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Instagram- @jeffdavis_bridgestone
YouTube- JeffDavis_Bridgestone
Twitter- @bridgestonecap
https://www.youtube.com/@ChainReaction-vh7rm
www.bridgestoneinvest.com
Look, we all know supply chain and logistics provides a stable job and income for the most part. The problem is this is W2 income, which is the highest taxable income. And it holds global hours. Around the clock. We're married to our jobs. And honestly, it's hard to find a safe return. That's over the standard interest rate you can get at the bank. We want our heart, our money to work for us. Real estate has proven to be safe and reliable. But seriously. How can we be sure which opportunities are the best and the safest. My goal. Is to provide supply chain executives deals that we can partner own together. Equity opportunities with cashflow tax benefits and appreciation. That's annual returns of 18 or 25%. That way we can all grow our portfolios together without taking time away from our jobs. Or our families. I'm Jeff Davis. And thanks for listening to the chain reactions podcast.
Jeff Davis:welcome everybody to another episode of Chain Reaction. Today we are going to look at safety, safety on the pipelines, and safety for companies who are representing those contractors and bringing those contractors to project sites. I have with me today Chris Bayardo with Bayardo Safety, and I'm excited to hear his take on the future of safety and compliance on the, on the ground. Chris, can you give everybody a quick introduction to yourself and your company. And what yeah,
Chris Bayardo:absolutely. And Jeff, thanks for having me out. Certainly appreciate it. Looking forward to the conversation where we're always trying to spread, information and word about, what we're doing, how we're doing it and how we can help out an industry that we think is, you know, really, really struggling in the way it's managing contractor compliance and worker credentialing. And those two things partnered up after. You know, 15 years, in the industry is kind of how Beardo safety was born and where we found our niche and helping all of these contractors. And we look at a bit in in a couple of different tiers. One being the contractor company themselves that wants to go out and, you know, garner their service agreements and their contracts in place to, you know, work pipeline jobs, maintenance, maintenance jobs, new lay mainline, you name it for the likes of, you know, the big guys out there, Exxon, Shell, Kenner Morgan. Enterprise Explorer, you name it. And, the knee jerk reaction is excitement when they land those contracts, but a very high percentage of the time, they don't really understand how much compliance red tape they're fixing to be forced. To jump through and handle just to put boots on the ground and and that that in itself is really messy and convoluted to them. So, we kind of created this compliance as a service where we work directly with those contractors to maintain that green light status for all owner operators that they're connected to.
Jeff Davis:Do you ever work with any contractors be proactive about it and say, I want to get in the door with Exxon, with Chevron with Kinder, and I can't?
Chris Bayardo:I love that you use the word proactive because we're reaching and preaching out on LinkedIn and various other platforms, we tend to use, phrasing like stop being reactive, start being proactive. And, they all want to, be able to say, we're working for Exxon, hey, we're working for Aramco or Valero, it doesn't matter. They want to, but a lot of times they don't know how to go about doing that. We're there to help them once they get that contractor connection and they start getting these floods of emails that don't make any sense to them. we know how to lay pipe. We know how to set valves. We know how to do what we do, but we don't understand all of this compliance database management. We need help because we don't have a choice and, and it's frustrating to them that None of the operators are on the same page. They all kind of want it, you know, their way where, Exxon might say, welcome aboard Jeff Davis incorporated. We need you to subscribe to this IS net world database. I've been waiting for that. So that we can, we can start vetting you and scoring your company. And then, you know, your BD team is out there doing everything they can, and they bring in another contract from trans Canada or whomever, and that company will say, welcome aboard. But we don't, like that database over there. You're going to have to do all of that again, but do it over here and also keep up with it and manage it. And so over time. A successful business development division or a sales team within a contractor will garner all these service contracts and they've done their job. At that point, it's out of their hands. And then there's the pipeline team that's sitting there going. So I've got to maintain. All of this information here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and so on and so on. And in their mind, it's absurd. And if we want to use some terminology, I like to use the phrase, it's very siloed data. And that in itself is absurd.
Jeff Davis:I want to hit that because I was at an event last night. and they talked about that. They said, from a risk management perspective, that is happening where you're getting into your first, second and tiered suppliers. You're betting them. How many are using this software? there was a show of hands and And the speaker was using this real time data analysis. Right. The big players Chevron was there. Exxon Savick was there and it was very telling on from a compliance and risk. Mitigation perspective. So my question is, do you think that the contractors what they're witnessing is because these companies are using a different risk management software or company?
Chris Bayardo:Yes. Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. And I mean, it's It's essentially in a way that I think about it. It's what the contractor falls victim to. Because none of those systems are connected. You know, and you might have a big group of operators that utilize a system like ISNetWorld. Then there's a big group of operators that don't even touch it. They don't like it. They use Veriforce or CompliancePro. Or a VEDA or this entity or that entity. And so the contractors essentially are falling victim to exactly what you mapped out, like a, a multi, multi, multi tiered management system. And it's just extremely redundant and hard to keep up with in their mind. So how's
Jeff Davis:this redundant? Isn't. A contractor able to retain this information and spew it out in just different formats? Or am I, am I simplifying oversimplifying?
Chris Bayardo:Well, think of it like this. I want you to sweep the floor and you say, okay, no problem. So you sweep the floor and then you get done and you say, Hey, I did a great job. The floor's ready. Everything's clean. We're good. And I say, great. And then two days later, somebody else comes along and says, I want you to sweep the floor, but do it with a different broom because I'm just going to flat out say you didn't sweep the floor with the broom you used. Cause I don't like that broom. That's redundant. And that's where these contractors wind up feeling like. They'd be better off slamming their head in a car door when really they're training their workforce, they're, they're following compliance necessities, and then it's like they get hit and they have to do it again and again and again, and it's, it's a cost waste thing as well. There's a certain understanding you have to pay to play. So, you know, if you want to work for enterprise, you will pay and subscribe to who they tell you they accept. But then again, you fall victim to cost waste where you're having to do the same thing in five different rooms all up and down this hallway of compliance. So that, that's why I say in their mind, it's very redundant to them.
Jeff Davis:Yeah. And taking it a step further than that cost play cost of the pay to play perspective. It was clearly identified that as you are going through your. tier of suppliers, your tier one and tier two. From a risk mitigation standpoint, the, the topic of the, of DeJure last night was cyber security and cyber attacks. And how have you vetted your tier one and tier two suppliers? Are you betting tier three zero or betting tier three, the size of your suppliers? it was recognized that if your supplier in whatever field, it could be raw materials, it could be logistics, it could be say, they recognize that not all suppliers are going to have a robust enough staff to vet X, Y, or Z compliance metric. Are they going to be able to pay to play? Are they going to be able to meet these metrics to have staff to implement such a compliance thing metric? So go into that. What are some of these costs, not necessarily for the program, but to implement some sort of compliance?
Chris Bayardo:Right. And so we get those calls all the, all the time, almost daily from our customer base. And, you know, some of them are as simplistic as we need to update our safety manual. We don't want to do things the way we've been doing it. What is the cost involved with that? And so we'll map that out and we'll help them every step of the way. But then, based on what they mapped out within that database, you know, answering those compliance questionnaires. They'll run into questions like, you know, is your company ISO 9001 certified or does your company, you know, prevent cyber attacks via X, Y, Z. And so they kind of find themselves. You know, hovering their foot over a bear trap where, you know, they're like, do I need to say I do this in order to get this work? Am I fixing to have to, am I order, am I fixing to have to pay a sub because I don't understand what an ISO certification is? I know how to lay pipe. What, what do I need to do? And so it's starting to get where a lot of the smaller contractor companies can't keep up with the Joneses within compliance. And that has become such a problem that their margins are completely wiped out. And it's, they get to this point of, well, why are we even doing this? Yeah. And that's, that's frustrating and that's, we could do better. The operators, the operators could do better and it's, it's the oil and gas industry is slow to change and thankfully tech moves at an extremely fast pace and we're starting to kind of fight the good fight against that old mentality of we've always done it this way. So this is what we want you to do and we don't care if you have to sign this 10, 000 times and write this 5, 000 times. Here's what we need. Here's what we want. And it's. We're trying to kind of fight against that and us specifically. You know, we created a software that tries to eliminate all of that siloed data and make life very, very simple where the operators can come in and participate and say, well, we can make this system customized for our needs. So we want essentially long term. It's not trying to make 20, 000 different operators happy with their own custom system. It's using one system that those 20, 000 operators can customize to their needs. That way, we have some centralized data. We're eliminating that siloed data. And no matter who you're working for, those operators can say, here's what we want, here's what we expect. It's, it's a one stop, single source of truth. No matter who you're working for. it's crucial within the Verilink software that we created, because not only are you talking about managing all the compliance needs for the company or the contractor who themselves are going to work. But there's so many multiple tiers to that compliance where within those systems, we're vetting the individual worker credentials, we're vetting, you know, drug and alcohol compliance, we're vetting background screens. I mean, there's just the list goes on and on and on and on and on. And just because you got that service agreement or that contract in place, I mean, your work really just began.
Jeff Davis:So how does Bayardo safety? Come in to
Chris Bayardo:save the day, right? So a lot of times contractors just as we mentioned, you know, they get this service agreement they're excited about it. Hey, we're fixing to go to work for enterprise or we're fixing to go to work for Exxon. And then all of a sudden the emails come in and they don't really know. What to do or how to do it, you know, what's this IS net thing or what's this veriforce thing and we're there to simply say, look, if you want a team of compliance experts at your company, that's going to cost you piles of money. And you might have a safety guy at your company, but safety and compliance are very different things. And so while we offer all of those safety trainings. And all of those individual worker credentials. We have a dedicated compliance management team where we can have them fill out a very simple questionnaire. Here's the databases that we're being forced to subscribe to. Here's the operators were connected to. We can dive in and help them and work with them directly to manage all of that. With kind of a regimented digital approach to keep all of that in green light status for them. So that's where we kind of use the phrasing compliance as a service, but I want to be really candid that I don't like the idea of the way some of our competitors are handling that. Everybody's different, but to just check a box and just, you know, fill out a questionnaire can be one of the most detrimental mistakes that I've seen contractors make over the last 15 years. And so we try to eliminate that. We're very, very hands on with their company. We're very, very matter of fact with our experience levels with what those operators actually require. And it's not a checkbox, it's how to implement this into your company and manage it with some simplicity so it's, it's not an overwhelming burden for you from a work labor perspective or a cost perspective.
Jeff Davis:So I'm going to change gears on you do so. Yeah. So it's fun to talk about work and as much fun as safety and compliances to talk about. I really enjoy entrepreneurship. I am an entrepreneur where I'm a one. to penure, you know, kind of what started this podcast is I'm sponsored by Bridgestone Capital, right? We're commercial real estate. So I want to hear, I mean, you were doing something and then you got this brilliant idea to go start a compliance consultancy business. I like that's. Bizarro. First off, people who want to start their own business are a little bit screwy in the head, right?
Chris Bayardo:Absolutely.
Jeff Davis:Walk me through, you know, I'm sure that went over like a Led Zeppelin with, with the bride. Like you want to do, well, you
Chris Bayardo:know, actually It all started, you know when I got an opportunity to get, you know, into the pipeline world, just as a labor hand and start learning that business as a pretty young guy. And I got addicted to it quick. I loved the work. I love traveling all around chasing these jobs. It was great. You know, it was hell. You know, running seven fourteens will, will kill a man. But I I've always had that working ethic and that work bone never bothered me. So I got good at it. I loved it. I moved up and then one day I got told I was going into safety. And so that started this whole change in direction of the career path. And I'm not shy to say it cause it's a part of my story. I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to just overnight become the most hated man on the job site. That's awesome. But when I was, you know, told, you know, Hey, we're not asking you, we're telling you, I said, well, you know, sink or swim, let's do it. So I dove in and I got an opportunity after a couple of years to take a director spot and spent quite a few years of my career with them. Close to a decade, you know, I won't name names, but you know, I didn't like what they were doing financially and it wasn't my company. You know, we were pretty strong in revenue, but we were pretty strong in overhead and expenses too. And that's when my light bulb went off that, you know, I need a protection strategy, I need an exit strategy. I don't want to rely on someone else's company. So I started to kind of make a plan and, you know, decide what my niche was and how I was going to help all these other contractors manage these problems. I've lived and breathed for the last decade and, you know, talk to my wife about it and she was like, if you want to do that. Go for it. She, she stood behind me to her credit, 110%, love her to death for doing that because, you know, here we are now going on we just hit year six this summer for the company. And, you know, there's a real, there's a real high percentages of small businesses that don't make that. They just don't, there's an even higher percentages. I think it's like 97 that won't make it past year 10. So we're fighting tooth and nail. But yeah, it was, it was kind of like I needed an exit strategy and I left the company that I was with, I want to say in late, late, late July year. And, you know, they ran August and September and then mid October they shut their doors completely. I mean, it was not pretty. And so sometimes you got to listen to that gut reaction. Sometimes you got to listen to the. The voice in the head and you're not always crazy. But that's what I did. And I've never looked back. I don't don't regret it for a second. And, you know, part of me wanting and who I am wanting to build this company and wanting to help contractors a big part of it. And I always tell our team here. This is it's not about revenue for me. It's not about that big number at the end of the year. But It's more so, you know, all you guys, all you employees, all you team members, you're with your family, you're at a barbecue, you're, you're doing something that you enjoy on your own time, and somebody says, Hey, how's work going? And your response is, I hit the jackpot. I love what I do. I love where I work. You know, that's, that's my number one goal. Because for a long time, I was miserable. miserable where I worked. I loved the industry, but hated where I was and just said, enough's enough. We're going to do something about it. Let's build something great. Let's create a culture. Let's take care of people. Let's help people. Let's help contractors and let's grow this damn thing. And, and that's exactly what we're doing. That is
Jeff Davis:That is a really cool story.
Chris Bayardo:It's rewarding for sure, but. You know, my friend of mine told me, you know, one time, you know, when I was trying to get ready to start the company. They had owned their own business for a while and they said, look, you know, hey, get ready to work harder than you ever have in your life. And I kind of assumed that and said, okay. And I nodded my head. And then they, they follow that with, you know, you, you can be as lazy and as comfortable as you want, and you can enjoy eating cereal. Or you can work as hard and grind as much as you want. You can enjoy eating steak and I like steak. I'm a Texas guy and I like to work hard and I like to enjoy the benefits of it. And that's kind of where we're at. We've, we've got a really good team. We're finally starting to really, truly optimize our processes and see really and truly where our client base struggles and what their pain points are and how we can help them. Cause I'm just simply not interested in selling snake oil. I'm not interested in some eight inch thick. Binder that says safety manual that sits on your shelf and collects dust for 20 years. Yeah. Like we, we, we want to dive in and solve some problems. We want your guns loaded, you know, we want you to be an effective contractor. And it, it, it boils down to what I see as like, you know, sort of like these three most detrimental. Things that I've seen to a contractor success or a contractor's failure, which is you don't understand compliance and you try to take it on by yourself and you're just running around like a chicken with his head cut off from the word go you don't understand fully the individual worker credentialing standpoint, and so you're hoping for the best that you have what you think you need, and then your job shut down, and then you got standby. And then you're racking up, you know, even a small case study we did was to the tune of like 240 grand a day, just for not having the right credentials when you were on standby, even with a small minimal crew. And so even the contractors that go past, you know, those issues one and two that we just mentioned, maybe they're aware of those issues. And so they start just saying, hey, let's pencil with everything we can. Let's just get our men out on the job. And you've got underqualified, misqualified workers out there. And that's where the incidents and the injuries start. And that's where you get catastrophic release. And even worse, I mean, I've had to work multiple cases for clients. You know, when you're starting to have to do incident case management and managing fatalities in the workplace, and while it's something I'm capable of. It's something I hope I never have to do again. And that's where our heart and our head kind of come together with our services that we offer our client base. Absolutely. So
Jeff Davis:last question. Brighter note, since you brought us down on that one, Mr. Veyardo.
Chris Bayardo:Part of the job.
Jeff Davis:I think I see a deer head
Chris Bayardo:back there. Yeah, you see that's an axis. You see one of my axis deer. He's he's from Sonora, Texas.
Jeff Davis:What is your, what's your favorite game to hunt?
Chris Bayardo:Probably a tie between the axis and whitetail. I'm a big, avid, avid, avid deer hunter. Love it to death. What's your,
Jeff Davis:what's your biggest biggest deer that you've taken down or
Chris Bayardo:axis? Well, the biggest access was probably, probably this guy out of Sonoran. I got him about six years ago out there, here's a plug, out there with Dustin McRae with Texas Safaris, and just a great guy had a blast out there at their ranch. A lot of stalking and they one of the guides was, I think, a collegiate football player. And, you know, I mean, I was, I was struggling just to keep up with him. I mean, this kid was all over the place, climbing, climbing these mountains like a billy goat, you know, But that makes for a very rewarding hunt but as far as Whitetail, I got lucky with a a double drop tine out of Pearsall, Texas, some years ago, and that's, he's probably somewhere in the one, 155s, 150 range, as far as inches B and C, but For me, it's more about the hunt. It's more about what getting out of the office and having some time in nature kind of does for me. Same thing when I'm out on the bay, out on the saltwater, it's not did I fill a box of fish, but it's more so my, my Decompressing a little bit, finding some peace and that that balance is absolutely crucial
Jeff Davis:story for the podcast. In fact, I told you I'm going to Louisiana. I'm leaving today when my son gets out of school. I'm taking him. So it's it is a business trip, but it is a we're actually going alligator hunting. All right.
Chris Bayardo:Fantastic. I'm
Jeff Davis:going to my uncle's lease and we'll be doing that.
Chris Bayardo:I've, I've had I've had the opportunity the invite, I should say. And I, I've never been, but I definitely got it on the list, but. Yeah, you know, it's,
Jeff Davis:it's fun for the kids. Yeah. So we'll probably go and bait it. Friday afternoon. I'm going to play a little hooky. Yeah. Meetings. Good for you. Going to but Saturday we'll get out early Saturday afternoon. We'll go shrimp in Sunday. We'll probably get out and do some more hunting and then Sunday. Come back, but yeah, so it's going to be an alligator hunt, some shrimping,
Chris Bayardo:nothing wrong with that. You know, the, the best part of the hunt is the table fair for me. You know,
Jeff Davis:Oh, we'll be getting some of that. I think we're not going to eat the alligator this time.
Chris Bayardo:This is such a hard. Yeah. I mean,
Jeff Davis:it is a lot of work and he's out there. He's getting more per foot if it's not cut up.
Chris Bayardo:Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And what an interesting market that's become to we, we, we could, we do a whole nother episode on, on that, but no, I love it. Field, field to table. I love to cook wild game. Yeah,
Jeff Davis:but the shrimp, I mean, so every September is alligator season. Yeah. He's got 1200 acres of swamp. And so fun story. I've never shot a deer been hunting. That's the only place that I have a lead. I'm about to sign on to a deer lease up in Bronson, Texas. Okay. Great with my neighbor. I was telling you about. You know, who's also an HSC director. So he invited me and he's got twins. And so I've got three boys actually be a good place to, we can all spread our leg you know, spread our legs and open up, get away from all these women in my house. So I. But I've never had the opportunity because my uncle, the one thing he takes seriously is deer hunting. Him and his deer. Yeah, I can relate. And so I'm like, I know what you're doing. You know, I know what you're doing. You put me in this deer stand, you know, at three o'clock in the morning with one of my sons. And you know, he'll tell me the same thing. He is a Cajun Cajun. Oh, yeah, this is where they're coming, bro. This is where they're coming, bro. Yeah, and then sure enough at around in about an hour and a half, two hours, I hit.
Chris Bayardo:Yeah,
Jeff Davis:now I hear him on the wall. We got him. Yeah. Here we go, sludging through the swamps again. And I got nothing. And it happens every year, every November. And I'm, and I'm the I'm the idiot who thinks he's actually going to put me up where they're going. But
Chris Bayardo:Hey, I'm
Jeff Davis:not going to my stripes by going out every weekend and putting the bait out, but it's,
Chris Bayardo:there you go. There you go. We, that's the fun part too, is you never know. And the phrase is you won't, you won't know unless you go. So yeah, yeah.
Jeff Davis:I just like to go get my boys that experience, but we'll see what this new lease in Bronson. Where we'll be going every week, you know, for a year.
Chris Bayardo:Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's love and hate for, for my wife. She, she loves it. You know, I'm an outdoors man and loves that I'll go and do my hunting and kind of decompress. And that in turn gives her. Some alone time and gives the house to her and, and, you know, she can kind of decompress and do her thing. But when I'm like, you know, weekend after weekend after weekend, because I mean, I'm straight addicted to that deer hunting. She's like, are you going hunting again? And I totally get it. But she's awesome. I was out of town last weekend. I was, you know, she had the kiddo all to herself and, you know, here she is. She's keeping up with it. She's like, well, it's the dove dove seasons opening this weekend. Do you want to go to the ranch? And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know, I'm not, I'm not going to push it. And it's
Jeff Davis:everything at
Chris Bayardo:least it's everything. Yeah. That makes it fun. That's similar to the place I hunt, but she's, she's always. She's always pushing for me to, you know, go and get that out of my system. And, you know, she knows I'm wound up pretty tight from work and the whole, the whole grind. So, I got really lucky with that one. Yeah, I
Jeff Davis:kicked my coverage as well. So, well, hey, Chris, it's been fun. We got to talk, you know, some technical work stuff, some how you started and then some fun stuff too. So tell everybody how they can find you and I'm gonna put it into the show notes as well.
Chris Bayardo:Okay, great. The easiest way is just to hit our website at Bayardo safety dot com. And I know that's not the most common name. So it's B A Y A R D O, BayardoSafety. com. And there you'll be able to see all of our services and how to get in touch with our team and how to schedule consultations and how to get in touch with for worker credentialing. You can find us and follow us on LinkedIn at BayardoSafety, L L C. But really and truly. Our website's the best way, the easiest way. Bayardo safety. com.
Jeff Davis:Awesome. Of course, I enjoyed it. And as always, we are Bridgestone Capital. We look to do, we look to provide passive income for supply chain professionals. We partner with folks in the supply chain on commercial real estate all over the Houston and Dallas markets. So if you are interested, go to chaininvestor. pro, chaininvestor. pro. Chris, it's been real. Let's stay in touch.
Chris Bayardo:Bye. Appreciate it, Jeff. Thanks for having us out.