Safety FM with Jay Allen
All Things Manifesto with Sam Goodman
July 13, 2021
Today on The Jay Allen Show, Jay speaks with the one and only Sam Goodman from The Hop Nerd fame! During their conversation, Sam talks about his new book “Safety Sucks — The Manifesto”. How he has been staying busy during the pandemic and what is next on his journey. Enjoy this conversation with Sam Goodman on this episode of The Jay Allen Show on Safety FM.
Today on The Jay Allen Show, Jay speaks with the one and only Sam Goodman from The Hop Nerd fame! During their conversation, Sam talks about his new book “Safety Sucks — The Manifesto”. How he has been staying busy during the pandemic and what is next on his journey.

Enjoy this conversation with Sam Goodman on this episode of The Jay Allen Show on Safety FM.

[00:00:03] spk_0: this show is brought to you by safety FM. Well hello and welcome to another episode of the J ALLen show. Hopefully everything is good and grand inside of your neck of the woods. So I have to tell you it has not been super long, but I was finally able to sit down and do a proper interview and that kind of a quickie. What Sam Goodman. So Sam and I sit around and talk about what's going on with him. His new book, Safety sucks the manifesto. And we talk about all things hot nerd on this episode of the J ALLen show. So stick around and take a listen to this conversation with Samuel Goodman and yours truly right now of the J Allen joe streaming now on safety FM dot life where it should go. So I'm here at your mercy. I don't know what we're doing. So it sounds like a plan. We can do one here and there. Yeah. So how have you been? It's been a it's been a hot minute. What? It's been like a couple of months now since I've seen something like that? It is but it's it's been I mean it's been a while, I mean, I don't know, it's like I still remember that you were just here, but then it's like, it seems like it's longer than what it has been, if that makes sense. It's uh especially in the past few weeks, man, I don't know what's going on. Time just seems to be moving fast. Things kind of went really uh busy but slow kind of when we hit all that quarantine stuff, you know? And then as the world kind of came back to kind of its normal state of being, or somewhat normal state of being and it seems like time just did double time to catch up with maybe some of what we missed. I don't I don't know what happened. Well, I mean, but you've been extremely busy. Let's let's not play because you were here in Orlando then you were doing virtual events. You were doing virtual events for a global scale. Um, so I saw, so I saw some a couple of those. So you are staying busy? Yeah, the virtual stuff man, the virtual stuff is cool. I've got to say though, hands down, not to call anybody out, but coming and hanging out with you guys at safety Day has been the highlight of my year so far. Just, you need to do that in person, getting to come to the great state of florida. It's always kind of fun. Um, and yeah, it was, it was a blast in the virtual stuff. Cool. It's great to get to connect with people around the world, but it's so fun just to get to have those little one off one off face to face conversations with folks, you know, put a face to a name in person. Just kind of get to, you know, me, I like to go down this rabbit holes man. So when people start having conversations it's, it's cool. Well, I mean I have to tell you it's been kind of interesting because hanging out on the virtual side, it's, it's good. I mean you get to meet a ton of people that you probably won't end up meeting. Um it's just a very short period of time, but it's not the same thing as being in person. I mean it's just, I like the world that we're starting to evolve into the middle way, Right? You can see that there's value in both. That that's a great way to get folks together folks that you would normally not good to see with any frequency at least. Right. I mean kind of more national, more global events in particular. You know, you might get to connect with people once or twice in your entire career, you know, through through a setting like that virtual makes that makes that little much smaller. Um, but then just the quality for me, I'm a people person. All right. So when you go, yeah, when, you know, kind of more vulnerable here, when when we went into the first little bit of quarantine man, it's depressing, right? When you're, when you're a people person like man, I just like I will silently stand next to someone just to be able to get some energy of being next to something. Like I don't even talk from having the ability now to do some do some fun kind of important stuff has been, has been called a lot of virtual stuff coming up. They're still in the future because as we know, a good portion of the world is still locked down right? Or in some form of pause or whatever we're calling it nowadays. But we a lot a lot of our role is still continuing on in the virtual realm alone. So oh, so that that at least you know, we continue with some of those connections, we can continue to have some of those conversations and make some new friends and hopefully we'll get to see face to face one of these things, Hopefully sooner rather than later. So with that going on then there's also been some other changes your surroundings have changed. I moved right? I moved. So that was, that was so I've got to say that was my my one bummed out moment come to florida and I didn't get to come hang out at the safety fl studio. I didn't get to come around on the radar safety show. Right? You can I'll let you do like exploration and player out, you know, it's funny, But but yeah, so kind of time that back to back to this studio. So we moved here a little bit of temporary space right now. So kind of going through quarantine. We've spent the past four or five years in downtown phoenix and that's fun and all, until you realize what you're locked there. It's kind of not great. Kind of went to the space of the headspace of saying, well, we just club desert further. Let's let's get some some room a little bit around us, you know, because the same thing, right? You go outdoors, Downtown phoenix is amazing. I still love it. I'm down there all the time. but you go out and you wander around and it's just, it is kind of concrete jungle, right? It's, it's just pavement and bus stops and traffic lights. So when there's nothing else to do and all the fun stuff that the owners closed, you start to really understand that having the ability to walk outside and maybe steal grass or touch a tree is something that that might be, might be important to it. And so we moved, we moved, we moved about Probably 45 minutes out of downtown phoenix. And uh, you know, we, we found a spot um, to rent until we end up purchasing the house out here. And so we've set up in a, in a nice little temporary studio here, which is, well, I mean you're making the same, right? You're making the best of it because I mean, if you were if he would have told me, I did a different camera angle and I'm still in the same spot, I would believe it because that's because that's how you make it look. So it's my it's my that's my junk collection. It's not it's my, it's my weird, wacky collection of books and buddha's and coins and Geiger counters and the bucket. I think it's neat and I want to just kind of chuck on the shelf, but I'm not allowed to put anywhere else. Well, this is your designated area only. So besides that, you, so you moved, you have some other things going on. I'll use this wording. If it's poor wording, somebody else can edited it out. But you've also got the golden handcuffs during that same time. So how are you liking that? Yeah, it's good, man. I mean, it's good, it's good. Uh if they're listening, it's great. So my employer that I've never met a woman, like for for obvious reasons, I don't think anyone out there that does podcasts and stay job doesn't think we do. They understand the value and obviously not not throwing that out there, it's easy enough what that is. Um but you know, through the, through the course of that, you know, I've never really run into any conflict at least, you know, as of yet, and I attribute some of that kind of managing that on my end. You know, obviously there's there's a there's a responsibility there to do so, um so managing those things with that responsibility in mind, But I'm a busy person. I like busy man. I mean my days are I cram them full, you know, crammed full of stuff just to give you an example of today. You know, I was about 4:30 this morning and had to get up at 4:30 because I had a virtual event at That's officially kicked off later. But the pre stuff started around 5:30 and then moving into the, into the daytime stuff, you know, and doing kind of all the normal day to day stuff of my, my real life job. Well, I mean, and I have to tell you, I'm always amazed on when we get together at least virtually on how it works. It, you pretty much do it whenever you, whenever you can and like right now it's, I would imagine what one about noontime, right noontime where you're, so it's noon time. So I don't know if you're doing this during your lunch hour or if you're just saying, hey, I'm doing this now and then I get back to my real life, but you're constantly doing stuff and let's not forget about the book writing the other things that you assist other people with, you still, you still have of university and all these other things that you're going on. I'm still trying to figure out the magic because there has to be something that you're doing that I just don't comprehend. It's funny because I get this question a lot, just just, you know, in this kind of setting from friends that I'm around kind of daily, even even kinda in more of the day job realm, right? And my, my kind of tongue in cheek answer is stupid, stupidity and persistence, right that I think I think too stupid to know when to quit, I can't leave things unfinished. So it's one of those things where you couple that stupidity with persistence and something happens right? It makes stuff will surprise you with what you're able to do, right? I think the what I've realized is, and I've come to a point with certain things, just just personally that you know, it's a question that not to kind of like shamelessly plug the book or find anything else. It's a lot of some of the rabbit hole that I've been diving down and Ian and I dove down in kind of the more recent book and some other stuff that I've really been exploring with writing is this idea of what's meaningful and meaningless. And I've really been kind of sorting through even just on a life perspective throughout my day, what's what's actually meaningful, what do I actually need to focus on? So you'll notice that I'm typically painfully absent from social media a lot these days. I mean I'll post stuff here and there, but I'm not like living on social media interacting because I'm just that's okay. Just I need to invest time other places in for sanity, say. So some of that is just freeing up from those areas to be able to accomplish those things to be able to sit down and say, you know, yeah, when I wake up in the morning, is it better for me to get my cup of coffee or three or four and then sit down on the computer and play on linkedin? Or is it more important for me to sit down and maybe write 1000 words, You know, So that's kind of how I've been approaching. So at least over the past few months as I've been trying to find, I've accepted that that balance isn't really much of a thing in my life because I'm trying to find what that same middle ground and it looks like. Well, I mean, I think there's a season for everything because I think that it's, to some extent what you did at the very beginning where you were actually on social media all the time. And I mean that in a good way, um, posting stuff and then kind of talking about the things that you were doing, it was needed to get attention to what you were doing, and then you get to the point where you start getting busy, what you can't do so much social media that you don't want to do it, but you have to start doing the time management aspect of it. But I mean, and let's not even talk about the most important job that you have, which is being a dad, and we didn't even talk about that portion or your relationship at the time that you have the development of those things. I'm just have, like, a right, I think, I think that's that's that's obvious if you're going to go down the insane, kind of wacky road that most of us doing this kind of space, you know, especially trying to juggle the things that we do. Um So, having that support and then as far as being a dad, I mean, you know, the thing that I found and we've done this since the beginning, I say we because it is kind of a group family effort, I wouldn't be able to do the things that I do without the support there, you know, um there's a lot that goes in like behind the scenes of just general support for me to get to sit here and have fun talking to jay, right, kind of free up the space to be able to do this. Um but with being being a dad or it's just, I've always included her, you know, she's always just been a part of it. So it's not like, it's something where it's like, and don't get me wrong, there's times like this I'm gonna go like, shut the door and lock it and she's on summer vacation, so I'm like, go hide in your room and be quiet. But there's, there's those things where, you know, it's not me squirreling myself away and leave me alone. I need time to just do this and avoid you, right? It's just, it's always been included. That's why, you know, you go back through the podcast and you listen, I mean, you'll hear every kind of wonder and you'll see in the background of the videos, you'll see her, you know, you'll you'll hear her chat, you know, a little bit. And he kind of, she was even doing commercials at one point. I mean, she was, yeah, that's her favorite thing is to get on the microphone as soon as I move stuff, I have things kind of connected yet, you know, uh I'm still back to life stuff. I'm still in the process of moving because we still have the studio downtown. Um but also you still have it downtown then as well to, yeah, I can still, you know, I'm still down there here and there. It's just, I'm going to let loose of it. You start outsourcing it. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna let go of it. But it's one of those things where it's like, you know, it's an hour away, right? It's an hour drive with early morning or evening phoenix traffic and it just makes it too hard back to finding insanity and that it just makes it too hard to sit down and do stuff like this without making it a whole half a day event. No, I have to tell you when you go from doing the normal studio to the home studio, there's such a change inside of that because let's just use the hypothetical scenario, if you would have started off with that studio that you're currently, and and then did the downtown studio, you'd be like, well the commute of eight seconds compared to the hour commute makes it slightly different. And I, and I know it's kind of uh it's kind of one of those uh, first world problems, but because we found ourself, you know, in the studio needed the space. Sorry, dogs. No, you're good. Now, we all know that it's real life and you're really at home, it's real life stuff. I'm not on some getting away highly advanced set somewhere. Yeah, but it's uh, yeah, so once, once we moved down there, it actually ended up being a really, really cool opportunity a blessing really. Um, because we got moved in and started to get set up right when things started to lock down, right, when people were starting to go work from home. So for me to have a space to not be at home was kind of the whole point right at that moment. Um, and then now after kind of functioning at home and then having the space to do stuff at home, it's like, well, I don't want to go back to the studio. I want to stay at home now that I have like the space and I can create something back to downtown problems. You don't give much space when you, when you're living right in the middle of it. Well, with, with everything that's happened during the lockdown and the changes that have come into your life, you've done some, some important things. So let's talk about the safety sucks manifesto. You decide to release that. It was about a couple of months ago at this particular point. What, what are you seeing? What are, what are people coming back to you with? What are they, what are they, what are they telling you? What do they like what they dislike? Because you're honest enough to tell people what people don't like because I have interviewed people were like, you know, everybody loves it. No, they don't. You know, it's, it's, um, as, as far as what they like and I think it's a mixture. Some folks, when you see these things that certain people like, other people dislike it for the same reasons, right? It's, we're unapologetic about being honest and just trying to lay things out on the table and for some folks that's a little too, um, I'll use this word tongue and you can look to triggering for certain safety professionals, leaders, right? That we're willing to challenge some of the things that are viewed as most sacred. And we're not really seeing a ton of stuff that's completely brand new, right? We really take things and kind of view it through the lens of the safety practitioner. Right? And so safety sucks. The original book was obviously us trying to, or me keep saying us now that I'm hanging out with this book was really just talking solely about the profession, right? Uh, and then as we kind of started writing the manifesto, it started in and kind of that head space and then that evolved. It's no, this, let's just take an overall kind of approach. Let's, let's put a lens here, let's let's create a lens and you know, um, a lot of the kind of general comments that come back, people just kind of reaching out, you know, to try to think of things very specific. You know, folks just really like that kind of rip off the Band Aid approach to things. And if things suck, we should talk about the fact that they suck, right? If we're creating suffering in our work world, we should put our finger on that suffering and explore that and hold it and figure out where that's coming from and why, how that's being created in our organizations and how it's causing harm and dig deeper into that to be able to kind of pull it out of our organizations, um, from the, from the not so great side of things. It's a lot of the same reason though, right? It's because that it's, it's we almost, I don't get many of those, but the ones that do, it's kind of like how dare you, right? It's kinda, it's kinda this how dare you respond. Um you know, I get accused of being a little too little too brutal, you know, sometimes I get accused of being a little too, you know, I get, I get the random kind of people trying to make you feel bad for being provocative. I feel that I look at it this way, if you're willing to take the time to actually send me an email, don't send me like a post or something along those, like, like you're gonna send me an email or write me a letter snail mail style and you're going to go into detail of what you didn't like about something that I did, Hey, I'll respond to you just cause you took the time commitment. So it meant something to you. But if you give it, if you give it to me on a post or on a review, okay, tough. But if you want to spend enough time, okay, I'm willing to listen. So that, that's one thing that's kind of touched on social media, not to get away from cover name, a lot of conversation there, but to kind of go back a little bit, you know, as much as I try to avoid kind of hosting and just kind of interacting, um, it kind of opened social media messages, Diem's emails at this point in my life and I kind of share that on the podcast with some regularity, just let folks know. Um, I still pride myself on returning practically everything that people reach out to me about right, whether it's for advice, whether it's for input, whether it's just to say, hey, you know, uh I don't leave much stuff unanswered unless it's an email for me. If I send you an email, it was on my list this week, it was on my list this week to respond to it, I get it, I get it. But yeah, I always appreciate that stuff, you know, I always appreciate that, appreciate the, because to me, it honestly, I'm not saying that that it steers, but it informs my next moves as far as kind of what I'm currently exploring what I'm currently writing, you know, the stuff and the radicals I'm currently going down, you know, that gives me kind of that real time feedback. Um, one of the biggest thieves that I, that I get from, from really anything that I've written this book in particular is that we leave, what part of kind of my thought process to leave you with more questions than answers? A lot of times. Right? And and that drives some folks just up the wall, Right? Because they want to give me the abc checklist on how I can fix safe in the No. Yeah. If I kinda not not to dive too deep on this stuff, I'm kind of working on the side. But as I'm kind of writing some stuff the other day, I was kind of doing kind of exploring a little bit of that thought, you know, and, you know, I'm very unapologetic about that. Is that, you know, if if I come to you and tell you that I've got the A B C 123 solution for your safety program, I'm lying, I'm not going to do that. And any book that you pick up that says, here's abc how to safety Greatness. They're lying. All right. Because there's no one size fits all process for anything. And I'm not talking basic principles or waste a few things or thought processes. If you you've seen some of these where you open it up like you do this and you do that and you do this and you do that exactly like this and everything will be perfect, right? And that's just never going to work well for anybody. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know. There's so many different things that you can take a look at when, when you hear stuff like that because I look at it. A lot of what people do on social media is they're not false advertising. It's puffery. It's over exaggerating what we've already what we have. I claim that it doesn't, there's never a failure. It always works. But this is what you have to do. And it's also part of the industry capture. And we can start talking about industry capture and we start talking about large organizations that like to give out lettering. But that kind of get some people upset. But that's what it is. I've captured the industry. I said, hey, this is what you need to do. And as long as you're listening to what I'm saying, this is the way that everything rolls out. Some people will agree with that if they've actually been vetted to believe that. But then on the other side of the equation, you start talking about industry capture all of a sudden has a derogatory comment or conversation associated to it because all of a sudden from who it's coming from. Because when I say that, well, yeah, all of a sudden I see a value in this designation that I get from an organization, but only from the standpoint because that's how I've been trained to believe that it's great, right? And you know, so much of the way that that again, we we kind of approach things with the manifesto was down this idea of, you know, how do you view things a little differently? You know, again, better lens, right. I'm not gonna tell you how to think, right? I'm not going to tell you exactly what to do. But here's some thoughts. Here's here's some questions, right? We were talking a little bit about even relating that to personal life around what's meaningful, what's meaningless. That's that's so much of the question that we kind of thread through that book as you should be in this constant state of not me telling you what's important, but for you going out and figuring out what's important to you in your particular work world, right? What's important to your operations? What's important to your folks? Because it's never gonna be exactly the same. We're going to have some overlap, right? And we're probably gonna have some common ground where we can learn from each other. We can exchange some protests and, you know, we can we can exchange some ideas. But I think the power isn't as much of the answer, right? I mean, we we hear that from from one of our one of our near and dear the goat, right? All the time, right? That's such a powerful way to approach things. The question is more important, right? The question is way more interesting, if not for anything else. Right? So, so much of what we continue to ask throughout throughout the manifesto, is that what's what's what's golden, what's fools go what's trash and what's treasure? What's trash that you painted gold? And you're pretending this treasure within your organization? What's gold that you're pretending this trash? Because you don't want to look at it right in asking those questions kind of on a regular basis and then going deeper, right? So when we're putting our hands on those things, when we, when we're touching those pain points or the progress, what are the unintended consequences that will come from those right and intended versus unintended? Are we creating more harm than good or more good than harm? Right? To kind of reduce it down to something? Um, and so back to the beef. Some folks don't want to get that meta, I guess some of the thoughts around safety, we want something that's linear because again, I grew up in more of the traditional school of thought of safety before departing from it. Um, and it was always this kind of idea that it's it's abc you do A B and C, and you get you get the right, that's where you end up at. This is not always the case. All right. It's just not always the case. So, um, while some of those kind of more prescriptive approaches can maybe be helpful to certain organizations, there still has to be significant adaptation that takes place and significant learning and growth. You might start with the check sheet and then evolve past, right? You might start with with following step one, step two and step three is kind of crap. We're not doing step three, we're gonna do something, do something, right? Well, I mean, because of you and Ian were able to take this dive into this when you start looking back at what you guys put down and watch trash what's gold and and so on. When somebody is going to come and approach this book, do you think someone new into the industry should, this should be the first book that they look at? Or do you think they should go with safety sucks first? No. You know, actually uh somebody that's new into this industry, um I wouldn't even give them one of mine, I would give them talk to be honest with you. I mean completely level with you for sure. There's there's there's a there's a few other books, you know, as far as just general approach that um you know, again, you know, we and we mentioned that frequently, you know that the stuff that we're doing is building up on years and years and years and years and years and years of work with any kind of more new if you safety and traditional safety. Alright, so again, there's as far as someone that's new to maybe hop for safety differently as a thing, I would not start with the manifesto, I mean for sure, but I'm not saying that it's, it's infinitely deep and complex. You definitely can sit down and if anyone is going to have my writing style, I try to keep things pretty conversation, pretty pretty, pretty, pretty easy to read. You know, other than other than uh, you know, maybe putting in like block large block text. You know, we make it easy. So this is the adult adult version. So it's, you know, you know, I think it's one of those things, it's according to where you're starting at, you know, as far as the original safety side for someone that's brand new to the profession, I think it is a valuable read to kind of understand, um, to understand maybe some of the challenges that you'll face not to scare people off again back to some of the intent of that book originally was to, was to me kind of saying that this is kind of what I wish I would have known before I came into safety, not so I could stay away from it, but so I could be more prepared to not have like amid a few years in kind of crisis, if I did say I want to, I'm gonna go to sweep floors before safety guy anymore, like this is horrible, you know, this is this is horrible. I was ready to give it all up just around. Well, glad that she didn't do that after during the lockdown, then it would just be straight over eats that's for sure. So as you and Ian have been doing this and kind of going through it, I know that Ian was kind of getting into a new world when it came to this, especially from the the author point of view, Have you guys thought of giving any thought of now that things are starting to open back up of potential potential uh many roadshows where come meet the authors and all that kind of fun stuff. We're hoping so, and for sure at some point we we've had some you're not going to Austin, are you? I am not presenting. Okay. I, you know, I think um for sure that's something that we've been kind of looking at, you know, we, it is the kind of person that's just as busy as I am, which is is insane to try to think about coordinated or to people like that coordinate on a project. So, fortunately, you know, through the power of dropbox in zoom and then a lot of kind of late nights on top of that kind of after hours just meeting up to just sit and talk, you know, talk through ideas. Um then, you know, things came to be um I say that to say this size that were, you know, as we start scheduling, I don't know what when or what that looks like, but that would be a goal for us for sure. I mean, because I think that you have the opportunity of doing a couple of interesting things together because you can do meet the author of course, you can do the book signing as always. But then you could also do your podcast, which I think that would be kind of be a very cool thing. Now I'm gonna I'm gonna put you kind of in a bad spot here at the moment because about two months ago we had a conversation about your potential audiobook, you know, you're gonna make time you actually, you know, but but here's the thing, I'm going to kind of put you on the hook, but also get you off the hook at the same time, because you said you wanted to do something different. And that was that was deep into the conversation, and that was something that came up right away. You weren't using it, an excuse, you said that you want to do something different because it was two authors, which I understood. So, have you come up with what that might be the difference yet, or what have you been thinking? We've you know, we're tossing around some ideas. I don't I don't want to say too much about what we're going to toss around. It wouldn't be anything extreme, all right. But we're talking about some ideas about just structure and how that plays out in an audio book format and maybe adding in some something some bonus something, you know, and figuring out just to bring something cool, right? You know, because for me personally, I'm one of those wacky people that when I sit down and read, like I do both, right, I usually do an audio book and I'll get a hard copy. And so the ability to maybe have some bonus content that goes maybe a little bit farther into particular ideas to branch out of that is something that we kind of tossed around just and I'm just addressing that from my own personal style, right? Of how I kind of absorb material and the person is like listening and reading, you know, just listening and then just reading and then listening, reading and highlighting the scribbling, right? So to have something that might bring just a little bit more kind of content and explanation to certain pieces of that I think would be something needs to do but we haven't landed on anything solid as of yet because then once we do it probably is some of our own kind of procrastination because once we find do, then that means we have to commit to actually producing it alright producing this almost without you saying it, that there might be some sort of level of a workbook may be associated to it or you don't want to go that deep into it which I don't blame you with all the organizations and leagues that imitate everybody else. That's the route. You know how much I don't know. Uh huh. A pause for a second workbook is just one of those words as much as I said everybody that we could do some cool stuff that the word, the word itself and whether this has been used with other with other things makes me kind of throw up in my mouth a little bit and I'm like I don't know if we want to do something but something like that might be interesting, you know I mean to take that farther, you know? Um I'm one of those folks that are always writing as well. So you know some of the thoughts that we explored in the manifesto, I'm continuing to explore kind of similar topics but just maybe a little bit deeper kind of thought process. Um So there'll be more to come later anyways that might be a little bit more no maybe a little more provocative while there's something there but you just don't wanna you don't wanna say it yet. I I get this. Yeah, I mean you can't tell me it's the odds censored version. What is it gonna have pictures at this point? Some pictures, but this would be something separate from the manifesto at some point the future. Um but kind of keeping it with with keeping in line with that, you know, I don't know, you know, an audio book, something there something bonus related, you know, just again, bonus, I guess there's additional additional exploration into some of those things as it relates to the audio book. Something that would be valuable. So, you know, I'm automatically imagining a golden ticket in five books, a five audio get to come to the factory. Right, Right. Well, I think, I think if you keep track of the news and stuff, we've seen what happens when companies promised build things. In fact it doesn't seem to it doesn't seem to end very well when it turns out not to go. Very true, Very true. So with everything going on for a while there, you were doing the scary podcast, what's going on with that? Are you still pushing it? I haven't, I haven't keeping keeping track. So I'm not gonna lie on that particular portion. So what's going on now? We still, so that podcast isn't taking the seasonal approach. So, you know, um, I enjoy, I'm not saying that I don't enjoy the hot nerds stuff because it's, it's obviously my baby is kind of, it is number one above all else I could disconnect everything else and then stop writing and I would still be doing, you know, podcast because that's, that's the fun part for me. But the, I wanted to keep the scary stories to the point where we're still manageable. And I wouldn't, it wouldn't, it wouldn't make podcasting overall un enjoyable, right? Because it would just be so much content if I was having to do kind of multiple, multiple episodes weekly, constantly pushing stuff out. So what's cool about this scary stories podcast, especially as we kind of take more, you know, we're talking more history kind of stuff, you know, experienced stuff, I can sit down and actually just record seasons, you know, which, which makes it way more manageable. So what's nice about that is it's, it's still ongoing and during the season we'll release episodes weekly, we'll do some preseason, then a couple of postseason episodes and then release main season stuff in between and just drop them every week. But it's one of those things where I can sit down over the course of a week and, and construct that season, you know, and then have it ready, just have it ready and polished and ready to go and then release kind of as we, as we work through the sea. Just as you introduce any kind of other made for tv content or something. I mean, I just want to make sure, you know, a safety person that does something outside of safety. I don't know if those things are, you know, if that, I don't know if that was allowed. So I was just wanting to double check. So you were doing the podcast, you were, you were going to be doing some books. What what do you think, What do you think about doing doing there? Are you going to continue doing the scary stories with the books as well or what do you what do you think tossing around my, you know, as zigzag, you know, and my mind has just been kind of elsewhere, especially coming out of the manifesto. Um there's some other kind of non safety book stuff that I'm kind of tinkering with, I just enjoy, it's like writing, right? So that's just part of my daily kind of existence, my daily processes. It's almost, it's really almost habitual at this point to kind of wake up and write something, you know, and so there's some other kind of scribbled out ideas for things, but so much of where my kind of head has been recently is just digging deeper around safety, and in particular, um similar to the manifesto, just kind of, I don't want to see a continuation of that thought because it's not, it's so, so much of what I've written so far in the past, since, since I basically stopped, so I stopped once we, once we published a manifesto, like, I'm not gonna write anything, you know, uh formally for at least of all, and then I'm sitting here right behind your screen currently, there's there's about 150 pages or something that I've written so far, I've got, so is that like a week, like a while was a week, you're going to be doing anything I guess. I I don't know how how how useful is to adopt too much in the process, but it's odd as I kind of came out, I'm like okay, I'm gonna continue because I had some thoughts and uh at the very least it's great to just explore those on paper a little bit. Uh and so if if this does turn into something, I'm not going to do what I normally do and I'm not going to accept dates, I'm just gonna write, I'm just gonna write and that's kind of what I've been doing, I've just been writing and just kind of seeing where those thoughts taking me and kind of radical. So really what I've been, what I've been kind of riding more recently is just that it's diving deeper down down these radicals. Um it just kind of just in and out of them and as I'm writing, so I might get to the end of writing whatever this is and read it and go, that's true. But it's fun, it's fun, It's fun for the time. So, can you even talk about what the subject matter is, what you're talking of, what you're writing or it's, you know, so much of kind of where my mind is. Um is it still back to the question of what's meaningful and what's meaningless? And so much of this exploration is really kind of around the broad sentence uh doing less overall, right? Because we've we've typically approached safety from this stance of more and more and more equals better, better, better. And that's just not true, right? It's just absolutely not true at all. We've we've approached typically in a more traditional mindset from this from the stance of if you if you if you're having safety problems, you just need a bigger dose of safety and if you just added more safety stuff, then safety will get better and just never, never quite works out well for us, right? We just end up with kind of clunky junk everywhere. Uh and it it kind of expands on some of the jump door a little bit that we talked about in the manifesto. But then so much of kind of where I've been kind of, the rabbit holes have been going down is even down into the rabbit holes of just general approach to how we seek to um, administer almonds pain and almost we do of pain and suffering into our organizations thinking that it's going to be curative by fixing our employees right? And how we approach so much of that almost around this idea of organizational sin right? That if you, if you violate a rule, you're basically a center to the organization, right? So about how, how so much of their safety beliefs and systems have almost have always turned into this kind of full religious model or pseudo religious model of sin and center, uh, organizational sin versus organization, wrongdoer versus organizational ST right, and kind of how we approach some of that stuff. And on the very best days, if if we're not the Church of Safety or the kool Aid, Shipping Safety Coal, then a lot of times we find ourselves as organizations creating these pseudo criminal justice systems where we're, you know, going out and seeking to extract to apply blame and punishment, you know, within our organization, seeking to be judges of actions, post events and all these different things. So it's I know that's a little rambling, that's kind of loose one of the rabbit holes going down around this idea of disciplinary action within organizations and who are we basically to be setting as judge, jury and executioner judging human action? Should that be the organization's role? Should that be the organ? Should that be the relevant organization that can't even manage to fix the potholes in the parking lot, can't even manage to balance the budget, but they think they're going to rid their organizations of organization, airports, organization will send in wrongdoers, right? So, so some of that is again, there's multiple branches here. I know I'm kind of just throwing stuff out. No, no, no, but yeah, there's there's there's some there's some interesting interesting ideas, you know what I'm almost thinking about it as you're saying. That is that it's it's almost the same style on how you took the lens that you were using when you wrote obscured. And I'm not trying to minimalize obscured at all, but but like you're applying it to a level of safety, kind of like the same kind of concept of lens, if that makes sense? Because believe me, that story that the story inside of obscured is so important, but I think that it's almost kind of a similar lens on how you were looking at the approach of that makes sense. Yeah, it's rather than just kind of looking at things in a very kind of pointed fashion. It's it's back to that concept that we that most of us toss around around everything, impacting everything right? And kind of taking a much broader approach uh and kind of diving um it is just a deeper dive right around how we're carrying in, you know, certain assumptions and and beliefs around safety in particular. Uh and how for me kind of the point that I'm at with with with writing on that particular thought is back to that question, right? Is who are we as organizations that create widgets and gizmos and gadgets, right? Or generate electricity or build bridges, won't we? To set in judgment of human behavior, right? Is that really our role to weed out sin and center? Right? As it relates to again, airports organizational center, it should organizational because that's how we kind of view it right? With with sin often being defined. Going back to kind of the root of send, viewing the root definition of sin means to miss the mark. What we literally punish people in our organizations for missing the mark, right? Whether that be a metric or a rule or something in between. Right? So it's exploring that thought and it's I throw some opinion in there a lot, a lot of opinions so far. Again, it's I'm just I don't know where this where this kind of endless writing lands because I'm kind of playing with this um, on the editors death. Right? But it's a fun, it's a fun exploration. It's a fun exploration. Uh, again, it's an exploration. And I'm kind of leaving to a personal opinion into A little bit as well. It's kind of Act two. What's meaningful. What's meaningless? Is it really our role? Should it be our role to apply pain and suffering within our organizations, whether disciplinary action or the systems that we create? Is that really the purpose of or is that really what we should be doing? Is organizations, even if it's in response to some, even if it's in response to Mhm. Making safety better. Right. Is that is that what we should? Well, you know, it's interesting that you're saying this because I remember the last time that I had a conversation with you, where I'm just coming up with ideas, I want to say a few weeks later, there was a new book. Uh So is that where this is kind of are you leaning that way right now or what are you thinking? No, I think, you know, I started in a different frame of mind with this one um and similar to the manifesto, the manifesto, just kind of just kind of really just just, just the flow is amazing, just kind of hanging out writing that and working with the end. Um but this one, you know, I started from this from this frame of mind, I'm just gonna just, it is what it is. I'm just going to I'm just gonna just start writing and see where it goes and I'm just gonna let it be an adventure. So if that adventure ends a month from now, if it ends sometime next year, I really have no gold date for this one. I mean that honestly is that I don't know, you know the ideas um the thoughts of the opinions are kind of gnarly and a little deep, you know, so I mean we're talking about, we're talking about organization will send right, so it gets a little intense so I'm just kind of letting it go where I feel like it needs to go, you know? So however long that takes I'm willing to just hang out behind the computer and keep hacking away at it until until I feel like it's something if I feel like this is this is this is the key here. If if it turns into something, so this might be the scroll away hidden manuscript that no one ever gets to see, I don't know how very Stanley cooper of you, if you're just gonna until it's perfected that guy, you put like eight years between movies or something like that. Maybe I'll just pdf and release it, understand now. Just just just get at least the world as long as you don't do the Alan smith, he opposed to like directors do on certain things that they don't they don't want everybody to know what exactly is going on. Well, that's that's interesting. So you so you said you've been working on this for a little over a month at this point? Yeah, it's just again, you know, writing this part of my daily uh probably therapy more than anything else, you know, part of part of my habit is just kind of getting up and that's some of the first things that I do in the mornings I usually I usually read and I usually write, you know, that's the first couple steps, you know, my uh not to get too personal into like my daily routines or anything because I'm the last person for anyone to take lessons from how to balance and healthy life. Coffee coffee just upgraded the Nespresso. Everybody needs to feel pro coffee for the Nespresso is worth it. It's totally uh but it's a lot of, it's waking up kind of early, you know, relatively early and spending those first couple hours of uh what would normally be maybe sleeping time, I guess, um of, of reading some stuff and, and sitting down and trying to write for at least an hour or so before kind of the rush of the day starts with meetings and then turns into podcasts and in terms of the virtual stuff and in terms into everything else, you know, that's kind of my, I've just found that sitting down and writing, you know, within an hour, if, if you just kind of snap in, you can easily pump out 1000 words in an hour. You know, not, not really say that there's a number that I kind of took for, but if I sit down and write 1000 words and I'm like, okay, that's a good way to a great way to start the day. I feel accomplished already. Either way, I can say that I did something today. I I'm sure, I'm sure you have that problem, you know, of, you can't say that you that you've done anything today. So with that, with that going forward and you thinking about all these things that you're doing and so on, I know that you were building on a pale horse, you were really pushing it, you were doing some things on there. Are you going to be adding additional names into their for authors for you? You know, there's, there's always the thought at some point. Um, and just just back to life, you know, pell horses there, it's kind of kind of kind of waiting off to the side, you know, as I continue to kind of focus on other things, but at some point that that would be the goal, you know, at some um, so much of that for me right now, it's just the time that I invest into other things like, like with most people and this, this isn't a complaint or gripe, you know, it's just saying that like, like most my days are chock full, so I used a horse to publish and I haven't had time to do much of anything else with it has recently other than other things publishing and some of the, again, the other just kind of basic podcast. But I mean, but let's be realistic, you've released the majority of your books and pale horse, but you've done some things that, I mean I know that all over, not related to safety, but just as I sit here and I just kind of look at it if you would, I mean I would have never known, thank God that you're here. I didn't even know about that because you don't because I haven't, I haven't like there's stuff that's, there is outside of the normal realm that you're doing. It's kind of weird because you have the, you have the opportunity of plugging away even on your own platform and you don't do it all the time. No, no, you know the last thing um you know when the books come out, I'll talk about it, I'll post some stuff about the books every now and again, I'll throw out some stuff on the books, you know? But I just don't know, I'm not out trying to sell books. Right? I mean, I know that sounds bad being somebody that writes books, but you know, fortunately and I'm fortunate I do understand that that, you know, the, especially the books as they relate to the safety sucks series in particular, you know? Um they have developed a slightly cultish following around those books anyways, they, people kind of toss them around, you know, And um, it's funny, I've got a, I've got a really close friend that travels around, works as a kind of higher level safety leader on organization and just catching up with him the other day and the conversation was mad. I've got to tell you, you know, I've been to like 20 or 30 power plants this year and out of those, there's only been one that I did not walk into the safety officer and see your freaking book sitting on somebody's, there's, yeah, I was like that because I never thought about it like that. You know, I never really thought about it, you know, walking into a power plant at least, I don't know, just just seen the book there. But it's that right. Safety professionals have kind of taken that and they pass it around. You know, they, they tell people about it. People pick up copy. So I've just, I don't know, I've never really felt the need to just actively try to sell people stuff. You know, the, I'll mention it, I'll talk about it, I'll throw, you know, I'll throw it on the podcast, I'll let people know it's there. I'm definitely not silent about it. I don't avoid it completely, you know, because obviously telling books is a good thing for somebody that writes books. But yeah, I would just rather spend my time doing other things like talking about stuff on the podcast that should you ever look at it when you go into like somebody's office and then they have the book, Have you ever been worried that maybe your manager might come to you and be like, what is this about? A copy? Yeah, yeah, I'm coffee. Um, you know, kind of back to tie that into the day job kind of thing. Um, I always say this and I truly mean this. I'm the employer that I worked for the shower man name was. Um, it's a unicorn employer. Absolutely. You know, uh, they get it right way more than they get it wrong, right. Um, this kind of idea of expression and free thought and bringing those ideas into the organization has always been viewed for the most part in at least in recent history within the organization as, as a positive thing, right? As a good thing, you know, so, and that's why I say that I am fortunate to kind of have that opportunity to be able to podcast and right and kind of do the stuff that I truly passionate about and just as equally passionate about the positive things that I do kind of in that day to day world, because all the stuff that I go out and do kind of on my own that I learn and get to play with I get to bring back. So it's it's really a win win situation, right? So even if things are a little more provocative, um you probably can't imagine this, but in my day today, more corporate e and the world, I'm just as provocative. It's not they know who I know, they know that I'm not that I'm more than willing to call things done if I think you're so you're so you're telling me on your podcast, you are not a character, this is the real you this is a real life, this is absolutely real life. So it's where there's not, there's never been a front there, right? So, um if someone from many of them do I get those? Trust me, that's even when, you know, even when you have a pretty pretty iron stomach, you still get that kind of butterfly drop feeling when someone sends you an email to your, you know, from, from work, just like the subject line is, hey, I read your book like, oh, let's see, let's see how this goes, right? And my packing, right? There was never anything uh there was no disparity between, you know who I am at work. I'll just say real life and who I am in kind of my after hours real life, right? The same kind of stuff that we're talking about here. The same kind of conversations that we have on the podcast, the same kind of stuff that I write about in the books. That's the same stuff that I carry with me every single day of my existence. Whether that's whether that's clocking in and out or doing stuff on the side, it's the same, it's the same thoughts, right? It's, it's the same same projects. It's the same thing. So without there being, again, being a unicorn employer, not having to put up that front that some of us do, kinda, as safety professionals, in particular organization. Um, there's no surprise and when you eliminate the surprise, there's no holy crap and they felt that there's none of that because they know exactly how. So do you ever, do you ever get the conversation where they're concerned that you might say something that occurred inside of the work organization onto one of your broadcast podcasts or books? You know, not, not so much because, you know, a lot of them have listened and they listened. You know, I've had friends that, that are practitioners in that world that have come on the podcast. Um, you know, so it's, it's one of those things where it's um, I guess there's a little bit of an element of trust there, that, that, you know, that's not going to happen, you know, because I'm, I think that, I don't know if I don't wanna say that there's a realization there, but I think that there's an understanding that as a professional, you have to know, you know what, you can say what you can, and there's, there's obviously a line there, right? I can share some generalized stories about my career, but I can't say, you know, when john bob, you know, did this at this company, let me tell you something. It was right, Yeah, those are called private podcast that you just share all over the place. Exactly. I mean, you, you, it's just that line, you know, it's just that it's that professional line that you have to maintain their obviously um and again, that's, that's part of being a practitioner is knowing those things, you know, learning those things. Some, some folks kind of seem to intuitively know those things and some folks didn't have to learn those things the hard way, but I seem to have just kind of never, I just knew going into that when I started the podcast, I'm like, you know, I just knew, you know that there is going to have to be some sensitivity around. I've always worked hard to keep them painfully separate. I've always kind of put the wall up between those and viewed them as two different things that that that shall not bleed together and by doing so there's there's never been any conflict that's ever been created. That's that's a very important part because if not they stopped, they stopped funding your other dream. So that's not the way that I look at it. So what's coming up next for you? What do you got coming up next? Do you have anything planned or you anything? I mean especially with some, some places opening, some places opening, you know, I don't know, I'm kind of riding out the rest of this year, just just trying to get kind of settled into what again, you mentioned some of the personal from the moving and kind of all that stuff will be moving again in the next uh probably around the end of the year to kind of move into our permanent new permanent location. Um so really with all the normal life stuff that's going on, I'm just hanging out doing the podcast, kind of leisurely writing, legal writing, kind of exploring some of these thoughts and you know, when stuff comes up, I've got some virtual stuff that's coming up throughout the course of the year. Um and you know, stuff that I'll be, I'll be throwing up on linkedin for anyone that's interested in finding out more about that stuff and stuff that I'd be throwing up on the calendar, but several, several virtual events and then hopefully as things open up, maybe trying to plan some stuff and do some other things uh to your point with some stuff maybe around the book and you know, this this has been the year of uh at least the last half of it is kind of turning into a year of winging it, so, and I'm good with that, I'm kind of good with, with the one you call it. It's not really relaxing, It seemed to do more when I get, but just kind of winging it. So let's see what the rest of your brain. Okay, so give us the website. That way people know exactly where to look, where the calendars at or where things might start popping up. The easiest place is just the hotmail dot com. I mean W W W dot com. You can find out anything you really want to know or care to know. Uh, there, if you want to find out anything about books, you can search your local amazon marketplace for safety sucks. You usually find both of them that were pretty easy. Uh, if you're in the US and you want a direct link to the new book, the amazon us market, uh, it's just safety sucks dot net. You can, you can just head on and that will take you straight to the straight to the amazon page. Um, so yeah, I mean, those are the easiest ways if you want to follow along on linkedin or uh you just find me. I'm pretty well, what do you mean? If they want to follow along? They should be following along. There's no excuse not to. If you want to see all the trouble that I stir up and talk about safety stuff, you're free, you're free okay conversations if you like as well. So yeah, I'm trying to reply to just about everybody. Uh even even some crazy that's even uh wow, that's crazy. Okay, so flood his email box. Well, Mr Goodman, I appreciate you coming on to the show. For sure man, Why I have to tell you always a good time. Being able to hang out with SAm and everything that he always has going around. I mean I have to tell you, I don't understand how this guy only lives in 24 hours in a day because he seems like he's super busy. Not sometimes, but all the time. Anyways. If you've not been up to copy of safety sucks the manifesto. You need to go to amazon right now and do so anyways. This has been another episode of the J Allen show. Don't worry. We'll be back with another episode before too long. Goodbye or now. Yeah. Want more of the J ALLen show. Go to safety FM dot com. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast

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