The Business of Safety - Apolonia Rockwell

I like the dance moves.

Safety. It's a safety dance.

It looks safe.

We should have licensed song men at work. Safety dance. You know, it's funny, we don't talk about things like safety a lot on this show. We talk about things related to growth. But when you're growing and moving things, things can break, things, people can get hurt, people get killed. And for so many of our companies, healthcare, medical, construction, manufacturing, we have a lot of companies on the regular that are dealing with safety and the whole business of safety. That's our topic today. My own safety dance. Hey, everybody. I'm building scaling coach and host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week, a couple times a week, usually with something to do to help grow your company. So tune in, subscribe, turn on notifications, all that kind of thing, and so you can get them every week. And then find our more than 500 episodes and back catalog of all that and more and all of our tools and coaching programs@scalingcoach.com ScalingCoach.com is our website, the place to find me and everything that we do with not just me, but our. Our whole team. All right, I need a little more groove.

I love it. Keep it going.

So we're talking to Apollonia Rockwell today. She's founder and CEO of a company, True Safety Services and True Safety University, and she's all about safety. And, you know, you don't think of and you don't see a lot of women in this field. So I think it's awesome to have someone talking to this. And so welcome to show.

Awesome. I'm super happy to be here. And I love how you said that. That is maybe not a regular topic on the show, but when you really dive into safety, it's just. It's about people. Right? People within organizations and in culture. So, yeah, I'm just excited to be here.

What is. Yeah, so. And you want to think about that, like, what does it mean in your company and your environment? And you know, it's going to be different in every single place that we every company. And sometimes it's very direct and sometimes it's indirect. So we're going to get into all of that and more. Where are you today, Apollonia?

I am in Greeley, Colorado. That's what we're based out of. Yes. Yep.

So tell us the backstory. Tell us your, like, how. I know you have a very powerful personal story from when you were very young that got you involved in safety. So share that. That's a good place to Start.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I often get asked how, you know, how I started in safety, and I. This isn't the story of really in my mind, like, how I got into safety. This is just an event that happened. And I. And I think it did lead me down this path, but I was in the third grade. My dad's best friend passed away on the job site site, and they both worked on a drilling rig, an oil rig here, close, actually, you know, here in Colorado. And it was. It was an interesting time. So I was in the third grade. My dad and the gentleman who passed away, his son was also in the third grade with me. So it was shortly before he had passed away that our dads had volunteered on a project which, you know, like a, you know, chaperone school bus. I don't know where the heck we went, but it was just an interesting moment in my life because I. My dad worked so much that I don't. It's weird that he would even have time to come to an event like this. And so it was pretty meaningful. And our dads came in with mullets and cut off, you know, T shirts and like jeans, tucked in the boots. Like they were just like our heroes, you know, that sounds funny now, but, you know, to see my dad, that really wasn't. Worked so much come to an event was really special and was. It was special to my. To my buddy too, in the third grade. And it was shortly after that that my dad had sat me down and told me that, you know, so and so's dad had passed away on the job. And I just remember, I just, you know, certainly in the third grade, I'm not thinking, oh, man, I want to get into safety. What is safe? That same safety wasn't even a word that came into my mind. What I knew then was that my dad could go to work and not come home like that. I did understand pretty quickly. And it was actually my first funeral that I had ever attended. And it was an open casket and it was. I just. I remember to this day all those feelings and seeing the faces on my. On my buddy, on. On his face and his family, the wife that he had left behind and. And his daughters. And then, you know, growing up, then seeing that family. Life goes on, right? Unfortunately, life goes on. And so to see that family progress and to patch together what they had left of a family was always impactful on my life. And I was just always curious about, wow, what is the oil field? What is this? That people can go to work and die for a Paycheck. I was really confused about that.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's that moment that like, makes an impression that tells you that life is precious and fleeting and fragile and. And has big consequences.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so then fast forward. I was, you know, in high school. I was always fascinated with my dad's job. He worked in the oil and gas industry. It was a bunch of rough and tough guys that, you know, a lot of my dad's friends had missing fingers. They always had stories about freaking Johnny almost dying on the job because he was caught in between a loader and another piece of equipment. I mean, it's just like all these crazy stories. And still, safety wasn't the trigger word that ever popped my mind. It was more just like, work is dangerous, work is scary, this is crazy. And I was just fascinated by it. And then when I was in college, I, I needed to. It was after my general EDS were all knocked out and I was trying to find a specialty. And at, at, at the time I was working for an oiling, my first big girl job. I'd always worked in high school and whatnot. But my first real serious office job was working safety for an oil and gas company. And it was at that time that I needed to pick my specialization. Specialization, Simon Word. I needed to specialize in something in college, and so I chose occupational health and safety. So really studying OSHA law and workplace. So what that is for the general public, like just workplace safety law. And I realized that, oh, this whole safety isn't just an option. Like, there's actual. It is federally made mandated that companies have to protect their employees. Whether you work at a hospital, whether you have an office job, whether you're a construction, oil and gas, mining, plumbing, trucking. There's regulations around this. And I was like, why do you guys hate safety? Like, why? What? So that just fascinated me. Like I, I was, I was just so passionate about how do I bridge the gap between the, the safety director or the safety team and the actual men and women in the field. Why do they hate each other? What's the clash? So it just became my, my passion and my life mission then and my life mission now to bridge that gap.

Yeah, you know, it's funny, I, I think that, like, the underlying psychology right around safe, like, nobody thinks that we should be unsafe, that we should be foolhardy. There's not many of us who want to go play Russian roulette, right? But there can feel like sometimes the safety rules and procedures are performative and not relevant. And oh, if I put the vest on, I'm safe now. Or if I like, whatever. We sometimes don't take them serious. It feels slow and like, oh, I'm going to do this and does that really help? Like so sometimes it doesn't feel related even though it, it actually might be. But.

Oh, you're so smart. Yeah. I mean you're speaking my language. Is that, you know, a lot of the times. Well, going back to your first point, nobody, you think none of us want to be on unsafe in a sense. Right. Like that. And that's true. Every. I've been doing this for 10 years. No one who has been in minor incident, a severe incident, nobody ever tells me afterwards that they were surprised by the incident that this was, that they didn't even know how they found themselves in this situation. No. Every single time I've done an incident investigation, the employee and the surrounding employees who watch this event go down, they've all told me I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew what I was doing was unsafe and I chose to, I chose the unsafe route because either I've done this a hundred million times and I've never gotten hurt or you know, it was around holiday and I just, I didn't, you know, my mind was checked out or I was going through a stressful time in life which we can all relate to and I came to work with my mind was not in the game. And because of that I took a whole bunch of shortcuts. So yeah, I knew what I was doing was wrong. So going back to like what you said, it's the psychology of, of us. It's the psychology of people. And, and then going to the other point is a lot of people think like these rules are, it's too much, it's overbearing, it's, you know, is it really mandated? Is it really for a, does this rule really serve a purpose? But it's those little rule breaks that end up becoming this, you know, becoming an incident or affecting the culture nonetheless.

You know, the other thing is that compounding thing like I'm a pilot, I'm not very active flyer right now. But every time they do a post accident investigation, what they discover like there's this one little thing that's off and then this other little thing and then this other little thing and, and I remember one time I was flying beautiful clear day and that kind of thing and, and then I heard this other pilot declare an in flight emergency. Loss of power is engines out. And I got so distracted and so engrossed, I'M looking for him and how's he doing and what's going on? And thinking about it that I started to change my speed and altitude and things like that. And I'm like, oh, he called. Hey. He's like, hey, hey, hey, pay attention.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely right.

And like a non injury thing more recently, just on the sort of fun side. But suddenly like, so I have this hydrofoil electric sir. I have actually a bunch of hydrofoil surfboards. Right. They, they, the hydrofoil goes under the water and they rise up out of the water. These things are basically pretty dangerous because those hydrofoils are super sharp and they can hit you with a lot of force and cut into your skin, which I've had. So I'm jumping on one, I'm about to move. I've sold this thing, it's thousands of dollars. And I'm like, I'm gonna ride it one last time. And I'm kind of in a hurry to like squeak in one last ride and I forget to secure down the mast for the hydrofoil. So I'm ready to go. It's a beautiful day and I'm coming off this dock at our place on the lake and I'm like ready to go. And so I just kick it in the water. And in that moment, completely oblivious to me, the mass disconnects and the whole thing just drifts down, you know, 20ft, 25ft down to the bottom. Right. So just like, I don't know, it, it's just a silent event. I just kick this thing in the water and then I jump on it. It won't go. And I'm like, this is electric powered one in this case. And I'm like, why? Want to go?

Yeah, yeah.

And then, and then I'm so, I've tried to reset the battery and I do this thing and then I, I, I go to flip it over to exam and I'm like, oh, the whole bottom, the motor, the whole thing is missing.

No. And you're like, I knew I didn't.

Put the screws in. Yeah, yeah, I just didn't even put them in. Like the most basic thing, I just dropped it in there and didn't screw it in. And like so basic. And we know these things and we don't do them right. Like, I don't know.

Happens to all of us. Yes, that's so. Yes, you're right. I mean it's, it's house projects, it's putting up Christmas lights. It's.

And then you drop something and then, ah, then everything Changes in an instant and you realize your life just changed.

Boom. Well, go ahead.

Well, I was just going to ask you about getting started in this because it's not a male and it's, it's tends to be a more of a male industry. And you start in this fresh out of school. How did that go? Like, what was the beginning of that?

Like, it was like, it was terrible. It was so terrible. And I, like, looking back, I feel like I just, I don't even know. I don't even know how I pushed through all this. But, but when I started, I had a rough and tough, you know, boss, just like the total stereotypical, like, tough guy. And I, I just remember asking him like, hey, muscles. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Like farmer born and raised on a farm probably since he was 2:30. Yes. And so I just remember being like, hey, like, any feedback from my safety meeting that I just did like anything. He was like, yes. He said, why don't you film yourself during the next safety meeting? And then why don't you do the complete opposite of that? Watch that video back and do complete opposite. Because that was terrible. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go cry in my car and call my mom and then I'll get back. But it was a lot of moments like that where just completely punched in the face verbally, but like, I needed it. But like, looking back, I mean, it wasn't. Sure I was emotional during those moments, but it was the tough, like the tough love that I needed to stick it through and see it through and I, I needed that. And, and it was, and it was good for me. But so as far as that was just like one challenge that was just with my boss. But you know, my goal is to bring employees. How do I, how do I shift that in an employee's mind to care a little bit more about safety or to care about their co workers while they're also working. How do I get that? And so that was the biggest mind shift. And so I realized quick that I was that field experience, like by me telling guys, and I know I want to be all inclusive, but to be real, we didn't have any girls in the class most of the time. And so I just, I realized, okay, if I need to make an impact on, on this class, speaking from the OSHA rules and regulations book, like, guys, the company is going to be fined if we don't wear our fall protection. OSHA's going to come out and do an inspection and we can get shut down or like the, you know, this is. These are federal rules. That approach wasn't going to do anything because I started that way and I, I tried to shove it down everyone's throat, like, guys, this is the right thing to do. And like, that wasn't. I wasn't making an impact that way. So what I learned from trial and error, though, like, I'll give you a story is that. So I would have been. I've been telling the guys in the, in the welding shop. So this was an oil and gas company. We had a trucking division, construction crews, and then we also had a welding shop. So I was in the shop and I'd always be on the guys about wearing their eye protection and wearing face shields and. And I couldn't say it anymore. And then one day I was just hanging out in the shop and I found the unspoken leader, you know, like the guy that was just the guy in the shop that everybody loved and respected. And I was like, Kenny, like, how do I get these guys to wear their fall, like, to wear their, Their. Their face masks and their face shields and their safety glasses? And he was like. I said, what do you recommend? And. And he was like, well, for starters, like, I just got to know this guy. And he was like, for starters, everyone hate this face shield because of XYZ reason. Like, this is the brand that I use at my last company, and this is the brand that I really like, and it doesn't fog up. And if you could get this approved to, to purchase, like, make that happen. So then I, you know, I got it to work, I got it approved, and I got him the brand that he wanted. And boom, that's where the magic happened. I got him the unspoken leader of the shop, and I got him his merchandise. So then he pushed that product. He pushed the mandate because it was ownership that he had. And so I learned, oh, this is, this is about pulling people in, getting to know, genuinely know and genuinely care about the employees that are here. And if something's done unsafe, and instead of doing an incident investigation where it's, you know, what, getting the surface level details, really getting to know these employees, their families, how they were motivated, getting to know their spouse, their family, do they have kids, like, what motivates them and speaking to them on that level, that moved mountains. Culture started to change when I was able to develop authentic relationships and show that I really cared about these employees. And when I bring up, I hear.

A couple things there. I mean, one of them is something isn't working, and you bring curiosity to it and you discover that it's not fundamentally rejected, it's just missing something. It's just off a little bit. And then in the course of doing that, you also get buy in of key influencers. Right, Influencers. We know, we know what that means a lot these days, right. Like somebody watches some video and they use a product because somebody they care about. And some folks, it's really, really overt. Right. They're an influencer. But other folks, subtle and. But influencing and influencers are all around us all the time.

Oh my gosh, you're so right. And this doesn't always have to relate back to safety. It's just in my world it does. But you know, to any, anybody working within an organization and they're trying to get a new policy push, they're trying to, you know, try this new program, this new incentive program, you know, hr, we're trying this new thing. Of course, whether it be safety rules or regulations or you're just trying to sell a new idea and a new vision. You're exactly right. There are always unsaid or unspoken influencers. Other more discreet than not. But, you know, if you could get people first, it starts with you being curious and understanding and genuinely get to know your teammates, your employees, whoever you're trying to influence. And then when you can get to that basic level of care and respect, then what you're asking is not going to seem like you're walking up a mountain. Yeah, right, right, right.

Yeah. It's a really interesting thing about how do you figure out how do you make anything work? Right. After a little bit, obviously safety works and you can't. I mean, it is kind of. It's more engaging and sometimes entertaining when we see the effects of safety ignored or that kind of thing. When you talk about something going badly or whatever. There's a funny old character who's a comedian, Fire Marshal Bill, who would like set himself on fire on the regular. Things like that is having safety briefings in this old show.

That's funny.

Fantastic, right? And sometimes showing the negative things and bringing it to life to real. A lot of times they're like, I don't want to be bothered with that. That's not really going to happen to me. And this isn't that serious, that kind of thing. And then you meet somebody who's lost an eye, you're like, yeah, yeah. And we all have those moments where something happens kind of in slow motion and you can see something. I injured myself out with my foiling thing one day and then just as I'm coming back and I'm really exhausted and I'm injured and I'm sort of managing and coming in, trying to get out of the water, I can see the wind kind of catch my board and turn it, and then the foil go into the wing.

And.

And then. And I'm like, I want to push it away from me, but also away from the wing.

Yeah.

And it goes. And it slices up the wing. And now that's a repairable thing.

Yeah.

I'm also thinking about that. And you could see it all kind of happening, and like, I don't know how to stop this. And here it goes. And you could just kind of feel it. And I think a lot of times there are these moments where everything seemed normal and safe, and then it started to change and you were just powerless to bring a stop to it.

Yeah, absolutely. And something. And. And going back to a point you made earlier, I thought was so good was you said something about, like, these compounding events that. These little subtle events that are always the buildup. You're exactly right. And that's. And. And in my world, what that looks like is, you know, let's say somebody. Let's say there's a loader accident, like somebody's operating a piece of equipment, a forklift or something, and an incident happens with that. Well, more than likely there might have been, you know, reports of property damage on this piece of. On this piece of equipment, or there was near misses with this piece of equipment because the bucket wasn't on right. Or there just was all these little issues, these little technicalities. And so those little things are always right, going to. To explode at some point. And in. In my world, they actually do explode. It could, you know, end up in a fire or something like that. But I thought. I thought that was good because it relates to cultural pieces, too. Within an organization, if you have, you know, two teammates that aren't. They're not connecting or there's just this. You're trying to influence a team to, you know, take it to the next level. I think there's just a lot of that human aspect that's always not thought of. You know, at the end of the day, we're all humans. We all need to be communicating. And like I mentioned earlier, too, it's not just the employee that said, I knew what I was doing was wrong. It was also the everybody around, and it became a cultural acceptance to just let this near miss happened. We've all done it. Oh, I saw that he was doing the wrong thing. But I just quite frankly, don't care about him enough to have said to put a stop to it. And that happened.

We all.

It was fine.

Maybe Clearwater and Clearwater is a story that you started to share and the. How safety becomes part of the culture or not part of the culture. Right, Because I think there's a collective norm you shifted with that one company. But what does that look like? And, and talk about that.

I realized that with this company, Clearwater, that in the beginning the owner was very, or the owners were very old school into the oil and gas industry, or they were just. And what I realized was you could have these old school mindset, like I don't care about safety type of mentality and you can try to have all the best safety training in the world and you could invest in safety consultants, you can invest in a safety manager, a safety program, but none of it was going to stay stick unless the owner genuinely valued safety. And that's point blank, like there. You can't outsource, you know, because. Because what happened was we would go out there and we would, you know, put together safety policies and procedures, we would share. This is how you do this the safe way. This is how you. And when the owner was out there, you know, just BSing with the guys, or they were. And so that level of expectation, if it's down here, it was always going to stick at down here. And safety was only going to be relevant when the safety people are around. But then as soon as we drive off or we leave, it's oh, it's always just going to go back to what level the owner was going to care about. And so that actually, and I communicated that that would. With the owner, like, hey, we. It starts with you, starts with leadership. It starts with ownership. And when you actually value this, when you actually enforce it, when safety isn't around, when they see, when all the guys who highly respect and idolize you, when you're the one saying, hey, no, no, no, no, wear your safety glasses, that's not how we operate. That's when you're going to see cultural change as well. And it did happen, and the owners did. Slowly but surely they got on the bandwagon of, of embracing these safety rules and regs. And once that happened, the whole company changed.

You know, I always say the owner, the founder or the leader of the company and the company are like the front and back of the hand. They move together, right? We build these companies around us and they're perfectly in sync with us and we with them and so whatever's going on, if it's going to change or somebody tries to change it, you can undermine it. You can cause something to happen and either make it happen or not happen. I remember one leader who came to me, he's like, we want to do the scaling up. We want to do these daily huddles and that kind of thing. And then after while he's like, yeah, my team doesn't really want to do it. And I'm like, okay, whose company is it?

Yeah, yeah, why, why don't they want to do it?

Company? And they were like, that daily huddle is pretty good. So we're going to do that. And then they implemented it across 1,000 employees in a. But the owner was like, yeah, no, it's going this way. We're doing this. You know, it wasn't like, but if you complain a lot, we're not going. We're going to stop doing it. I was like, no, we're doing. This is what we're doing. And I think there's definitely something to that. I was talking with another CEO earlier this week and he was talking about a problem he was having and he was like, you know, I have several companies and it's not that like that at the other one. So this isn't. I know you say everything starts with me, but this isn't me. Like, I didn't create this. My other company isn't like this. And I'm like, yeah, no, I mean, you have two different companies, but you have your self behavior and there, there is something that you've tolerated or allowed to happen because it worked for you to be that. And you've let it get to this point in this other company. So the two companies don't look like it, but your behavior with the two companies is not the same.

Yeah.

And they're not the length of time and like everything else. But it does come back to you, right?

Yeah. I think that you're so spot on is that we, we keep talking about safety because that's my background. But you're exactly right that when you're trying to influence any type of change, you do have to look at the owner or, you know, the owners or the founders and see what are, what are the beliefs here? What are the beliefs? What are the tolerance points, what people know, what they can get away with, what they can't. And you set the tone. At the end of the day, subconsciously or not, you are setting the tone. I think that's great. And, and I do get that a lot from business owners when we're taking on if we're interviewing a new client and we're trying to see if it's a good fit or not. And we'll get a lot. Oh gosh, this is the, this is the common customer that I'll get is they'll come to us and say I don't know why, I don't know why the safety. I don't know why our safety score looks like this. I don't know why our safety culture looks like this. That, you know, they're like, we have a bunch of idiots and are, you know, or we had a bunch of idiots a couple years ago and they're the ones that got into these incidents and that that's what made our safety culture the way or that's what made our safety stats go up because of this. And, and how can you fix, you know, how we don't want to be over regulated with safety but like how can you fix this? And I'm just like, this isn't a good fit because I know that you don't really care about safety. Or sometimes, sometimes owners will just be straight up like they're like, well, we don't. We're looking for like a check the box. Like we're looking for somebody to come in and just like get us in compliance with osha. You know, like, what's the price on this? Because. And I'm just like, oh my gosh. I, we. We're not a good fit.

Yeah. Yeah. They don't actually care about the thing. Well, and you care about it. It talk to us. You had one. There was a terrible accident around a grinder wheel. Share about that.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. I'll never forget. We were, I was in a shop area and one of the employees was grinding inside a tank. So imagine a tank on its side and an employee is inside that tank and they have a ladder propped up on the edge of this tank. And he welded a kickstop to so that he could lean his ladder and he just welded this kickstop really quick. And so he's the employees on the top of the ladder grinding without a face shield. And his kickstop breaks. So his ladder falls from underneath him and he ends up splitting his face from here to here and wide open. I meet the employee, you know, we meet at the emergency room and he was this older gentleman and just to see the amount of pain and he was. And you know that he was in just the fear in his eyes, you know, because this, this incident happened in, in such A split second that, you know, he was still trying to get his, his mind wrapped around it and I had to call his wife and his daughter and, and relay the news and for them that he's okay. But to come to the hospital and you know, it's those moments where I'm at the emergency room with an employee that you also realize too, like you mentioned, nobody plans to get hurt. Nobody wakes up thinking I'm going to be out of control. While today it's just those compounding human aspects that we kept going back to of, oh, I did it this way so many times, like what's, you know, what's gonna happen and, but you're not. When you're in the hospital with a grown man, it doesn't matter if a man or woman, young, younger, older, you're the. I am never thinking about fault or blame. And what could we have done differently? Like in that moment, like you're just trying to care for this person. Person. And so, so yeah, I just, I have so much passion and a lot of empathy for the blue collar worker because a lot of the times like they're the only, you know, income for their family or even if it is dual income, there's like a lot of stress and anxiety that these workers have because they're working under immense weather conditions, adverse weather conditions. A lot of the times they're working a lot of hours. There's just a lot of stress and anxiety that I've seen over the last 10 years that has always surrounded this industry. And actually the number one cause of fatality, so to say in the construction and industry is suicide. So. Oh, it's the number one, number one for, for quite a few years now is suicide. And you know, talking to psychiatrists and psychologists that work with a lot of employees, with workers, that's, those are the things that they take away. I'm like, what is it that these men and women are carrying with them? And they say it's just a lot of pressure from society, a lot of pressure to, you know, pay bills and especially in today's age, like you know, groceries and all the things, like life is so expensive right now and it always has been, but it just, there's just a lot of pressures, especially around the holidays and they just don't a lot of time feel comfortable to maybe express those types of things with their spouse or maybe they're not married.

So they just, we start this conversation thinking about safety and largely in sort of blue collar environments where we're dealing with equipment and we're doing physical things then you start to think about the impacts of our actions as leaders and non manual labor kinds of things and how that cascades out and then impacts other things. And, and then you talk about kind of the ultimate safety that we all deal with and that's depression and upset which can be compounded by the kind of work that you do. Right. But if you are distraught, if you're not managing your finances well, if you are dealing with psychological and family issues or other kinds of traumas like that is just compounded by that and whether it's self harm or that kind of thing. I had a friend that I worked with many years ago in a senior executive position position and, and he had some. He lost his job, things weren't going well and he lost his job and. And then he tried to kill himself and he, he is, I don't know if he's still alive. He. But he survived and, but it was unbelievably like traumatic to him and the family and there was a lot of medical and that kind of thing and, and but noticing whether your job is particularly physical or not, noticing what's going on with people caring, having a culture that cares for and is looking out for people's well being across the board. We saw a huge amount of that over the last few years with the stress of COVID the dislocation, the disruption of things, whatever it was and looked like for you, we were all shifted and that caused stress. Like we had kids who were going to school differently and were hating it and then that impact parents and like on and on and on.

Well you're totally on onto something. Because one emerging class in my industry that I'm really excited our instructors are getting going through the instructor development course for it but we provide first aid, cpr, AED through American Red Cross or American Heart association on a weekly basis. But what is emerging is mental health first aid. And everyone is like what is this? And I was on and I've just been talking to people that are not in non blue collar industries and I'm like what do you think about mental health first aid? Because like when I say that to the guys in the field they laugh their heads off. But I'm like and no, no, no, no. This is actually really serious and a lot of people are excited about this because class or just the idea that this is important to companies because like you said it's not just physical labor type of jobs but this mental health first aid course is teaching. It's just, it's just you know, it's a four hour, it's not this huge. It's not making you a psychologist of the office. But what it does provide is give you some basic tools to help you recognize, just as you mentioned, those common stressors or if somebody is mentally checked out or substance abuse or substance abuse, how to recognize those sign and symptoms. How to recognize sign and symptoms of depression, of you know, extreme this, the stressors, the anxiety and to maybe hard to deal with.

Right.

Yeah. And to speak up and, and, and maybe you're not intervening but maybe just letting the supervisor, somebody, hey, go check on, go check on Sarah. Or John always does this and he, I feel like he's out of it and just a call from the owner or from HR or, or from, from whoever that, you know, gets involved and maybe also realizes, hey, like Johnny does need to take, do you need some days off? Like do you need to take a day that could save someone's life?

Or you know, I had, I was working with one of our leadership teams. It's been a few years now, it's probably five years ago. And we were doing one of our off site planning strategy sessions. I forget exactly what time of the year or whatever it was, but there we are. And this one of the senior execs shows up and a little bit late and a little bit off and then he proceeds to continue to act off to me. But I recognize it and I've seen the pattern before. I don't think any of the others had. And I went over and I called the CEO aside while I had other people doing some kind of work and I said, listen, he's not well, there's something really off and you're at huge risk right now.

Yeah.

And he's not really on your team and he's not right in the head. And, and given what we know about his background, he may be like headed for a mental break and you need to do some defensive things to shore up the company. And the CEO thought I was overreacting, but he did. He's like, we had a good relationship and he listened to me, took some corrective preventative safety action. Right. But later that day, the guy broke into the office, he vandalized a senior exec, breaks in the office, vandalized the office, makes obscene gestures in the cameras, that kind of thing. Diverted over a million dollars and just made a mess of things and then flew a private jet to some island.

What in the world?

He had a mental health breakdown. Right. But because they were aware and because they had alerted the board and because they thought, well, there could be something going on here. It wasn't as bad as it could be. Now, I don't know whatever happened to the guy, he didn't die, but at least not at that moment. And the company recovered the money and was able to stable. The company wasn't destroyed by that particular event because of that, but because somebody in this case me saw it and then other people took it seriously and took some action. Maybe not everything that could have been done, but enough. But you don't always know and you can't always tell. I had a woman in a workshop. I was leading a workshop all day, about 75 people, and there was a woman sitting to my right in front and I remember her and I had some interaction with her during the course of the full day workshop. And she was there with some other people, maybe they were co workers. I don't remember the relationship. It's been some years now and it seemed normal. And she talked to me about something or other, but I didn't pick up on anything. And. And she went home and she killed herself. And I was so distraught. And now I haven't thought about it in some years except as you mentioned this and like, you don't always know what's going on and you can't prevent everything. You can't. Like I looked, I thought a thousand times about what she said. Was there some clue that I missed, that I was being not present or insensitive or something like that? And I don't know. And I spent a lot of time, I had a coach at the time and he said, you can't beat yourself up about this. People are going to do what they're going to do. You did what you were meant to do and that's how her life went. And like. And. But then I did talk to the others who knew her and they're like, well, she was having issues and that kind of thing. I'm like, nobody told me I didn't know. Like there was nothing that I saw. You know, I wish that I could have said something. I'm not a psychologist, therapist or suicide preventer, but I am a sensitive, caring person. And have I seen anything at all?

Right. Like I, I think what you just said there, you know, I'm not in this field, I'm not this whatever, but I'm a sensitive and caring person. And I think that at the root of safety, at the root of this mental health first aid course that's going, that's emerging, our local counties are looking for are looking for this course for their employees. So I mean these are agencies so invested in a mental health first aid course. Something that, something that recognizes to bring awareness to the average employee. Speak up like, like look, start to like this is important. We need you to start to care if you're not already care about the team members that you're working with and under and to and to have the courage courage to speak up. Like you said, you're not the fix all and maybe that's not our role and responsibility but at least be able to recognize when somebody is off. So there could be something, say something.

Yeah, speak up. One little thing in a chain of events, one little thing can bring it back into line, can prevent something terrible from happening. Whether it's a physical safety event or a, or a mental health event or the company is Apollonius Company's true safety services. If you need to up your safety game and want to check out what they do, maybe they could help you or maybe just get you started thinking about it. If they're not a fit for you, go check out truesafetyservices.com there's a website on screen and it'll be in the show notes with a link and that kind of thing. But it's really thank you for coming on and talking with us today and sharing, sharing everything that you had to share about that reminder to our listeners and viewers if you want to know about our programs to help companies grow, our guest speakers, our show guests, that kind of thing, our coaching programs, you'll find all that in the 500 plus episodes on all sorts of topics to do with business growth@scalingcoach.com or wherever you're getting this right now. YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Like whatever it is, like it, subscribe it, get the downloads, turn on your notifications, pass it along, pause right now. Share it with somebody who needs to hear this. If you know somebody who needs pause right now, share this thing with someone else and then finish it out. Also thanks to the folks at Story On Productions who got our show ready and produced and our guests lined up and that kind of thing. So we can go to the folks at Podfly who edit the audio and distribute for us, and to my friend and mentor Vern Harnish, who created the Rockefeller Habits and the Scaling up framework that we use in our business. Thanks again everyone for watching for listening. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep scaling.