3 Compliance Services to Jumpstart Your Consultancy

Safety Consultant with Sheldon Primus

Keywords: Sheldon Primus, Safety, EHS, safety EHs, safety consultant, consultant, training, audits, OSHA, Joe Biden, US government, government, safety culture, training resources, Permit Required Confined Space, hazard control, hazard prevention, podcast, webinar, safety and health
[00:00:01] spk_0: this episode is powered by safety FM.
[00:00:08] spk_1: Welcome to the safety consultant podcast, I am your host, Sheldon Primus, this is the podcast where I teach you the business of being a safety consultant in this episode. I'm actually gonna break it down to three, just basic things that you would need to know just to help you with your consulting business. You can kind of think of these three things, the three things that will help you start, There's many things that could get you into business, as many things you could do to start your business, but these three things will always be reoccurring, these things are always going to keep coming back and it's gonna be the cornerstone of your business if you don't know where to start or you haven't even, I considered being a consultant yet. Think of these three things as being the entry point, what can you do? How can you get there? So as always, I want to thank you for listening to the podcast. If you have not yet, go on and subscribe to this podcast so that you could get any notifications of when I come out and do a new one. Generally it's on Mondays, but from time to time, I have to do it on a different day of the week because I am still an active safety consultant and I'm also a traveler with me and my wife, my little yorkie poo and then that's a yorkie and a poodle mix yorkie poo Romeo. You can follow our travels at instagram and all you have to do on your instagram is go to beyond boundaries dot world beyond boundaries dot world on your instagram and you get to see us. So from kind of time I travel makes it where I can't be right on time. Right on Mondays. I generally try to, however, I'm here today. Right? So what you could do then is go ahead and subscribe to the podcast. When I come out with a new one, you're going to get notified. You're going to get a little text notification or some notification or wherever you listen to the podcast. And can you please help me in a little bit of a way which is supporting the podcast through going to the itunes or wherever you're listening to and go ahead and leaving a comment, letting people know what you think of the safety consultant podcast like it. I don't know if you can thumb up it, if you can go for it. Generally speaking, that's how all these algorithms work where it's social proof. So once you say that you like it, then it's gonna point out to someone else. Hey, you could like this too. So that will really help me. That's one of those things that I look forward to doing is just being able to help people who especially want to get into this field and don't know how to, how to break away from the man as uh, some people may say and become their own boss. That's what I'm here to do. So I am going to go ahead and I'm going to go into the three steps. The three things that you could do compliance related to get your business started. So I'll be back right after this message. Yeah. Hello Sheldon Prime is the host of safety consultant podcast and I'm gonna be doing a demystifying OSHA compliance webinar, whether you're a small business or a fortune 500 company oceans, aggressively adding compliance officers to help inspect more businesses across America. You will learn how to build OSHA compliance training, written programs, you know what to look for in an inspection. You also get a good understanding of the future of OSHA. How would you comply with the new joe biden era agency book your ticket today, May 24th from nine a.m. Eastern time to one p.m. Eastern time. Go to Primus Webinar dot com and you can join this event. Welcome back to the podcast. And I just wanted to give a little ground work on the things I'm gonna mention to you regarding compliance services. So here's some groundwork and I'm, you know, I'm going right in it because we already did our intro intro. Right? So here's some of the things I was thinking about as a groundwork. The episode today is going to be talking about compliance activity and compliance means that you're going to make sure that your organization is not in hot water with whoever the regulator is in this case will be ocean compliance because they are the occupational and safety health administration and as a safety consultant, they're the ones that I deal with the most, I do deal with the P. A. And a few other things from time to time because I started out with the environmental before I got into safety and health and see a little known fact about me. I was an environmental guy first and then I got into occupational safety and health when I wanted to grow my businesses. But we are going to be talking about compliance activity that is going to keep that employer out of hot water hot water so that they won't get fined. They won't end up getting sanctioned in any way. Now, this will go across many countries, not just the US, I'll be talking about oceans specifically, but whatever country you're in, if you do have a regulatory body for occupational safety and health, whatever the name would be, this is the same idea and chances are they have the same type of need. However, if you want to, you can start looking at some more needs that they have that you could fulfill. That's great. But we're talking right about compliance now and not talking about culture yet. When I speak of the term culture, I'm talking about safety culture and the safety culture is reminiscent of when an organization is so far behind or I should say above compliance activity. They don't have to worry about. Are they following the rules with the regulatory agency. That's like, you know, last last year's news right now they're dealing with how can we make our system so safe that it goes beyond the compliance and regulatory agencies and we get our workers involved, we get management support, we get everything that we need to ensure that we are going to, uh, do our activities with low risk in mind. That's honestly what it is. So we're gonna talk about compliance things and not culture things for these first few minutes. I might end up touching on culture things later. But honestly, if I don't, don't worry about it, compliance is where we are because I'm going to help you start your business and there are at least go back to basics with your business if you already started. So compliance activities will be something they're regulated by. And when I say they, I mean, your client, the employer and this regulation is gonna go for pretty much the length of the time that they're in business. Sometimes they may need you, sometimes they won't. But with these three services, you can keep getting new clients and get your foot in the door and then you can offer other services later. So these are mostly foot in the door things or repeat business thing. That's, that's what we're going to cover over right now. So I'm gonna start with the first of the three compliance activities that you should be thinking of that, you could make into a business or service. Number one is written programs. So written programs are very important. These are the things that will necessitate that there is some sort of outline their detail for activities that the workers will take on. So if you're going to say this workforce does permit required confined space entry, then you're going to offer a service that is for a permit required confined space entry programs. So that means for your part of your service, you're gonna end up of just going through their documents and if you can send them pictures, have them send you pictures. Excuse me. So you can see what an entry looks like to them, interviews and workers and use a guidance from your regulatory body. Just do a search for permit required confined space or whatever regulatory body you have for your country. And then now you can see an outline of what their actual written programs will require. So that's one of the easiest things to, to get your foot in the world in the water for your own business. So what you're gonna end up doing is you're going to look to see how many programs they need. So if they need many programs that's good for you because now you're going to have a business after business after business creating programs for them, not all companies will need this. Some companies will already have programs. So what you could do is you could review one program. So let's say for instance, you're a specialist in confined space. Like my example. So then you can offer, hey, let me review your confined space entry program for free. And now when you go through it, if you find something wrong or you find something that's not uh that is not completely right, let's say that way or a deficiency, then you can offer the service to fix it. So whatever it is, you could say, well this is really old. You need an updated version or uh this, let's say it's their gas detectors. You guys don't even use this gas detectors before and no one's updated this program, chances are you have many programs out there that haven't been updated. And then you could pitch that. How are you going to charge for? This is gonna be up to you. This is what I've seen. I've done different ways. But this is what I've seen works really well with charging for written programs. Look for the programs that need to be changed. And if it's a lot of programs that you don't, the customer may be thinking, I mean it's gonna cost me a lot to do this. We'll offer them an hourly rate on this one and I don't always do hourly rates and I honestly don't like Harley rates, you could listen to podcast past and you know, that's not, I'm not a fan of that, but what you could do is say, well this is going to cost you $60 an hour if you're just starting out and it's gonna be roughly three hour minimum. So you're gonna tell them $60 an hour in this example, you set your own rates and then you're gonna say it's a three hour minimum for this one. If it's gonna be more than three hours, let them know ahead of time. Alright, don't sneak in on them and let them know that all of a sudden you're getting a bill for five hours when you said three hour minimum, so let them know ahead of time. If I feel like I'm about to get close to the three hour mark, I will let you know for approval sake so that they know ahead of time that you're not gonna just get over on them on anyway, that you're gonna be able to be able to um get proof or not proof approval. That's the better way of saying that you're going to get approval before you spend any more money for their money. So they'll understand that and that's going to be fair for them. It's the right thing to do. So three hour minimum and whatever your prices and then at that and then maybe we can stop the our leasing. So three hours minimum just so that they know kind of a range and you give them your price, let them know how long it's gonna take. You could use a template in some cases some cases you can't, But if you're using a template, go through that thing with a fine tooth comb and make sure that you don't have a past clients information on a current clients program that won't be good. So I'm gonna tell you how to dime check that stuff out that's not fun. Alright. # two compliant service that you could provide. This one is going to be in on it. In some cases you won't get your foot in the door with an audit unless there's a driver that will do it. And the driver in most cases for audits will be either OSHA showed up or their insurance company said, Hey OSHA showed up and this individual needs some help. And if you partner with an insurance company, you could go on behalf of the insurance company and get paid through the insurance company or the other side of it would be this where they are aware that there have been a lot of activity for OSHA in their area or in their industry and they want to get ready. Another thing for artists could be, it's for the insurance company itself. So you're going to be doing an insurance company type audit. So when the insurance company comes in, this person would have already have had a specialist go through and found some of the areas that they could tighten up so when the insurance agency comes they look that much good and they're that much better. I can't say Gooder. That's not gonna work that much better. So therefore the premiums could possibly the same or lower. That's the idea behind that one. But when you get into an audit now you're thinking a few different things. You're thinking how large of a company is it? How what kind of interaction am I going to see? How many sites do I need to look at? So I can get a good representative sample. And then do you work at full eight hour day? Do you work a six hour day or you're gonna get paid for lunch? What your lunch is going to be. That's all going to go into the proposal. And I'll just invite you to go through my my list of podcasts and I have a few out there with how to write a proposal and the art of a proposal. But that's the consideration you're gonna be thinking of is what are some of the things that is gonna that I'm gonna need to do in order for me to get this job done and still make out where there's a profit to it. So you're not breaking even or you're not losing money. That's consideration is going to be ours and you're not going to charge them by the hour. But you're gonna have some consideration that says these are the hours that your audit will be and this is the estimated days it will take. I would suggest for a program like an audit that you get 50% up front and that's going to give you some money to get what you need to do the activity of the audit. And then when you submit your report that when they approve anything, when you submit your report because some people are slackers will take them forever to approve things when you submit your report at that time, that is when you're going to say that you're that it is complete and you're going to get paid so 50% at the onset and then the other 50% when you finish your, your recommendations and you hand it to them at that final meeting is when you get paid. So put that into the contract, put that into the proposal. So that that expectation is there to make sure that when you're physically there, uh if you do choose to do coaching because that is something you can say, hey, you've written program or to say a written recommendation is not, it will cost you extra. However, I will do coaching while I'm here. You can do that as well. So that you could still get some uh, some different tier, let's say that way a different tier for service. But that's a big one. When you do audits. So you're going to really go through the facility, you're gonna get a good chance to talk to workers. You should interview them as well. You want to make sure that while you're there and you're going to see the operations and action that you are going to give it your all, you're gonna look top down side to side and reference things. Take pictures, take videos, reference what you see. So that if you may not know something offhand that you could talk to someone and send them pictures and say, hey, I know you're more of a specialist on this. I know something's wrong by regulatory issues, but I don't know exactly what I'm seeing here. Help me out. I do that all the time with electrical because electrical and I'm aware of the, you know, for OSHA, there's a lot of electrical standards, but the ones that I deal with the most part S and general industry sub parquet and construction. I know enough to say that man, this is a violation of this part of the standard. But I can't tell them in my recommendation. This is what you should do better because I may not be just familiar with everything that the National Electrical Code would be or the National Fire Protection Agency. Excuse me. The National Fire Protection Association Code would be, I may not know that. So therefore I will tell them, hey, well, I actually won't tell them. They'll get, they'll get the final copy, but I'll consult with someone who I know that knows that information and just say, hey, can you help me on this one and just pay them for their time for, for helping you out. So that's all going to be part of your, your process there. You're thinking? So service number one is going to be written programs. Service number two is going to be doing some sort of audit or inspection at their facility at their sites and your considerations or your time that it takes or you're gonna do a full day. You're gonna do a partial day. How many days is it your lunch period? What is the lunch period if you gotta travel? I forgot about this one good thing I remembered and I was doing my review. If you gotta travel then at what distance does it take for you to stay someplace overnight? Are they paying for your gas or not? That's all the stuff that goes into that proposal so that you could make sure you're not losing money because you got to pay for your insurance. You gotta pay for your mileage. You gotta pay for tolls. You gotta pay for your lunch. All those things must be in consideration for that job and you're putting that in the proposal. Then the last thing that I'm gonna put for compliance space for you guys will be training and some of these things will piggyback off. I'll offer each other. But training in and of itself is a huge compliance issue for OSHA. So I'm pretty sure that it's probably gonna be a big thing for other countries and entities? So what you're gonna do is, you've got to hone your compliance training skills. You're gonna have to figure out what needs to be trained, what makes the compliance training. So you're gonna have to go back to the regulator, the regulatory agency and look at what that regulator says as these things need to be, uh, taught OSHA as the agency. They actually have a training resource page that will show you by standard. If there is a training that these are the things that you must train on and these are, who are, who are the people that need to train and it's just, you know, a whole bunch going on there. So you could find that out. You now replicate what's required and then you offer that as a service delivery is also different. You can deliver this as a learning management system, you could deliver this in person, you could deliver this online, how you can deliver it where it is truly face to face thing hybrid where some people are online, some people are physically there. That's all consideration for price. As far as pricing for training. It really depends. So here's my philosophy, usually with training, when someone calls and they say, Hey Sheldon, I need some training. All right. That's all I got, I need training. Okay, so let's quantify that a little, How many people? What's the topic, Let's start with that. What's the topic? How many people is this something where I'm gonna end up having to submit paperwork for continuing education units? Or am I going to get someone to ocean cards out of this for their training? Now when I'm thinking about those considerations, all that is also helping me frame how much I'm gonna charge. So generally speaking what you want to do, especially if the continuing education credit look around and see what other people are charging for continuing education classes. Not that it's apples for apples for safety or not, it's just going to give you a price range. So in some cases some people may charge and see you. Continuing education unit is .1. So every hour is going to be .1 see us. You could say contact time, which is time for time. But if you're talking about continuing education units then for one hour 10.1 See us. So what you can do is look for trainings and then see which training have 0.1 attached to it. How much is that agency charging and use that as your base? So for instance if someone's charging $15 per see you and you're going to do a four hour class. So at that time you're gonna do like 15 times four that's going to give you 100 and 20. Now, you know per person you're gonna be charging 100 and $20 per person and then that's gonna go into your your rate that you're going to give the client, most clients are gonna be looking for group rates. So you can start with your base rate, let's say it's gonna be once 20 and now I'm going to end up saying I'm going to give that to a three minimum up to 15. So if there's three people up to 15 people, they're going to get this rate. If you get more than 15 then I'm gonna give you a discount. Maybe it's only going to be $100 per person. And if you have, you know from 15 to 30 and now all of a sudden you got 32 then for every extra person I'm going to give them maybe $90 for that. So you're giving them a benefit for for packing the class. Uh It's possible that you could also have clients who have a good relationship with other people, especially if they're like a city or a county or something else. And you can open up the training to other people in the agency and now they could get more and more people into that base price. So on the earlier end $3 or three people up to 15 people you get paid the same if they only give you three people you get paid the same if they max out at 15. But that's the range you're looking for, that's the way to, to kind of price this in the mindset behind it. So that's the training side. If you're gonna do online training, then that's a whole new discipline altogether. As far as learning management system, you got to think about the price it takes for uh, your learning management system, your certificates because you definitely want to issue certificates. So how much did that cost you? You're also going to be thinking a few other things related to that as well. So honestly, there's a lot of considerations, so that means you're gonna have to be on your toes on this one. And uh, I would suggest getting as much detail as possible as to what the person is looking for, what type of training and then the outcome of the training, find out how quickly they need that training and then make sure that they know the range of people, the range of students per price, and that's a good way of doing it. Alright, so there you have it three things for compliance. One again is a written program. Second one is going to be an audit and the very last one will be training, You do those three things and you can start your safety consultant business right away. And if you've already started your safety consulting business, keep going back to those three things because you could get your business, keep going with business. Getting new clients that way, you should always be looking to get new clients or getting older clients back and and seeing if you can work with them again. And chances are one of those three things will be the way to get back into the door so that you can keep your business going. So thank you so much for listening to me this week and next week I'm going to just do my best to get Mondays. But again, if I'm not on Mondays, you will get something for me Weekly. Uh, it depends on my travel schedule, depends on my training schedule, depends on my consulting schedule as to the time, but generally it's going to be on Mondays but you can get past that by subscribing. So go ahead. Like I mentioned before. Subscribe to the podcast And if you are in America and you need some ocean compliance help. I'm gonna teach you how to understand ocean. That's one of the biggest things that my students always love for me is I break it down when it comes to ocean. So I will be breaking it down for you May 24th from nine a.m. Eastern time to one p.m. Eastern time demystifying OSHA compliance. We're gonna do this together. All right, gang, go get him.
[00:27:03] spk_0: This episode has been powered by safety FM views 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,
[00:27:54] spk_1: mm hmm.

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