Ren Lu You, CEO Frontline Data Solutions
Safety Consultant with Sheldon Primus
Ren Lu You, CEO Frontline Data Solutions
March 28, 2022
In this episode, Sheldon speaks with Ren Lu You the CEO of Frontline Data Solutions. Frontline is a optimization tool for data related to safety and health culture and compliance. Sheldon and Ren talk about his journey into safety from Harvard Business School and capital management. For more information: https://www.fldata.com/?grsf=gwf9cq
Keywords: Sheldon Primus, Safety Consultant, Ren Lu You, Frontline Data Solutions, EHS, Safety Culture, Safety FM, Harvard Business School, Health and Safety, COSS, COSM, Safety designation, OSHA, OSHA Compliance, Frontline Data Solutions, Management of Change, Oil and Gas, Manufacturing, Incident Management, Learning Management System, LMS, Contractor Safety, Corrective Action, Food and Beverage, Chemical Manufacturing, Government, US Government, Training, Webinar, Blog, Podcasting, Business Development, Regulation, Regulatory Agencies, Public Speaking

[00:00:02] spk_0: this episode is powered by safety FM.

[00:00:10] spk_1: Welcome to the safety consultant podcast. I'm your host. This is the podcast where I teach you the business of being a safety consultant in today's episode. We're actually gonna be interviewing Mr ren lu yu and if you have not heard that name well you will soon. You just did actually. Mr liu you he is the ceo of frontline data solutions and what that is is actually a data system, it's a software company and they help you with the workflow of your job. So you have your management of change incident management, all the other stuff that you're thinking about in the oil and gas field, chemical manufacturing, food and beverages feels like that even have some training that you could do online through his company. So we talked a lot about his journey from being a Harvard and I said Harvard as in the Harvard business school graduating and working in the fields of capital and financial stuff, right, big stuff. And then all of a sudden he's like I'm looking into some distressed businesses, finds one and he decides he's going to get into safety. So we kind of talked about how everything goes or did go with that transition a little bit about the company and the solutions that they saw for you. And then I even threw in a bonus for us consultants. I asked him how can you partner with consultants out there, not only to grow your business but to help us out too. So we talk a little bit about that as well. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and there will be no tip of the week because I haven't done that in about a year. So after this episode I'm just gonna let you go have yourself a wonderful rest of the week, go get him.

[00:02:32] spk_0: Great.

[00:02:33] spk_1: Excellent. Well, welcome to you. The safety compliance. See, I don't even know my own show. It's a safety consultant podcast and I just wanted to talk to ren lu yu, who is the founder of Frontline Data Solutions. And ren thank you so much for for coming on the show and I really appreciate you first, you had me as a webinar guest and that was really cool talking about uh the training aspect and now having you on my show, which is awesome. So thank you so much for for being a part of the safety consultant podcast,

[00:03:12] spk_0: it's a pleasure to be here Sheldon.

[00:03:14] spk_1: Um I always start with the basics, right? And everyone does this, it's like, tell me your journey because I'm looking at your profile and I see Harvard Harvard M. B. A. And I'm thinking, how does Harvard Harvard go with safety? What happened then? What went right?

[00:03:35] spk_0: Yeah, yeah, some some things went right. Some some things uh went other ways. Um But yeah, so overall my background, so I I didn't come from, as you probably guessed, I didn't come from the health and safety background. So I started out my career in finance, working in private equity, doing deals in technology enabled business services mostly and some health care services. And so I did that for a while when eventually went to Harvard to get my M. B. A. And came out of that. And a few years after I kind of really wanted to uh you know, as they say, get an honest job and do something that I wasn't just moving numbers around. And so so I basically spent some time doing a somewhat unusual but increasingly common thing where I went and spent about a year just talking to various business owners, talking a lot of intermediaries and basically looking for a business to acquire. And so I looked at a lot of different industries and front line was actually the one that I came across that I saw a lot of potential in. So as a company for for those of you who are unfamiliar with a company that makes web based environmental, health and safety tools primarily for large industrial companies, mostly chemicals, oil and gas, food and beverage manufacturing and a few others. And so this company at the time was kind of a sleepy family owned business that really had, had had found some success over the years, but really was just kind of coasting along on its reputation and on the fact that it found a nice niche for itself. And so I I came came, I brought out the old owners and basically decided to really, you know, put some effort into this in terms of investing in R and D to improve our tools, investing in sales and marketing to get the word out more so than just just, you know, waiting passively for folks to knock on our door. And so yeah, that's that was about five years ago and have been doing it ever since.

[00:05:50] spk_1: Wow. Now, from your experience, from first trying to find a distressed company or at least one that you, you felt that you could add some value to. And then now when you started learning a little bit more about safety and health, uh were there any things that that really um like stuck out to you and saying, man, I I did not know this about the safety industry or what what were some of the things that that that hit you?

[00:06:19] spk_0: Oh, there were, there were a million things, certainly, I honestly I came into this with some with a healthy dose of humility because I I knew that, look at, you know, I've spent my career up to that point as what I would describe as a desk jockey, right? So just sitting around punching numbers into spreadsheets and things and and so, you know, never really setting foot in in, in what I described as the physical world of where things get done and things get made and products get produced and so, you know, there were a ton of things, I didn't know, I think one of the one of the most overarching things I I kind of had a misconception about was that health and safety was all about kind of regulatory compliance. Right? That was that was my assumption coming in that hey, OSHA E. P. A. D. O. T. These news organizations have these rules and health and safety is all about following those rules and that was kind of it. That was the

[00:07:17] spk_1: bottom line.

[00:07:18] spk_0: What I came to realize was that it's yeah, that's part of it, certainly. But that's not nearly all of it. There's there's so much more that companies do and our clients are doing that go way beyond what these regulators are mandating and that's purely for kind of pragmatic business reasons and you want your people to be safe, you want them to stay healthy. You want to avoid incidents, not just you know, for that, that helps, which helps your employees stay on their feet and stay happy and healthy. It also helps the company's bottom line. Sure, there's just so much of that and that extends to not just the U. S. But also internationally. So I thought, well, you know, she was a U. S. Regulatory body and some of the other ones I named. And so some of the stuff we're doing, you must not be relevant to any companies that are outside the US because they're not governed by the same regulations. So how could it possibly make sense for them. And I've come to realize since then that it does actually make a lot of sense for these international companies because a lot of them look to the US for leadership as far as what are the best practices, you know, what, what are the, um, what are, you know, things like, things like PSM is a US framework, but it's been adopted by a lot of other countries is not exactly the same terms, but very similar terms. And that's because it is kind of the best practice for certain types of industries.

[00:08:43] spk_1: Yeah, Well, now that that whole learning and I guess discovery process, if you would was probably something tough because truly being a ceo of people or to say a company that's supplying support to these type of industries, uh then I'm grateful. And, and, and as a member of the industry that you came into saying already that you're thinking of it humbly and that you really wanted to learn. So that shows that you had to write, intent to write heart to to figure out some of the acronyms and nuances and and all the stuff that we get in the field. So used to the fresh Eyes is really one of the things that, that is a great benefit to the industry. Yeah,

[00:09:31] spk_0: thanks for that show. I mean, yeah, I mean, look before I started this, I, you know, the term PPE just meant a line item on a balance sheet or something, right? Yeah. You know, I never put anything on and had to go through, walk through a plant and, and you'll get my hands dirty. But now that I have, I see that there's just, there's just so much more nuance to it.

[00:09:53] spk_1: Oh yeah. And just truly when, when I, a lot of my students that come in for like the certification classes that I teach the new students that are just getting into the industry, sometimes it's because they just got out of an industry that was either they were released ceremoniously or they were just bored or in some cases more recently it was the cut back from covid, you know, so with those people just getting into the field, one of the things that I, I see is their excitement and then I also see the wonder and the mystery, I started getting more and more of it deeper and deeper into it. Had you experienced things like that where you started to, to get more of a wondering and um, and just a feeling of hopefully not where you're overwhelmed, but what was, what was your feeling when you started getting deeper and deeper into the safety uh, cultures, the safety needs, the paperwork and all those type things.

[00:10:56] spk_0: Yeah, Yeah. You know, I absolutely, I mean, there's been lots of those types of moments and I think one thing that really struck me was just kind of how passionate some folks in this industry are about what they do, right? And so, you know, again, this is just born out of my initial ignorance about this whole field, but you know, I kind of thought, well, you know, when you talk about compliance in lots of other industries, so, you know, let's say financial services, right?

[00:11:27] spk_1: You have a compliance

[00:11:28] spk_0: department at a bank. Their job is to make sure the bank stays compliant with all the rules. Okay. Um, you know, that's a different kind of compliance, right? Because the stakes, well, they're also high, the stakes are quite different because those are kind of financial stakes, their reputational stakes, sort of, things like

[00:11:45] spk_1: that.

[00:11:46] spk_0: And in the industry that we're talking about that, you have all of those, you have financial stakes, you have reputational stakes, but you also have just like human beings and you have, you know, that the stakes are just totally, totally, much higher and, and totally different. And so you have people that are really passionate about that and, you know, I think that has really impressed me and surprised me that there are, there are folks that are, they're so passionate about this and um, that have made their careers to make sure that people stay safe, that work gets done, but done in a, in a way that minimizes risks to the people that work there and to the surrounding environment and community. Uh, so, you know, I, I live in Houston texas. And periodically I'll hear about some sort of industrial accident or a gas leak or something that

[00:12:38] spk_1: comes from a

[00:12:39] spk_0: nearby

[00:12:39] spk_1: area.

[00:12:41] spk_0: Exactly. And so yeah, that happens somewhat regularly and frankly as someone who lives here, that, that has really, it really hits home that, yeah, I mean, I'm glad that these companies have a robust, um, you know, safety group and that they are, you know, not just following the regulations kind of the minimum degree, but also doing a lot more in those cases. And so that, that really hits home that yeah, I mean if there's some sort of gas leak or something that's coming out of the location, you know, 10 miles from where I live? Well, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm really glad that the professionals in this industry are on top of it and I generally speaking, don't, don't worry too much about it because it's usually under control.

[00:13:26] spk_1: Well, um, let me to, to believe another thing. And uh, or at least a question came up, was there anything when you started with frontline that you thought my discipline in the finance world, we could use this in this area to make this business run smoother or more economical? What what were some of the things that you found like, oh man, we could do this and you married your tune into your, your, your knowledge with financing with a need that the business had when you took over. Was there anything like that that you you discovered?

[00:14:03] spk_0: Yeah sure. You know I think that there there is quite a bit of overlap in terms of just the skill set and the mindset that's required to to do some of this. So for example you know the name of the company's frontline data solutions. Right? And so what we're in the job, we're in the business of helping folks get things done more efficiently and then also helping them keep track of what's happening around them. So keeping track of all the data that's there and making sure that it's easily reportable that they can pull it up at a moment's notice. And so what I found that that is that you know a lot a lot of folks that we work with even a lot of large very sophisticated companies, they're capturing a lot of information that they don't end up using for anything. Right? So in finance like information is kind of all you have because frankly I I've done, You know I've done deals and worked on transactions where you know aside from maybe a single site visit. You know I'm sitting there thinking well that does this like facility actually exist. Right? I mean there's like a like a piano, I'm looking at a spreadsheet with some data about it but like I've never actually been there like it says there are 500 employees there. It's like you know who are these people, they're

[00:15:18] spk_1: just names on a on

[00:15:20] spk_0: a spreadsheet. So um so you know there are data is kind of all you've got and so I think there is definitely still a learning curve in some of these um uh some of these, you know industrial companies that are in some many cases very old school and the way they operate in terms of seeing the value in capturing this information and then being able to parse it in a way where they can actually make some decisions. So yeah, I think that's one thing that comes from my finance background where we're saying, okay, well yeah let's help people make decisions based on this information because my mother in the world that I came from. Yeah, that's really all you had to go on. There was no way to, you know uh touch and hold kind of, you know physically inspect things. So you're just relying purely on the data that you're getting,

[00:16:13] spk_1: wow and data is king right? But data has but data in our case is generally the reason why you have this data is because of some lagging issue to lagging indicator that you're looking at. And generally speaking it's an injury and illness or something where it's got somebody's name to the data, you know, so that's truly hell with safety and health, we need this stuff, we need the lagging indicators, we need to know uh some of the things that uh for us we value that information or on total recordable injury rate stays away restricted transfer rates management to change incident investigation things meaning the event happened. We now have to dissect it and figure out how it happened and then put it in terms where it could be legally defensible. And that's what the front line is doing. It's really giving, giving us the tools if you would to be able to do that. Yeah,

[00:17:15] spk_0: absolutely. Um, and that's yeah, that, I mean that that's just, it's, it's what we're trying to do and that there's so much more that we could do in terms of, you know, you mentioned lagging indicators and that's obviously important and a lot of companies don't even have those kind of sorted out. But ideally you want to be able to collect data and be able to make certain predictions, right? So identify risk areas, try to head off some of these things before they actually become full blown incidents. Now, frankly, I don't think we're quite there yet either both as a company and as an industry because because with with any kind of predictions or any kind of probabilistic statements, you really need a lot of data and that data has to be really high quality because as the old adage goes garbage in garbage out, right?

[00:18:03] spk_1: So if you're collecting

[00:18:04] spk_0: information in an inconsistent way or, you know, it's not a complete set, then it's really hard to make really say anything about what might happen in the future. And so I think that's really the next step to all of this. But I think it's something that I think neither we as an individual company or really has an industry where we're not quite there yet.

[00:18:24] spk_1: Yeah, but you're covering a lot of ground because you're working on management of change, working in incident management, corrective actions of your learning management system, which we, we talked about in the webinar that I did with you guys earlier, uh contract safety or contractor safety is part of your services and a lot of people need this help, especially when they got subcontractors and make sure that they're doing the right thing. So you've got a lot of solutions there. Is that a growth model? So every time you hear a need and uh and something comes up, you're thinking, oh, we could do this and you add to it.

[00:19:05] spk_0: Yeah, you know, necessity is the mother of invention, right? So I think, I think that definitely is one of the main ways we identify where we should be focusing our engineering efforts, you know? But then then again, it's, it's tough though because it's easy for, for your, what's the saying? It's like for your eyes to get bigger than your stomach or whatever,

[00:19:27] spk_1: whatever the

[00:19:28] spk_0: saying is, right? So it's it's easy to see a lot of things we say, oh well this doesn't work that well, we could do better or oh, you know, I heard from this customer that they have this need, that seems like no one is able to fulfill right now. But it's tough because there are a lot of idiosyncratic needs where it's hard to say, oh, just because one or two clients brought something up. This really is a genuine kind of systemic thing that lots of people could use help with. And it's also an issue of, well, does this really make sense given everything else we're doing? Right? So there's lots of lots of wacky stuff that I could dream up and I have that really had nothing to do with any of our other products and don't really fit neatly into everything else that we're doing. And so yeah, so that those things might be in real need and they might be really interesting projects, but it's not something that I don't want to Drag our whole engineering team into 2 to pursue.

[00:20:25] spk_1: So

[00:20:26] spk_0: yeah, it's the latest thing.

[00:20:28] spk_1: Yeah,

[00:20:29] spk_0: exactly. Yeah. There's just, there's just so much out there, you know, the latest thing that we're working on is something you mentioned a second ago that the contractor management and training tool, so we call it the frontlines CSM for contractor safety management. So that's told that is really born out of what we've heard from the market, which is that yes, everybody has some kind of system in place for orienting and training contractors that are coming through, but given everything that's gone on in the last few years. And just given the fact that the status quo is, is very time consuming and very expensive of having to send people to, you know, on site training or to a computer lab to do web based training in a kind of specific physical location. We've heard a lot of feedback that, yeah, that just doesn't work that people don't want that anymore. That it's very tight, very expensive, very time consuming for everyone involved. And so that was one thing that was just born out of, hey, we're hearing this a lot and you valid, we've done our research and kind of validated that yeah, this seems like a real problem that we can help solve. And it's closely related to everything else we're doing because we're already doing training and health and safety, uh, you know, stuff for all full of the full time employees at our clients. So this seemed like a natural extension.

[00:21:51] spk_1: No, that's excellent. So you're not taking everyone too far out the box with with your team, but, but you're covering things that you believe that's necessary, which it is. I had another thought because I noticed that you guys that, that the company has a real good a grasp on a team. You seem like the people that, that you've either hired or absorbed into the company when you took over took over, uh, they're just really dedicated. I, I see that they, I don't know, the the the energy is kind of what I'm thinking of, what I'm thinking about that because I do see, and some people that I've, I've dealt with, john, uh, one of the ones that I've dealt with and uh, it seems like they have a lot of energy knowledge and then passion for, for safety and health and then also to get the word out about the business. How did you come about it? Because a lot of my listeners are going to be people who are either their own bosses as safety and health or they're going to be getting into that and they're currently working for a company and they're trying to get their exit strategy going and they're, they're getting ready there. But then I also have a segment of people who they've been in consulting for a while and they were ready to start releasing some of this for um, hiring people and trying to get some people in there. What's your philosophy on, on hiring and getting a team together and when do you know, it's time to get a team member for this product out there. That

[00:23:29] spk_0: right? Yeah, honestly, that's, that's a really great and really difficult question and I certainly don't pretend to have the answer to this. I don't know, frankly, I don't think anybody has the answer. Um, you know, what's worked well for for us is, well for one thing you may not know this, but our whole company is fully distributed. So as of a few years ago we ditched our physical office that was based in, based in the Houston area for this model of just going fully distributed. So that was initially the initial impetus for that was covid. But then with it, after a few months of working in that model, I found that that works pretty well and that, I mean I made the call to to take it fully remote. So everyone works works from their own home office these days. So I think that that has a few advantages and disadvantages. So the advantage is that it's, people don't like commuting. So our employees are generally happier and more productive because of that. Um, the other advantages that were able to recruit from all over, I think that's been helped a lot. So all the folks that you've dealt with, um, at our company, they're all from different places. I think none of them are actually in texas where I am, so where we are. So, and then the disadvantages of that, it's, it's harder to maintain kind of a coherent company culture, right? You have to really go out of your way to make sure that people are interacting that they feel like they are part of a team and not just off on an island sitting in their home office living room or wherever they are and just, you know, in their own little silo. So yeah, so I think that that's always tricky and when I hired folks like that, you know, I think people put too much weight on unprecedented. So I think a lot of people like to hire folks that say, okay, well I'm hiring for X. Y. Z. Role. I'm gonna hire somebody who has done exactly X. Y. Z. In the past. Right? And so for me, frankly, that that's just not really possible in our market because because, you know, with health and safety, yes, there are plenty of professionals out there who have done some work in that space. But if I'm trying to hire, let's say, a software developer or maybe at a client support person or something like that, it's almost never the case that they have both experienced in those specific functions and they have expertise, expertise of some kind of experience in health and safety also. Right? So there's there's like a Venn diagram on that, it's just like there's like almost no overlap between the

[00:26:09] spk_1: circles. So

[00:26:11] spk_0: yeah, so I think for me, I think being able to hire, well comes down to it, it's a bit like investing, it's, you know, you have to be able to see value somewhere where other people don't recognize it. And so when I say value, I might, I mean, things like someone's skill set, maybe it's unconventional, maybe their background is a little bit outside the center of the bullseye for for a role like that, you're hiring for, but you're seeing something in terms of maybe they have, they've worked on certain side projects where it uses the same skills, that's what you're hiring for. Even if even if they don't have great direct experience or maybe they're they're they're they have fewer years of experience than you were you were hoping for. But you know, maybe they have demonstrated that they are able to land on their feet and be a quick learner and try to ramp up into the jobs that they've had and so that maybe that gives you comfort that even though they were kind of under experience for a particular role, there is still a good hire. So yeah, I mean there's no silver bullet, but I think I think for me the key is kind of seeing value where other people may not recognize it.

[00:27:18] spk_1: Oh well that's great because generally when you're thinking about, especially someone that is going to be remote, you want to make sure that they're going to be dependable. You want to make sure that they they're going to um time manage properly. But then also you want to make sure that they are skilled at what they're doing. So you've you've managed that. But then you know the I like that that idea of also looking for the intangible or at least going with your gut and then you can see, oh yeah, this person is more than just this job description in this case.

[00:27:53] spk_0: Yeah. Some, some people I just found are just much better at both putting together a resume and at interviewing than other people. It's it's it's easy to be seduced by someone who looks really polished and shows the interview and they just give a great 30 minute interview and it's hard, it can be hard to separate that from someone who is going to be a genuinely great contributor and a team player.

[00:28:20] spk_1: Yeah. Can you talk about your partnership model with people who are consultants such as myself? I know it may vary from person to person, consultant consultant, but I I figured that might bring value to the audience that that type of knowledge of what your program would do.

[00:28:42] spk_0: Yeah, absolutely. So this is something that we've launched fairly recently where we're trying to get in touch with what we know we know is out there that's kind of long, this diffuse and kind of long tail group of. Oftentimes, small business owners, individual, um kind of sole proprietors working as consultants to various companies. There were just, you know, I know from personal experience that there are tons of folks like this out there, but for the most part of companies in, you know, in my industry or really, you know, lots of other related companies, they really historically haven't paid much attention to this, this group because it's it's kind of diffuse and it's kind of hard to a lot of these folks, you know, they don't have marketing departments, they don't, they're not out there very visibly in a way that you can kind of hold the other list easily get in touch with them. So, but nonetheless, these people are really, really sharp, they have great expertise and folks like yourself who have a ton of experience being kind of thought leaders and so we wanted to reach out to these folks and and establish some sort of relationship and um if there, if the timing is right and the opportunities right, we'd love to find a way to um, you know, both uh kind of refer business in both directions and so um in the direction kind of of from from the clients is we wanted to work with these partners to uh to be able to refer basically if they go into an environment, oftentimes, you know, they're doing an audit where they're doing safety training or whatever their job role is, they may find an environment where they could, their clients could really use the type of tools that we're providing. So they diagnosed. So show me your, your training records for this past year. Okay, well give us a month, like, well like pull that all together the paperwork, it's like, okay, well why don't you just have a thing where you can press a single button and they'll spit it out, right? So, so the, so, you know, their environments like that where I think it's a great opportunity to start a dialogue and so we have a kind of incentive system in place where, you know, once we're kind of, you know, you got the partner is part of our program, uh you know what they can do whatever they want, they can conduct business however they feel like, and if they so choose they can put us in touch with their clients and our our folks will, will start that conversation and basically along various points in that conversation, including their client actually does sign up with us. Um you know, there's there's financial remuneration for, you know, for the consultant for being able to refer to us that business. Um and then beyond that, there's also the opportunity to kind of do kind of cross promotion and do kind of co branded marketing. So for example, in our tool, there are a lot of um for example, there are recurring training items, recurring action items and things like that. So one thought that we had was again depending on the consultants and their interest level and their, you know, their engagement. We could do things like have their company branding embedded and then our software, I can even have things like recurring action items that say, hey, go talk to every whatever, March, March 15th of every year. Go go, you know, the action item populates on people's desktops that says, hey go give Sheldon a call to, you know, initiate your annual training for X, Y. Z. Right? So um so there's a lot of things like that we could potentially do again depends on the exact partner and kind of what services they provide and what they're interested in. And then going the other way going from us to the partners. There's also a lot of opportunity in terms of allowing us to, you know, we encounter lots of situations where our clients say, hey we need help developing certain forms. We need we need help shoring up our M. O. C. Process. We need someone to review, create some documentation for us, review our processes, do an audit of, you know, X. Y. Z. All these requests and we hear this all the time because we're in the process of saying, hey, so what is your M. O. C. Process? And then you have to show show us what is, tell us what is your data collection process for an incident and how do you handle corrective actions? And oftentimes we hear the answers again, we don't really have a process for that, right? We're like oh we're still working on it now. And so that that comes up a lot. And because we asked that question a lot. And so and they say, hey can you help us with this? You can you can you like come and send an expert to um to help us define our M. O. C. Processes and and frankly we don't do that right? Where software company our our job isn't to be that expert consultant and to give these kind of uh you know informed recommendations about how they should run their business. And so that's why that's another reason why we want to build out this partner network because we are seeing a lot of business that you know, that's been requested of us a lot of services and we're just we're just not equipped to provide that. So that would be a perfect opportunity if we have this kind of uh kind of bench of folks that we are in touch with and we are familiar with what their expertise is that we can say, hey here are a couple of names that we know that specialized in the thing that you're looking for and what do you want to give them a call? Alright. So that's something that we know we're more than happy to do because it keeps our clients happy and then we can drive business to our apartment and

[00:34:19] spk_1: work, wow. See so those of you listening and you're a consultant, then that's another way that frontline data solutions can help you guys out and especially if you're trying to branch out and and get out of where you're currently working and you want to build that client base as best as you can or offer solutions to someone that's a good one too. Yeah. What is the future, what does it look like for the for the organization?

[00:34:45] spk_0: Uh yeah, there's there's a lot of possibilities out there. So as I mentioned right now we're focused on getting the contractor safety management application out there. So we're really excited about that I think in the next month or so it should be going live and you will be out marketing it and talking to folks about that. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there beyond that, you know, I think frankly this industry is so even though it's very niche, it's it's so wide open because there are a lot of companies just in the U. S. Just in our core market that core industries that are really behind the technology curve and they're still relying on things like spreadsheets and manual processes to handle all the things that we work with. And so there's a there's a ton of opportunity there and we could spend the next five plus years doing nothing but going after that market. And so that's certainly something we're focused on. And then beyond that, there was something I alluded to earlier was that there's this whole global community out there where a lot of them really looked to the US for leadership and this is in places like Latin America in the Middle East India. You know, there's lots of in europe there, there are lots of different markets that are really trying to model their health and safety after the best practices and oftentimes those best practices are really in the defined by the U. S. And so we're we're we have maybe, I would say maybe 10% of our customer base that's located outside the US. And frankly those are just those are just opportunities we kind of fell last backwards into, you know, we really didn't have a concerted plan to go after, you know, clients in your in western europe or in the caribbean or I'll do these places where we have a few accounts and so yeah, that's another opportunity where there's to bring our services to these global companies to to make versions of our software that are kind of specialized to these local markets. And so that's another opportunity for for the the kind of network of partners and experts that were trying to build out because frankly I don't know exactly how how Germany sees health and safety differently from the US, what what are, what are some of the customs and the best practices that are that are prevalent there that I have no idea about or in India or in the U. A. E. Or in many other markets. So yeah, so to be able to kind of build out that network network to have experts that can potentially be have an even greater degree of involvement with us, that kind of your typical referral partner type of relationship. I think that would be a great way to go in terms of going after this vast ocean of potential opportunities out there,

[00:37:41] spk_1: wow, excellent. Well that is, You got, you got a whole bunch going on there and, and even, you know, I'm looking into 2020, 27, 20, 2035. And so it seems like this would be a wonderful going concern for you.

[00:37:59] spk_0: Yeah, yeah, certainly I'm excited for it. Um you know, I think there, there is just uh there's really a sea change that's happening right now in terms of folks that finally embracing technology and a lot of these areas where they've been kind of resistant in the past and yeah, so, you know, we'll just have to see what happens from here. It's, you know, a lot can happen just in the last month, you know, a lot has happened. So who knows what the world will look like a few years from now, but certainly, you know, the world is always gonna need, uh it's going to need, you know, and it's gonna need energy, it's gonna need paint and food and beverages and you know, materials to make things. So these industries are always going to be around and I think you have nothing else or if anything, the recent events of the supply chain disruptions and now some of the stuff going on over in terms of kind of global

[00:38:55] spk_1: conflict, I

[00:38:56] spk_0: think it's shown that every country needs to have a strong base of these industries because you know, you really can't do anything if you can't feed your population, you can't produce basic goods and medical supplies and things

[00:39:09] spk_1: like that. Wow, well thank you so much for being part of the show. Is there any parting thoughts or anything that you want to give to everyone before, before I close up or anything that you've got?

[00:39:22] spk_0: No, no Sheldon. It's been a real pleasure and thanks again for joining us on our webinar and to share some of your experience and it's been a real pleasure to come on your show and build a talk a little bit about what we're up to because yeah, I think, um, yeah, I'd love to

[00:39:38] spk_1: have you back on.

[00:39:40] spk_0: We, we also have a podcast that we're just getting off. So I would love to interview you at some point and pick your

[00:39:45] spk_1: brain so long. Yeah, I love those shorts that you guys do. So it's, it's a really good concept, especially for, for a small short detention spans get in there. Yeah.

[00:39:58] spk_0: In the, in the, in the Tiktok world that we're in. You know, you have to, you know, it's hard to get people's attention is for, you know, an hour or more at a time.

[00:40:07] spk_1: Yeah, absolutely. So I know, I really, I appreciate it. I am, I'm on board. So I'm willing to help out any way I can. And uh, and I absolutely think that this is a wonderful concept. I know for sure that you guys will go far, especially starting to meet and see some of the team, so I'm glad to get on board when I can.

[00:40:29] spk_0: Absolutely. Alright. Thanks so much. It's been a pleasure.

[00:40:32] spk_1: Alright.

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[00:40:47] spk_2: and opinions expressed on this podcast or broadcast are those of the hosting its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within the past hour are only examples. They should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based on very limited and dated. Open source information, assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast or broadcast may be reproduced stored within a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast or broadcast. Sheldon grimace.