Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from Riskworld 2022 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, it’s time for Workplace MVP. Brought to you by R3 Continuum, a global leader in helping workplaces thrive during disruptive times. Now, here’s your host.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:23] Hey, everyone. Jamie Gassmann, your host of workplace MVP, here again at Riskworld 2022 with my guest, Michael Zalle.

Michael Zalle: [00:00:32] Hello. Good morning.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:33] Yes. And I’m going to rhyme with your name, my new pal.

Michael Zalle: [00:00:38] Good trick. Good trick.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:40] Yeah. You actually told me that’s what it rhymed with so I had to leverage that in the interview. So, you are with YellowBird.

Michael Zalle: [00:00:46] I am.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:47] So, tell me a little bit about what YellowBird is, your role at YellowBird, and just kind of give us a background on you.

Michael Zalle: [00:00:53] All right. Wow. I’m the founder. So, I started the company about three years ago. We are an on-demand people business and we focus on matching professionals in environmental, health, safety, and risk. And so, what that means is we have a platform for loss control and safety organizations to bring in the right people with the right skills on demand, and we do all the work, essentially.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:01:22] Interesting. So, give me a little kind of like scenario of how your platform would work.

Michael Zalle: [00:01:29] Okay. I was actually just talking to a group over here who’s a consultant firm. And so, everybody goes, “Oh, you’re competing with the consulting firms.” We’re really not. So if you have a big consulting practice or you have a large organization and you’re running your own loss control practices and you have 30 sites you need to do an environmental assessment on, and 25 of those sites are perfect for your staff and five of those sites you don’t know what the heck you’re going to do, so you say, okay, who do we know in these five states? And the answer is, well, we probably have people who could fly around and get there. And so, this went from a profitable deal to an unprofitable deal in those locations.

Michael Zalle: [00:02:10] We can help basically facilitate that type of work. Or in the case of loss control, like in an insurance organization, they’re constantly doing assessments. And so, we can help them bring the loss control process down to mid-market where realistically they go deeper dive when you get upmarket because they can afford to do it so they can send people out rather than just doing self-assessments.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:02:37] Yeah. So like for those in a sense, it’s almost like you’re tapping into the pool of people you have within your platform and finding an expert in that location that can help support that need, correct?

Michael Zalle: [00:02:48] Yeah. Absolutely.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:02:49] Awesome.

Michael Zalle: [00:02:50] And, what we try to do is we go well beyond their certs. So for us, the certifications are important but the background and experience and history. So I’ll give you an example. You have a client that’s at a chemical organization and they need somebody to come in and do a chemical assessment. And you have somebody on the platform that was 30 years at DuPont who’s retired who says, “I want to stay in the game.” Well, I can send that person out and they would be able to, assuming legally they’re allowed and all the other things. But assuming that they’re allowed and they’re not under a non-circumvention or non-compete or anything like that, they could go out and they could do the assessment. So, you could get somebody with 30 years of DuPont experience going to a regional chemical place where otherwise they wouldn’t have access to that world of knowledge.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:03:37] Interesting. So, you’re here at RIMS.

Michael Zalle: [00:03:42] Yes.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:03:42] Are you an exhibitor this year or are you just kind of moseying around and kind of looking at it for future? You know what – yeah.

Michael Zalle: [00:03:47] So, well, we’re throwing a big party, so I’m excited about that.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:03:52] Yeah.

Michael Zalle: [00:03:52] I am not an exhibitor this year and we chose not to be for a couple of reasons. One, we’re a small organization. We have 27 people now on staff. We’re raising venture capital a couple of years back and we are growing rapidly, but we can’t do as many shows as I want to do. So, I always try to walk through and see, you know, what’s it all about. This is a great show. This is a great event. So, we will be exhibiting in the future. I was hopeful that I was going to be speaking this year and I was not selected to speak this year because it was just such a tight sketch.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:04:26] Absolutely. Yeah.

Michael Zalle: [00:04:27] But hopefully, I will speak next year because I’m somewhat of a subject matter expert on the changing nature of work in general, which is a big hot button in today’s world.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:04:37] Yeah.

Michael Zalle: [00:04:38] So that’s my hope. But, yeah, I’m just exhibiting and eating and drinking and being Michael.

Michael Zalle: [00:04:44] Social. Yeah. I was going to ask if you had been presenting, what would your topic be that you would present on?

Michael Zalle: [00:04:51] The complexities of running a consulting practice. Because I think most people, most professionals have this mindset of when I stop working, I want to consult and they should. That is a natural inclination. And, I’ve got all this work. There’s an old quote, and I don’t know where it comes from and I should know because I use it a fair amount, that when an elder dies it’s like burning a library. And I look at it like when a knowledge holder retires, it’s like burning a library, where there’s only so many times that you can go back to these people and there’s only so much information that you would’ve been able to glean from them. And so, you will either consult and be one-client consultation or you will start your own consulting practice and then you have to hustle. And most knowledge workers are not hustlers. They’re, you know, they haven’t had to be.

Michael Zalle: [00:05:44] And so, the most the biggest challenges with starting your own consulting practice are obviously getting the insurance and getting the business set up. And then, of course, it’s billing and receiving and then it’s customer service, all the things that as a risk and safety executive you don’t want to do.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:06:02] Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Michael Zalle: [00:06:03] It’s the worst part of anybody’s business, but we do it for them. And so, I wouldn’t really focus it on YellowBird per se. But really, the inclination and the wishes of becoming a consultant combined with the, is it really worth my effort?

Jamie Gassmann: [00:06:19] Yeah.

Michael Zalle: [00:06:19] And so, we try to make it worth their effort to keep them in the game.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:06:22] Yeah, I love that. It’s almost like it’s okay to ask for help, right?

Michael Zalle: [00:06:26] Totally.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:06:26] And sometimes, you know, when you’re an expert, you don’t think about that. But it is, you know, as a leader, I’ve heard more and more about that. It’s okay to ask for that help. So, that’s fantastic.

Michael Zalle: [00:06:36] Oh, absolutely. Well, thank you.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:06:38] If our listeners wanted to get a hold of you, how would they go about doing that?

Michael Zalle: [00:06:41] So, our website is goyellowbird.com. Just like it sounds, G-O, yellowbird.com. We’re on all the socials, @goyellowbird. And if you are in San Francisco, you can come to one of our parties because we’re having a party on Tuesday night. So, hopefully, actually, this is not going to be heard before then, so. Too bad you missed our party on Tuesday night. It was fantastic.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:07:05] Yeah. You just showed off your ping pong skills, I hear.

Michael Zalle: [00:07:08] Yes. We’re going to a ping pong bar.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:07:11] I love that idea. Yes. Well, it has been an absolute pleasure.

Michael Zalle: [00:07:15] Thank you.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:07:15] And, it was so great to meet you and talk with you on our episode here. So, thank you for joining me.

Michael Zalle: [00:07:19] My pleasure. I’m glad you’re here.

Outro: [00:07:26] Thank you for joining us on Workplace MVP. R3 Continuum is a proud sponsor of this show and is delighted to celebrate most valuable professionals who work diligently to secure safe workplaces where employees can thrive.