Jeff's Blahg

Wow, the last 5 days have sure flown by. SafeTrax made a number of great contacts and continues to strengthen its position as an IARW Service Partner. There were literally hundreds of vendors at the expo, and I was surprised to see, once again, that no other company offers anything even similar to SafeTrax Online. The preventative maintenance integration we have done sparked a lot of interest as well. We are in a great position and offer a unique, much needed, product / service.

Sandie used some Mark Twain quotes as the basis for our focus session:

“If you eat a frog first thing in the morning, the rest of your day will be wonderful.”
“If you have to eat a frog, don’t look at it for too long.”

Your frog – looking all ugly and nasty on your plate – is the most important, most challenging, the biggest and hardest task you could possibly do. Now that you have eaten that ugly annoying frog you can focus on other tasks knowing you have finished the hardest part first. We have learned in this industry that the ‘frogs’ for many of these companies happen to be safety / regulation items. These are frogs that just don’t ever go away and must be managed regularly. Our spin was that we can really help by reducing the size of that frog through the use of better tools / services. I think it was well received as we had several people approach us after the presentation and comment on the effectiveness of the analogy, and how it relates to them.

The days here have been quite relaxing even with all the activities that we have been involved with. Most of the days started very early but we were finished by noon, which provided plenty of time to get sunburnt to a crisp (my chest took a scolding). The beaches here are beautiful with pure white sands and blue water. There are nice restaurants at the resort as well, so you really don’t have to leave if you don’t want to.

We ventured out a bit and found a great little restaurant called Snooks. We heard about it from the locals so we knew it must be good… and it didn’t disappoint. The food was good and hot and the scenery was even better. And if you like pickles, they have a 50 gallon barrel full of them. If you ever visit Marco Island, be sure to stop by.

I am heading out tomorrow morning for the 2008 IARW-WFLO-IRTA Annual Convention & Expo. SafeTrax will have a booth as well as teaching a focus session titled: Altogether Now: Consolidating Your Maintenance and Safety Programs. If it is like all the other IARW events it should be a great time!

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Here is a news release we just posted. This will explain what I have been working on.

GRESHAM, OR-January 28, 2008- SafeTrax is proud to announce the upcoming release of a preventative maintenance program to integrate and coincide with SafeTrax Online. The SafeTrax Preventative Maintenance Program will help you track and monitor scheduled and nonscheduled maintenance on equipment. It is unique in that it allows you to seamlessly integrate your safety program and preventative maintenance… bringing them together, as they should be.

The SafeTrax Online Preventative Maintenance Program was created using feedback from a preventative maintenance advisory board, which consists of existing and potential customers, on how to best track and maintain equipment. SafeTrax took that feedback and over the past eight months has been building a preventative maintenance program on the solid SafeTrax Online framework, making the preventative maintenance module seamless with the existing components. With the input of the advisory board, we can assure our customers that as the module nears completion it will be what is needed and wanted for an ideal preventative maintenance and safety program.

Part of the appeal of the SafeTrax Preventative Maintenance Program is its unique bottom-up approach, which allows you to create maintenance procedures using a work order accessed in SafeTrax Online. The procedures can involve as few as zero or as many steps as necessary. So that the maintenance is done in a timely and cost-effective manner, the work order allows you to state an estimated time for completion and specify the parts and tools needed for proper maintenance. Once a work order is created, it is assigned to the appropriate employee in the system and can then be tracked by management to insure completion.

Further, the SafeTrax Preventative Maintenance Program allows you to create a maintenance group (or several) and assign equipment to that group that fit into the type of maintenance to be performed, and then apply procedures to that maintenance group. This allows for quick and easy assignment of common procedures to equipment rather than creating several equipment work orders for the same procedure. A single piece of equipment can belong to several maintenance groups depending on what type of maintenance services it needs.

Below are some of the features the new preventative maintenance module provides:

* One online location for creating, assigning, and tracking the completion of work orders
* Ability to schedule preventative maintenance days, weeks, months… even years in advance
* Simple yet powerful interface for assigning equipment to maintenance groups
* The ability for management to track man-hours on maintenance work orders, as well as the consumption of parts
* Seamless integration with the SafeTrax Online Safety Program

SafeTrax is proud to expand its SafeTrax Online product to include this work order and preventative maintenance module, as it will greatly benefit our customers. SafeTrax plans to roll out our Preventative Maintenance Program in April 2008.

Ah… how does it feel? No job, nobody telling me WHAT to do, WHY to do it or WHEN. Wow, if you haven’t had this opportunity you should give it some serious consideration… not that it can be achieved overnight by any means.

I started my first business in January 2001. Kristie and I were just married and I had started doing some web development things for fun. I had created BYUTrack.com as my first site. Now, I say that loosely, because what you see there now was probably about the third makeover it went through. The last go round I actually hired a designer to come up w/ the the look and feel of it – because I then, and still do – consider myself to be weak in that area. I wanted to make it look very polished. Anyway, not too long after I did that site the BYU Gymnastics coach approached me because he had heard about this cool site I had done for the track team. You see, the official site, BYUCougars.com was very weak on media. And, even more frustrating to the coaches, they had almost NO control over what was there. So, they wanted what I had created, a very powerful, flexible site that they could update and manage without having to ask permission every time they needed something. So, another site was created, BYUGymnastics.com. It amazes me that these sites have not been messed w/ at all since I did them. I would have guessed that they would have had major work needed by now. So, lesson 1 is take the time to do things right the first time, and don’t expect the world for it – or anything for that matter.

So, back to the business. I had this bright idea (so I thought). I had been paid for the above two sites, although it was insignificant amounts… but I could see where the value was being created and respected. I wanted to basically take over the BYUCougars.com site and redo the whole thing – add a ton of media and other cool things and provide what was being so loved by the track and gymnastics teams to all sports. Long story short is that we got all the key players in a meeting and presented the idea. It was shot down. So, I lost on that deal, but I gained some good experience from it – like 2) don’t expect people to even respect your ideas. Some people don’t, so either get thick skin or get out of the game.

Well, I still thought the *idea* behind the scenes was a good idea. Hence I began working on a new project. It was called SportTrax (notice the ‘trax’ portion, it will become a popular theme). The idea was this – create a site that allows a school to create / manage all their sports teams and their activities through it. Create rosters, schedules, add pictures, results and more – all easily on their own. When I started doing this schools around here didn’t have sites at all – requesting a schedule from the local high school required them mailing me (USPS) a photo copy. So, I did all the work on this, and oh ya, here was the real kicker: I was going to have the site easily MAKE money for them. I provided forms that would be taken to their existing (or new) sponsors that would allow them to choose a level of sponsorship, and their logo would show up on the top banner at appropriate interval based on sponsorship. Oh, wow, what a brilliant plan!!! I took it to the local high school and asked if we could test it out on them, at no charge. Of course they were all for that. We got them all setup and trained them how to use it, etc. I walked out of the place and nothing else ever happened to it. Anything besides the minimum is too much to ask it appears… so, outside the job description and outside the possibility of getting done. I met with a few other schools and came to the same conclusion… and left with a bitter taste in my mouth for athletic directors that claimed to care, but in the end were more concerned about doing as little as possible than anything else. Lesson 3, no matter how great you think your ideas are, don’t put all your eggs in one basket… ever! Always be thinking about what will be next. Oh, and 4, take some time to do some market research .

So, all those attempts pretty much went down the drain. But, I learned some valuable lessons along the way. In one of my next posts I will continue the story and eventually get caught up to where I am today… hope you can stay away that long.

Been a bit – there has been a lot going on in our neck of the woods.

I just got back from a trip back east. I flew into Philadelphia and met up with SafeTrax partner Sandie. We met the following day with United States Cold Storage at their corporate offices in Cherry Hill, NJ. It was decided that it would be beneficial for us to visit one of their facilities up in Bethlehem, PA the following morning.

Anyway, we had most of a day to burn, so we headed up to New York City. Now, this was my first visit to the Big Apple you see. I had this picture in my mind (I think we all do) of what it is supposed to be like. Surprisingly, my mental picture was pretty close…. until it came to the World Trade Center site. It is hard to comprehend the size and magnitude of the destruction without understanding the surroundings. So, I got off the subway and walked down the street… TALL buildings consuming every inch of every block – I am talking huge buildings (bigger than the barn back home). Claustrophobic. Then there is this huge… hole. The size of the hole and empty space contrasted with the enormous buildings surrounding the area was stunning to me. There were all these people just running around – meaning like going in and out of the subway station there, and just going about their daily lives… as though nothing ever happened there – just so used to it at this point. For me everything went quiet, zoned out and had a moment of pretty deep reflection. It was quite the experience… The picture was taken behind a bunch of netting, so that is why it blurred.

Then went on to see Madison Square Garden, ESPN Zone , Times Square, Statue of Liberty, etc. Overall, it was a pretty interesting place to visit. I wouldn’t have cared to stay any longer, nor do I care to return there, but am glad I can check it off the list…. whatever sense that makes.

Anyway, from there we went to Bethlehem for our meetings. After that I headed back to Philadelphia to drop Sandie off at the airport before continuing down to Baltimore. I got to spend Friday through Sunday with my brother Jared and his family. It was a great time, we got to: ride the light rail, attend an Orioles game, eat some tater-tot casserole, play with the computers, almost beat Zelda (almost pulled and all-nighter), went to church, etc.

So… that was the trip back east in a nutshell.

The other bit of exciting news is that we are in the process of buying some land. The land can be viewed here. It is 5.25 acres in Payson, UT. Currently it is an alfalfa field. Actually it is about 15 minutes south of where we currently live. It has been our dream to get out of the city and back to our roots a bit. While the deal is not complete, it is looking good. So, I’ll keep everyone informed. Either way, we will have to build on it, etc… so we won’t be going anywhere for a while…

Just a side note – SecurityTrax is doing great. We are adding adding adding.

Till next time…

I just got back from the IARW Annual Convention held in Phoenix, Arizona. It is basically a gathering place for anyone and everyone in the cold storage business. There was an expo which we had a booth in. We also taught one of the break out sessions titled: “Tracking your Safety & Maintenance”. SafeTrax got some great plugs in other sessions as well. It all lead to several very good leads.

Part of the convention was a golf tournament held at the resort. I am unbelievably pathetic at golf, although I have really been making my first real efforts to get better. It was a scramble… thank goodness. Anyway, we were paring every hole (using little of my help I might add) until I chipped one right in the cup for birdie… from about 20 yards away. It was pretty sweet. Then, even better, I eagled a shot from 100 yards out. Again, unbelievable. The guys I was golfing with about fell over… pure luck for sure. Anyway, it made for a good time.

Also took the chance to hit a Arizona Diamondbacks game. It was great besides the annoying drunk ladies behind us.

Due to some recent / upcoming events I have updated the homepage for SafeTrax. Click here to check it out. Keep posted for some exciting developments.

I just got back from a couple of trips.

Started out flying to Tulsa Oklahoma so I could bus (minivan) the pole vault poles over to Fayetteville, AK for the NCAA Track & Field Championships. We took two vaulters and it was pretty much a dismal performance. Competing at the NCAA Championships is a lot different than any other meet – the competition is phenomenal, which tends to get into your head. I flew back from that trip on Sunday night and got ready to leave again Monday night.

The next trip was up to Portland. SafeTrax attended the Oregon Governor’s Occupational Safety & Health Conference (GOSH). We had a booth which ended up being a great experience for us. It was our first stab at such a thing and was an invaluable learning experience for me. Sandie did an unbelievable job at getting the booth put all together on relatively short notice… GREAT JOB SANDIE!!! Best of all we got TONS of positive feedback and have some deals in the works right now from it.

There are some big things on the immediate horizon for SafeTrax. Keep posted and you will be hearing about them in the next month or less… in the mean time, have fun and be safe.

Here I am in Albuquerque… 3rd time in 2 months. This time is for the MWC Indoor Track & Field Championships. I will be coaching the heptathletes today (Friday) in the vault. Tomorrow is the main pole vault competition. We brought 4 vaulters to the meet… all of which should score points, which is 1st-8th place.

I brought the family on this trip so it should be pretty fun. Sydney has flown before, but never while old enough to really care. She had a blast yesterday and did great on the plane. She gets really excited to help me coach . It was also Allie’s first flight ever… and she did great as well. We will be flying back tomorrow night late, through Phoenix.

I need to book a ticket today to Portland, Oregon for next month. SafeTrax is attending the Oregon Governor’s Occupational Safety & Health Conference held the 12th-15th.

Wow – what a week it has been. I have been attending the WFLO (World Food Logistics Organization) Institute in Norman Oklahoma – Home of “OU” (Oklahoma Sooners).

The last four days have been filled with intense classes ranging from ‘Ammonia Safety’ to ‘Attitude in the Workplace’. The quality of the classes, as well as the instructors teaching them, was excellent. Not coming from a PRW (Public Refrigerated Warehouse) background like everyone else there, I was leary of what I was getting myself into… but quickly discovered the classes were in part tailored for people just like myself. Very cool.

I did some other very important things while I was here… like try out a new steak house each night. Here are my reviews:

• Kuna Ranch: Best ribeye I have had in a while. Atmosphere was very nice too. It was this Hawaiian themed place that had coconut in even the butter… yummy. 5 of 5 stars.
• Saltgrass: My least favorite of the 3 for the quality of the food… which surprised me since it came highly recommended (thanks alot Kim!). The atmosphere was fine – almost identical to a Lone Star. 2 stars.
• Santa Fe Cattle Company: Steak was pretty good really… but was out shined by the bread w/ honey-butter. My weakness.. like kryptonite to Superman. The atmosphere was unique to me – very casual w/ peanut shells all over the floor… like everywhere. 3.5 stars.

I also went to a women’s OU basketball game while I was here. It was pretty cool because the nearly sold out the arena for the game… most people I have ever seen at a women’s basketball game. Of course, they were playing rival Texas. OU won the game by about 20.

Well, I am happy to be headed home tomorrow. Being back w/ the family will be great. From what I have gathered Sydney can’t handle too much more of me not being around anyway.