Ep 30 Steve McLeod, FIre and Safety Australia / NSCA owner, explains how he did it!

 

TRANSCRIPT

Brendan Torazzi
This is an ohs.com.au production Welcome to Episode 30 of the Australian Health and Safety Business Podcast. I'm Brendan Torazzi, the host of the show and today I'm with Steve McLeod from Fire Safety Australia and NSCA. Good morning, Steve.

Unknown Speaker
Good. Brennan, good to be with you this morning. Yeah,

Brendan Torazzi
thanks for coming on the show. So you are definitely on my bucket list of people to get on the show. Once I had a few under the belt. I'm really interested to hear your story, because I've been quietly watching you from afar. And how long? How long have you been running FSX so far saved your Australia for?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so just over 12 years, so about 12 and a half years. So started the business back in 2007. After I, the short story is that no, I left school. I wanted to either be a paramedic or join the fire brigade. And so I actually joined the aviation rescue and firefighting service, and was at Sydney Airport. So I did that. I actually joined them just typing birthday, and was up there in Sydney and Sydney Airport for a couple of years. And that was great experience. And I was certainly quite young at the time. And, you know, enjoyed my experience learn a lot about firefighting and medical response. And then my now wife, Kelly, we decided to move to Melbourne. So I was always from Melbourne, to Sydney for the role, and then joined the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in Melbourne. So I joined the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in Melbourne, I was there for about six years. And you know, during that time, where my days off, I used to go and work for various training organizations and you know, conduct first aid training and height safety training and those types of things. And, you know, it was always very passionate about training and about helping people. And from there sort of saw that there was an opportunity to be able to start off the business. And it wasn't something I'd always intended to do. To be honest, it was just something at the time, I thought that there was a lack of providers that were providing, you know, really tailored specific training, you know, a lot about that provided.

Brendan Torazzi
Go on, sorry,

Unknown Speaker
is, you know, you it was very cotton trading, trading. So yes, it took the leap and decided to start a business.

Brendan Torazzi
And so some of those providers that you used to work for they still around.

Unknown Speaker
Again, look, a couple of them are still around, I remember at the time going to them and actually saying all of these other things that I think we need to do to deliver the best quality writing, and you know, they'll probably be quite young back then, and maybe not the right person to give them advice on how to run their business. So I gave it a go. And then I decided, You know what, I'll just go and do my own thing. And yeah, I started with the view to go and do you know, a few days of health and safety and emergency response training a week. And, you know, over the next year or two really found that I thought there was a big opportunity to grow a national business. Most training organizations really were just focused on one geographic area, like they might have been focused on, you know, Melbourne or Sydney or Britain, they didn't really have sort of a national footprint. Yeah, so yeah, first 12 months, picked up virgin international client, you know, they wanted some tailored confined space training, you know, entering into aircraft fuel tanks is, you know, what a hazardous type of confined space entry. So, you know, we worked with them to build tailored programming, and they want us to run it in other locations. And to me, then it just expanded the opportunity of well, maybe, rather than just trying to do training in Melbourne, I really should be trying to look more nationally. So from that moment forward, I really started trying to build out the business to be able to service national companies, or large businesses, which had locations across the country. And really over the last 12 years, that's been our goal to build out a national network of locations, you know, the right emergency response and safety trainers and personnel, and really leverage that out nationally, so we can provide one solution to national customers.

Brendan Torazzi
So just giving me a bit of a timeline here, that was what 2007 2008 Around that time or,

Unknown Speaker
yeah, round to the 2000 setting. The business was started. It was July that year. And then really over the next three years. It was you know, the business sort of went from, you know, just me to in three years time I think we had 12 or 13 staff and we just put on a couple of people in Sydney and Brisbane at that point. So yeah, the business I would say grew quickly at that time, but that was also a time when there was a lot going in going on within the mining industry. And there was even though we were did a lot of Lighting work. There are a lot of other lighting services companies and companies that needed a lot of emergency response and safety training. So we started to grow up nationally, I then started to put on an account management sales team and sort of grow the business forward.

Brendan Torazzi
And do you have like a business background? Because I mean, for someone so young, because you how you would have been what 24 or something when

Unknown Speaker
I was about 24, when we started the business? Yeah. And no, so the short answer is no. I mean, I studied Business Management, I studied a lot of those areas during my HSC. And, you know, it's kind of coincidental, but I was actually the equal top student in the States for business management during year 12. That's amazing, with a perfect score, which was not sort of what I expected, because I never expected to go into business. To be honest, I had great visions of being able to do other things around, you know, sort of, say, around either medical or around during the fire services. So it's not like business was not what I originally envisioned. And to be honest, it was more about seizing the opportunity and seeing that there was a real need for, you know, tailored national emergency response and safety training, which is really the entities that cause the business to

Brendan Torazzi
be able to grow. And so how hard was it for, you know, being 24? To, you know, because to open an RTOS? No mean feat? Did you? How did you sort of back yourself?

Unknown Speaker
Yes. So good question. I mean, at that point, I'd been in the fire services for six years. So I actually had a really solid amount of emergency response experience from, you know, helping save people's lives and going to different rescues and those types of things. So that I was very confident in my ability to do that do great training, to deliver great services to our customers. So that was very confident in. But there were times when I would go and present at a manufacturing site or a mining site. And you know, I wouldn't be the youngest person in the room for a long time. And, you know, a lot of people, you know, 40s 50s and beyond, sort of tried to, you know, make sure that I knew myself, and I think if you aren't getting one during those courses that I used to present, they would always say that, you know, I was confident I knew my stuff, but I also knew how to trade. And so I think for me, you know, I started off as the trainer, and the salesperson and the administrator, and then, you know, over the years that really concentrated more on building a team to be able to take your business to the next level. But look, everything in the first couple of years in business is really hard. Because I didn't really know a lot, I made lots of mistakes, and still make lots of mistakes, but make probably small mistakes, and then some of the things that I used to do. So you learn on building a team, you learn how to run the fun as a business, obviously, making sure you're delivering great training, making sure that compliance is correct all the time, and also trying to grow the business. So there's, there's a lot of different skill sets to learn very quickly. So it's

Brendan Torazzi
very, it sounds like it's very much about, you know, learning, I guess you you've done all these tasks, mastered them, and then delegated them to other people that have got a lot of talent as well to be able to run it for you.

Unknown Speaker
Absolutely. And I think over the years, you know, I've recognized the importance of making sure that you don't hire people better than you and egeria. And so there might have been a time many, many years ago, where I might have been the best trainer in a certain area of skill. But over time you go and get people who have got, you know, more experience and more qualifications and people that consider delivered the same passion and excitement that I would have had, but are also able to go in and, you know, take the business forward and building the right team of people is how we've been able to grow today, which is much bigger than back then.

Brendan Torazzi
And so fast forward through to today. How many staff?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so between full time and part time and casual staff, it's around 135, I think 140 of that permanent is over 100. But there is we have a very large number of part time and casual staff as well. So we don't just have contract or casual staff, we certainly have the majority as permanent full time. But the nature of the trading business and the nature of the emergency response and medical business, which I'm talking about, as well as that, we need also the ability to be able to scale numbers up and down at different times of the year. So about in about probably 2010 2011 You know, one of the key strategic shifts for us was actually going and looking at another area of our business, which is, you know, 50% of the business today, which is providing emergency response and medical personnel. So, find sites and yeah, so we used to get to these mines, and train emergency response teams, and sometimes I'd be training full time teams, yet the skill level just for someone like me from the fire brigade just wasn't at the right experience. So what happened is that, you know, I saw that there was an opportunity to be able to provide, you know, foreign Safety Australia, me impersonal emergency response personnel. And then yeah, that there are 2010, we have, we have first contract to provide some relief and full time stuff. And that's an area of business today that would employ probably 60 people, it'd be half the business. And in that we provide outsourced emergency response like fire and rescue personnel, even more than two years providing nurses and paramedical personnel. So, you know, clients are typically large oil and gas sites, mind sites, and that's been a really good area for us to grow into.

Brendan Torazzi
So does that mean that like, say, if I'm just going to pick an area of Australia to say the Bowen Basin up in Queensland, does that mean that you've got staff all around the country that when the shit hits the fan, he can just send people straight away? Or do they have to fly in? Or?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, good question. Generally, we work on a actual rosters on the sites, typically a typical site for us, so like our biggest site might have for staff 24/7 for three or four years. And that would be a fire and rescue team, you know, vehicles, sometimes paramedics, and they would be sort of on shift at the location, 24 hours a day, or sometimes just day shift. And so they would be there to respond to critical incidents, whether it's a mini Glenn's in Luxembourg, who's broken an arm, or who's fainted or has a heart attack, or whether it's something like a high angle rescue or a confined space rescue or a fire. So in those ones, there we are on sites, filling a capability gap for the client, and out some work within software, a sponsor will be contracted to us.

Brendan Torazzi
Yep. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think you've done something like that a lot of training businesses in health and safety haven't been able to do, which is to create that recurring revenue source.

Unknown Speaker
Look at it, it's a very different business. So you know, the business of this is very HR intensive, because you're putting people in fly in fly out locations around the country. And you know, making sure you can recruit, retain motivated and have the swine fly out, start performing. You know, he's a, he's a critical challenge for a business like ours, because, you know, FIFO work has high turnover, the training work, and it's the nature of it that not everyone wants to do that. The work is long hours in remote locations. But look, it's a different type of business model. But a benefit that we've got is that hardly anyone does a mixture of both. And so for us, we tried to do the mixture of, for example, providing a paramedic staff or nursing staff or emergency response staff, and then also be able to do some of the training at these remote sites, because a lot of them find it difficult to be able to release staff to be able to go and do training. So it's a growing area of the business. It's something that, you know, three years ago, I stepped away as the CEO of the business, and have a CEO run the business owner, Tony, and it's something that he has a lot of experience and background and actually tried to grow that out. So

Brendan Torazzi
yeah, and I guess it makes a lot of sense. Also, because you've got, I guess, personnel on the ground that can identify where there's gaps in training for like the general as a whole,

Unknown Speaker
yeah. And sometimes part of our contract will actually go and you know, we're sort of intervention to safety teams who will actually go out and identify it and complete it. And sometimes that part of that contract, sometimes that's outside, but you know, really our role there is to make sure that there is the right emergency response preparedness, the right exercises, drills, plans. So we have a very big auditing session component that roll the second part is obviously response, which is responding to any emergency that happens on site. And then the third part of that is going well, you know, how do we keep planning for the future? You know, how do we make sure that our staff has the right level of training and competencies? How do we make sure we have that thirst for improvement and keep getting better at what we're doing as well.

Brendan Torazzi
And I guess with like, the sort of, I'm not sure how mining is going at the moment, whether it's still sort of in that downturn, but that would be, I would imagine great food for, you know, for these companies to use someone like you because it's an essential service. And it also, I guess, it's probably quite an effective and economic way of having that in there, that capability inside.

Unknown Speaker
It just gives organizations the ability to work on their core. So you know, if your organization your core business is LNG, or iron ore mining, and this gives you an opportunity to sort of contract out, you know, some of the risks regarding emergency response or medical services to a company that does that. I mean, that's our core business, making sure that we can have the right people with the right qualifications, the right equipment in these locations 24 7365 to be able to respond to it. So it's a different, you know, rather than them going employing their own stuff or rather than have mean volunteer staff. So there's nothing wrong with them having volunteer staff, but in certain locations, it's difficult. It's difficult to keep volunteer emergency response teams, you know, motivated people that training up to date, this is just another opportunity for them. And even some of the locations we're in, we might only have one or two staff, like one person back to back with another. But they'll actually go and trade the voluntary it they'll run the voluntary it sort of in a mentoring and coaching capacity, and eventually, they might be able to take over themselves.

Brendan Torazzi
Awesome. So I wanted to turn now to the National Safety Council and how that because you've now merged with Fire Safety Australia, is that correct? Or have I got so what happened

Unknown Speaker
is that, so the National Safety Council of Australia, and so there's two components to the NSCA. One is the non for profit foundation. And the other part was the for profit trading arm, and so about, I think it was six or seven years ago, might even be slightly longer the National Safety Council of Australia foundation split, and the for profit training area of the NSCA was bought by Blackwoods. And when I say Blackwoods, at that time, was pretender also, then it became Blackwoods trading. And so just over two years ago, we acquired the business and assets, from Wesfarmers industrial and safety which includes the Blackwoods trading business. And as part of that, the National Safety Council of Australia, like that for profit trading. And so that was that about two years ago and and then actually came about, because of a contact one of my senior executives had within Wesfarmers industrial and safety within Blackwoods. And, you know, it was it actually worked out really well. So we acquired that business, we put it into the fire and safety Australia business, you know, we co brand so we have the National Safety Council Australia brand, which does our health and safety representative training, you know, diploma and certificate for workplace health and safety and safety for leaders courses, and the fire and safety Australia brand, which is the main company that does all the emergency response and other courses that we operate. So, you know, as part of that we brought over more than 30 staff, I think it was 38 or 40 staff, were able to, you know, bring those extra courses into our clients and into our business. And, you know, we have some great team members that joined us that are still with us today. Any integration like that is challenging, and not everyone likes the new environment. And there was a lot of change very quickly, but overwhelmed. So it's quite successful in terms of our course offering now, and geographical presence being much larger than it used to be.

Brendan Torazzi
And I mean, I always looked at NSCA as like, almost like a national icon for training. So it's, it's amazing, really, that you've you've put the whole thing together. And

Unknown Speaker
yeah, and we still partner very closely. So the National Safety Council of Australia Foundation, which is the nonprofit membership arm, I mean, we help them a great deal. We work with them, we provide, you know, content for their magazine, and for the different things that they do we we help them out with some offices and some other things, administration requirements to help them function. So they're really important. You, your partner, yeah, partner, and really, with all their members, someone that's out there to make sure that they are, you know, preaching the message of safety to their various members. So it's been a really good opportunity for us. But it's also been something that I think will help the business so long term.

Brendan Torazzi
And then so sort of going back to your initial, I guess, reason for starting the safety company, you've you've achieved what you've set out to do, which is to create this national training company. I don't I can't think of any others that have really achieved that. Look,

Unknown Speaker
I think there are there are others, there are others that might not have quite the geographical spread. But who been who was similar. I think our course range and geographical spread is probably not matched by anyone being affected. You know, every capital city with the exception of Hobart when we had full time staff member, but we don't have apprentices, every other capital city, we have a location, you know, half a dozen or more staff and also combining that ers the emergency response and medical services, but look saying that I mean, there's still a long way to grow. I mean, I've sort of feel that the opportunity in the next five or 10 years is the safety industry is still quite fragmented. Yeah, there are a lot of those medium sized businesses and I would put us in that medium sized category as well. But there's one other than the small to medium size. And I don't think that there is one dominant player. I mean, I don't think that were the biggest I think there are areas where we have a great offering in terms of our presence and our capability and our experience but this there's still a lot of different businesses out there and to be honest, is one really good businesses out there as well. but really take the time to deliver, you know, that hands on practical, tailored training, not just the generic type of stuff. So I think there is an opportunity for more consolidation within the industry, whether that's more acquisitions or the right merger or partnership in the future. But I do think that long term, that that will continue to evolve and change in the Australian market.

Brendan Torazzi
I guess that's also the challenge that, you know, for a lot of big companies, they lose that agility. And with safety training, like what you've described, you've got to be, it's got to be hands on and contextualized to what the clients need. So I think it's getting, it's getting that balance, right, you know, like, if you're too big, and you lose that, well, then that kind of, is not serving what customers are looking for.

Unknown Speaker
I agree, like, so it's a balance of going, you know, how do we make sure that we're large enough that we can continue to grow, offer more great opportunities for employment and partner with the right, you know, national, a large businesses, but at the same point, how do we make sure that we deliver, you know, that bespoke hands on tailored training, that which people really, really need? So, generally, for us what that might sound like a lot of people, you know, each state location in terms of trading probably has about 10 people. And you know, that's a good number where you can run, you know, a good team, with, you know, some of the national compliance and customer service and finance, Melbourne, but really, each state has its own sort of group of people and its own team to be able to deliver the right, you know, sort of custom or the right training programs with the right national support for large national customers. So it's a challenge making sure that you're able to always, you know, to be able to grow, but also to be able to deliver. But I think where we've worked well, there is having, you know, the small state based teams, you're part of sort of a larger national structure, I think that's what worked well, for us.

Brendan Torazzi
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so are you still involved in the sort of day to day business? Or are you more moved to that sort of, I don't know, Chairman role or more strategic on guiding.

Unknown Speaker
Look, I'm absolutely involved with the business, but my involvement in the business is probably that two to three days per month. You know, I recognized a couple of years ago that for us to continue to grow, we needed, you know, more skills. And so I put in a CEO three years ago, his name is Tony Metcalf. And he's a terrific CEO of the business. And he runs all of the day to day operations in the business with a focus on the burden to respond to the medical side, but also, I focus on our emergency response and safety training. And my role is really making sure that working with him and the rest of the leadership team that we've got the right strategy that were executing on that strategy. And, you know, helping also called out less and less now from a technical advisory point around some of the more specific emergency response contracts that we would have, or some of the larger corporate clients with emergency response and safety training. So I'm not day to day, every day, but I mean, there wouldn't be many days where I wouldn't have any mobile phone call about it. And somehow, but my actual sort of in the office is, yeah, it's probably a day, probably three or four days a month or something like that, and wouldn't need it. I mean, we did a project a little while ago, where I was in there for a couple of weeks. Whereas, you know, there might be quiet for a month where I won't do as much oversight January.

Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, I've just got five short questions to ask you before we wrap up, Steve. First one, how old are you?

Unknown Speaker
3535.

Brendan Torazzi
And what do you like to do to keep fit?

Unknown Speaker
You know, my favorite thing is golf. Although some people say that golf is like, he's not really fitness. We live we love playing golf. I love getting outside in the fresh air and going for a walk for 10 K's or so. So I'll say that although I am trying to get back into running for fitness.

Brendan Torazzi
Okay. How many hours sleep you're getting each night? Oh,

Unknown Speaker
I probably go to bed at 1130 and get up at 630 Depends on when the kids wake me up, to be honest. But I'd say seven hours, eight hours, I reckon probably seven on average.

Brendan Torazzi
Excellent. And do you have any personal goals you're looking to achieve in the next 12 months?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I've always been big into terms of personal goal setting. There's normally something for me around family and making sure that I'm spending good quality time with my wife and kids. There's always something around fitness. There's always something around business as well at the same time. So yeah, for me, it's coming into that time of year now, which is sort of starting to reflect on goals this year and what to do next year.

Brendan Torazzi
Okay. And then finally, if you could be remembered for one thing for business, what would that be? So your legacy do you think around business?

Unknown Speaker
Look, you know, I always had a vision with farms to Australia, where I wanted to be able to have the business to not necessarily be the largest business but to be a business that could deliver national emergencies. phone services and emergency response and safety trading to Australia's largest companies. So r&d to be able to walk into the room at you know, the biggest mining or oil and gas or manufacturing or retail customers in Australia and actually be able to look them in the eye and say, we can provide you a national footprint training can give you the right quality consistency Australia wide. So that's probably the latest, whilst we do a lot of that now, I think that's something that I still want to continue to expand on. And I always had the goal of being able to do sort of get to that, you know, the definition of a large business in Australia has over 200 employees. And it's always that this view that we can get over that level that we would be making a serious impact, which would, you know, really give the whole passion for safety, which is our core value. really bring that across the country?

Brendan Torazzi
Oh, that's amazing. Well, thank you very much for sharing today, Steve. And if people our listeners want to find out a little bit more about fire safety, Australia NSCA where's the best place to visit?

Unknown Speaker
Sure, so they can go to fire and safety australia.com.au Or if you Google fire and safety, Australia will come up? And yeah, have you get in touch if there's anyone that I can help out personally have you someone to reach out to me on LinkedIn or via email? Otherwise, you know, obviously, we have a large team of people that are there to make sure that we're looking after clients. So yes, thank them for joining us this morning and to like to think a bit more about my answer for the legacy question.

Brendan Torazzi
Okay, see, thanks very much. No worries.

 

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