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[00:00:07] spk_0: See, well, hello and welcome to the J ALLen show. Hopefully everything is good and grand inside of your neck of the woods as we begin this lovely Tuesday. That's of course if you're listening to this on a Tuesday of course, as you are aware, we are a radio show and podcast so you can listen to us at pretty much any time. Well, let's get started to start talking about what we have going on today. Of course. We talk always about the subject of safety where at least a good chunk of the times. But today I have

[00:00:41] spk_1: the privilege

[00:00:42] spk_0: of speaking to ERic, the host of empowered life Hacks. Yeah, we're gonna go down some past today talking a little bit about everything. So sit back, relax and take a listen to this version of the J ALLen show

[00:00:56] spk_1: with

[00:00:57] spk_0: our guest ERic. Right

[00:01:00] spk_1: now,

[00:01:01] spk_0: show is streaming now on safety FM Don't life Well, of course, but I? Ve um it was stolen. Nice gesture, I feel. Hold on, you're the one that's going around interviewing all kinds of people all over the place. What are you talking about? I I see your stuff, I see you posting on Youtube. So I mean if anything it's an honor to be with you. Thank you now, I'm being dead serious. Don't thank me, I'm being dead serious here. I love I love the mindset, humble leadership at its finest. Isn't it? A leadership? I have I don't have hardly any of that. Yeah, I was looking at your link to actually excited to dig in because I had some ideas I was going to touch on today and I really like that you had that customer service operational kind of almost a sales background and you're marrying it with Hop almost because I feel I was listening to Todd's podcast and that guy, you suggested me Brett Sutton, he was on it. And Todd came to the conclusion. So you're saying by selling learning teams, we actually use conversation, like we'll say conversation is the main value. Um that's the value of it. I thought it was interesting, they were talking about value, how do we deliver value? Um and I think it's a cool thing to talk about because of my sales background today in the Hs tech and that's all I do is I talked to VPs of Safety, higher level people and I have to relay them the value of something that matters like nothing to them at all. Well, that's the interesting part because you are bringing this up. So let's start talking about it. The interesting site is that you get to talk to some pretty interesting people as you have some different discussions. So where did the love of Safety come about for you? So basically the love of safety didn't come, like it didn't come. I love how that starts off well, actually didn't want to even really learn about it. What happened was people always said erIC you're very personable, like why don't you consider sales? And I always looked at like Wolf of Wall Street and I thought I don't want to be in Wolf of Wall Street. I hate that. Yeah, I found it. I hate that stuff. And I had like five people tell me, especially in the restaurant industry and I thought, okay, let me observe and look into it. And apparently there's a whole consultative section to sales and I like software. So, um I found it's a very good progressive culture, great reviews. That's why I went there and I was so desperate for the job. I was so happy about the reviews. I just learned everything I could. And I killed the interview, right? I was talking about ergonomics. I knew very little about it, just various health and safety things and my boss bought it, right, and he hired me and from there, what I realized you are aware that there might be a possibility they're going to listen to this. It's totally cool. I I'm super into it now. And the reason I'm into it was because I started learning that I'm not selling technology, I'm selling what technology can do. And not only that I'm basically bridging the gap between technology and humans. So I have to learn about these humans and the more I started learning about the humans themselves, they started becoming passionate because I invested the time to learn about them and before these humans the self, I mean, are you kind of putting yourself in a different category? I'm not sure what's going on here? Well, almost it was very detached like I felt like when I talk to safety people, I thought I was similar to them in many ways, but the more I looked into it, I knew nothing about their life, I knew nothing about their day. I knew nothing about their struggles and I'm trying to call people and I'm not getting the interaction I want, but I know nothing about them. So I had to start having conversations and that's when I really started enjoying the whole hop idea because I've been groomed a certain way as a leader to think a certain way and speak a certain way. Not that it was very militant, but it was very relationship based and there was a lot of learning team type stuff. So when I started seeing what makes resilient organizations thrive and what made us prospered during the pandemic and pivot. So well I mean the parallels are clear to me. So that's when I doubled down on this. So as you look at it though, there has to be some interesting things. So it's not something that you cared about at the beginning. You like it now. Of course, I'm sure it pays well in regards of what it does. But have you noticed as you're going in and speaking to different people, it's almost to an extent like you're talking about religion, it is different religion based on wherever that person is actually added to be behavior based safety, it can be lean, it can be hop what do you think about it? Especially when you have to have the different conversations and be able to adjust, especially with what you're doing? Well, I'm a passionate person and passionate people tend to, especially when they like something going a little too heavy. So I got humbled a lot where it would be like BBS hop, lean six oh what you got to do? And I'm just expressing myself and I've been grateful that I met some people one particular tomorrow paris, she introduced me to a bunch of people and I noticed now looking back, she was biting her tongue, not really biting it, but she saw me growing. So she was very patient with me. The reason I go here was because I think I can relate to the dogma because I jumped in it right away when I was like BBS is like this, hope you guys got to start seeing what I'm seeing. But the more I looked into it, it seems like both people by want good outcomes, um, just how they go about it is a bit different and they both seem a bit necessary like to understand systems, you have to see how behaviors are influenced. So I don't think it's bad to look at those behaviors, but as Sidney Dekker said in the safety differently movie, it's not about who and why, because that pushes the brain to blame, it's what and how and that changed me fundamentally after seeing that um how I look at things, I've always very systemic the way I look at things, but after that I really started saying, I do see a lot of why and who questions those are wrong questions right. But here's the interesting part you've been doing this a little over a year in regards with the organization that you're with, you know? Yeah, but but you're you're mentioning this stuff and you're taking these deep dives and nothing against where you're at. So I don't want to come across the wrong way eric is great and he's going to be with you for a long period of time. Please understand what's the goal, what is it that you're wanting to accomplish? Because you're taking some divergences into some subjects when when people taking these dives, they normally try to go other places. So what are you trying to accomplish? Uh so I have this written typically if you need to censor it, I can sense or be like smart needs to be edited, can we come in here and you can say whatever you want? Um well I'll put it like this. So basically what I'm trying to do now is embed myself in a way of thinking that I try and help as many people as I can through the few. So, how I do that in my podcast, empowered life packs is when I talked to people about what safety people find is the most profound experiences in their life. It was never in school, it was never once, I haven't had one person, mind you, I've had people that know and they wanted to be an industrial hygienists in like elementary school. They never said that it was I'm telling you So what was the profound experiences that I don't know what he wants to do? All the bends, you know that, but all jokes aside, I mean, what they told me, it was profound experiences with people and mentors who gently guided their mind in a direction and that was the profound shift or it was higher knowing or their own self giving them a perspective that they didn't think was there and I'll tell you a trend I'm seeing actually a trend I'm seeing is this people often are telling me that a big shift they had was when GM came and he started looking at safety is marketing. He said, guys, we have the mark, I don't care how you see safety marketing guys. And he changed this airline fundamentally. Another one was a gentleman who is the director for oil and gas company out in texas. I said, what was the most profound change in you? Like, it was one thing you can tell me that I can relate to safety professional that they would be like flabbergasted and he's like, eric, the single most thing I've learned was I started looking at everybody as a customer in my business. I don't care. I was employed by this company, you know, and another one was um even funny enough, I was speaking to us, uh, she was the head safety personnel for this food and beverage organization in new york. You have this down so packed in regards to how you don't give names of companies, you've done this a couple of times. Well, the reason I do is because I've interviewed a lot of people and some ghosted me after and they disclosed very private information and I realized I always wanted their anonymity to be at my forefront so I can have these conversations. So anyways, but this woman was so enjoying this experience and she kept like, she's really loving the sales venous of this interaction, but there's nothing sales you about it. And at the end of the conversation, she was like, oh, you remind me of myself, and I was like, yeah, you're very personable. I could tell you be great in sales. She's like, can you tell I was an engineer and I don't usually equate like engineers with, with strong sales capabilities. But the beautiful thing is I think there's this rise in this embrace and being able to sell the value of safety because it has often I think then understood as something separate from what we do on an everyday basis. So for me, in terms of where I would like to go with this, my vision is, I would like to share the skills I've learned to position a technology that no one cares about the Ceos and Cfos and say, I don't even want to see the competitors. I want that guy. Like I want to teach people that skill set. I'm only getting better. So we'll see when the time comes. But as of now I like using technology as a pseudo way to talk about hot based ideas. They think they're talking about technology. I'm explaining them how they can have a learning team. They're talking about kappas, I'm talking about how they can engage the janitor and finally hear his perspective. So he's not grumpy every morning. So it's interesting that you bring that up because it's high reliability organizations that do the tie into this. And if you kind of take a look at how systems are built out in regards of computer programming, not a lot of difference on some of the similarities to Hop. I mean if you kind of go back to core messaging and I'm sure that you have based on what you're telling me, you, you realize that it's a new aspect of the whole thing, especially when you start looking at volume one, volume two as you're going through the whole journey. So as you're doing this and you're moving forward and you've done several different things. So about a year of three months, give or take, you've been, you've been taking the deep dives, But about a year into it, or 11 months, you say, let's do um empowered life hacks. Why all of a sudden turn to the podcasting world? Well, I was actually part of a group of people I met through this meditation group. There's an individual named um swami. Yeah, he offers some perspectives that transformed me and I like him because he's like found his awakening through religious stuff, but he completely smashes that. He's like, this isn't practical for you by the way, let me tell you what I've learned going this path. And anyways, I met a bunch of great people and we're just like, hey, let's do it, acts of kindness in our community. So we do like mitt and drives my school from back in the day or we try and organize these food drives and try and do all kinds of stuff. But then Covid happened and we're actually planning to help the elderly, right? So we can't do that. Of course the covid high risk. So what we did is I said we had an individual who is passionate about the youth is a very successful multimillionaire and he's like, you know what eric the youth, I'm telling you they're they're the fundamental future and they are not, they're struggling right now. So I'm like, the easiest way is just to get them content. Guys, this is the easiest thing we've ever done. I can sit on my ass at home and we can just find meaningful content. So the whole premise was where I felt I missed out in school was they didn't teach me the skills that I had to learn. So hardly on my own. I didn't know how to read books fundamentally make that fun and interesting. I did never did. I actually struggled in university. Why? Because I don't remember Jack from it. I just regurgitated the information, right? I did. The information is leaving me after the test, literally that's what happened. I didn't, I didn't know the value of conversation so I can really learn how work can be done in my workplace and how the power structures in my organized. I didn't learn that skill. I didn't learn how to role play to make boring things more fun and that's everything we talk about. But not only that when you're giving away the trade secrets and everything that we talk about is boring. I mean, did I say that out loud? Well that's the thing. What I try to do is it's funny because I'm trying to enhance human beings so they can perform better in their life and organizations and try and help organizations perform better so they can enhance their people. So basically my purpose is to make people connected to new ideas, new people and see a different version of themselves. Right? So as long as I'm doing that, that's how empowered life hacks. That's why I'm passionate about it because I'm getting people human beings on both fronts now. Like they can't run for me, basically. I'm trying to figure this out because you essentially have three jobs and let's talk about this, you're a lifelong learner, you work, but you are so active on social media. It's not even funny, at least what I see on linkedin. So how are you pulling this off? Because you have are you using some of your some of your software to kind of help you work out on the links and stuff? I mean, but there's so much detail on when you make a post or comment on someone's post, you must be spending all kinds of time doing all three things. Yeah, I do, I don't play games and I actually tried not to post during work hours and by the way, my work today, I was posting all day because my mechanic was taken forever and I told my boss like I've taken a day off and now I feel better just commenting all day. But um yeah, so it is a third job, I never really thought of it, but it doesn't seem like a job because I mean, what is spirituality essentially like for me, I'm a person who likes, I embrace you in connection, I don't take it for granted, you know? Um and when I see someone giving their sincere effort now I really close my eyes and just try and be like, wow, like that person can die tomorrow. Like that's a person that had all kinds of stuff happened to them and they're here trying to live their best life and engage with people. Like I want to be that person Spending five minutes and be thoughtful and that can not only change him, change the way he may do something. Maybe at a synchronous tick event that can help him or have someone read that and say I want to engage with his content or a third option, change an unsuspecting person. And that's my whole thing is like I like optimizing performance and that's part of my whole social media stick to isn't just so empowered life hacks get visibility truthfully. It's a pain in my ass and empower. I like when people like it, but doing all the back end stuff isn't fun. The best part is when I get to comment when it's all done, that's when I find my fulfillment is through conversation and having someone reached out to me and saying, wow, that really helped me, you know? But I, I don't like a lot of this stuff I don't like, I don't like prospecting, I hate getting hung up on, but I love it when today I talked to a VP of Safety, a VP of Safety, very large company. I've been hard time getting pressed time with him and I finally got him on the phone. I'm like, listen, so now I know you just give me a second here. You have a minute. He said, sure. I said, you know, this is basically how I interface with people. This is the value they bring. And j do you know what the value I said we bring, I didn't say anything about features. I said we help people in their organizations feel more connected. We help people have better conversations and we help HR and quality finally feel like they're spoken to and everyone can communicate on a level playing field. So if you give me to someone lower level I'll take 18 to 66 to 18 hours to build a presentation for you. And I always get a good response. They said eric I talked to people every day, you're really good at what you do, I appreciate you, I'll give you this guy you know and that's kind of what drives me is like I know I fail a lot but I know when I get connected to the people, I don't care what people think of me because I have a good purpose and I have a good mission and I'm unwavering with that, That's pretty much what drives me. But what the things that drive you are also trying to, to enhance in betterment. I mean, let's just be realistic, you're trying to make someone better an organization better, but it's not just by the work that you do, it's also by the conversations that you have the post that you make. What do you think actually kind of got to the point where you want to drive forward and do that because you're kind of trying to make everything around you better is the spiritual, the spiritual journey that you went down. Yeah, I mean, it's just, life has blessed me in so many ways. I came a long way. Maybe I'll talk about it another day, but what do you mean? Maybe we're already here now. You know, we all have our troubles and it's just honestly, I wasn't that disciplined in my life just based on my own tendencies and some people like food, you know, some people like various other things and I'll just say I'm in the various other things calling my friend, I'll staying up late. And so what are the various other things we're here now? We're already an open forum. No one's listening is just you and I. Well, um, you know, pretty much just, we'll just say other things that that. But my point is I had tendencies that I had to overcome, but I found when you suffer with other people, right? And you come out of that, I had real relationships with people that were of a different life that were also suffering with me and I saw great potential in them. So much. So I still go back to these people and I pray for them and help them out and I get them to where they're in a better place, where they get that job because I don't stop there. And once I realized that I have the gift of communication, I'm very good at it. But I also have heart, I'm like, I have, I I don't want to be, I honestly didn't want to be on social media, I don't want to fame, I never wanted that. But life's just kept putting me in these positions around, honestly, just have to now and I embrace and I said, you know, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go full out and I'm going to impact people, like I'm not going to play around and I know that people are busy and I know I have to be concise and Todd's podcasts. I know I referenced him before when I saw his was only 25 to 30 minutes. That's when it went off. I'm like, whoa, that's what I'm gonna do, right. Not that I like long form podcast, but my job is to empower people with very short attention spans with many ideas, so they get one idea and practice it has to be short. So I basically married the idea of me wanting to help people, me seeing the light and people that maybe other people don't and me having to be concise in teaching them real world things that they're not going to find elsewhere typically and based on that I try and empower people through simple ideas that's just conversation and ideas and then get them out of here. I don't care if they never hear from me again. I just want them on and trying something That's pretty much my, hey, have you ever wanted to hear what's going on around in the world of safety and you're not able to do so? Have you ever wanted to take a listen to what exactly is going around in the world of safety? What if we call that thing around the

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[00:19:50] spk_0: you on the other side, make sure to join the revolution and we are back on the J Allen show on safety ff. Well, I mean, and I think that you're accomplishing what you're wanting to do and I will tell you, I think Todd's podcast is one of the better podcast that I've ever heard. He knows that I've told him that personally. I think I like I tell most people my 1st 100 episodes is my love letter to Todd Gangland and regards on how the great, I think he actually is, but I've been lucky enough to tell him in person on several occasions. But as you look at this and you talk about, you know, there's certain things you don't want to bring up and I understand that, but what I also think about is also there's people that are out there that could be taking a listen at this moment and they might see themselves in a place where they don't see that there's light at the end of the tunnel. Could you discuss that on how you were able to overcome? Doesn't have to be necessarily what it was, but how you were able to overcome and be able to move forward? Well, I mean, like look, I'll just say this, it was definitely parting oriented and I just have to remain humble because with the way my mind is and I understand my the way my mind is very nuanced individual. Right? So your streets this put it that way, we can say that I have quite a bit of street smarts. Um Aaron, I just have to retain a level of humbleness and and, and mindfulness when speaking now, that's just how I have to live my life. So that's why I'm always very careful. Okay, so um but yeah, I mean, I mean at one point you just kind of think like, you know, I wasn't going to kill myself, but I just felt like, you know, why not though, you know, like when you're very in, in a low, you just look at yourself in the mirror and what really hurts you is time. I used to think it was the things I did, but it's just because it's like time you just don't get back really, you know, or you're looking in the future and you feel like you can't recuperate some of that lost time, that was my biggest thing. But then I got to a point where I was just sitting there and I'm like, well if you're going to just feel like you're gonna die, you may as well live, like if you like, you may as well just do the good, if I want to wear underwear on my head, I may as well do it at this point, I literally about, I feel like just often myself like this is, you know, but mind you, this was like seldom one times. That wasn't a lot of times I felt that way, but there are certainly times where I just felt like I'm not going to improve, like I keep making the same errors. Um you know, my parents are maybe not feeling the best of my behavior, they're definitely physically looking different from just being worried about me. I have friends that no longer talk to me, you know what I mean? I'm not the person that I want to be yet. I have people tell me eric you're one of the smartest people I've ever met. Eric, you do things that are so kind, wow, you're such a great dude. And I just trying to marry this uh savage version of myself I've become and the beauty that people seeing me, and honestly, it's just like, I think whatever people believe that I don't care whether it's buddha or jesus or, but for me, it's just something came and picked me up out of my sheets and said like, I got you, don't worry. Um but you're gonna have to start making some steps to help yourself because I can't do everything. Um how how long do you feel that that translation that transition took? I mean, and I always know that it's an ongoing program when you start thinking about, especially when you start talking about suicide and depression and things along those lines, it's always ongoing because you struggle with the day to day. But as you look at it, how do you think, how long did it take you for that transition to occur? Where, I mean, I still know that most people that go through this still struggle. I'm not saying that it goes away, but where did you start seeing incremental improvements that it was night and day difference? Yeah. It was never a night and day difference. Now it is, I mean today I had an instance where I was eating breakfast waiting for my car. It's funny you say that I was looking at this place, I had to go that I didn't really want to go at the time and I'm just like Holy moly, look at where you're at. You got a good job, you know, a clean car, clean house, you got some money saved, you have friends, family, you have purpose mission. Like when you were at that location back in the day, that wasn't, that was just trouble going on there. That wasn't a good old time. And that felt like a night and day difference. Looking at those moments. But when I look at the journey, It was very drawn out. It was like sometimes I would take five steps for 30 steps forward, Wow, look at that guy, he's doing great 50 million steps back. Like who the heck is that guy? How did that happen? Right. So I mean it was a very drawn out process, but something that helped me is people's involvement with me directly and people's prayers for me. Now I'll say this, I don't know how people feel, but I mentor some people now of all ages, of all backgrounds. Um, not because I reached out to them, but it's just how life brought them to me. And I teach in my methods for dealing with people and I I take a state I do basically like my own eyes, so audit on my life every night and I pray for people. Um and I tell people like, you know when you can't do something that you like when you're trying to control too much, I don't care what you believe in, but if you want to power in your life, you turn it up and see what happens. I say, I always tell people be skeptical, I'm not telling you this will work for you. I'm saying say eric you're full of your full of whatever and try it cussed me out and then try this. And almost every time they come back I got the job I wanted, I got out of this industry that was crippling me, you know what I mean? I've been able to make that amends. I wanted to make a better at communicating now because of this. I told the story the other day, there's a woman I know she is a traffic controller for a construct card worker man. I'm like, you should be doing like she's getting there, but my point is she was getting crap from her foreman that she knew back in the day, horrible. Just get and she's like, why am I getting cussed out? I'm worried people are going to get ran over. I can only do so much. And she was like, I'm hearing people talk about this dude and he's looking like he's gonna be get canned and what I told her is that from my experience this can be a reflection of fear and upscale pressure from senior management. So give him a shot. But it wasn't relenting so much so that it was looking like people were going to leave. It's not crazy. So what I told her was like, you know what? You can always try and pray for the dude, but don't pray for the outcome. You want pray for his well being. And I told her uh cautiously optimistic prayer anyways. So with the cool thing about this is so here this out, she told me another instance with this dude. Guess what? I wrote her back, I can read it. I said, man, this guy needs to get fired. She was like, no, no, no, I don't want that. I'm gonna try that thing thing you told me about the whole prayer sure enough, she goes back to work one guy machine operator 10 years, walked off the site cousin, I can't deal with this dude, I'm out. And she's like, oh my God, I didn't pray for this. But guess what happened after this that humbled him? He became more kind. They were working from seven in the morning to 10 30 to 12 30 at night. Isn't that crazy on friday? Right? Crazy period. Doesn't have to do anything with. Yeah, but the beautiful thing this week. They're working earlier hours this week. He's thanking her a lot. Now mind you, we don't know the catalyst. The funny thing about hopping conversations is you can't measure off in the change. It just happens, isn't it? So is it prayer? We can't say that she prayed for this dude and now he's kinder. But I will tell you this everything was going off the Richter people are leaving the company and then the night before she praised. They leave early. Huh? What? And she's getting thanked the whole week. Now say what you want. What I what I just don't want to dismiss in anything is that there is a spiritual component to, to what we do is people. And I'll tell you this, J what is funny? I'll tell you this. I did pray for you that day. You invited me to be on your podcast randomly. I just pray for random people. I thought nothing of a very short prayer and then I saw your podcast and I was just so I don't know what it was about. So captivated by your humanity, who you are as a person. I was like laughing my ass off like this dude. Well this guy is amazing. I'm definitely gonna follow this podcast from now on and I remember thinking you deserve that comment. Like that comment was for me, but like I want people to know how engaging that podcast was. Not funny enough the morning that I pray for you and I listen to your podcasts and I giggled and laughed my ass off and you're so engaged and learned so much and comment, you invite me on your show. What are the chances of that? So I'm just trying to tell people like, you know, I can say a lot about what I stand for and things that work for me in my wish and but I also hope to bring a spiritual component to what we do because often safety people have to put out so many fires and have so many hats, you try and control everything, but you just can't. Sometimes you have to surrender and leave it to life to help you. So when you look at this, then do you think that there's hop components to spirituality completely completely. And I honestly have like 16 behind the scenes interviews I did with people tying this together and it's just looking at me and I don't want to sift through the data, but I was going to tie anybody want to do this out there. Please do. But yeah, I do see it directly correlate because if you think about kindness being kind is essentially an outcome like love is, if a child sees his dad, his mom and after apologize and say, I love you, there's a good chance he's going to do that. I feel he's expressing love, right? But love is an outcome. Same with kindness and hop is a philosophy that produces the outcome. So it's hard to unmarried the two. Um, and when you look at what kindness is, it's essentially a risk assessment. For example, if a woman is crying and she's a stranger and I go hug her and then she shudders because she's been abused when she was younger and she doesn't like to be touched. I ruined her week. I tried to be kind my risk, my Jayce was like person sad hug remove P. P. E mails thrown in the garbage. Like no. So, so essentially like it is inherently. Um it's it's embedded and you can't replace it. It's it's there. And the beautiful thing about kindness is there's so much evidence to show the value of kindness. There's obviously the scientific evidence of hot, but there's also scientific evidence of what kindness does to people, what kindness does to organizations. So the hours, a whole body of evidence to support its value undeniably. Well, it's interesting that you bring that up because I'm going to say give or take about a month ago, I was having a conversation with someone and they said that they went to a church and the principles that were brought up during the church service was the seven principles of Hop very similar to what Tony would share it. Yes. And he was referencing that, that's what the service was about, which was pretty amazing. So I bring this up to kind of go to another portion, still talking about the same thing. Do you think that we need to do something where we're focusing more on humanity when we go into organizations to speak to them opposed to just going directly into the safety side or even kind of tying some of the spirituality into it. It's the audience. It's your opinion. That's the great thing about it. It is, we'll be, it's funny because actually, again, I want these people, but I have been introduced to some people uh that are quite known in the industry and I talked to them about my idea and what they said is just like from an executive, I find safety people love this anytime I talk about this, they're like, yeah, yeah you're right. Like they're like, whoa, I didn't see that perspective. I've had people told me they didn't see this perspective, but you see it, I see it. But it's just funny how many many people actually don't and the idea is that it depends on your audience. Um I was speaking to someone about total worker health and I'm not too nuanced with the particulars, but after a conversation I opened up the document and she asked me like eric you said you see some challenges with implementing something like this and we're total worker health often is a philosophy as much as the procedures in there from what I see. But um I was telling her like just based on reading wrote Rosa's book um on relationship factor safety leadership and I'm like you got to really think like it's all fine and dandy, but do you think they're going to see the value in your taking time and having these conversations? How do you know you have the supervisor saying we're doing Total worker Health now and when you leave he's going to be having those conversations, you want him to, there's no way to measure and monitor that and they can chicken scratch the data. So how are you selling the value of conversations? And it's very difficult. So what I say is like you have to be ready for productivity gains, you have to be ready to share financial gains, you have to be ready to share reputational gains right? You have to be ready to learn whatever they consider important results. And what I do is I have something known as sales for us and when I speak to people, they say, my director of Quality, my VP of global regulations and Quality, I'm like that's how I pull information. As I say, so I can refer to him by his first name and not call him by a role. Can can I just get his first name and I start building this archetype in my mind. I ask what he thinks, how he feels about them, how often they interact with that individual, what are 3 to 2 questions he asks himself or asks you to know that he's doing a good job and then from there I know the R. O. I. And I'll spend 6 to 18 hours again building a presentation for that guy and then him saying I want to speak to that kid and that's I think that's a skill many safety people have that. They don't think they're using light into their faithful capability based on the fear I hear from them being like ERIC I'm working 9 to 9, I can't do training and safety data sheet management, I can't update these and I'm so screwed. And then me giving them a solution and then literally coming back to me, jay rebuttal ng themselves. It's like, well we don't need it. No, no, we're okay. Uh do you know what? You know what? It's going to be too hard. Wait eric, do you know what I got to talk to my president, could you help me? And they have a bipolar episode in front of me and I realized this is fear of not being able to sell the value properly. That's it. And obviously the power structure being hurt. But the biggest thing is knowing your audience, j you can sell kindness if you talk about it the right way, you can sell hop if you talk about it the right way, but you can damage your reputation if you talk about it the wrong way and that's people's biggest fear. Well eric it's kind of interesting, you know, I'm going to go back to something that you said at the very beginning when we first started when people told you about going into sales and you turned it into you compared it to the Wolf of Wall Street. If you kind of think about the movie and just go through the example of the breakdown that you just gave. I'm just saying, but there's some similarities there for sure, but here's the here's the other portion and don't get me wrong, I'm just going to say this is normally not something that I say on the air, but I'm gonna share it with you. Why are you not a motivational speaker going around teaching people how to do this? Well, this is my vision is that I've spoken to over 250 organizations since if I were to work for health and safety for an organization, I would interface with so many different problems. So the idea is, I don't sell software. I sell a conversation and I learned so much every day and the more I learn about hop, I'm just bought a bunch of books about the book you recommended about learning teams from. I've got another one coming from Ed Shine and I'm just like, I'm going to just learn so much that I'm gonna pseudo sell these people these values, They have no idea what's gonna hit them. Really don't because the moment I can speak to their pain point, they get receptive to any thing else. I say, I'm not going to say you have to do hop. I'm just going to position the R. O. I often I told somebody this idea where I was like, he was like, well eric well these people are old. They won't use the system and I just sold the idea of how he can print out the kappas and in different ways in rhetoric. He can engage people and he said, huh, I'm realizing a lot of these ideas just simply aren't out there and every day, every year, every time I sell, every time I talk to someone, I'm not selling software, I'm helping the safety community position their value to people that have never heard or care about your procedures or protocols. So the better I get at that then I will for sure consider going off and this isn't just about environment, health and safety operations. This is about the world. Like my goal would be that DHS may as well not have that title. It just have a very robust name and people know these people as human enhancers and that's why I love the hot movement that I would love a hop sir doesn't exist. Apparently I've been looking around for it. You're not gonna you're not gonna find, you're not gonna find a legit one. You might go to a four day training where somebody slaps a certificate. Your certified. Yeah, no, I would like one with a practicum. Um but the good thing is I have some ways of doing about this. I'm partnering with a friend of mine who owns a plastic manufacturing company and he's been telling me his philosophy is I let him talk for two hours straight and I was just taking notes. I'm like uh huh. I'm like, do you know there's something called Hop out there and I told him this whole philosophy and I'm like, man, I would love, you can trust me, I'm your friend, I love to partner with you. So what I think I'm gonna do behind the scenes to now my education will be just out partner with people and gain their trust and then we'll actually be able to hopefully participate in these processes. So again, there's empowered life hacks from helping people individually that will work for organizations and be better parents and kids into actually empower organizations, have tools to have better conversations. And now there's my new goal on this side is where I'm becoming comfortable with people until I can ask them if I can actually help them make some decisions or propose ideas and in position hop. So I'm like almost like a ghost that a lot of people don't really see. But hopefully again, I haven't written on my board, I'm here to help the many through helping the few. So if I can do that then mission accomplished. Well, I was, I was gonna ask you if you had a vision board, I was wondering if you did actually, I'll tell you what's on my sales vision board though. You know, I noticed a lot of people for example, we refer to, we have a tendency in organizations to refer to people by the role or their title or their function, right? So for me, I like to refer to people by the what they drive or the outcome I want. So I have people that I'm trying to build more hearty communication with have their organizations below. But I say relationships that are blossoming and it's not a flower return. It's true because they didn't know me and now they're trusting me. So I put them there and for the people that are really down and really like me and I've spoken to senior management, I put organizations I have trust in meaningful relationships with. So rather than, and I don't have a dollar figure. Often people put a dollar figure beside them, but by not having a dollar figure or their names, right? When I look at these organizations in my mind, they're very human, like, like X organization is a human and I have him on linkedin and I'll never sell him or target him on linkedin for that. But I had him connect with me on linkedin because I said, hey, you're more than a VP of safety. I'm more than a sales guy. We both care about helping the youth. I will never target you on here for that, but I'd love to connect with you and that's really what he, if he never goes with us, I don't care. You know, that's my job isn't to sell people again. My job is to do everything I've been saying on this podcast, perform at a higher level with or without me. So that's how my vision board is pretty much sales oriented, but it's about having me connect to humans not to money. Money will come, I know that, but people, people are transient, they leave so I have to empower them before I can do anything eric, if people want to know more about you and what you're doing, working to go to find out more. Sure, best platform is Lincoln, E R I C, eric Labant, L A B A and C Z. Um Empowered life hacks dot com is our website. Um I try and post things here and there, but we have a whole resource page for each episode. If you don't want to watch the whole 15 to 35 minute episode, I have time stamps. I have written the actionable tips and I even have a topic summary so you can learn about why this may matter to you. Well eric I appreciate you coming on to the show today. Oh man, you have no idea this made my day.

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