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Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 001 That's right. Episode number one of the Professional Volunteer. My name is Brian Soller and I am your host. Today's episode is really just an introduction, little introduction of myself. What you can expect to hear, hear on the podcast. So let me start with a little bit about myself. I have been a volunteer firefighter for 30 years. The 1st 20 years of my career were spent in a combination firehouse here in upstate New York, with those of you in Buffalo and Rochester would call downstate with those of you in the city would call upstate, basically located in the Catskill Mountains Hudson Valley area of the last nine years of my volunteer career have been spent in an all volunteer firehouse. And, ah, throughout my 30 years of volunteering, I've worked my way through the line. A couple of times. I was chief in 2001 and 2002 in the combination house, and I currently serve as chief at my volunteer house. Ah, this thought of the volunteer for the professional volunteer, I should say has has been coming to me for years. I've had the pleasure and the opportunity of traveling around New York state to speak and teach and be around hundreds of volunteer firefighters over the years. And, um, our career brothers and sisters as well. And some things that have always they have always kind of gotten to me personally, is how there's times out there when the volunteer firefighter can be downplayed. And sometimes sometimes we're actually downplaying, downplaying ourselves. So I started hash tagging professional volunteer, using the phrase be of professional volunteer probably a couple years ago now. And the more I spoke on it, the more I talked about it. I've gotten feedback from my peers who thought that this would be a good topic to discuss and to keep pushing forward so out of that, out of those conversations and out of my social media feeds, comes this idea of the of the professional volunteer, and I know this isn't a unique idea. There's others out there that discussed the same topic as well, and I think it's a topic that can't really be discussed enough. And when we refer to a professional fire finer, um, were attuned to immediately think of somebody that is getting paid to do their job, right? So when I say professional, um, isn't do you immediately feel that that's a word that's reserved for our career? Brothers and sisters? Um, and one thing that you'll hear commonly and talk about this a few times today is We're just volunteers. Me personally. When somebody says to me, I'm just a volunteer, it bothers me. It really It really strikes hard at everything that, you know, I feel that I've worked for over the years, and people that are very close to me, that I know put the same amount of pride and dedication into what they do is a volunteer, and I know it hurts them as well. So when I hear somebody say I'm just a volunteer, it's like, Oh, oh, my God, Why why would you? Yeah, why would you say that? So we all know there's plenty of social media feeds out there that are just dedicated to the the bashing of volunteer firefighters. Um, I won't use any names. You know what they are? Um, there's Facebook pages that are dedicated to it. There's Instagram pages that are dedicated to it, but you know what's generally highlighted on these pages. And, you know, there used to point out all the unprofessional things that we do in the volunteer world and, you know, sometimes were referred to is is huckleberries, pancake flippers. Um, all kinds of things. Some things that I wouldn't even that I wouldn't even repeat, because I'd have to change my settings on my podcast. Um, but they're negative, right? And they're mostly negative. Um, the problem is that a lot of us in the volunteer world give the content to those pages based on our actions and the things that we do and the things that we think are. Okay, um, if you live in a volunteer community, um, our community, it's protected by by a volunteer fire department. Chances are your community doesn't know the difference. I happen to live in a community that has a lot of 2nd 2nd home owners. People that come out of the New York City metro area have homes in the Catskills, and they summer here. They weekend here, you know, spend spend their free time here to get out of hustle and bustle of the city. Um, when they have an alarm at their house and activate alarm and oven fire. Ah, the barbecue catches fire. Whatever it may be, the for some reason they have to dial 911 may be a medical emergency. All they know is that when they dial 911 and a few minutes later when somebody shows up with their door, whether that's a red fire truck, a green fire truck of blue fire, truck and ambulance, whatever it may be all right. All they want to know is that they're getting the professional help in the professional service that they deserve. They're not checking pay stubs. They're not checking union cards. They just want to make sure that somebody shows up and does the job that's needed to be done. And they get the help that they need. They don't know that we're volunteer. They don't know that we're career. If they're coming out of the city out of the five boroughs, they might assume that we're more professional career firefighters because maybe they just don't know any different. Um, so when we think about that statement, I'm just a volunteer. Shouldn't that bother us? Shouldn't that bother us as volunteer firefighters? Um, when we're doing the same job as our career brothers and sisters. You know, if we're doing the same job, and here's your going to see very quickly where I'm going and when and where this podcast is gonna lead to over the coming weeks and months and hopefully years. If we're doing the same job as our professional brothers and sisters, why aren't we holding ourselves to the same standards? Why are we giving the haters per se and those that love to take all the ridiculous things that you see out there on the Internet and exploit them against volunteer firefighters the ammunition to do so? Why aren't we striving to be professionals, you know? And I know this can, you know, this could be a tough concept to grasp, but it But it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be a tough concept to grasp. Um, we should constantly be striving to be better at our craft, always learning, taking care of ourselves both physically and emotionally and following the rules. Right. So here's the big one filing the rules. Um, and I'll hit on a couple today that our pet peeves of my own over the years, um and I'll be the first to tell you I'm not gonna put myself on a soap box and say that I've never done any of these things because where I, um where my mindset was 20 years ago, 25 years ago versus where my mindset is today is is Knighton Knighton day. I mean, I've learned I've grown. I've watched people. I've gotten into some hellacious arguments defending myself when I was probably when I was wrong in the first place. Um, so here's the thing. You know when we talk about following the rules and and let's be honest as volunteers when it comes to violence filing the rules, that's when we love to pull the volunteer card. And let's use the biggest possible, the best example that we could use right out of the gate. Facial hair, right? How many volunteers in your firehouse have a beard, a goatee, something that interferes with the seal of the mask, something that goes against the respiratory protection standard, something that is just not proper, something that would not allow them to operate if they were, Ah, career firefighter. Why do we allow it? Well, because we're volunteers and I can get a seal with the faith that I could get a seal with the beard, right? It doesn't matter. We're breaking the rules. So I always like to use this analogy when somebody says to me, Well, I don't have to follow that. So I just got done building a brand new fire engine. And those of you that have built any piece of fire apparatus know that when you build a piece of fire apparatus, you follow the N F p. A. And when you follow the n f P A, it gets us all the all the stuff we love, right? All the cool stuff gets us the lights, gets us the equipment. When we when we go looking for funding for that piece of equipment, there's things that we can't cut out of it. Why? Because the FDA says that it has to be there. All right, so we love the n f p. A. We love standards, and we love rules when it comes to building $600,000.700,000 dollar piece of equipment. But when it comes to protecting ourselves and facial hair, all right, we're just volunteers. We don't have to follow the rules. Okay, Simple things like pee Pee and And thankfully, this discussion seems like it's, you know, kind of finally gone away. Right? But are we dining? Are proper p p e on every single run, right. As the chief, as the assistant chief, as the captain as lieutenant, Are you donning your proper P p e on every run? Are you setting the example for those that follow you? All right. And if you're not, and they catch you on it and they say, Hey, chief, you forget your bunker pants today. How are you handling that with that? With that upset you, or would it make you happy? Right, Because being a professional is being able to take advice from others. All right, and correct your behaviors. No one. You need to be corrected and not get upset about it. Right? So you can see where I'm going with this. It's about setting a higher standard. It's not about, um, meeting a low standard of being happy with it is about setting a higher standard. We're doing the same job. Over the years as New York State has consistently increased the training requirements for a recruit firefighter, we've all heard the We've all heard the, um, were killing volunteerism. There's too much training, too much training. We're killing volunteerism. How are we killing volunteerism by making sure that those that are doing the job are trained to do the job? Why should the standard be different for me if I don't receive a paycheck versus the person that does receive a paycheck? We're doing the same job. We're fighting the same fire. Nobody's stopping at us the door and check stopping us at the door and checking a union card prior to us going into the building. So as we look forward, as I look at future episodes and as I look to bring guests on, you know, what can we do to prevent our prevent promote professionalism, right? What can we do to promote professionalism? We definitely don't want to prevent it. We want to promote it. What can we do to promote professionalism? Let's start with number one, right? Training, right. Actively promoting in house training, going the classes, going the seminars, not just for our recruits. Right. If you're an officer or a chief officer, but for everyone, for the chauffeurs, the senior men and women. All right, um, leadership, grabbing people by the hand and saying, Hey, I'm going out to the training center tonight to take class. Why don't you come along with me? If the leadership is doing it, people will follow. Right? Health and wellness, Health and wellness. Huge, huge topic, All right, and it's a topic that we like to ignore, Right? How can we potentially ignore? How can we even think about ignoring health and wellness when cardiac events still remain the top killer of firefighters? Every year? We need to look out for one another, and that might include having tough conversations when it comes to health and wellness. And one thing that I recently discussed among a group of my peers is there's a lot of attention, um, around cancer right now. And Di Khan and wearing RSC be a during salvage and overhaul. And the discussion kind of went like this because, um, we had witnessed a situation where firefighters were operating in a building and it was that time of salvage and overhaul. They've taken their masks off their breathing in all that, you know, all those carcinogens and garbage, and the department had recently instituted a Nikon procedure, which is awesome. Great. That's operating as a professional, right? Setting the standard high getting d con before going back to the station, getting our gear cleaned off before it goes back in the rig. That's awesome. But I got what got missed, right. It's wonderful that we come out of the building, We get all scrubbed up and our gear is clean. R S C B A is clean, we clean off our skin. All right, But why were we operating in the building during salvage and overhaul and at an S c B A on? All right, So let's think about health and wellness and think about the full package. It's phenomenal if we're going to do d con. But are we paying attention? Toe everything? Are we paying attention to our firefighters and what they're doing during salvage and all overhaul? All right, what else? Carry yourself like a professional. Be proud of who we are. Be proud of your department. Be proud of what you represent. All right. Um, I know in the volunteer fire service, we tend to say there's a job for everyone, but not everyone is meant to be a part of the volunteer Fire Service. All right. We're a special breed. We should be proud of what we do, right, And we should do it the right way. Follow the rules. I talked about that before. We can't pick and choose the rules that we follow. If you are an exterior firefighter, you're a scene support person. And you wanna have a killer goatee or a beard or whatever it is that you wanna have have at it. But if you are in interior firefighter, that takes a fit test every year. Right? And your department is counting on you when they need you to go interior on that structure fire. Then you need to be clean shaven. Find refer to the rules, see what the rules are. You wanna have facial hair, grow a killer mustache. All right, but you cannot have facial hair that impedes the seal on that mask. Follow the rules. And that's just one example where we have to respect the members of our team and we have to respect those around us. Confrontation is okay. Difference of opinion is okay. And this is this was a huge learning point for me personally. over the years because I was years ago. I was the guy that I just had to be right at all costs. I had to be right, right? And what I've learned over the years is healthy disagreement as long as this healthy disagreement is good for everybody. And if people can disagree and then walk away from one another and respect one another's opinions and potentially learn from one another, it helps move us forward. Right. Final point on my list of how to promote professionalism. And as you can see, we got a lot of topics here to talk about in the in the coming coming weeks and months, right? Don't be closed minded to new ideas, right? The fire service is always evolving. Yes, we're rich in tradition. But don't let that tradition close your mind to new equipment, technology or skills right? That could make us safer or or more efficient. And I'll give you a perfect example of that right now, myself and five other firefighters in my department, our demo ing Euro style helmets. And there's a lot of controversy around, um, the slight push of Euro style helmets in the United States and most of the negativity has nothing to do with safety or features or benefits. It just half that has to do with the fact of It's not traditional, right? It's not my end. Five. A leather New Yorker right, which I've warned for years, By the way, it's not my New Yorker, right? It's It's stupid looking. You look like you're from out of space. Um, it's not what we do here in the US, right? I love him. Hate him. I would never try to push you in a direction. The point of it is that when there's new technology or new things out there before you judge, give it a try, right? If you don't give it a try, you've really got you've really got No, no, wayto you know, no wayto voice, an opinion if you've never tried it yourself. So that's where I'm looking to go with this. Um, over the over the coming weeks and months, My my goal here is to ah keep my episodes to 30 to 45 minutes a day, 30 to 45 minutes an episode. I'm sorry. Um, I have a few guests lined up. I have a few potential topics. Thanks to my friends on social media that have given me some ideas. I don't have any sponsors. I don't have any fancy intros yet. You're not gonna hear any sirens in the background or saws or or anything crazy. I mean, hopefully I'll get there in the future. I've I got to give a shout out to, um, you know, one of my friends that I've I've listened to for, ah for a while now and definitely got some great advice. Great advice from on how to, um, how to get this podcast started and were to find some excellent tutorials. And that's my buddy over a jump seat training. Ryan Pennington's Ryan. Thank you. Just a little shout out if you don't follow Ryan's podcasts. Absolutely. Head over there and check it out. Um, but that's where I'm looking to go friends. And, um, I would really love your feedback. I'd love to hear from you. You can find me on social pretty much everywhere at Chief Scholar. All right. And that's, um, Chief regular spelling s like Sam o l l e r and R new. Ah, show instagram um is at professional volunteers to make sure you give us a follow with the professional volunteer. I'm hoping to get this on all the platforms, right, Apples, Spotify all the podcast platforms. And we're just gonna do our best to keep it going as I drop something off my lap. Ah, and one more thing I'll share. Listen again. There's there's nothing crazy professional about this professional volunteer podcast cause I sit here in my office, I just dropped my phone. Every once in a while, you'll probably hear my dogs barking in the background. Um, this is this is a produced at home by me podcast. So hope Thio advanced things in the future. But that's where we are right now. So thanks for listening today. Don't forget to follow me again @chiefsoller and @professionalvolunteer. I look forward to hearing from you and please drop me a line. Tell me what you think. Send me your ideas. If you have any guests that you think would be good guests for the topics that we're going to be approaching, right career or volunteer does not matter. But we are coming at it from the volunteer firefighter perspective. So just keep that in mind, but send them, Send them my way. And I'd love to talkto so thanks again for listening. Have a great day. Everybody stay safe out there and we'll see a or talk to you the next time. Bye bye.