Road to 100th Episode-Sam Goodman
December 29, 2020
In today's episode, Sheldon continues the road to 100th episode with Sam Goodman the HOP Nerd. They speak about a bunch regarding what Sam is up to during these days, and he gives Sheldon some thoughts for beyond 100 episodes.
[00:00:02] spk_1: this episode is powered by Safety FM. Welcome to the safety consultant podcast. I'm your host. Shell the primacy. This'd the podcast where I show you the business of being a safety consultant and a bunch of other things that it turns out to be. This'll week, we're gonna talk to Sam Goodman. Sam Goodman is the hot nerd. Yep. You know him as toe hop nerd. And he is the betterment evangelist. This week, Sam and I, we actually just get right into it. When I was doing this 100th episode event, I thought for sure I'm gonna need Sam to be on this thing way have really become friendly over the last few months. And it has been great learning Maura, Maura about him and his life seeing how have dedicated to writing he is and then the mind that he has towards helping other people. So we talked about a few things that he's going to do in his local Phoenix area regarding free training for OSHA training, Outreach Way also talked about his pale writer organization that he has, which is a studio of sorts, and it also is a publishing house. So he has a bunch of different types of things in that realm as well. So we've just truly went all across the gamble on this one. We talked a little bit about what it takes to get some balance in your life. And truly balance is one of those topics that I talked about a lot because it means a lot to me. I'm not always balanced. I gotta be honest, and I try to be as best as I can. However, I do have moments of being a balance that have moments that I really need to step back, rewind and see how I'm doing. Eso that z episode. We talk a little bit about everything. If you have not subscribe to the podcast yet, please do go ahead and subscribe to the podcast so you could get every notification this week as we do daily episodes leading to 100. And I also noticed that if you look at my actual podcast from whatever service you're listening to me, it probably has right around 107 or 108 posted episodes. That's actually because when I transferred from one service to the next, it actually picked up a bunch of repeat episodes, so you may see, like episode 30 twice or something like that. So it did it enough times that it makes it look like I have over 100 episodes. But that is not true. E. I have not recorded 100 unique episode yet. It's on the way. January 4th. That will be 1/100 episode with my very special guest. J. Allen J. Allen will be on that episode with me, and that will be the official 100. So go ahead and subscribe to this podcast and what will be even wonderful for me? Because if you give me rating on whatever service you're listening to me on, that means a lot to me. What we'll do is will boost me up into the algorithms for that service. And then it will also help me get ranked so that more people will find the show. And then I could help more people. So it's ah, great service in that. So if you do have the time and you want to say thank you for putting out content for me to help you with your safety, consulting in OSHA compliance and all the other things we talk about, even meditation. Go ahead and do that for me. They'll be really, really wonderful. So let's get into the episode. You're gonna hear me and Sam going ahead and starting right away. At the end of this episode, you're gonna hear just, uh, my song to close everything out in the final bumper from Safety FM. And then we'll be done with this episode tomorrow. You'll have a new episode. So stay tuned. Each day you're gonna have me on the road to 100
[00:04:09] spk_0: go get him. But it's It's that I mean, that's that's the hardest part with the video is like at the time, I was like, I gotta shave some stuff off because I've got to have some time to actually do some like me stuff like I've got a good like like I want at least have like, 10 minutes. And it's like, go take a walk around the neighborhood. If I If I feel like I can go to bed before midnight, let me, you know, E And then we got a daughter. Yeah, well, the past couple of the past couple of months, I've been trying to really hone in on trying to figure out e Don't know if I'm a super huge believer in balance is you know, I think I think to get great and anything, you have to live a pretty unbalanced life to be greatest stuff. But I'm trying to find a better balance. I guess between those things, because the crazy thing about this stuff is actually enjoyed. I love this. I love my day job, Thio. So it never feels like that much of a burden. It's just going okay. I just need, like, if I just had If God could just give me three more hours in the day e mean, it would be fine. Everything would be perfect. Yeah, Yeah. Give me those extra three hours. Everything would be perfect.
[00:05:16] spk_1: That's cool. Well, I e I am definitely with balance. The whole thought to me is, uh, balance is maybe thought of for me, not in a 24 hour day, but in a micro version. But I kind of look at it in the macro version as what does this week look like? Did I have sometimes this week that you know, truly, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe I was going hard at some project. But maybe Thursday I'll wake up late and, you know, do something fun or something.
[00:05:50] spk_0: What? That's that's, you know, something. That's really something That's really helped me a ton I take no credit for I heard it somewhere. I'm like most of us, you know, Im e like to go, and I try to consume stuff as much as I can. It's harder when you create a bunch of stuff, but I'm really pretty purposeful about making sure that just a reading, whether physical books or audio books A lot of times in of audio books because, you know, windshield Tom and stuff. Um, but I'm always trying to listen to video that I just enjoy that stuff, you know, listen to other podcasts and, you know, checks up on YouTube. So I heard it somewhere, but I heard someone talk about their productivity. Um, you know, I started trying to apply some of this around this notion of to your to your best ability. Tried, have certain days that you do certain things well rather than taking the time, because a lot of times on that kind of person will start on something then pause and started something, then pause and then go back and then, you know, just try to not get a bunch stuff in a day. And I could I could be pretty successful that way, but it leaves me completely mentally drained at the end of the day. Um, and the whole premise was was that, you know, if you're gonna write today, make that you're writing day and because once you already started already invested and just finished the day out, if you can, you know, in that in that process, rather than taking that extra energy to stop switch, you know, pivot and move into something else and then re pivot back and just take that day. If you're gonna do a podcast day, you're talking to some of the podcast. Some of them just have, you know, Wednesdays is my podcast. A. That's only days I recorded blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know, I can't really do that with the podcast as much. But I'll take interviews where I get them. I'm super nice. You know, I was like, do whatever is good for you.
[00:07:23] spk_1: E act up in the interviews like you were earlier when we were trying toe like, work stuff out?
[00:07:30] spk_0: No, no, I've So I went. I went the pretty much went the total opposite direction. Like I went like I keep it razor thin now. Razor thin. Yeah. Like so. Just like as an example I recorded with Andrea Baker yesterday. Okay? Her episode is Monday.
[00:07:49] spk_1: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I dio.
[00:07:51] spk_0: So it's Yeah. So but, you know, I'm probably I think I'm gonna try to do that more seasonally. Doesn't make sense. Where there's certain areas in the year where I'm going to try to build up a little bit of back because I know I need it. Yeah. So, like, like, right now, I'm e I think I'm gonna build up because I kinda have a thing. This is rare, but already kind of a thought in my head. Kind of how the rest of the year plays out with the podcast. At least was pretty specific episodes toe where I could probably do that now by myself, that extra time during the during the holiday season, and build a backlog for that. And then, you know, after the first year, when I'm back to just kind of running and gunning, and it's easy to just kind of turn them out, keep them really fresh. But at other times, I think I'm gonna try to build that backlog backup. Maybe not a month or two, but, you know, two or three weeks, you know, at the time let it dwindle down and then go back toe my insanity Razor, razor thin lines there. Tell
[00:08:46] spk_1: me where you guys like. For instance, last time I had you were talking a lot about about safety and health related stuff on. I think that's great. But thisted time I really want to find out. You know, from then to now, pale horse creep just arrived. And then you're the second book. You know, you're what is obscured eso you wrote. That one is well, so you and your writing machine I'm just telling you you've got right or die is your program. Uh, and I'm scared to get that because I wanted for the accountability, but I feel like I do it. I'm gonna end up just getting mad and pissed off because it's gonna do a thing. Oh,
[00:09:32] spk_0: that's that's the hardest part for me is or waas and it still is. I'm a procrastinator at heart. You understand? All right. Um, I just say I'm awful like this, so I don't think her I guess that's better than procrastinator, I guess. But for me, it it was this whole idea that, um I would get stuck. And I'm like, Okay, I'm sit there and I sit there and I'll try to think about, you know, almost almost into this perfectionist mindset. Okay, but then I kind of switched. And writer, I helped with that a little bit to force me to write, but what I what I kind of discovered in that process, And I really don't use it that much anymore. I'm gonna more just throw it in the word, you know, kind of guy. But what? What? What? I found out Number one is that my notebook was killing me. So, um, Stephen King said the writer's notebook is writers graveyard. Its's for ideas that you'll never use. If the story is good enough, you write it down. Not in your notebook. Eso and I kind of started to live by the sword. I'm like, Okay, if the idea is that good, why don't I plot my butt down in a chair behind a computer and start writing it instead of trying to take notes about what I think I should write about later. So that helped me a little bit. But the whole notion of just writing and just starting to write and not stopping because the ideas on paper are way better than that it is in your head, right, Because at least now this on papers tangible and do something with it. It sounds like crap. I always delete it. But what I found is that when you actually force yourself to through a program or just through sheer willpower, toe force stuff out on the paper, usually you put out some good stuff. Is it gonna be full of typos and you're gonna need a But you usually get the ideas out. Once you rough out the ideas, you can polish it later. It's just getting those words out. And what I found with myself is that you know, if I actually force myself to sit down and remove distractions, turn off the television, turn off the music, you know, off the little Yeah, flip off the little wife. I'm gonna silence guy when I'm writing, I gotta I gotta listen to the voices in my head, I guess. But you got Thio, you know, flip off the WiFi switch on the computer. Uh, avoid Facebook. Avoid Instagram. Yeah, And, uh, but when I do that, when I actually pour myself into just writing, I can put out 1000 1500 words in our, you know, pretty easy. Pretty. And I'm not saying Polish Done ready to publish. But I can I can draft out 1000 words and now pretty easy.
[00:12:02] spk_1: And I'm a technical writer. So the stuff I'm writing is truly coming from OSHA compliance, or I'm writing a course for one of my clients or something like that. So when I Price and this is my new pricing, because before they used Thio, get me to like, I just finished one that was 40,000 words, was the pricing for that one. And I kept thinking, while they're getting away with something there because I'm thinking if I am writing roughly, I would say right now and technical writing, I still have the I had it, as I write, which is probably the worst thing like you're telling me I should do so. I'm staying right around 800 to 1000 words per hour, and I'm in that mode. And and now I'm thinking my early is so much I'm charged. They're getting so much out of
[00:12:52] spk_0: steel. What a discount you should charge for 40 hours.
[00:12:54] spk_1: That's exactly right. Eso I truly should have been charging this for 40 hours because I broke it down. And from now on, I'm charging, uh, in that rate of saying I'm thinking of myself, I'm right about 1000 words. And now a Now, er and therefore I'm gonna dio hourly rate equivalent, if you will. And that's gonna be my pricing.
[00:13:19] spk_0: Yeah, And so and I will I will back a little bit and say that I do edit while I'm moving. So when I do rough something out, I am that I do like to scan because for me, a lot of times when I hit that kind of that airports writer's block peace, if I go back and kind of start at the beginning, that chapter and re read what I've written, I kind of get to where it stops and I know where to go next. Now it kind of starts flowing again, right? So But when I'm doing that, I'll kind of edit and ship stuff around and, you know, they're different stuff like that, but yeah, So I won't, like hard edit while I'm going through. But I will Kinda Yeah. I still re edit and gonna go back for a couple times later. But
[00:14:01] spk_1: when we talked last, safety socks was was out and obscure was coming up. So first tell us how safety sucks. Did as far I know you're still promoting and everything else you're Yeah. Initially did it do and then obscure tell us a little bit about the book itself. And then how's that one producing for you?
[00:14:24] spk_0: So both have done have just performed phenomenally well, outside of my wildest dreams. I mean, I'll just say that, uh, statistically, I think it's important for folks. Uh, if you're going to go down the path of writing books and I looked up, I looked this up before I started. I just think it's a good thing for people to understand, and I needed to understand. It, too, is that most independently published books sell like three copies and three is like the actual number. Like they actually sold three copies. Yeah, like they it goes to like, Mom. Dad, Aunt, Right. Like so. And they really don't sell many. They they really don't sell a ton over. All right, So a lot of it has to do with, as as we kind of, you know, because we kind of know. I mean, knowing your audience writing to your audience, a lot of folks don't necessarily follow that advice. And that's just overall indie published books. Let's just say overall and published books eso it. I did not go into it expecting, um, safety sucks to perform the way that it did. Yeah, does it still does? I mean, it's still
[00:15:30] spk_1: physical, and, uh, yeah,
[00:15:33] spk_0: so you know. Well, when I first started down this path before, I really gotta grasp on understanding itself. Publishing. Um, I did what most people probably do or think of when they publish a book. I you got the book written to cure all that stuff I ordered in, you know, four or 500 copies. You know, toe warehouse here. You know, at the office Onda, we become like a mini warehouse because But what's really surprised me was how fast those moves. So it was like every day I'm like, Oh, we got to go by. We need to We need to mail out a stack of books. I've got a good swing back by the studio because I'm gonna mail out a stack of books. So? So there was not understanding the fact that, you know, direct printing was probably much better option, you know, at the time, to less labor intensive oxygen. But that started because not not really understanding that the book was going to really touched a nerve, right? And mostly in a positive way, there's there's a few folks that aren't too fun of uh, you know, if that's okay, I like those people to That's okay. Um, but, you know, it really touched either way, touched a nerve in the community, right? And and for that reason alone, you know, it moved a lot, and again, it continues. Thio, you know when when I log in and take a look at the performance of the book to this day, every time I look, I'm like waiting for it to stop, you know? And I'm sure it will at some point, but I'm like, Yeah, OK,
[00:16:55] spk_1: it's still performing. Okay, So what about the secure,
[00:17:00] spk_0: so obscured? Obscured Did extremely well to, um, you know, completely different market, right, Completely different audience that I'm maybe not even has tapped into, as obviously into my my more professional audience, but did extremely well. It was so just just to put just to put that out there, eso safety sucks. Was number one hot new release for a while, Um, on Amazon and within these categories. Um, just the other day, I don't know what it is at this moment cause it fluctuates, But just the other day it was back at number eight again. Well, it goes, it goes up and down in those charge and charge in those charts. There we go. I'll talk of right Eventually, my redneck coming up in those in those charts, it usually does pretty well obscured. Peaked at number two. Hot New release for its categories. Andi, it still does floats around. It's still in like the top couple 100. It's not nearly as a zoo high a safety six maintains, but yeah, I mean again it z their performance I have. I have no complaints whatsoever about that. Well, they've done. And mostly I'm just happy that they moved to get that message out there. Those messages, you know, super important to me. That's why the or the books were written to begin with. They were never written with sales in mind. They were really written assed passion projects to get those messages out there.
[00:18:17] spk_1: What's your category for? For obscured, Is it like, uh, L g B t Q U
[00:18:23] spk_0: s. So there s o n like like on Amazon. You have a few different categories. Um, but eso like with that when it's like L G b D plus studies, uh, there's its's also falls in the LGBT memoirs. A swell eso. It's it's kind of sub categories under kind of greater. I think it z even sure what it is. But its main category isas for its problems fall under like gender studies or something wonky like that I don't know, but there Yeah,
[00:18:55] spk_1: hell horse, Tell me about Pale Horse. How is that pale horse riding for you? It's good. It's about
[00:19:00] spk_0: it. Za good. So help or stemmed out of writing the first two books or writing the first one and then upon the second when I'm like, if if I'm gonna publish, I'm just gonna start publishing company, right? Because, uh, it just seemed like the right thing to Dio. It seems it seems to have been the right thing to do eso with pale horse. We've got a couple projects in the works right now that we're working on that actually can't dive too much too deep into. But I will tell you that, uh, that there are some other books that are coming out very, very soon. There'll be some announcements around the first of the year. Uh, both so currently. So I will say there's both as of now unless something drastically changes. I always throw that out there. It's the world that we live in, who knows? But, um, yeah, so between myself and others on there's some co authoring stuff happening to that's gonna be super super cool. So you'll see some books coming out from do authors, which is gonna be super neat stuff. And I I know it's everything I'm saying is shrouded in mystery and very, very vague. And I just have to be because there's a mystery, right? It's I have to be because it z e will say I will say this. There are books written. There are books written. They were working on bringing the market right now, but I just can't say anything to after January XYZ how it
[00:20:19] spk_1: is. What's the inner workings of starting a media company? Or you just for for written or you video or what? What what is your your media company or should say, Why choose to start one? So what's the inner workings to that?
[00:20:38] spk_0: So for me, the why choose to start when I think is probably will probably answer a lot of it is I just wanted to help birth cool things into the world, whether it's whether it's safety related or not. Right So even like, uh like like the studio, you're so overkilled because we're playing the music too, right? So this whole idea of even moving beyond kinda and I know that's that's scary. Maybe for some of our safety friends out there, you know, they're like, Well, you do stuff more than safe. Yeah, like I love all kinds of stuff. You know, the the ability to like here in Phoenix. The Phoenix has a great local music scene, you know, able to work with local artist, you know, to be able to work with, just like with the book. We're working with local indie bookstores here, you know, doing stuff like that. Teoh help do events or to help find other other authors that we can help publish to help with recording audio to help with other podcasters. I've got a great friend that I'll give a huge shout out to right now. Um, he and Alison has been on my podcast every time because he's a safety professional. I get to pick on him, calling him and call him an exciting profession because technically, he's I guess he's still a safe. He's still CSP. He's he knows this stuff, but he's not working in safety at the moment. He's, uh, working in some other. So but X just awesome guy. Awesome guy all around, um, and just phenomenal safety person. But just started an amazing podcast called native film talk where they dive into indigenous representation in in films. And so like like being able to help people like, you know, like I helped him create, like his intro Outro music and, you know, just stuff like that Just to be able to help kind of folk get into this into this world. So anything that's cool. So that's gonna be rambling just to say this. Is that you anything that's really cool that I just look at and go? Okay, that's cool. I wanna be a part of that. That was really the Why behind behind Pale horse is that if it's a cool book, because safety sucks like, sell this to a traditional publisher, right? You know, I mean, they're gonna, but it doesn't have a clip art image from from Canada that has two people on people in hard hats. With this one, it can't be a safety book. You It's not in comic sand from the front of the book. I mean, what
[00:22:46] spk_1: do you mean? You know all that stuff now And you gotta know, uh, publishing numbers and you got to know distribution numbers and you're gonna end up having to know, you know, margins and all that stuff too. Said, how do you learn in that stuff?
[00:23:03] spk_0: So, for me, just going through a lot of the process of writing books and self publishing helps a lot. So I will say with pillars like Like we're not What makes us a lot more nimble is that we're not a traditional publisher. Were small scale indie publisher over. All right, so we function in the direct printing space, right? So we don't have the overhead. We don't have the risk that a traditional publisher has. We basically helped take great ideas, work them through the process of bringing them to market through a direct print model. It already exists in the world, right? It's It's already there, right? So we help folks get their product from kind of idea or finished manuscript or somewhere in between and make it not suck for them. Not the idea, but the process. Uh, right, because if you talk to a lot of folks that go through more tradition and there's there's a place for traditional publishers, I'm not. I'm not bashing them, but they really e don't wanna say they screw over their authors. But authors don't really receive the cut, in my opinion that they should their hard work, sweat and tears, you know they're receiving pennies for every book that they sell in a lot of times eso to be able to help folks understand and help them through that that world of, uh, direct print where there isn't the risk where there isn't the need toe, order 10,000 books and warehouse them where we can get their book to market in a very, very fast amount of time. It's not months and months and months of a publisher you know, printing and proofing and getting things ready. And then maybe the book sales. And then maybe, just maybe, if you can. If you can exceed whatever check they wrote you for your original book, which is a pretty low, um, thin. Maybe you're royalty might go up to 50 cents a book, right? So it's that it's this whole different idea about really just helping folks go down. It's an existing path, right? It's an existing path, but helping them come together under a single imprint, which is pale horse to go down that path of direct friend. And then, obviously with her, you know, our marketing and helping to do those bits and pieces of it. And, um, like I pick on book covers all the time, because I'm a firm believer that if the cover sex people don't buy it, yeah, yeah, right. That and unfortunately, in their world, like, there's a lot of great safety books that have horrible covers, right? And you're
[00:25:19] spk_1: like, I think I was looking at it recently, and I have to working versions of my cover. I'm like, I could do better next time, eh? So
[00:25:29] spk_0: you gotta You gotta put like, some flames and some like, uh,
[00:25:34] spk_1: with shooting that something from my hand. Well,
[00:25:37] spk_0: eso, like with like with, uh, with ours Is that is this not just this idea that safety books don't like safety books? In general, they don't have to be boring, right? Because most the content is great. There's folks that, like that's one amazing thing about people being locked in their houses. Is there some folks that have written some amazing books in last year? Absolutely amazing books in the last year. Uh, but with that, you know, the what's in between the coverage is pretty good. It's pretty great stuff, but again, if we're never going to get those great world changing ideas out there, if people look at the book and they go. Well, that looks like a textbook. I'm not reading reading that, you know, Or they look at the price point through a traditional publisher on Amazon in the books listed for, like, 70 bucks. You know, we're 50 bucks for, like, 100 page book, you know? So that was the difference with us. Like when safety specs first come out, we'll sell it for 15 bucks because we can. We're nimble enough. We don't have the risk of the overhead to have to jack the price up to try toe to try to clear our risk. Right? So it's that right? So the to really kind of summarize those inner working did is that I mean, we help folk looks through the process. Overall, we help folks through the process of bringing their book to market and through a direct print model. Um, and we offer, you know, all the cart stuff to authors as well, you know, if they want help with the cover design will help them do that. If they want stuff even down toe just proof reading and thoughts and ideas on the book. And we're glad to help with that, too. We helped pretty much anywhere between all the way down the audiobook production. Obviously, anything else that we that they need besides just besides just, you know, a quote signed author, too. To your pale horse.
[00:27:22] spk_1: Yeah, Awesome. Now for the podcast side. I know that for me. I've got you here is a guest one of my special guest working towards my 100. And I know you passed your 100. So any any tips that you need to give me the or even lessons learned as you're going along the way in this podcasting life, I'm open book. What you got from E
[00:27:45] spk_0: don't I don't know if I could pass on any riel real tips. I mean, I still consider, as I still consider myself a rookie, I guess there's a podcaster because I was just sharing with you. I'm just coming up, you know, just passed. 100 episodes were like 100 16 5. Some sources 100 something. Now, you know, we're just passing up the passing of the year of podcasting or at the first year of podcasting. Um and I don't know. I think for me probably, um the biggest lesson that I kind of learned was just to start and not stop like that was probably the biggest lesson. Because at the beginning, and this is probably more for folks. They're just getting started. You know, at the beginning of the whole thing, I was like, I don't know, nobody's gonna wanna listen, e you know, And then e just jumped it. I just I just dove head first and then, you know, quickly became addicted to it, enjoying it, you know? And, um just ran with it, you know, a Sfar. As you know, the lessons that I've picked up have been really mawr transformative just towards me as a person. Me as a professional, more than it's really been around. Just a podcaster. Um, just because the community that's grown around the podcast and around the greater safety community and just the ability to sit down and have conversations like this and just make friends right? I mean, make friends that that you know that with without the world of podcasting like, that's the stuff that and I'm kind of moving more to like the thankful territory, I guess, than I am from the lessons learnt. But just moving into this kind of thing of saying that, you know, um, the folks that I've had that I had the opportunity to have conversations with on record podcast with and become friends with just such as yourself, you know, that are there to pool lessons from in the long run that I can learn from in the long run that's so valuable that's so valuable, you know? So when when folks kind of start talking about, you know, starting podcasts or or or should they or shouldn't they always always suggest that people do, if they have any, any inch to doing it all they should, if not for anything else from the friendships that grow from it. And, you know, even if they don't like friends from the context of Yeah,
[00:30:05] spk_1: yeah, it does help. E. I was lucky enough, and I know you were part of the safety of fam family, but lucky enough, thio really be part of that, too, because it gives you another added benefit to doing your podcast. You know, we're doing it. We've got yourself already a network. Your family of people in the same uh, while same digital spaces you are on, then having a show being played 24 7 Not your particular show, but just, you know, shows for safety FM on. You know, having your own slot every day is like a so that's a yeah, thank you.
[00:30:45] spk_0: Absolutely. And I think I think it's that right. I think it's, um, the word that I keep landing back on his community. Uh huh. And you brought up J I mean, such a such a amazing thing that j did by pulling together such a diverse an amazing group of people. Yeah. You know, just just the ability to to to wrangle this heard of cats together. E should tell you how awesome, j right? You could wrangle all of us together, this insane bunch of people that we are right. Um but not only that, but to curate such such such differing opinions and a lot of ways and different folks that all have amazing, great, valuable things to bring to the table and like so, I'm gonna under one roof. And what's so great about that, though, is that the community that's growing around that and again, the community that not only grows around e j for individual podcast, but it brings all that together into into a much larger thing, right? I mean, it's just that this mind blowing to me, um, the amount of folks that again, the tune in and listen to our podcast that that that that send me emails was like, Hey, how you doing? I love the show. And e can't believe you guys give this stuff away. You know, this is so awesome. And then then they're like, their mind is blown That Yeah, for sure. You guys like, let's just reply back to them, you know, chat with them like, Oh, you helps out. Yeah, just that kind of network of friends and community and kind of all this stuff toe where e think we've been lacking that in our space for a while. Um, other than maybe, you know, maybe we have. There's some There's some, you know, professional groups out there that do networking and things, I guess, but it's never I've never found that much value in what's been available to us as professionals out there, and I think that's where we've seen kind of this community grow out of, um around social media and around the podcasts and around safety FM and around the hot nerd and around the stage because around all this stuff, because people want mawr from there, they're kind of networks e. I think that's a lot of what we found. What we've kind of discovered is that you know, we can grow these communities have awesome conversation. If I have a problem, I call you up and ask if you dealt with it. Yeah, and that's just such an amazing thing to have that I don't even have to pay membership dues for E. Just like I just have a have an awesome conversation with people and their people out there that think like me. Or maybe they don't think like me. And that's the point. And we could have a real and honest awesome conversation And people can tell me I'm full of crap if I am. And you know, they give me some cool ideas and I get to meet cool. It's just this is awesome. Just talked
[00:33:23] spk_1: about safety. You could talk about music and you don't you also like branches out different ways to Yeah, for me. I feel, uh, just just every time I do a show or every time. Now I'm into the livestream. I've been doing a lot of live streaming lately on Linked in and Facebook and everything else. And my live stream has been specifically thinking about OSHA compliance. Help helping people that really need to understand OSHA compliance. And the podcast is teaching people the businesses safety consulting. So I kind of delineated those two things. But the response from Livestream has been really cool because you couldn't see the the live chats and everything in there, and you get to respond right away. So have you been getting into that? I know you kind of your time is Yeah, Stretch. But I know you've been doing that too.
[00:34:15] spk_0: Yeah, I did that pretty hot and heavy. So again, during the I made a commitment when things kind of went officially locked down that I would do when? Every day and I did for quite a while. I don't know. I remember what the streak was, but it was like a month or two that we did one like, every single day. Um, just some of them was from my sanity, just about, you know, get on here and hang out with folks and you
[00:34:37] spk_1: know that?
[00:34:38] spk_0: Um, no, really. No really kind of topic. Just almost like variety show, just chatting and current events. And you just whatever. I felt like talking about the time ranting about, Um, So yeah, at some point in the future because, you know, a lot of the studio here it was built around the concept of being a live streaming and do video and do anything, you know, kind of in that space. Um, so at some point, that's kind of where I'm at right now. It's the When I have that block to feel I'm gonna jump. I plan on jumping back into doing the live streaming stuff. But for me right now is we're kind of talking before, you know, the calendars really kind of squeezed with everything that's going on. And at some point, yeah, at some point, you know, definitely to get into some frequency what I've really been enjoying lately that was just doing these kind of free events, you know, and their live, live streaming events. You're doing stuff through zoom and you know, doing just different things. And they're not always even safety related, just doing, you know, like like virtual happy hours and just doing like, virtual chats on this. Or maybe we do have a topic. You know, we've done a couple of one of the topics and, you know, doing free webinars. You know, kind of this live stream set up towards it might technically be a webinar. Its's informal people jump in the chat boxes and the button. There's a lot of folks are doing that, which has just been amazing, right? I've got Thio got to participate in a couple of days. It just just awesome. Awesome tools that didn't exist again, back and maybe some silver lining some stuff that we just we're not thinking about or doing, you know, before our whole lot down Kobe thing. Yeah, no
[00:36:12] spk_1: kidding. And lock it down for me. I'm in Florida, so our governor
[00:36:16] spk_0: is there, like you guys are, like, 120% open.
[00:36:19] spk_1: I know exactly right. I mean, he's trying to like just he's wishing it away. You know,
[00:36:28] spk_0: I'm in. There is also It's not. We're not far behind you. You guys might be 100. You guys might be turned to 11 were on 10 e.
[00:36:38] spk_1: I know that you're I'm gonna end up doing more and And currently, my schedule set up where, um, I have enough 2021 online things that I'm my calendar up to December 2021. So I know I'm going to be doing a lot more online, but I'm looking at plugging some of those calendar gaps with some of my own things. Like you said, you know, might be Webinars. They might be, you know, live events. But I want to do a lot of partnering with people. So are you down with some of that?
[00:37:13] spk_0: Absolutely. I love stuff like that. Yes, well, and especially things like that, because I mean, e think it's it was this thought right about and I've continued to try to do things with the podcast and everything with this kind of general thought way always started off with kind of that mantra. Just making the world a better place to work on and where that really comes from is this idea of service, right? That the community is not in service to me. I'm in service to the community. Yeah, right. So it's that it's is how do we ban together to make the world a better place. We're going, especially nowadays. You know where where things are. Tough times are tough. You know, there's a lot of safety professionals that are out of work. There's a lot of such a profession out there that are struggling to get professional development that they need, whether they're in work or not, you know, especially the ones you know, that they found themselves non essential on. And there's a significant portion of those folks eso anything that we can do to give back to the community, especially in these times, but always but especially right now, um, something I'm always ready to jump right on board with. If we could do a webinar and I can't I don't know, I just when I first started in this vein of kind of, um, social media and especially with with hop on human performance to kind of safety differently stuff it was almost like the information was, other than buying a book and reading it on your own, at least to find the class or something. It was There was just not enough classes, so it appeared as if it was almost behind the veil of secrecy right. It was everything behind almost a paywall. If you wanted to have a real conversation about it. Yeah, other than tuning into a podcast, right? You couldn't find anything that was just People sit around chatting, and Q and A and, you know, ask me anything type of stuff. You know, Um and so the really cool thing is that that stuff's all available now, you know, And that's how we really pushed this rock farther up the hill, you know, is is by just opening up and just going, you know, just have that event. It's free because sun up, we'll hang out, We'll talk about anything you want. If you wanna talk about the weather, we're talking about whether you wanna talk about half. We'll talk about hop, you know, But it all it all still kind of grows from that idea of, you know, being in service to other people, being in service to our community, being in service to other safety professionals and really providing that stuff. Right? Just throwing it out there, you know, and like, right now, I mean, um, we're trying. We're trying toe or we're working on some stuff here. Just locally, right locally in the greater Phoenix area just to give away training, right? Just to do training for free, for safety professionals that are out of work. Because just because, you know, just because they're in a again, we're pretty open. So we can we can put people in a conference room if way we're hearing in Arizona, so we can organize them events. And those are the things that we're looking at right now. We're starting off for up here locally, Um, even down to just organizing some kind of again local local here to Phoenix. You know, organizing groups of there's tons of safety professionals in Phoenix. How can we ban together on locally kind of pool? Our resource is, you know, whether whether somebody teaching 10 or 30 or somebody teaching other classroom teaching hot classes, how can we come together as even just a local group of safety professionals help give back to those folks that might be hurting? Yeah, right now. So that that's a lot of where it kind of stemming even farther from, You know, I kind of took the webinar topic even kind of to the extreme, but it zits in that vein of kind of kind of service and helping. Yeah, so it's It's something that's really been on my mind a lot lately, with as many as many phone calls I get from other safety professionals like, Hey, man, I'm you know, things were rough right now. You know anybody that's hard, you could put me in any direction,
[00:40:44] spk_1: e get those as well. And truly I feel the same way. I know I have, uh, you know, I don't think it's a d economy in any way, but I have paid things and I have free things, and I feel that, you know, when you're ready for the pay stuff, I have it there. But I have so much free stuff out there that I feel that it's good to to still have some things where people could get it at low or no cause. And I do have some products or services that is paid, and I don't feel bad about that because I e that catalog, if you will free stuff that is valuable. It's a poignant and it's also, you know, not not just cheapo stuff.
[00:41:31] spk_0: Yeah, I mean that that's exactly exactly the same way exactly. Somebody because you with with, especially with the amount of free stuff that we know within our little like circle folks that, you know that we constantly I could I would hate to know if you try to put a price on the material that we just give away. And again, I'm perfectly I enjoy it. I like it more. I think when I give it a e thinking because there's not as much pressure I don't I don't know, but But exactly the point is, is that, you know, um all of that comes full circle. I'm a farm believer in that, you know, if you give it away, right, if you give it away, people eventually pay you for it. You know, if you if you're in service people, if you're in service to others, people see that they feel that they can tell the difference, you know, and they're gonna You know what? I'm definitely going business with Sheldon because I could just tell, you know, he's just in service to others. He does so much free stuff for the community. Does you know? So when it's time, it's time to jump in tow, pay That's the person I'm thinking off, you know?
[00:42:39] spk_1: Hey, E, no. You get a hard break coming up soon. But are you? Are you committed to the hop nerd Montecor or Monica or you gonna You're also here You every now and then say safety Evangel or know what's what's the the Well, evangelist, the
[00:42:59] spk_0: betterment, the betterment evangelist.
[00:43:01] spk_1: Yeah, I've heard both. So I'm thinking, Are you Are you prepping us for a transition or
[00:43:09] spk_0: No, You know it, Z, um when it comes down to really thinking about what? What? I'm what I'm doing, You know, it is that everything kind of comes back to betterment. Everything comes back to that point, right? But still, you know, for me, I've the hop nerd was a title that was given to me by others. And so I plan on keeping that, you know, I don't I don't have any e Think it's become known that it's that I'm not just hot nerd? Yeah, you know, But at at at the root, at the root of everything that I dio, um, like the hot principles. Just another example. You know, those air trying through through through beliefs for me, right? So I try my best to apply those to any other bits, so I think it's still think still a truthful statement is still fair statement. Stick with the hop side and the hot nerd because, um, the nerd thing, I really appreciate it. And that's why I stuck with it because I never wanted to be known as any form of hop or safety guru or any You're the hop or safety. God. You know, there is those folks out there in the industry, and they're very, very well known, you know, and Thea upper echelons, right? Yeah. Yeah. People can't. People can't hear me rolling my eyes through the microphone.
[00:44:34] spk_1: E I was hoping to get one of these like, stupid, you know, really great scoops, you know, like like what? Your news business. You know, like I got him.
[00:44:46] spk_0: I really You know, I really do promote this idea of just doing things better. Um, and that's really how how I found this kind of thing. Evangelist of betterment. Just cause I like that, because when when I, um when I first kind of got into hop and especially when? Several several years back, You know, when I was when I was helping lead a couple companies through that transition day job. Employers, you know, moved becoming more hop based organizations. E kind of That was kind of got got called, you know, the evangelist because I was going around. We call them our underground or guerrilla training sessions because none of it was approved. Way just went and started teaching people hop on, and then it was kind of and I know this probably goes against every kind of formal change management management thought, but we're like if we go out and we get enough people on board will start a revolution on, and that's kind of what happened. It got to the point where it's finally e won't name any organizations, but the executives like what's going on? Something's changing and we need to know is changing it. Amazing how quickly tomorrow it's amazing how quickly you get an audience with executives. When you go around being the safety hippie, telling people that blame doesn't fix to be
[00:46:00] spk_1: like you're forced to be that most your change analysis and then
[00:46:06] spk_0: right you're right, E. But you know, that's where that kind of that kind of evangelist term came from is as I was, because I was going around and I was evangelizing lot at the time throughout these organizations. Um, yeah, that's a lot of what I still continue to do, you know, in whether with no no secret that I maintained a day job. That's my biggest. That's my day job to I'm literally, ah, hop evangelist in my organization e. And then I do that in my second PM job to which is all this stuff's going. But I really liked that idea of the evangelist piece. And then when it really got down to that kind of notion of just making work, suck less. Yes, just in general, make it work. Not suck is bad. It's just making things better because we get so tied up in this notion of, well, I'm a safety to person. I'm a traditional say, and that's a hot person, and that's a safety differently person. And that's that's an H R O person. And okay, like I get it, they're all a little different on I get it. They're all a little different. The only thing that a lot of us have in common is that they throw rocks at the BBS people, which isn't fair either, you know? And so we're all we all kind of come from this little bit of a different school thought, but what we all align on is this idea of doing safety better. Yeah, And that's where I kind of landed on this kind of this. This evangelist, betterment, betterment, evangelist and even safety Better Like when I start talking about I've had this conversation with a bunch of people where I'm so like, yeah, it's hop, you know, But I don't even really call it hop that much anymore. Just call it, you know, doing safety better because we get so hung up on these these naming conventions that were just way just paralyzed. And we can't move forward because we're like, Oh, that person's persons of BBS. We don't talk to them. Yeah, s's a long It's a long story to explain away some of those names, I guess. But when I when I really thought about what? What? What I want on my on my e. Guess you know that there's that that title or if you wanna put a title on your resume on your business cars when I thought about Really What? What I do my Hopfner I've been a majority of my day studying human and organizational performance organization, performance of culture in some form or fashion of the other. And the other portion of my day, the other 50% of that I spend evangelizing, hopping betterment and trying to do safety better so that z Ugo just boil those down and then you end up with a hot nerd and the betterment evangelist.
[00:48:39] spk_1: Alright, what does 2021 look for Sam Goodman.
[00:48:44] spk_0: Busy right now. Busy. Busy is good. You know, if I had to to peer into my crystal ball of 2021. Um, unfortunately, I don't see much of the problems that we face in this crazy world changing very much into 2021. I think a lot of what? Ah, a lot of what we're dealing with right now with, uh, this talks about going back into lockdowns and back into different things.
[00:49:10] spk_1: And, you
[00:49:11] spk_0: know, I think that that's going to continue
[00:49:12] spk_1: for quite a bit. Um, I
[00:49:14] spk_0: know a lot of employers that I speak with, um a lot of organizations I speak with a lot of them were talking about not going back to you in person work until the end of next year.
[00:49:22] spk_1: Now eso
[00:49:24] spk_0: itt's pretty pretty interesting is pretty intense. At least I could speak to the folks I speak to here in Arizona quite a bit especially. But for me, what I see is is, you know,
[00:49:32] spk_1: uh, more books, So I kind of shared that. There's gonna
[00:49:35] spk_0: be more books, I will tell you that at a bare
[00:49:37] spk_1: minimum right now that you're going to see, um, two books that will probably have my name on them somewhere. That's my, uh, there
[00:49:48] spk_0: is your scoop. There is your scoop. And if you wanted to find out more about that, here's my my my hype marketing, I guess if you want to find out more about that, it will be
[00:49:57] spk_1: towards the end of the year. I'll probably I'll either drop some of the names of what we're doing either as Christmas presents or
[00:50:03] spk_0: his New Year's gifts. Haven't decided where that needs to come out yet, and there'll be some pre order stuff coming up. But first, the year
[00:50:08] spk_1: two eso there's more. There's more stuff coming in the way of books and I'll say safety books. I would say that their safety related books um beyond that more podcasts obviously gonna continue with the podcasts. Um, all
[00:50:22] spk_0: that stuff happening as far as anything new with that I don't know. I think we're just gonna continue toe, keep having these valuable conversations and probably do some more minis. I've been doing a safety sucks miniseries lately, so I think we're going to do some more miniseries focusing on some different stuff. Um, you know, I wanna I wanna have some conversations around some of more of the hot basics, Andi, I wanna have just to provide that. The folks that maybe haven't haven't taken that dive from the basics, Um, and also get into some of what we're just talking about mawr in a mawr pointed fashion. Maybe not pointed, but a more focused fashion. That's part of the right way to say that in a more focused fashion around how we bring together
[00:51:00] spk_1: the different schools of thoughts, you know, around safety in general, right, To move safety
[00:51:06] spk_0: in a better direction rather than all this kind of fighting that continues to happen. E i don't know what that miniseries looks like. Everyone is called E. Those are the things that are scribbled on the board right now. For the
[00:51:18] spk_1: podcast, at least it's like like drop your set e Yeah,
[00:51:24] spk_0: yeah, exactly. And so And to be on that, you know, we're looking at doing some stuff, and it's it's scary. I know people get super scared. I'm saying this, but as barring that, the state of Arizona remains open at any point in 2021. We're looking at doing some in person stuff here locally, really gonna doing some impressive stuff.
[00:51:42] spk_1: Maybe around about here, there, we'll see. We'll see what 2021 brings. But
[00:51:47] spk_0: like most a lot of virtual stuff obviously happening. You know, we're in a lot of virtual stuff
[00:51:52] spk_1: and and
[00:51:53] spk_0: free events and all kinds of other events and virtual stuff with other organizations and just just like you filling up, trying to fill up
[00:52:00] spk_1: the calendar for next year and try to make it work, try to put a pencil in some sleep somewhere. That's that's a big goal for 2021 get sleep. Absolutely. E. This episode has been powered by safety FM
[00:04:09] spk_0: go get him. But it's It's that I mean, that's that's the hardest part with the video is like at the time, I was like, I gotta shave some stuff off because I've got to have some time to actually do some like me stuff like I've got a good like like I want at least have like, 10 minutes. And it's like, go take a walk around the neighborhood. If I If I feel like I can go to bed before midnight, let me, you know, E And then we got a daughter. Yeah, well, the past couple of the past couple of months, I've been trying to really hone in on trying to figure out e Don't know if I'm a super huge believer in balance is you know, I think I think to get great and anything, you have to live a pretty unbalanced life to be greatest stuff. But I'm trying to find a better balance. I guess between those things, because the crazy thing about this stuff is actually enjoyed. I love this. I love my day job, Thio. So it never feels like that much of a burden. It's just going okay. I just need, like, if I just had If God could just give me three more hours in the day e mean, it would be fine. Everything would be perfect. Yeah, Yeah. Give me those extra three hours. Everything would be perfect.
[00:05:16] spk_1: That's cool. Well, I e I am definitely with balance. The whole thought to me is, uh, balance is maybe thought of for me, not in a 24 hour day, but in a micro version. But I kind of look at it in the macro version as what does this week look like? Did I have sometimes this week that you know, truly, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe I was going hard at some project. But maybe Thursday I'll wake up late and, you know, do something fun or something.
[00:05:50] spk_0: What? That's that's, you know, something. That's really something That's really helped me a ton I take no credit for I heard it somewhere. I'm like most of us, you know, Im e like to go, and I try to consume stuff as much as I can. It's harder when you create a bunch of stuff, but I'm really pretty purposeful about making sure that just a reading, whether physical books or audio books A lot of times in of audio books because, you know, windshield Tom and stuff. Um, but I'm always trying to listen to video that I just enjoy that stuff, you know, listen to other podcasts and, you know, checks up on YouTube. So I heard it somewhere, but I heard someone talk about their productivity. Um, you know, I started trying to apply some of this around this notion of to your to your best ability. Tried, have certain days that you do certain things well rather than taking the time, because a lot of times on that kind of person will start on something then pause and started something, then pause and then go back and then, you know, just try to not get a bunch stuff in a day. And I could I could be pretty successful that way, but it leaves me completely mentally drained at the end of the day. Um, and the whole premise was was that, you know, if you're gonna write today, make that you're writing day and because once you already started already invested and just finished the day out, if you can, you know, in that in that process, rather than taking that extra energy to stop switch, you know, pivot and move into something else and then re pivot back and just take that day. If you're gonna do a podcast day, you're talking to some of the podcast. Some of them just have, you know, Wednesdays is my podcast. A. That's only days I recorded blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know, I can't really do that with the podcast as much. But I'll take interviews where I get them. I'm super nice. You know, I was like, do whatever is good for you.
[00:07:23] spk_1: E act up in the interviews like you were earlier when we were trying toe like, work stuff out?
[00:07:30] spk_0: No, no, I've So I went. I went the pretty much went the total opposite direction. Like I went like I keep it razor thin now. Razor thin. Yeah. Like so. Just like as an example I recorded with Andrea Baker yesterday. Okay? Her episode is Monday.
[00:07:49] spk_1: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I dio.
[00:07:51] spk_0: So it's Yeah. So but, you know, I'm probably I think I'm gonna try to do that more seasonally. Doesn't make sense. Where there's certain areas in the year where I'm going to try to build up a little bit of back because I know I need it. Yeah. So, like, like, right now, I'm e I think I'm gonna build up because I kinda have a thing. This is rare, but already kind of a thought in my head. Kind of how the rest of the year plays out with the podcast. At least was pretty specific episodes toe where I could probably do that now by myself, that extra time during the during the holiday season, and build a backlog for that. And then, you know, after the first year, when I'm back to just kind of running and gunning, and it's easy to just kind of turn them out, keep them really fresh. But at other times, I think I'm gonna try to build that backlog backup. Maybe not a month or two, but, you know, two or three weeks, you know, at the time let it dwindle down and then go back toe my insanity Razor, razor thin lines there. Tell
[00:08:46] spk_1: me where you guys like. For instance, last time I had you were talking a lot about about safety and health related stuff on. I think that's great. But thisted time I really want to find out. You know, from then to now, pale horse creep just arrived. And then you're the second book. You know, you're what is obscured eso you wrote. That one is well, so you and your writing machine I'm just telling you you've got right or die is your program. Uh, and I'm scared to get that because I wanted for the accountability, but I feel like I do it. I'm gonna end up just getting mad and pissed off because it's gonna do a thing. Oh,
[00:09:32] spk_0: that's that's the hardest part for me is or waas and it still is. I'm a procrastinator at heart. You understand? All right. Um, I just say I'm awful like this, so I don't think her I guess that's better than procrastinator, I guess. But for me, it it was this whole idea that, um I would get stuck. And I'm like, Okay, I'm sit there and I sit there and I'll try to think about, you know, almost almost into this perfectionist mindset. Okay, but then I kind of switched. And writer, I helped with that a little bit to force me to write, but what I what I kind of discovered in that process, And I really don't use it that much anymore. I'm gonna more just throw it in the word, you know, kind of guy. But what? What? What? I found out Number one is that my notebook was killing me. So, um, Stephen King said the writer's notebook is writers graveyard. Its's for ideas that you'll never use. If the story is good enough, you write it down. Not in your notebook. Eso and I kind of started to live by the sword. I'm like, Okay, if the idea is that good, why don't I plot my butt down in a chair behind a computer and start writing it instead of trying to take notes about what I think I should write about later. So that helped me a little bit. But the whole notion of just writing and just starting to write and not stopping because the ideas on paper are way better than that it is in your head, right, Because at least now this on papers tangible and do something with it. It sounds like crap. I always delete it. But what I found is that when you actually force yourself to through a program or just through sheer willpower, toe force stuff out on the paper, usually you put out some good stuff. Is it gonna be full of typos and you're gonna need a But you usually get the ideas out. Once you rough out the ideas, you can polish it later. It's just getting those words out. And what I found with myself is that you know, if I actually force myself to sit down and remove distractions, turn off the television, turn off the music, you know, off the little Yeah, flip off the little wife. I'm gonna silence guy when I'm writing, I gotta I gotta listen to the voices in my head, I guess. But you got Thio, you know, flip off the WiFi switch on the computer. Uh, avoid Facebook. Avoid Instagram. Yeah, And, uh, but when I do that, when I actually pour myself into just writing, I can put out 1000 1500 words in our, you know, pretty easy. Pretty. And I'm not saying Polish Done ready to publish. But I can I can draft out 1000 words and now pretty easy.
[00:12:02] spk_1: And I'm a technical writer. So the stuff I'm writing is truly coming from OSHA compliance, or I'm writing a course for one of my clients or something like that. So when I Price and this is my new pricing, because before they used Thio, get me to like, I just finished one that was 40,000 words, was the pricing for that one. And I kept thinking, while they're getting away with something there because I'm thinking if I am writing roughly, I would say right now and technical writing, I still have the I had it, as I write, which is probably the worst thing like you're telling me I should do so. I'm staying right around 800 to 1000 words per hour, and I'm in that mode. And and now I'm thinking my early is so much I'm charged. They're getting so much out of
[00:12:52] spk_0: steel. What a discount you should charge for 40 hours.
[00:12:54] spk_1: That's exactly right. Eso I truly should have been charging this for 40 hours because I broke it down. And from now on, I'm charging, uh, in that rate of saying I'm thinking of myself, I'm right about 1000 words. And now a Now, er and therefore I'm gonna dio hourly rate equivalent, if you will. And that's gonna be my pricing.
[00:13:19] spk_0: Yeah, And so and I will I will back a little bit and say that I do edit while I'm moving. So when I do rough something out, I am that I do like to scan because for me, a lot of times when I hit that kind of that airports writer's block peace, if I go back and kind of start at the beginning, that chapter and re read what I've written, I kind of get to where it stops and I know where to go next. Now it kind of starts flowing again, right? So But when I'm doing that, I'll kind of edit and ship stuff around and, you know, they're different stuff like that, but yeah, So I won't, like hard edit while I'm going through. But I will Kinda Yeah. I still re edit and gonna go back for a couple times later. But
[00:14:01] spk_1: when we talked last, safety socks was was out and obscure was coming up. So first tell us how safety sucks. Did as far I know you're still promoting and everything else you're Yeah. Initially did it do and then obscure tell us a little bit about the book itself. And then how's that one producing for you?
[00:14:24] spk_0: So both have done have just performed phenomenally well, outside of my wildest dreams. I mean, I'll just say that, uh, statistically, I think it's important for folks. Uh, if you're going to go down the path of writing books and I looked up, I looked this up before I started. I just think it's a good thing for people to understand, and I needed to understand. It, too, is that most independently published books sell like three copies and three is like the actual number. Like they actually sold three copies. Yeah, like they it goes to like, Mom. Dad, Aunt, Right. Like so. And they really don't sell many. They they really don't sell a ton over. All right, So a lot of it has to do with, as as we kind of, you know, because we kind of know. I mean, knowing your audience writing to your audience, a lot of folks don't necessarily follow that advice. And that's just overall indie published books. Let's just say overall and published books eso it. I did not go into it expecting, um, safety sucks to perform the way that it did. Yeah, does it still does? I mean, it's still
[00:15:30] spk_1: physical, and, uh, yeah,
[00:15:33] spk_0: so you know. Well, when I first started down this path before, I really gotta grasp on understanding itself. Publishing. Um, I did what most people probably do or think of when they publish a book. I you got the book written to cure all that stuff I ordered in, you know, four or 500 copies. You know, toe warehouse here. You know, at the office Onda, we become like a mini warehouse because But what's really surprised me was how fast those moves. So it was like every day I'm like, Oh, we got to go by. We need to We need to mail out a stack of books. I've got a good swing back by the studio because I'm gonna mail out a stack of books. So? So there was not understanding the fact that, you know, direct printing was probably much better option, you know, at the time, to less labor intensive oxygen. But that started because not not really understanding that the book was going to really touched a nerve, right? And mostly in a positive way, there's there's a few folks that aren't too fun of uh, you know, if that's okay, I like those people to That's okay. Um, but, you know, it really touched either way, touched a nerve in the community, right? And and for that reason alone, you know, it moved a lot, and again, it continues. Thio, you know when when I log in and take a look at the performance of the book to this day, every time I look, I'm like waiting for it to stop, you know? And I'm sure it will at some point, but I'm like, Yeah, OK,
[00:16:55] spk_1: it's still performing. Okay, So what about the secure,
[00:17:00] spk_0: so obscured? Obscured Did extremely well to, um, you know, completely different market, right, Completely different audience that I'm maybe not even has tapped into, as obviously into my my more professional audience, but did extremely well. It was so just just to put just to put that out there, eso safety sucks. Was number one hot new release for a while, Um, on Amazon and within these categories. Um, just the other day, I don't know what it is at this moment cause it fluctuates, But just the other day it was back at number eight again. Well, it goes, it goes up and down in those charge and charge in those charts. There we go. I'll talk of right Eventually, my redneck coming up in those in those charts, it usually does pretty well obscured. Peaked at number two. Hot New release for its categories. Andi, it still does floats around. It's still in like the top couple 100. It's not nearly as a zoo high a safety six maintains, but yeah, I mean again it z their performance I have. I have no complaints whatsoever about that. Well, they've done. And mostly I'm just happy that they moved to get that message out there. Those messages, you know, super important to me. That's why the or the books were written to begin with. They were never written with sales in mind. They were really written assed passion projects to get those messages out there.
[00:18:17] spk_1: What's your category for? For obscured, Is it like, uh, L g B t Q U
[00:18:23] spk_0: s. So there s o n like like on Amazon. You have a few different categories. Um, but eso like with that when it's like L G b D plus studies, uh, there's its's also falls in the LGBT memoirs. A swell eso. It's it's kind of sub categories under kind of greater. I think it z even sure what it is. But its main category isas for its problems fall under like gender studies or something wonky like that I don't know, but there Yeah,
[00:18:55] spk_1: hell horse, Tell me about Pale Horse. How is that pale horse riding for you? It's good. It's about
[00:19:00] spk_0: it. Za good. So help or stemmed out of writing the first two books or writing the first one and then upon the second when I'm like, if if I'm gonna publish, I'm just gonna start publishing company, right? Because, uh, it just seemed like the right thing to Dio. It seems it seems to have been the right thing to do eso with pale horse. We've got a couple projects in the works right now that we're working on that actually can't dive too much too deep into. But I will tell you that, uh, that there are some other books that are coming out very, very soon. There'll be some announcements around the first of the year. Uh, both so currently. So I will say there's both as of now unless something drastically changes. I always throw that out there. It's the world that we live in, who knows? But, um, yeah, so between myself and others on there's some co authoring stuff happening to that's gonna be super super cool. So you'll see some books coming out from do authors, which is gonna be super neat stuff. And I I know it's everything I'm saying is shrouded in mystery and very, very vague. And I just have to be because there's a mystery, right? It's I have to be because it z e will say I will say this. There are books written. There are books written. They were working on bringing the market right now, but I just can't say anything to after January XYZ how it
[00:20:19] spk_1: is. What's the inner workings of starting a media company? Or you just for for written or you video or what? What what is your your media company or should say, Why choose to start one? So what's the inner workings to that?
[00:20:38] spk_0: So for me, the why choose to start when I think is probably will probably answer a lot of it is I just wanted to help birth cool things into the world, whether it's whether it's safety related or not. Right So even like, uh like like the studio, you're so overkilled because we're playing the music too, right? So this whole idea of even moving beyond kinda and I know that's that's scary. Maybe for some of our safety friends out there, you know, they're like, Well, you do stuff more than safe. Yeah, like I love all kinds of stuff. You know, the the ability to like here in Phoenix. The Phoenix has a great local music scene, you know, able to work with local artist, you know, to be able to work with, just like with the book. We're working with local indie bookstores here, you know, doing stuff like that. Teoh help do events or to help find other other authors that we can help publish to help with recording audio to help with other podcasters. I've got a great friend that I'll give a huge shout out to right now. Um, he and Alison has been on my podcast every time because he's a safety professional. I get to pick on him, calling him and call him an exciting profession because technically, he's I guess he's still a safe. He's still CSP. He's he knows this stuff, but he's not working in safety at the moment. He's, uh, working in some other. So but X just awesome guy. Awesome guy all around, um, and just phenomenal safety person. But just started an amazing podcast called native film talk where they dive into indigenous representation in in films. And so like like being able to help people like, you know, like I helped him create, like his intro Outro music and, you know, just stuff like that Just to be able to help kind of folk get into this into this world. So anything that's cool. So that's gonna be rambling just to say this. Is that you anything that's really cool that I just look at and go? Okay, that's cool. I wanna be a part of that. That was really the Why behind behind Pale horse is that if it's a cool book, because safety sucks like, sell this to a traditional publisher, right? You know, I mean, they're gonna, but it doesn't have a clip art image from from Canada that has two people on people in hard hats. With this one, it can't be a safety book. You It's not in comic sand from the front of the book. I mean, what
[00:22:46] spk_1: do you mean? You know all that stuff now And you gotta know, uh, publishing numbers and you got to know distribution numbers and you're gonna end up having to know, you know, margins and all that stuff too. Said, how do you learn in that stuff?
[00:23:03] spk_0: So, for me, just going through a lot of the process of writing books and self publishing helps a lot. So I will say with pillars like Like we're not What makes us a lot more nimble is that we're not a traditional publisher. Were small scale indie publisher over. All right, so we function in the direct printing space, right? So we don't have the overhead. We don't have the risk that a traditional publisher has. We basically helped take great ideas, work them through the process of bringing them to market through a direct print model. It already exists in the world, right? It's It's already there, right? So we help folks get their product from kind of idea or finished manuscript or somewhere in between and make it not suck for them. Not the idea, but the process. Uh, right, because if you talk to a lot of folks that go through more tradition and there's there's a place for traditional publishers, I'm not. I'm not bashing them, but they really e don't wanna say they screw over their authors. But authors don't really receive the cut, in my opinion that they should their hard work, sweat and tears, you know they're receiving pennies for every book that they sell in a lot of times eso to be able to help folks understand and help them through that that world of, uh, direct print where there isn't the risk where there isn't the need toe, order 10,000 books and warehouse them where we can get their book to market in a very, very fast amount of time. It's not months and months and months of a publisher you know, printing and proofing and getting things ready. And then maybe the book sales. And then maybe, just maybe, if you can. If you can exceed whatever check they wrote you for your original book, which is a pretty low, um, thin. Maybe you're royalty might go up to 50 cents a book, right? So it's that it's this whole different idea about really just helping folks go down. It's an existing path, right? It's an existing path, but helping them come together under a single imprint, which is pale horse to go down that path of direct friend. And then, obviously with her, you know, our marketing and helping to do those bits and pieces of it. And, um, like I pick on book covers all the time, because I'm a firm believer that if the cover sex people don't buy it, yeah, yeah, right. That and unfortunately, in their world, like, there's a lot of great safety books that have horrible covers, right? And you're
[00:25:19] spk_1: like, I think I was looking at it recently, and I have to working versions of my cover. I'm like, I could do better next time, eh? So
[00:25:29] spk_0: you gotta You gotta put like, some flames and some like, uh,
[00:25:34] spk_1: with shooting that something from my hand. Well,
[00:25:37] spk_0: eso, like with like with, uh, with ours Is that is this not just this idea that safety books don't like safety books? In general, they don't have to be boring, right? Because most the content is great. There's folks that, like that's one amazing thing about people being locked in their houses. Is there some folks that have written some amazing books in last year? Absolutely amazing books in the last year. Uh, but with that, you know, the what's in between the coverage is pretty good. It's pretty great stuff, but again, if we're never going to get those great world changing ideas out there, if people look at the book and they go. Well, that looks like a textbook. I'm not reading reading that, you know, Or they look at the price point through a traditional publisher on Amazon in the books listed for, like, 70 bucks. You know, we're 50 bucks for, like, 100 page book, you know? So that was the difference with us. Like when safety specs first come out, we'll sell it for 15 bucks because we can. We're nimble enough. We don't have the risk of the overhead to have to jack the price up to try toe to try to clear our risk. Right? So it's that right? So the to really kind of summarize those inner working did is that I mean, we help folk looks through the process. Overall, we help folks through the process of bringing their book to market and through a direct print model. Um, and we offer, you know, all the cart stuff to authors as well, you know, if they want help with the cover design will help them do that. If they want stuff even down toe just proof reading and thoughts and ideas on the book. And we're glad to help with that, too. We helped pretty much anywhere between all the way down the audiobook production. Obviously, anything else that we that they need besides just besides just, you know, a quote signed author, too. To your pale horse.
[00:27:22] spk_1: Yeah, Awesome. Now for the podcast side. I know that for me. I've got you here is a guest one of my special guest working towards my 100. And I know you passed your 100. So any any tips that you need to give me the or even lessons learned as you're going along the way in this podcasting life, I'm open book. What you got from E
[00:27:45] spk_0: don't I don't know if I could pass on any riel real tips. I mean, I still consider, as I still consider myself a rookie, I guess there's a podcaster because I was just sharing with you. I'm just coming up, you know, just passed. 100 episodes were like 100 16 5. Some sources 100 something. Now, you know, we're just passing up the passing of the year of podcasting or at the first year of podcasting. Um and I don't know. I think for me probably, um the biggest lesson that I kind of learned was just to start and not stop like that was probably the biggest lesson. Because at the beginning, and this is probably more for folks. They're just getting started. You know, at the beginning of the whole thing, I was like, I don't know, nobody's gonna wanna listen, e you know, And then e just jumped it. I just I just dove head first and then, you know, quickly became addicted to it, enjoying it, you know? And, um just ran with it, you know, a Sfar. As you know, the lessons that I've picked up have been really mawr transformative just towards me as a person. Me as a professional, more than it's really been around. Just a podcaster. Um, just because the community that's grown around the podcast and around the greater safety community and just the ability to sit down and have conversations like this and just make friends right? I mean, make friends that that you know that with without the world of podcasting like, that's the stuff that and I'm kind of moving more to like the thankful territory, I guess, than I am from the lessons learnt. But just moving into this kind of thing of saying that, you know, um, the folks that I've had that I had the opportunity to have conversations with on record podcast with and become friends with just such as yourself, you know, that are there to pool lessons from in the long run that I can learn from in the long run that's so valuable that's so valuable, you know? So when when folks kind of start talking about, you know, starting podcasts or or or should they or shouldn't they always always suggest that people do, if they have any, any inch to doing it all they should, if not for anything else from the friendships that grow from it. And, you know, even if they don't like friends from the context of Yeah,
[00:30:05] spk_1: yeah, it does help. E. I was lucky enough, and I know you were part of the safety of fam family, but lucky enough, thio really be part of that, too, because it gives you another added benefit to doing your podcast. You know, we're doing it. We've got yourself already a network. Your family of people in the same uh, while same digital spaces you are on, then having a show being played 24 7 Not your particular show, but just, you know, shows for safety FM on. You know, having your own slot every day is like a so that's a yeah, thank you.
[00:30:45] spk_0: Absolutely. And I think I think it's that right. I think it's, um, the word that I keep landing back on his community. Uh huh. And you brought up J I mean, such a such a amazing thing that j did by pulling together such a diverse an amazing group of people. Yeah. You know, just just the ability to to to wrangle this heard of cats together. E should tell you how awesome, j right? You could wrangle all of us together, this insane bunch of people that we are right. Um but not only that, but to curate such such such differing opinions and a lot of ways and different folks that all have amazing, great, valuable things to bring to the table and like so, I'm gonna under one roof. And what's so great about that, though, is that the community that's growing around that and again, the community that not only grows around e j for individual podcast, but it brings all that together into into a much larger thing, right? I mean, it's just that this mind blowing to me, um, the amount of folks that again, the tune in and listen to our podcast that that that that send me emails was like, Hey, how you doing? I love the show. And e can't believe you guys give this stuff away. You know, this is so awesome. And then then they're like, their mind is blown That Yeah, for sure. You guys like, let's just reply back to them, you know, chat with them like, Oh, you helps out. Yeah, just that kind of network of friends and community and kind of all this stuff toe where e think we've been lacking that in our space for a while. Um, other than maybe, you know, maybe we have. There's some There's some, you know, professional groups out there that do networking and things, I guess, but it's never I've never found that much value in what's been available to us as professionals out there, and I think that's where we've seen kind of this community grow out of, um around social media and around the podcasts and around safety FM and around the hot nerd and around the stage because around all this stuff, because people want mawr from there, they're kind of networks e. I think that's a lot of what we found. What we've kind of discovered is that you know, we can grow these communities have awesome conversation. If I have a problem, I call you up and ask if you dealt with it. Yeah, and that's just such an amazing thing to have that I don't even have to pay membership dues for E. Just like I just have a have an awesome conversation with people and their people out there that think like me. Or maybe they don't think like me. And that's the point. And we could have a real and honest awesome conversation And people can tell me I'm full of crap if I am. And you know, they give me some cool ideas and I get to meet cool. It's just this is awesome. Just talked
[00:33:23] spk_1: about safety. You could talk about music and you don't you also like branches out different ways to Yeah, for me. I feel, uh, just just every time I do a show or every time. Now I'm into the livestream. I've been doing a lot of live streaming lately on Linked in and Facebook and everything else. And my live stream has been specifically thinking about OSHA compliance. Help helping people that really need to understand OSHA compliance. And the podcast is teaching people the businesses safety consulting. So I kind of delineated those two things. But the response from Livestream has been really cool because you couldn't see the the live chats and everything in there, and you get to respond right away. So have you been getting into that? I know you kind of your time is Yeah, Stretch. But I know you've been doing that too.
[00:34:15] spk_0: Yeah, I did that pretty hot and heavy. So again, during the I made a commitment when things kind of went officially locked down that I would do when? Every day and I did for quite a while. I don't know. I remember what the streak was, but it was like a month or two that we did one like, every single day. Um, just some of them was from my sanity, just about, you know, get on here and hang out with folks and you
[00:34:37] spk_1: know that?
[00:34:38] spk_0: Um, no, really. No really kind of topic. Just almost like variety show, just chatting and current events. And you just whatever. I felt like talking about the time ranting about, Um, So yeah, at some point in the future because, you know, a lot of the studio here it was built around the concept of being a live streaming and do video and do anything, you know, kind of in that space. Um, so at some point, that's kind of where I'm at right now. It's the When I have that block to feel I'm gonna jump. I plan on jumping back into doing the live streaming stuff. But for me right now is we're kind of talking before, you know, the calendars really kind of squeezed with everything that's going on. And at some point, yeah, at some point, you know, definitely to get into some frequency what I've really been enjoying lately that was just doing these kind of free events, you know, and their live, live streaming events. You're doing stuff through zoom and you know, doing just different things. And they're not always even safety related, just doing, you know, like like virtual happy hours and just doing like, virtual chats on this. Or maybe we do have a topic. You know, we've done a couple of one of the topics and, you know, doing free webinars. You know, kind of this live stream set up towards it might technically be a webinar. Its's informal people jump in the chat boxes and the button. There's a lot of folks are doing that, which has just been amazing, right? I've got Thio got to participate in a couple of days. It just just awesome. Awesome tools that didn't exist again, back and maybe some silver lining some stuff that we just we're not thinking about or doing, you know, before our whole lot down Kobe thing. Yeah, no
[00:36:12] spk_1: kidding. And lock it down for me. I'm in Florida, so our governor
[00:36:16] spk_0: is there, like you guys are, like, 120% open.
[00:36:19] spk_1: I know exactly right. I mean, he's trying to like just he's wishing it away. You know,
[00:36:28] spk_0: I'm in. There is also It's not. We're not far behind you. You guys might be 100. You guys might be turned to 11 were on 10 e.
[00:36:38] spk_1: I know that you're I'm gonna end up doing more and And currently, my schedule set up where, um, I have enough 2021 online things that I'm my calendar up to December 2021. So I know I'm going to be doing a lot more online, but I'm looking at plugging some of those calendar gaps with some of my own things. Like you said, you know, might be Webinars. They might be, you know, live events. But I want to do a lot of partnering with people. So are you down with some of that?
[00:37:13] spk_0: Absolutely. I love stuff like that. Yes, well, and especially things like that, because I mean, e think it's it was this thought right about and I've continued to try to do things with the podcast and everything with this kind of general thought way always started off with kind of that mantra. Just making the world a better place to work on and where that really comes from is this idea of service, right? That the community is not in service to me. I'm in service to the community. Yeah, right. So it's that it's is how do we ban together to make the world a better place. We're going, especially nowadays. You know where where things are. Tough times are tough. You know, there's a lot of safety professionals that are out of work. There's a lot of such a profession out there that are struggling to get professional development that they need, whether they're in work or not, you know, especially the ones you know, that they found themselves non essential on. And there's a significant portion of those folks eso anything that we can do to give back to the community, especially in these times, but always but especially right now, um, something I'm always ready to jump right on board with. If we could do a webinar and I can't I don't know, I just when I first started in this vein of kind of, um, social media and especially with with hop on human performance to kind of safety differently stuff it was almost like the information was, other than buying a book and reading it on your own, at least to find the class or something. It was There was just not enough classes, so it appeared as if it was almost behind the veil of secrecy right. It was everything behind almost a paywall. If you wanted to have a real conversation about it. Yeah, other than tuning into a podcast, right? You couldn't find anything that was just People sit around chatting, and Q and A and, you know, ask me anything type of stuff. You know, Um and so the really cool thing is that that stuff's all available now, you know, And that's how we really pushed this rock farther up the hill, you know, is is by just opening up and just going, you know, just have that event. It's free because sun up, we'll hang out, We'll talk about anything you want. If you wanna talk about the weather, we're talking about whether you wanna talk about half. We'll talk about hop, you know, But it all it all still kind of grows from that idea of, you know, being in service to other people, being in service to our community, being in service to other safety professionals and really providing that stuff. Right? Just throwing it out there, you know, and like, right now, I mean, um, we're trying. We're trying toe or we're working on some stuff here. Just locally, right locally in the greater Phoenix area just to give away training, right? Just to do training for free, for safety professionals that are out of work. Because just because, you know, just because they're in a again, we're pretty open. So we can we can put people in a conference room if way we're hearing in Arizona, so we can organize them events. And those are the things that we're looking at right now. We're starting off for up here locally, Um, even down to just organizing some kind of again local local here to Phoenix. You know, organizing groups of there's tons of safety professionals in Phoenix. How can we ban together on locally kind of pool? Our resource is, you know, whether whether somebody teaching 10 or 30 or somebody teaching other classroom teaching hot classes, how can we come together as even just a local group of safety professionals help give back to those folks that might be hurting? Yeah, right now. So that that's a lot of where it kind of stemming even farther from, You know, I kind of took the webinar topic even kind of to the extreme, but it zits in that vein of kind of kind of service and helping. Yeah, so it's It's something that's really been on my mind a lot lately, with as many as many phone calls I get from other safety professionals like, Hey, man, I'm you know, things were rough right now. You know anybody that's hard, you could put me in any direction,
[00:40:44] spk_1: e get those as well. And truly I feel the same way. I know I have, uh, you know, I don't think it's a d economy in any way, but I have paid things and I have free things, and I feel that, you know, when you're ready for the pay stuff, I have it there. But I have so much free stuff out there that I feel that it's good to to still have some things where people could get it at low or no cause. And I do have some products or services that is paid, and I don't feel bad about that because I e that catalog, if you will free stuff that is valuable. It's a poignant and it's also, you know, not not just cheapo stuff.
[00:41:31] spk_0: Yeah, I mean that that's exactly exactly the same way exactly. Somebody because you with with, especially with the amount of free stuff that we know within our little like circle folks that, you know that we constantly I could I would hate to know if you try to put a price on the material that we just give away. And again, I'm perfectly I enjoy it. I like it more. I think when I give it a e thinking because there's not as much pressure I don't I don't know, but But exactly the point is, is that, you know, um all of that comes full circle. I'm a farm believer in that, you know, if you give it away, right, if you give it away, people eventually pay you for it. You know, if you if you're in service people, if you're in service to others, people see that they feel that they can tell the difference, you know, and they're gonna You know what? I'm definitely going business with Sheldon because I could just tell, you know, he's just in service to others. He does so much free stuff for the community. Does you know? So when it's time, it's time to jump in tow, pay That's the person I'm thinking off, you know?
[00:42:39] spk_1: Hey, E, no. You get a hard break coming up soon. But are you? Are you committed to the hop nerd Montecor or Monica or you gonna You're also here You every now and then say safety Evangel or know what's what's the the Well, evangelist, the
[00:42:59] spk_0: betterment, the betterment evangelist.
[00:43:01] spk_1: Yeah, I've heard both. So I'm thinking, Are you Are you prepping us for a transition or
[00:43:09] spk_0: No, You know it, Z, um when it comes down to really thinking about what? What? I'm what I'm doing, You know, it is that everything kind of comes back to betterment. Everything comes back to that point, right? But still, you know, for me, I've the hop nerd was a title that was given to me by others. And so I plan on keeping that, you know, I don't I don't have any e Think it's become known that it's that I'm not just hot nerd? Yeah, you know, But at at at the root, at the root of everything that I dio, um, like the hot principles. Just another example. You know, those air trying through through through beliefs for me, right? So I try my best to apply those to any other bits, so I think it's still think still a truthful statement is still fair statement. Stick with the hop side and the hot nerd because, um, the nerd thing, I really appreciate it. And that's why I stuck with it because I never wanted to be known as any form of hop or safety guru or any You're the hop or safety. God. You know, there is those folks out there in the industry, and they're very, very well known, you know, and Thea upper echelons, right? Yeah. Yeah. People can't. People can't hear me rolling my eyes through the microphone.
[00:44:34] spk_1: E I was hoping to get one of these like, stupid, you know, really great scoops, you know, like like what? Your news business. You know, like I got him.
[00:44:46] spk_0: I really You know, I really do promote this idea of just doing things better. Um, and that's really how how I found this kind of thing. Evangelist of betterment. Just cause I like that, because when when I, um when I first kind of got into hop and especially when? Several several years back, You know, when I was when I was helping lead a couple companies through that transition day job. Employers, you know, moved becoming more hop based organizations. E kind of That was kind of got got called, you know, the evangelist because I was going around. We call them our underground or guerrilla training sessions because none of it was approved. Way just went and started teaching people hop on, and then it was kind of and I know this probably goes against every kind of formal change management management thought, but we're like if we go out and we get enough people on board will start a revolution on, and that's kind of what happened. It got to the point where it's finally e won't name any organizations, but the executives like what's going on? Something's changing and we need to know is changing it. Amazing how quickly tomorrow it's amazing how quickly you get an audience with executives. When you go around being the safety hippie, telling people that blame doesn't fix to be
[00:46:00] spk_1: like you're forced to be that most your change analysis and then
[00:46:06] spk_0: right you're right, E. But you know, that's where that kind of that kind of evangelist term came from is as I was, because I was going around and I was evangelizing lot at the time throughout these organizations. Um, yeah, that's a lot of what I still continue to do, you know, in whether with no no secret that I maintained a day job. That's my biggest. That's my day job to I'm literally, ah, hop evangelist in my organization e. And then I do that in my second PM job to which is all this stuff's going. But I really liked that idea of the evangelist piece. And then when it really got down to that kind of notion of just making work, suck less. Yes, just in general, make it work. Not suck is bad. It's just making things better because we get so tied up in this notion of, well, I'm a safety to person. I'm a traditional say, and that's a hot person, and that's a safety differently person. And that's that's an H R O person. And okay, like I get it, they're all a little different on I get it. They're all a little different. The only thing that a lot of us have in common is that they throw rocks at the BBS people, which isn't fair either, you know? And so we're all we all kind of come from this little bit of a different school thought, but what we all align on is this idea of doing safety better. Yeah, And that's where I kind of landed on this kind of this. This evangelist, betterment, betterment, evangelist and even safety Better Like when I start talking about I've had this conversation with a bunch of people where I'm so like, yeah, it's hop, you know, But I don't even really call it hop that much anymore. Just call it, you know, doing safety better because we get so hung up on these these naming conventions that were just way just paralyzed. And we can't move forward because we're like, Oh, that person's persons of BBS. We don't talk to them. Yeah, s's a long It's a long story to explain away some of those names, I guess. But when I when I really thought about what? What? What I want on my on my e. Guess you know that there's that that title or if you wanna put a title on your resume on your business cars when I thought about Really What? What I do my Hopfner I've been a majority of my day studying human and organizational performance organization, performance of culture in some form or fashion of the other. And the other portion of my day, the other 50% of that I spend evangelizing, hopping betterment and trying to do safety better so that z Ugo just boil those down and then you end up with a hot nerd and the betterment evangelist.
[00:48:39] spk_1: Alright, what does 2021 look for Sam Goodman.
[00:48:44] spk_0: Busy right now. Busy. Busy is good. You know, if I had to to peer into my crystal ball of 2021. Um, unfortunately, I don't see much of the problems that we face in this crazy world changing very much into 2021. I think a lot of what? Ah, a lot of what we're dealing with right now with, uh, this talks about going back into lockdowns and back into different things.
[00:49:10] spk_1: And, you
[00:49:11] spk_0: know, I think that that's going to continue
[00:49:12] spk_1: for quite a bit. Um, I
[00:49:14] spk_0: know a lot of employers that I speak with, um a lot of organizations I speak with a lot of them were talking about not going back to you in person work until the end of next year.
[00:49:22] spk_1: Now eso
[00:49:24] spk_0: itt's pretty pretty interesting is pretty intense. At least I could speak to the folks I speak to here in Arizona quite a bit especially. But for me, what I see is is, you know,
[00:49:32] spk_1: uh, more books, So I kind of shared that. There's gonna
[00:49:35] spk_0: be more books, I will tell you that at a bare
[00:49:37] spk_1: minimum right now that you're going to see, um, two books that will probably have my name on them somewhere. That's my, uh, there
[00:49:48] spk_0: is your scoop. There is your scoop. And if you wanted to find out more about that, here's my my my hype marketing, I guess if you want to find out more about that, it will be
[00:49:57] spk_1: towards the end of the year. I'll probably I'll either drop some of the names of what we're doing either as Christmas presents or
[00:50:03] spk_0: his New Year's gifts. Haven't decided where that needs to come out yet, and there'll be some pre order stuff coming up. But first, the year
[00:50:08] spk_1: two eso there's more. There's more stuff coming in the way of books and I'll say safety books. I would say that their safety related books um beyond that more podcasts obviously gonna continue with the podcasts. Um, all
[00:50:22] spk_0: that stuff happening as far as anything new with that I don't know. I think we're just gonna continue toe, keep having these valuable conversations and probably do some more minis. I've been doing a safety sucks miniseries lately, so I think we're going to do some more miniseries focusing on some different stuff. Um, you know, I wanna I wanna have some conversations around some of more of the hot basics, Andi, I wanna have just to provide that. The folks that maybe haven't haven't taken that dive from the basics, Um, and also get into some of what we're just talking about mawr in a mawr pointed fashion. Maybe not pointed, but a more focused fashion. That's part of the right way to say that in a more focused fashion around how we bring together
[00:51:00] spk_1: the different schools of thoughts, you know, around safety in general, right, To move safety
[00:51:06] spk_0: in a better direction rather than all this kind of fighting that continues to happen. E i don't know what that miniseries looks like. Everyone is called E. Those are the things that are scribbled on the board right now. For the
[00:51:18] spk_1: podcast, at least it's like like drop your set e Yeah,
[00:51:24] spk_0: yeah, exactly. And so And to be on that, you know, we're looking at doing some stuff, and it's it's scary. I know people get super scared. I'm saying this, but as barring that, the state of Arizona remains open at any point in 2021. We're looking at doing some in person stuff here locally, really gonna doing some impressive stuff.
[00:51:42] spk_1: Maybe around about here, there, we'll see. We'll see what 2021 brings. But
[00:51:47] spk_0: like most a lot of virtual stuff obviously happening. You know, we're in a lot of virtual stuff
[00:51:52] spk_1: and and
[00:51:53] spk_0: free events and all kinds of other events and virtual stuff with other organizations and just just like you filling up, trying to fill up
[00:52:00] spk_1: the calendar for next year and try to make it work, try to put a pencil in some sleep somewhere. That's that's a big goal for 2021 get sleep. Absolutely. E. This episode has been powered by safety FM
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