Episode Zero - introduction

Introduction to the host and his vision for the podcast. 

Transcript

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The views and opinions expressed on Beyond Command are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views, policies, or positions of any fire department, EMS agency, government organization, employer, or other organization with which they may be affiliated. The information presented on this podcast is for educational informational purposes only and should not be considered a substitute for your department's policies, procedures, protocols, training, medical direction, or applicable laws and regulations. Fire and EMS professionals should always follow their agency's established procedures, approved training, medical protocols, and the direction of their appropriate authority. I'm your host, Sean Malloy. This is a new podcast here. We're going to call it Episode Zero. And I'm just going to give you a little background on myself, the show, how we got here, and what it's not going to be. So we'll start off. I've been a veteran of the fire service for over 35 years. I spent 20 years as a fire chief. And so I've seen a lot of things, I've dealt with a lot of issues, and I've learned a lot of lessons along the way. And although I am retired from the fire service now, I still feel I've got a lot to offer. So I started this podcast and I hope you guys get a lot out of it. And probably the best part of my job, I was a fire officer instructor for many years. Fire officer one and two in Illinois here. Now company fire officer, advanced fire officer, and did a lot of work with the next generation, you know, and I'm big about trying to pass along all of the information, the knowledge, the experience that we've gotten over the years. Because if we don't pay attention to the mentors that are there, you know, we're just doomed to repeat some of the problems they had. So I want to help people. I've also got a master's degree in organizational behavior. So I've got some formal education background in this area too. How did I get to this point? I recently re-retired, and I say that because I retired from my job as chief. And I went back to work for a department that was they were starting out their first time with having full-time people in the station. They had been paid on call up until that point. And I was hiring all young people that needed mentors. So I was able to go back there and we had a lot of fun. And I, you know, tried to teach people the things that I knew, and I really enjoyed it. But just got to the point where, you know, it's not a job for guys that are 57 years old. It gets a little tough climbing in and out of the engine every day, going on 10 runs a day. So I decided that two years of that was enough. I gave them a good head start, and they're still doing great over there. So God bless them. Keep them all safe. My vision for this show. The intended audience is fire, EMS, and dispatch. And I call that my fire, my emergency triangle. Because if all three parts of that don't get it right, we fail. And I have huge respect for dispatchers. The job's tough. You know, I've been through dispatch centers that had one person working, two people working, and then up to when I when I left, we were coming out of a dispatch center that you know might have 10 people working at a time and was very busy. So my hat is off to everybody. It's a dispatcher out there. And for fire and EMS, you guys respect them because until you've been up there and see how things go, because it can be chaotic, you gotta you gotta bear with them because nobody's perfect. We're not perfect in the streets, and they're you know, sometimes they miss things on the dispatch side. But part of this will be, you know, working to give them tips and how how dispatchers can get better and you know what we expect and what they can expect of us. So my vision is also to talk a lot about leadership because without it we all fail. You've got to have people that are there ready to lead, and some people aren't. Some people just don't have it. It's a personality thing. You've got to be able to step up, say what's gotta be said. Sometimes it's a tough conversation, but you also need to be have a have a loving part of it, you know, because people will respect how you treat them. And it's really about how you treat your people here, you know, respect-wise. If you don't respect them and you can't talk to them honestly, it's really tough to lead. But we'll get into a lot of leadership aspects. Another thing that I stand for in the fire service in EMS is excellence. The public deserves it. Okay, the public's out there, they're paying our salaries, they're paying for those big trucks. They expect professionalism and excellence. And it's not that hard. It's not that hard to be excellent in what you do because if you're gonna make a career out of this, or even if you're a pay it on call, you know, if you're not giving 100%, then you know, why are you doing it? If you're going in and saying, ah, I can go 50%, I'm getting a paycheck, it's an easy job. That's not right. We got to be able to respect the job that we're in, respect the people that we're working for, which is the general public. We're here to help people that are in need. All right, they dial 911 because they have a problem, and they expect us to show up and help them through it. And sometimes it's, you know, the proverbial cathetery, but sometimes it's just somebody that that's fallen down. They're older, they can't get up, they don't have family living with them. You know, sometimes, you know, we gotta we gotta really help them. I I've been out where, you know, you've got a senior by himself and not doing well, and you know, we've cooked food for him. You know, we'll put his meal in the microwave, make sure he's set up. Sometimes you gotta do that. And sometimes you don't want to. Sometimes people can be thankless, rude sometimes, but you know, you do your best, bite your tongue and uh be good to people, and this job will be good to you. One of the things I'm really hoping for is audience participation. I could drive this myself, I believe me, I can talk for hours, but you guys don't want to just hear what I got to say. You might have problems or have questions how to how to make yourselves a better officer or what you can do for professional development. So audience participation, huge for me. So if you get the chance, email and ask your questions. You can lay out something, we'll read it, talk about it. My email is the show at beyond command. The show at beyond command.com. Real easy. What I'll tell you is what this show's not gonna be. Okay, this show's not gonna involve politics at all. I doesn't belong there. Okay. We're talking about positive things, no complaining, no bitching. We want to be positive and lay something out for people that can help you do your jobs, help you get better. Politics, unless you know it involves some kind of uh legislation that is good for the fire service, EMS, we could talk about those. But as far as party politics, it's a no-go. And also war stories. You know, there's guys that'll sit out there and they can talk and talk and talk about war stories and you know, going down the hall with a two and a half and this and that. Not here for that either. You don't want to relive my life. So unless it has something to do with the lesson for the day, I'm probably not gonna bring too much of that up. You know, we could talk about tactics and strategies, but uh old war stories of what I've done, you know, that's that's not really gonna help people get better. So we will try to eliminate them, keep to some lessons that are gonna help you guys learn, help you guys develop into fire officers, fire chiefs one day, and hopefully I can live them leave a good mark here. So that is my orientation here quickly for Beyond Command. The intent here is that I'm going to release segments on Fridays. Uh that gives me the week to get through news, you know, pertinent news on the fire service. We can talk about a little bit of that, and then to get into what's really going to be our bread and butter for the day. I will have co-hosts, I will also have guests. I've got a I've got a good network of people that I'd like to bring on this show because I'll definitely add to it. And again, you know, I'm gonna bring them in because they're also people that talk about excellence in fire and EMS, excellence and leadership. And you know, they're we're gonna we're gonna bring people in here that you're gonna you're gonna think are experts and what they do. So yeah, that's about it for episode zero. I'm keeping it short. Hope you guys will come back and start listening to all the other episodes that we drop on Fridays. So until then, be safe. God bless you all.