#52 - Tim Page-Bottorff - Game On for Safety: How to Drive Engagement for Zero-Harm Culture

Gallup even says that if you get engagement from your employees in safety, you're likely to decrease injuries by 71%. That's a fact. And the second word was retention. Often now, even in Haswopper, there's a mandatory retraining class, what we refer to as an 8-hour refresher. And refresher sometimes implements complacency. And if it's mandatory and people come and you do a good job at the refresher class, they're more likely to want to return. But anytime you force a retraining, you end up getting less engagement. So, if you focus on retention instead of retraining, you get a lot more people that'll want to come back.

You are listening to the Safety Heroes Podcast, the podcast where we delve into the world of safety professionals and explore the critical role they play in ensuring every human Our guests are the unsung heroes and natural leaders of the safety space. If you're in the safety space or have no clue what happens in safety functions, this podcast is for you. Join us as we celebrate these heroes, hear their stories, and discover the human side of safety and make sure it's constantly evolving for the safety of our people. My name is Moussa. I'm the founder and CEO of Pixera and your host for these episodes. Because when it comes to safety, every hero deserves a voice. So welcome to the Safety Heroes Podcast.

Hey everyone. Today we're speaking with Tim Page Butterworth. From earning the Humanitarian Services Medal in Operation Desert Storm to authoring the Core of 4 and guiding HSE technology strategy at JLL, Tim's journey is a masterclass in applying soft skills, data, and standards to complex safety challenges. Let's dive in to explore his story and extract lessons that we can all benefit from. Tim, it's great to have you here, man.

Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. What an honor to be on this podcast.

Awesome. So first things first, Tim, how did you get here, man?

Here to the podcast or here in the business?

Here in life and in the world of safety.

Oh my gosh, it was— it's an up and down road and lots of mountains, lots of valleys, lots of wins, lots of losses. I started out in the military, in the United States Marine Corps, got an opportunity to participate in some safety events, even in risk management and risk assessments. And as a former crash fire rescue individual, that's where I learned a little bit about risk management. But I started teaching, and I don't know if the supervisors, the managers, the leaders of the organization, the United States Marine Corps, thought I was really good at training. But they kept giving me more, and they they thought that I should be delivering more training. And all of a sudden, I found myself doing just that—delivering a lot of training. And the origin story of safety is that I didn't necessarily think I was going to be a safety professional. I would rather have just been a firefighter or a baseball player. And sure enough, it it turned into proactive preventative safety. And right after that, I got a job real quick at a company called Motorola here in the United States. States, and it's a global company, so a lot of folks out there know who Motorola is. And it was very scientific, but there was just not a lot of people doing a lot of training. And all of a sudden, even though I said yes, I volunteered to do a lot of that training, it turned into doing a lot. And I think I found a niche in doing safety and health training. Even a lot of environmental classes I was delivering And all of a sudden, there started to be phone calls and a lot of interest. And ever since then, I've been doing health and safety consulting and training. Even now, just this past March, taking a position with Jones Lang LaSalle, JLL, I'm still sort of in a consultative position, in a training position, in a mentoring position, and I really absolutely love it. That's awesome. Love it. And I'm glad that I'm here because I've been able to work with a lot of folks that I think are going to be excellent in the things that I used to do. Hopefully, that I could be a good mentor or leader to them. And I'm grateful for being in this position. And I absolutely, looking back, wouldn't change a thing. So, the proverbial, I fell into safety, is true. I didn't have an injury per se, but it just picked me. The safety business picked me and I didn't hesitate. I didn't say no. I just said, you know what, I'm going to continue to do this thing. And I'm forever grateful because I absolutely love what I do. So, kind of how I got here. I don't think I'll change a thing and I think I'll continue on and hopefully I can help out others do the same.

Honestly, I can hear how passionate you are about what you do as well, Tim. And it's so interesting. I mean, I've spoken to so many people who started their career in the Army or, you know, Marine Corps and then transitioned into into the world of safety, and maybe I I I I'll stop here, and I just love to hear your perspective actually because I I keep there there seems to be a trend and and the level of of passion people develop towards you know just helping everyone around them be a better individual, more aware individual, a more calculated individual or but yeah how how did you feel the Marine Corps helped you? There's

a lot of things. Now, the Marine Corps gave us something that we had to memorize. Now, if you'd asked me what all 13 of these were, I probably would have to go back and do some research, but they gave us an acronym to remember, JJ Did Tie Buckle. But it's the 13 Marine Corps characteristics of leadership. And to be a better leader, you would have to basically root all of your activities in these types of behaviors. What are they? You know, justice and belief. And those are all those characteristics that you kind of almost hear as a cliché in business. But those things I was fairly attracted to. Now, was I always perfect at them? No. Did I make mistakes? Yes. But the Marine Corps gave me a certain drive, and they also gave me a bit of discipline. And I'll tell you, I got a chance to not necessarily meet Samuel L. Jackson in the Marine Corps, but I got to see him speak At a military event. And, you know, Samuel L. Jackson said a quote that I'll never forget. He said, you got to learn to discipline yourself or someone else will. And that was a characteristic that I was like, wow, that's just something that I believe to my core. And so getting up early, starting to practice, starting to study. If I had to do a training class the day before— or sorry, the day after— I would spend a lot of time preparing for it. And so that kind of internally, that drive and that discipline was definitely a resource that kind of shows in my passion for this work. That's number one. And then number two, I always had this drive to want to be an achiever. And I'm thankful for the ASSP because they gave me this test that was called the CliftonStrengths assessment. And I could always root it back to the Marine Corps because I wanted to achieve. And I wanted to drive for success, and I always wanted to do what was necessary to get to the next level. And you could thank my gaming experience for that, but I think that, you know, all of us that have gamed before, you want to achieve the next level. But that was the Marine— it was the Marine Corps that gave me that drive and that purpose. And of the 13 leadership characteristics, and please don't ask me to name them all, but discipline— Drive, passion, justice— those are all elements of things that I pulled from that that I think that I incorporate now into everything that I do. And I still believe that if you wanted to achieve a certain thing, you gotta work to get it done. And that you just can't just automatically think it's going to be handed to you. You have to find whatever it is that you need to accomplish, and most of the time it's just work, just the work to do it. Um, try to get there and make that achievement a success for you, you can actually start to feel that in your skin, feel that in your heart, feel that in your brain. And if there is a level that you want to get to, you know, you got to work at getting there. And if it's gaming, it doesn't matter to me if it's gaming, training, even if it's leadership or you want to ascend the ladder. Um, I think that you got to do the work to get there. So that's, that's part of the reason why I believe the Marine Corps instilled all of those things for me. And I'm still a believer in it today.

Yeah, what a gift, honestly, like going through that and having kind of building those habits just by virtue of being there is such a gift that I'm sure you always know that it's helping you build towards whatever you're building now. I was going to go in a direction, but you said gaming and I'm a big gamer and I'm in love with games. So what's your gaming background?

Gee whiz, if I can move my camera to that area right there, that's where all my games are stored. If you had to ask me what game was I playing today, it would probably be some level of Call of Duty. Even this last iteration from past November, they had elements of Desert Storm in there, the oil fires and all of the things that I remember learning as a budding safety professional, but it was in the game. And I was taken aback. As a matter of fact, it was kind of startling to me. But if you were to ask gaming-wise, I think it would be Call of Duty. Now, if everybody comes to this studio in this room, my family, my kids, we're probably playing Rock Band. So as a tight-knit family, we're doing those types of things. But if it's just me sitting in front of this TV, it's probably going to be Call of Duty or even Star Wars Battlefront. So I'm kind of a Star Wars nerd that way.

Yeah, I can see you have all these Star Wars Star Wars gadgets behind you. So you're a big Star Wars fan, right?

Oh, big time. Yeah. I've been claimed by friends to be just the right amount of nerd with a balance of professionalism. If I could pan around my entire room here, it's a collection of everything since 1978 that I have in here. But yeah, I'm a big Star Wars nerd. And a lot of you know that if I've seen you at a conference or at a training session, that I I always incorporate a Star Wars lesson into my safety lessons, and I think that it's a great way to, to live your life, good, bad, or indifferent. But thanks for that.

Love it. Honestly, so the reason why I find this so fascinating is I've always been a gamer, and it's the reason why I started Pixera, the company that I, that I run now. And it's interesting, you were in the Marine Corps and then you like navigated into training. And I, and I think like from my perspective, having been a gamer, you know, growing up being a gamer and then being exposed to Fatality early on in my career in 2011, you know, nearly 14 years ago now. And then being part of the team that had to retrain 13,000 local contractors and like just rethink our safety procedures in that specific site I worked on, seeing the learning experience that we were still delivering was shocking to me. You know, particularly someone who's a gamer, you're always experiencing things and living through these stories that are very realistic, that are emotionally engaging to you. And then when it comes When it comes to things that are so important that can actually cause a fatality and get people seriously hurt, we were still just putting them in classrooms and talking at them instead of helping them actually live through these scenarios and experiences. So that was kind of the seed. I think my gaming experience was the seed behind why we went and built the gaming engine and the ability to simulate and create games for high-risk activity that you can deploy, et cetera. I'll pause here and I'd love to hear how your transition looked like, you know, and how you ended up learning and you feel like gaming did contribute to how you deliver training and how you think about training.

That's a great question and thank you for that. It really dives into some of my soul. I've done training where I felt, just personally felt, that the students that attended didn't get a lot out of it and they were just not They were dumber for having to attend. I hate saying it, but I felt that inside. And so throughout the years, I started incorporating different levels of, you know, other types of training. And now it's not alternative training, it's just that I was always looking for ways to engage and get engagement back. And one of the things that I found that was pretty interesting was a lot of the students really got attracted to Different types of games. And so, in the learning model, and you go back to— you even go back to adult learning, even with Malcolm Knowles, if you want better retention, you got to get better engagement. And I've always thought, well, how do I do that? And so, throughout the years, I started incorporating gamification. Now, I know that's a scientific way of looking at training, but if you want better engagement, you would find different tools or methodologies to get your students involved. So a perfect example of that was Haswopper. Now, Haswopper is a local United States philosophy, but in that regard, the Haswopper thing, there's like half of that work that you do in the 40-hour, 24-hour class is going to be hands-on training. And sometimes when you're putting on PPE, and I know this sounds counterintuitive because we don't want people rushing to put PPE on, but if you just slipped in a stopwatch while they were getting dressed during training, you add that competitive spirit. And then you could go back and, you know, even in gamification, you can actually say, hey, I know we've added a stopwatch, but let's talk about some of the mistakes you made in a hurry. And then it's a lessons learned for everyone. And so when people go rushing through putting on PPE, it— even though I incorporated a game, there was competitive spirit, there was a little bit of engagement. As you reverse that training methodology, you can go, hey, You guys were in a rush, which proves a couple of things. When you put on your PPE, there's a sense of urgency. Your mind will tell you to hurry up, but when you go slow, it is the new fast. And so, it kind of opens up the door. So, gamification is one way of doing that engagement piece. But if you ever look up the words humor and safety on Google, you'll notice that it's attached to some of the things that I do. And I incorporated a program called the Humor in Safety. And engaging people with gamification or even having fun, it actually elevates 2 big things that I'll never forget in my, you know, my beginning training experience. And that is that you want better engagement, which, by the way, Gallup even says that if you get engagement from your employees in safety, you're likely to decrease injuries by 71%. That's a fact. And the second word was retention. Often now, even in Haswopper, there's a mandatory retraining class, what we refer to as an 8-hour refresher. And refresher sometimes implements complacency. And if it's mandatory and people come and you do a good job at the refresher class, they're more likely to want to return. But anytime you force a retraining, you end up getting less engagement. So if you focus on retention instead of retraining, you get a lot more people that'll want to come back and, and I know this sounds like a cliché, but in the training class, you get people to sit in the front row. That's kind of interesting to think in a safety class that I got people sitting in the front row. What is it that you did? Was it fun? Was it humor? Was it— well, in this case, gamification. And gaming is a huge part and a background that I will always incorporate into my classes. And it doesn't matter what it is. And I think it's a huge way of getting both engagement and retention.

Yeah, absolutely. It's beautiful. As you're speaking and knowing that you do quite a bit of consultative work, I'm just excited to honestly try to set up something else with you and show you some of the cool things that we built. But ultimately, there are several things that were surprising in the market, right? So one is you should be able to incorporate gaming and realistic storytelling in learning, right? Instead of telling someone, here's all the information you need to understand about working at height, throw them in a working at height experience and allow them to go through a training, but also add gamification throughout. But there's also another thing, which is, as you just said now, the compliance, the need for compliance has become such a big aspect of how people plan their safety strategies that everyone is frustrated by having to constantly redo trainings. It's just become a box-checking exercise to the extreme. And in many cases, if you're a frontline worker, operating at a site and you get a better package at a different site and you move to a different site, you have to go through nearly the same training. And then a few months later, you head back to that same site, you go through that same onboarding process again, and there's no consistency or standardization in many of the work sites. And it's just become such a burden on the frontline worker. The learning aspect has been like, and no one trusts it, believes in it, and it's a burden. And that's like a sad thing to see, particularly in a space that needs innovation and needs exciting learning that's centered around the individual. I don't know if you have any thoughts around that too.

Yeah, no, I do. When I teach, there's a program here that is run by the OSHA Department of Education, and so we refer to it as the OSHA Training Institute. And so there's a class that I teach both at the 500 level, so it's OSHA 500 and OSHA 501, which authorizes Trainers to deliver OSHA 10 and 30 hour here in the United States, and sometimes when I'm actually watching them deliver training back to me, they're mainly teaching with the focus of compliance. Now, does that drive me nuts? No. Do you have to follow compliance? Yes. If that's your primary purpose of training, you need to step aside because there's other reasons why people need this training. And if compliance is the biggest drive for you, I find that that's where most people end up failing. And when I say fail, they just don't deliver the class with purpose or with effort. They're just there, like you said, to check a box. And if that's the case, I sometimes will go back and I'll try to work with them as a coach and say, hey, I want you to start focusing on why this is important to you. Why would you think you would need to deliver this class other than because OSHA said so? I know you're here because of federal OSHA. I know you're here because of state OSHA, whatever the reasons why you're here. If you're there to deliver the class because you're just checking that box, you're not going to get a lot of engagement and retention. And so, I try to steer them in a different direction in regards to why it's important to deliver the class as opposed to why it's— why you're there to just, you said it best, check a box. And so, I try to avoid that as at all possible. But in my coaching, it's find a purpose, find a reason other than compliance because— You know, you can actually reach people on a heart-to-heart level, which, you know, heart-to-mind is what a lot of folks are trying to do in their training. But if it's just compliance, you're not going to reach their heart or their mind. You're going to miss both. And so focus on something else. And I think I would agree with you. Checking a box is not the real reason why we do training in the first place.

Yeah. And, you know, a fun question that I'll ask now. If you were to take a step back from how things run today, and you were to consider the technologies that exist, assume you can build the best forms of games or the most adaptive, intelligent journeys through AI, what do you think the future of safety learning for individuals should look like?

That's a great question. The future for me is that we still need to retain some level of human-to-human interaction. But with that said, there's nothing wrong with giving somebody an idea in a virtual reality setting that they can actually see before they get hands-on. That's cool. I like that technology. As a matter of fact, as long as the virtual technology is a learning machine and there's some level of artificial intelligence that they can learn together and that can be adapted to future trainings, that's great technology. There should be machines out there that can help out a human in identifying risk. So, if I place a picture into a technology-running device, whether it's machine learning or AI, and then it can help me find the risk or the hazards in that photograph. It'll only enhance a human's perception on what's developed for risk assessment and hazard mitigation. So, in other words, a photograph shows up, I want to place that into a machine that's learning, as long as I've educated that machine in the beginning to what to look for, and then at the end, it spits out a report. And then I could go out to the real place where that photograph was taken and say, hey, I didn't think about that risk. I didn't think about that hazard. I think that technology is fascinating. And I hope that, you know, some folks would embrace it because let's face it, even though we would think that AI might take over and a lot of folks that I talk to think that they see 1997 Judgment Day from Terminator 2, I think that's a reality based in fear. And I would say right on a limb that we got to get rid of those fears and hopefully we can embrace this to a point because we're the ones that are educating the AI platform. And as long as you train it to do what you want it to do correctly, you should get the reports that you want to do in the end also at the same time correctly. But I'm excited about the future. There's AI, there's learning machines, there's, you know, there's hazard investigations that can be done together with both machines. But at the same time, humans will get better and refine their work because they're going to have to review all of this work and still put their eyes on it. So, I'm excited about the future, but that's what I think it's going to look like.

Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, like, I mean, as you said, as long as you think about it as a tool that's contributing to your day-to-day and just improving the quality of the work and your level of awareness and your level of understanding, then so many things open up, right? Like, even if you think about the whole process now, even when you start off from the position of creating your safety learning matrices and creating your safety requirements, you should be able to use AI to simplify that process, just spit out the risk that you typically see in such an operation, such a project, recommended learning content, recommended journeys. You can do with it what you want. And then on the learning side, for example, the most successful type of product we see within our client base is people using the product within a classroom setting where you still have the trainer, but instead of the trainer just talking at people, they play the game. with everyone, and everyone scans a QR code and votes for the answers. They make decisions as a group, so you're just elevating the level of engagement across the classroom, and people start engaging with each other and saying, oh, I thought this was right, I thought this was wrong, and then they're going to witness a very dramatic incident because they're living through a real-life Call of Duty-like scenario. But we saw that many customers are navigating through using things as a tool within a classroom where the trainer is still there, the trainer is still understanding the trainees and intervening where they need to. And what's interesting is, and I've been in many of these classrooms, the very interesting thing is you notice how intimidated people are in classroom settings to make mistakes when you give everyone the ability to make a decision. And the trainer doesn't end up calling them out, of course, because it's a work setting and they don't want to look like they're not as competent as their colleagues. But when you notice who has the gaps, you can focus your content, you can focus your delivery to make sure that you bridge the gaps that they have. And yeah, I love what you're saying. And by the way, the thing you mentioned around using AI, be it voice or voice recording through Toolbox Talks or image recognition for you to identify hazard risks, there are a few tools out there now that are doing something that's light touch. We can, like, I can send that, but it's, I 100% agree that that's one of the biggest things to do because you're at the forefront of the activity and it's allowing you to take a step back and just talk about the work. And through AI, you're just telling the person, oh, great stuff, but did you also consider this risk? And did you engage some of your colleagues? Or yada, yada, and just reporting that back and starting to capture that data.

Yeah, I love to see that because I know that my son-in-law, my brother, they're all entering the AI space in regards to machine learning. My son-in-law even does the physics aspect of what can occur, and he works for a space company now. And I can't say their name, I wish I could, but the work that he's doing is out of this world. And he's dived a little bit into human factors, and I think the connection between humans and that artificial intelligence, and even with augmented reality, it gives us a space to learn. And so, yeah, I'm not necessarily scared of it. You used the word intimidation. It's funny, everybody looks at me and goes, hey, did you know Tim was in Intimidation? Yeah, thank you for that. Anyway, so yeah, you make a good point about that and I appreciate that.

Love it. Cool. So what's your take on how things are going now in the US? Something that I wanted to honestly explore hearing you say this. We've been operating in the European market. We're very mature in the European market, and now we have a small team in the US market. And I started realizing that there are trends that are different between the regions. And I know you've been operating with global organizations that deploy globally. From your perspective, are there differences between how, let's say, the average large construction company operates in the US and thinks about safety and safety programs, safety compliance, compared to European, UK companies.

My reference is 3 regions: EMEA, APAC, and the Americas. And I'll say that the regions that I've been working with, with some of even my employees currently, one of them right now in EMEA trying to figure out, you know, they're in Scotland, but they're kind of responsible for everything all the way up until, you know, we get to Belgium. And then they're working their way down in the Middle East. The Middle East is a little bit more aggressive when it comes to tackling things like AI. I find that though here in the US, still blazing trails, I guess, if that's the term, but cautiously. In the Middle East, I feel like in some parts of Europe, I feel like it's tackling AI, but not cautiously. They're like, let's just get out there and do it. So I see that a bit. And then conversations with some of the folks, even the customers that we have, I find that in Europe and the Middle East, they're tackling it with a little bit more fervor. Here in the US, it's cautious optimism. And so that's something that I see specifically with AI and machine learning. But outside of that, the hazard assessments, the risk assessments, anything that they could place into a machine, To help them identify because they might miss a risk. I believe that here in the US, we're doing pretty good at that, even in the Americas. But I find that Latin America, South America, they're actually a little slower in regards to this because the technology is a little slower. Some of those locations are even having a hard time getting internet resources. So I think that there's a little bit of drawback there in those parts of the Americas. But as far as I'm concerned, there's a little bit more progression when it comes to the Middle East and Europe. But the United States, we're there. It's just cautious optimism. And I think that we're moving forward, it's just a little slower.

Yeah, it's very interesting, right? Typically the US would be blazing ahead. So when it comes to safety, your perception now is it's probably just

Yeah, I think if you looked at a graph, you might see blue and red lines, and then you'd see the US— let's just tackle them as one color. They're just slowly or a little bit behind, not too far, but we're still trying to catch up.

And what about budgets and spend and appetite for innovating and changing things? Would you say the same applies?

Yeah, that's a good question. I am not going to get into politics, but there is some reservation. Right now because of tariff talk. So, everybody's kind of— they pulled back on the reins a little bit on spending. I would say that here in the United States, that's most certainly true for a lot of organizations. Innovation-wise, there's still an appetite for people to think out of the box. We've had folks here in the United States refer to safety technology a little differently. So, you might hear terms like resilience engineering or safety differently. So, there's an appetite for innovation outside of the normal check-the-box appetite for compliance. But outside of that, with the stuff that we talked about for the future of safety, like I said, there's cautious optimism, but I think there's still a reservation. So, hopefully, once we get beyond what these tariffs look like, and again, I'm not politically connected to anything, I would say that once those get behind us, that there's probably going to be more of an appetite to spend.

Cool. So Tim, you mentioned at the beginning that you deliver consulting work. You still, you know, support quite a few organizations right now. You're in the early stages of supporting JLL. Can you tell us more about what you do and how you operate with different organizations and how they can think of like, where do you shine and when should organizations, when do you feel like organizations should get in touch?

Well, first of all, I have selected this year and the next with an individual Focus or an intention. And there's a book that's out from L. David Marquet called Turn the Ship Around, and he wants intentional leadership. And I think that after I've learned intentional leadership, that you have to set a focus for you strategically and then go out operationally and start— I hate using the term, but Marine Corps-wise, take the hill. And with the intention set in the back of your mind, mine is collaboration. So, I've developed Stop, Collaborate, and Listen as one of my talks for safety. I know it's supposed to affect safety leadership and that what you do is you got to stop for the right reasons and collaborate, but also at the same time, listen to your employees. So, when I'm working with other companies and other, you know, if I'm like working with a customer, I would ask, are we partners? Have we been collaborating in the past? And what can we do in the future to collaborate together? Moving forward with a combined effort sets kind of a teamwork vision. That's one. But also the strategy for teamwork vision is that leadership-wise, people will actually— they'll see that vision of teamwork leadership and they're going to want to be a part of that team because it's something to ascend to. And if everybody wants to get to the next level in a video game, guess what? If they see teamwork leadership as a vision, They're going to want to be a part of that team. And I'm hoping for that. And if it's competitive to be a part of the team, so be it. But that means their drive and their discipline to get there is a big part. So what I see myself for the next couple of years is just trying to drive that effort for better teamwork and align what we do as a consultant or what we do as a company with our customers. And when that alignment shows up and there's a stronger partnership, Boy, that's going to help out sales and marketing because we've actually driven something together. And when they see us as partners, you wouldn't necessarily have a customer-client relationship. It's more of a partnership. And I believe that drive for me is going to last longer than 1 or 2 years, but I'm looking at memorandums of understanding. How can we work on this together? How can we partner better together instead of having this typical customer relationship? I don't I don't want to be a customer and a supplier. I want to be a partner in this venture. And I think that's, to me, the most important part of this whole journey for me. And I think it's going to be— I hope it lasts longer than 2 years, honestly.

Yeah, it seems like a core value that you want to operate through. You know, as you're speaking, I kind of put myself in the customer's shoes thinking about like how to engage with you. I just kept thinking of the word trust, trust, trust. Like I would need to trust you here and then I would open up up completely to start making this a true partnership. And how do you think of that?

I use an acronym to that question. And the acronym— and my wife, she's a singer, love her to death— her favorite genre of music is disco and funk. And one of the songs that I really enjoy watching her band perform is called Making It Real or Make It Real. It's an old disco song from the late '70s. It's got to be real. And so I've actually taken that word and made it an acronym. And so for us to have trust, I would say starting with the letter R, we've got to respect each other. We also, with the letter E, have to understand where each other is coming from, but I'd have to have empathy for that. I would use the letter A, and I want to accept you, your organization, for who they are, not for who I want them to be. And then the letter L for me is that I've got to learn to listen to you. But I believe that if you make it real through the relationship, that there is a stronger bit of trust. And I think that it develops to those 2 words, engagement and retention, outside of training. But I think that our relationship should be based on the letter— are the words real? So, we just got to— let's make this relationship real. I always use that as acronym for me in developing that level of trust. So great question, but I think that those 4 words to me are the most important.

Love it. Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Tim. As you're going through this, and I know you're someone who's had very interesting experience and you've been doing this for a very long time and you've seen all sorts of different issues and challenges, if you reflect on the last couple of years, What do you feel very proud of achieving? Are there specific activities or projects or contributions that you feel very proud of that you'd like to share?

Well, that is a loaded question. I wish you would have given that to me a week ago. I joke. I will tell you that I can't really come back to one project. For the last 20 years, I've been attached, partnered with another organization called Safe Start, and I will never forget my time with them. That there's different ways of tackling health and safety. Because I used to be, and I would always joke about the word intimidation, Tim is in the middle of it. And you would see folks going, oh, here comes Tim. And you know what that does for an ego is something incredible. But this work these last 20 years has made me who I am today. And I'm forever grateful for my connection with them. But I've done a tremendous amount of body of knowledge and body of work. With that organization. And I'd say that the thing that I got out for those 20 years is that I can look at safety a lot differently. And to my approach is not always coming at people with intimidation anymore. It's always building the level of friendship and partnership. And I always use the term, don't be a safety cop, but you got to be a safety friend. And the only way that you could be a safety friend is to develop a relationship with someone. And understand where they are using the acronym REAL. And I've learned that for me, I've learned that over the last 20 years. So the culmination of 20 years of a body of work that I've worked with with Safe Start, I believe, has really gotten me to where I'm at today. So deeper relationships, deeper commitments, better partnerships, and understanding with where people are coming from. And I believe that, you know, not everybody is out there to make mistakes, but we've all done that. And if you're willing to admit that you've made a mistake, it doesn't matter if it's in business or in safety, and you share that with people, it opens the door for future relationships and conversation. And I think over the last 20 years, that's what I've gained the most. And I think it's really highlighted that people are willing to develop a relationship with you. You just got to find a way to, to commit to it. You got to find a way to gather it. And you being a mentor leader, you got to find a way to get them to say it. And I think that I would say the last 20 years is, that's, that's to me what's been most important in my career.

Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. It's like, it seems like the things you're most grateful for are really the experiences you had that, that shaped you and, and helped you become who you are.

Yeah, absolutely.

And Tim, I know you've been involved with the, you've been involved with ASSP. You know, the, the conference is happening very soon in Orlando. What's your involvement with them? And please share whatever you'd like to share about the conference with our listeners.

Thank you for that. I have been a member of ASSP, the American Society of Safety Professionals, for 25 years. My involvement started out locally here in Arizona at a chapter level. I took all the leadership positions as a volunteer, elected as president, went through 3 years of leadership there, moved my way up into the region. I became the regional vice president by election. That was for 6 years. And then now I'm on the board of directors at the society level. So I'm the senior vice president for ASSP, just newly elected. That term started July 1st, and I will forever be grateful because I think my career has progressed because of my membership, meeting new people, networking. I'd like to say that my whole entire appetite for being a member of ASSP is leadership, but it's not. Every person that I've met through my connections at ASSP, networking or otherwise, has been my greatest— whatever I've collected from ASSP has been my— that's my greatest accomplishment, I guess, is because I got to meet new people. And so I have this drive now for the next 5 to 10 years that I want to give back because it's given me so much. Meeting new people, understanding where they come from, actually the partnerships and networking, that's all been incredible. So to me, I think my involvement, even though I'm on volunteer leadership, that's probably the most important. But I'd say comfortably the most important thing about being a member of ASSP is the number of people that I've gotten a chance to interact with and be a partner with. That's the most important.

Amazing. And what advice would you have for, you know, attendees or companies that are, that are, you know, exhibiting to maximize the value that they get out of that, out of that conference?

Well, first of all, in July in Orlando is going to be extremely hot. So there's no need for you to go to theme parks, stay away from those, go to the conference, be an attendee. If I could give one bit of strategy, be present. Go in there full, full well knowing that your organization, if they invested in you to go, come back with knowledge that you can share with them. That means you should be fully equipped to attend the conference. Go in there, meet new people, network with all kinds of different folks that you've never met before. And I know that fear will be a strategy. You got to work to get rid of that fear. So come up to people that you've never met before and find out where they're coming from. Find out what they do. Find out what interests them. If I can give you one bit of experience over the 21 PDCs that I have attended, I find that that fear was there initially. But coming back full circle to our opening conversation before we started to hit the record button, you know, I walked across somebody named Mary Silva and she was laughing in the corner with somebody else. And I was like, I got to go talk to Mary Silva. I didn't know her name at the time, but she introduced me. Oh, that's great. To herself and the person she was laughing with. And I was like, oh. And I look back at that event, meeting Mary Silva, as, you know, I removed my fear. I stepped out of my box. I was a brand new attendee to PDC. And I'm grateful for that. And we're now friends for life. And I think that you can make friends for life at any one of these conferences. So make the best of it when you go. Be present, attend, meet new people, get out of your comfort zone. I think those are all great ways of learning at a PDC for ASSP.

Amazing. Tim, thank you so much. I had so many other things that I wanted to dig into, but I'd want to end it here just because it was such a beautiful closure. And many people who will listen to this will likely be at the conference, and hopefully they'll pass by, say hi, and build new friendships with you. And yeah, if there's anything that you want to share before we, before we wrap this up, please go ahead.

Well, first of all, thank you for what you do. Being on the podcast, I'm honored that you would invite me. And so for everybody that's out there listening, watching, safety is a great business to be in. We're in a noble profession, and the work that you're doing is saving lives. And I don't want— I want— I don't want anybody to ever forget that, that you're out there to save lives. And for you to have a podcast and this platform gets the word out, it gets the communication So keep on doing what you're doing, and I appreciate you, Moussa. It's been a great, great privilege to be here.

Amazing. Thanks a lot, Tim. We'll see you soon.

Okay. Thank you. See you guys.

Thank you for listening to the Safety Heroes Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click follow. Until next time, stay safe.