's East Coast. You're, are you a Rams fan or a, a Niners fan or a Raiders fan

John Tabacek: (01:00:45):

Fan? I'm a Pittsburgh Steeler fan being originally from Pittsburgh, but I think it's gonna be, you know, what's good about the game? It's like whoever wins, it's not gonna be, you know, it's gonna be close game. It's gonna be, yeah, I looked at that. We get two, two evenly matched teams that, um, uh, whoever wins is not gonna be a surprise.

Randy Rousseau: (01:01:05):

Hey Drew?

Drew Slocum: (01:01:06):

Yeah.

Randy Rousseau: (01:01:07):

The best team and the healthiest and the ones that come out the strongest is who's gonna win on Sunday? .

Drew Slocum: (01:01:14):

Okay. Whoever doesn't go out the, the couple nights before in the Super Bowl,

Randy Rousseau: (01:01:19):

Absolutely

Drew Slocum: (01:01:22):

Well, um, so yeah, that, that's pretty much it, guys. I'll, I'll, I'll give you a couple minutes just to kind of give you the last shout out how to, how to find you guys. Uh, we're coming up on an hour here, so, uh, uh, again, I want to thank you guys for coming out. Uh, really thank you. What you're doing in the extinguisher industry, trying to change some people's, uh, viewpoints of, um, just different extinguishers out there and, uh, challenging the fds, challenging the AHJs and putting the, uh, putting it back in the, uh, end user's hands, like, uh, what I've seen so far. So, uh, yeah, let me know where to find you. Let the listeners know where to find you and, um, yeah, we'll go from there.

Randy Rousseau: (01:02:05):

Alright, thank you very much, drew, for the time. Re really appreciate the opportunity. They can go to, uh, russo.com, again, that's R u s O h.com and, uh, read all about it. And there's videos and background and all, all types of information and, uh, like I said, really appreciate the opportunity. And that's basically in a nutshell that, uh, let the end user be responsible for the product. They wanna hire an f e D, so be it. And, uh, we basically have, uh, innovated this space and it gives the end user an option and an opportunity to try something new.

Mike Friedman: (01:02:48):

And the website, drew, has a certification program there that really takes someone through all the skills and knowledge they need to use and appropriately service the fire extinguisher. So that's very important. It's, you have to go look for it under one of the dropdown menus, but it's in there. It's worth taking a look at that because that's, that knowledge is very important. You have to have that to properly, uh, own and use

Randy Rousseau: (01:03:14):

And maintain it

Mike Friedman: (01:03:15):

And maintain the, uh, rousso eliminator.

Drew Slocum: (01:03:17):

Correct.

John Tabacek: (01:03:18):

Sales are snowballing and, uh, you're gonna start seeing these, you know, everywhere, which is really kind of fun. And, you know, we do a nice little trade show route, so stop by the booth, say hi whenever you can, and, uh, you know, we'll send you some inform information if you need it.

Drew Slocum: (01:03:37):

Yeah, great. Well, well, thanks guys. Uh, um, I'll, I'll throw out the, the social media. I'll, I'll tag everything, uh, social media wise as well as, uh, where to find you guys and we'll, we'll see you at NAED here, uh, probably in about a month or so, right?

Randy Rousseau: (01:03:52):

Yes, sir. Looking forward to it.

Drew Slocum: (01:03:54):

All right. Thanks guys.

Mike Friedman: (01:03:56):

Thank you. Thanks,

John Tabacek: (01:03:57):

Dr.

Drew Slocum: (01:03:58):

Thanks again for Mike, Randy and John at Russo, the eliminator for joining me on today's podcast. I really learned about a, learned a lot about, uh, how they're going to market. Uh, it is a, uh, a sensitive topic in the industry with a new extinguisher out in the market. Um, but I think they're going about it the right way. They do have some challenges in up uphill battles, but I think they're, they've, they've got a, a nice momentum and, uh, they're really gonna open up some eyes, uh, to the industry, I believe. So, uh, again, want to thank those guys for coming on and, um, yeah, a lot more coming with a podcast here in, in early 2020. So please stay tuned, subscribe, and please like the podcast. Talk to you soon.