Time We Discuss: What It Is Like Working as a Corporate Safety Trainer

Transcription

(Music)

Jamie Anderson: Our system is designed to be easy to learn, easy to remember, but highly effective. Brian went to, for years, when he was working for the state of Ohio...

Dan: Today on Time We Discuss, I wanna welcome Jamie Anderson and it's time we discuss what it's like working as a corporate safety trainer. Jamie, thank you for joining me today. Thanks for having me, Dan. Absolutely, this is gonna be really interesting. So I was on your website, and from what I gather, you kind of do like a martial arts kind of corporate training, community building kind of thing. Give us an overview. What exactly is your company all about?

Jamie: Weapon Brand is a corporate training company where we go into businesses, organizations, we do private training as well. And we shift people's mindset from being a victim to being aware of what's happening and being a weapon in your own life, whether that is through a lecture-based series on identifying predators, whether that's bullying, whether that is fighting against a health issue, whatever it is you're fighting against to be a weapon in your own life, to be your own weapon. And so that might look like a lecture-based series. It might look like a self-defense class. It might look like a class where we talk about tips to a bulletproof lifestyle. It may be leadership training. It may be an active shooter response training or things like for special security teams, SWAT teams, things like that, we'll do a little more intense physical training as well.

Dan: How did you actually get started with this idea, this concept? How did that all begin?

Jamie: My cousin, Brian Anderson- Needham, is my business partner in this. And it actually was his idea. He was a former US Marine, sniper, brought recon forward operator, hostage negotiator, platoon sergeant. And then when he left the Marines, he actually was in the Marines. He re-enlisted after 9/11, after his deployment over 9/11 was over. He went to the state of Ohio and worked for them for over 20 years, teaching law enforcement corrections and parole officers, all of the things we teach corporate teams today. So, one of our programs is a realtor safety program that comes from his work with parole officers who were going into the homes of these parolees. You don't know what you're getting. Same with realtors. So we've developed a program for realtors. Anyways, this was Brian's baby and he came down to Florida to visit me. And I asked my friends if anyone would like to come to a workshop put on by Brian to hear about, how to avoid predators. And a ton of people RSVP'd right away. And I said, why don't we do this in Florida and we can do it together? And it just kind of took off from there. So we have trainers in Florida, Ohio, and New York, but we travel throughout the country.

Dan: Okay, okay. I wanna come back to the different offices that you have. That's really, really cool. How did you decide on the different types of training? So you talked about realtors, you talked about leadership, you talked about using yourself as a weapon. How did that part of it begin and how did it evolve? So I'm assuming you didn't offer all of that right out of the gate.

Jamie: Right out of the gate, we were offering so much because of my partner's experience. He has so much experience. We were offering everything literally, and we still do, but we really don't focus on that so much anymore. We used to do tons of events for the public. We still do a lot of free community events and events for the public once in a while, but we really had to niche down into the corporate world because what we were offering was so much that people just kind of got confused. So right now, most corporations hire us for either our realtor safety, and those are people in the real estate world, our program called Personal Safety and Threat Awareness, which like I said, is identifying the bad guy before the bad guy does bad guy things. They'll bring us in to do self-defense training. Some will bring us in to do firearms trainings if there is firearms in their business or they want to teach their employees if they're around a firearm, what to do, how to be around it safely if they've never handled one. So those are kind of our main offerings, but we do, I mean, we probably have 30 different offerings, and if we don't know how to do something, we know someone who does and will get you connected.

Dan: When starting your own business, there are a couple of key moments. Okay, there's, you know, if you're already working a job and you're building your business, that transition from your being an employee to being an entrepreneur full-time, and then I would say the next big milestone is hiring the first person. But the one thing I want to definitely touch on, because I haven't touched on this with any other person that I've spoke to that I can remember, how did you go about opening up these other offices? Talk to me about the challenges with that.

Jamie: Our Ohio Center, actually, Weapon Brand was going to be based in Ohio when Brian had first come up with this concept, and then when he came to Florida to visit me, and we decided to put on that workshop, he had kind of been looking to, he was going through a breakup, basically, so he decided to move to Florida, so we decided to really focus our efforts in Florida, but when he was in Ohio, he owns a gym up there as well called Combat Athlete Performance Academy. We use that as our Midwest Training Center, and he had had that for several years prior to coming down to Florida for Weapon Brand, and so a lot of the people who he had been working with there were already trained. It just, Weapon Brand hadn't been put out to the public yet, so they had been training for years to do this in Ohio. Then Brian came down here, and once he came down here, it was just him and I for a while, and now we have, I think we have a total of 11 people on our staff that are not full-time. Most of our people still work other jobs, including Brian and I, because I had a company before starting Weapon Brand, he had his gym before starting Weapon Brand, and then one of our partners, the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, hired Brian to do training throughout Tampa Bay, which is a really great lead source for Weapon Brand as well.

Dan: Now, when companies are looking to partner with your company, okay, when they have you do these trainings, what do they, typically I say, these are the ones we offer, what are you looking for, or is it more word of mouth? Like, I heard you did this training for this other company, we would like that same training. How does that, how do they decide which training they wanna do?

Jamie: We normally will talk to them about what they're struggling with. Like, maybe they had an HR situation where somebody was getting fired and was very angry, and now their HR team is scared. So a lot of times it happens after the fact. Some companies are proactive, and a lot of times I meet them through networking events that I go to, or they've heard about us through, you know, another company that has used us, but a lot of times it's, something's happened in their company, people are afraid, or something big in the news happens. You know, sometimes sadly when there's an active shooter event, you know, somewhere, like maybe at one college, then another college will call us and be like, "Hey, this is happening. We really want some training for our staff, for our students. Can you come?" So I always say the world is a crazy place, and it's bad for business, or bad for humanity, but good for business. We don't want to be ambulance chasers, but we do want to be a solution when people are afraid.

Dan: It vaguely reminds me, in a past life, I used to teach CPR and first aid, and I used to say when I first started the class, you know, I hope, specifically with CPR, I'd usually say, "I hope this is the worst money you ever spent. I hope that you never have to use these skills, but if you ever have to use them, they're here for you."

Jamie: Exactly.

Dan: When you're doing these trainings, what kind of timeframe are you usually working in? Is this like a half a day training? Does it depend on the type of training, or they all kind of fit in the same, what's it like?

Jamie: It depends on the client, what they want, what they're looking for. In general, most of our classes are two-hour classes. We can do half days. We can do, you know, weekend seminars. We can also do it in an hour. We do them live and virtually. So right now we have an eight-part series going with Pinellas County. So any of Pinellas County residents can come join our Zoom. And we talk about things like personal safety and threat awareness. We talk about fortifying your home. We talk about de-escalation and conflict avoidance. That's another big one with companies that I failed to mention. And we've talked about, oh, misconceptions and self-defense because a lot of people will think, "Oh, I'm gonna put my keys between my fingers when I go out to my car." And really that's not a great self-defense tactic. It's, you know, it's not gonna do much when you have that adrenaline cortisol dump as a predator, when you're attacking somebody, getting hit with someone's keys really isn't gonna stop you. Neither is kicking them in the groin. And basically what kicking them in the groin is gonna do, they're not gonna feel it because they're pumped up full of adrenaline, but you're gonna be taken off your base. And you're gonna be on one foot then instead of two. So unless you're trained to do a proper kick, you know, kicking someone in the groin is probably not the most effective way to take a predator down.

Dan: I never would have guessed that the adrenaline would overtake that level of pain. I never, never would have guessed that. So fascinating. One of the things I like to talk about on the show, I like to look at what other people are doing and how other people can replicate that. You know, ideally in a different geographical location. So if someone wants to do something similar to what you're doing, you mentioned Brian was in the military, he was a sniper, all of this experience hand-to-hand combat essentially as well. If someone doesn't have that experience, how important is that? How easily can they kind of like do what you're doing, but kind of like pick up other training? Do they need years of experience? Talk to me about that.

Jamie: It's like anything, right? If you're a doctor, you know, on your first day of being a doctor graduating from med school, you're not gonna know as much as you are 20 years in. The thing about Weapon Brand and some of the teachers that we have created is that our system is designed to be easy to learn, easy to remember, but highly effective. Brian went to, for years when he was working for the state of Ohio, he went to different training classes throughout the country to learn different techniques to see what works, what doesn't work, what's easy to learn, what's easy to teach, what's easy to remember, what's gonna be effective. And so he kind of put all of those training programs, the things that were going to work best into one, which is Weapon Brand. So, you know, to answer your question, I think it's like anything. With practice, you definitely could be good at it. Now, all of that being said, I've heard Brian teach thousands of classes. Am I a teacher? Am I a trainer? No, I don't have that gift, but I do all the marketing, I do all the scheduling, you know, so there are some people who just have it and some people who just don't.

Dan: Let's stick on that for a little bit. Let's talk about education. And you said you had a previous company before this. So you're bringing forth all this other experience from your other company. What about your formal education? How important is that in doing what you're doing? Did you go to school? Did you go to higher ed for marketing or business? Or were you a math major or an artist? Talk to me about your formal education, how important that is in doing what you're doing.

Jamie: I actually was a communications major with a minor in marketing. And my other business is an advertising agency. So the funny thing is though, I talk about how in college, I really don't think that I learned a whole lot that is helping me in business. What helped me was my internships that I got through going to college. And I was the editor in chief of our college yearbook. So I really had to, after being on staff for years, I had to really learn about design and computers and running a team and, you know, what looks good aesthetically and what's going to kind of move the needle. And I've always been in sales. So I would say the experiences that college provided me was more important than the actual classes.

Dan: Going back, you talked about doing virtual trainings and obviously you do them in person as well. Talk to me about that. Are you seeing more people requesting virtual after COVID or people kind of shifting back, trying to get more in person? What's that balance like?

Jamie: Yeah, you know, it seems like for the smaller teams, it's in person. For the larger teams, it's virtual. So say for Pinellas County, and, you know, for example, they have, our programs are eight one hour programs throughout the course of several months. Somebody on the, and it's from 12 to 1 p.m. Somebody in South Pinellas County can't make it to where we're doing the training in North Pinellas County or vice versa. So it makes sense for them to do it virtually. You know, I always love in-person trainings a lot more. I think it's more exciting, obviously, but the virtual trainings do work and people are excited about them. But yeah, I would say it's more when you have a large, larger company that has people from all over, they're more willing to do the virtual than some of the smaller companies.

Dan: Recently now is talking with Gordon Southered and he runs a pub-style trivia company, but it's actually more about team building and being in the corporate scenario and getting people engaged in that team building kind of component. And one of the things we talked about was what do you, how do you deal with, how do, yeah, I'll say that, how do you deal with a person where they're more, they're a little more shy, they're introverted, they don't necessarily want to get involved. When you're doing these trainings, is there a lot of like, okay, everyone pair up now and you have the people that are kind of like, "I don't really..." how do deal with that?"

Jamie: We were doing a huge talk on active shooter response for Florida Realtors. There were a few hundred people in the room and one gal had been in an active shooter situation. And so it was a little triggering for her. So we do always say at the beginning of every training, if there's something that's triggering for you, if you're not comfortable, please feel free to step out, take a few breaths, take your time. When you're comfortable, come back in, if you'd like, but there's never any pressure. Like we don't shame anybody who doesn't want to participate because even if they're not participating physically, if they're in the room and hearing it, they're still going to get so much value out of it. But like I said, our trainers are trauma informed. So I think that helps a little bit too. My business partner, in fact, he can spot somebody who's had some sort of traumatic event and like literally almost right away. And so sometimes they end up sharing it, sometimes they don't, but he knows. And he can kind of handle them in a kind and sensitive and caring way, a little more gently than maybe somebody else who may not require that kind of handholding.

Dan: Thinking about this company and thinking about the other company that you've run, okay. What are some of the barriers that you encountered that were specific to this company that you had to overcome?

Jamie: So my other company is an advertising agency and I work with mostly, not so many small business owners. So these people have a budget to market, doing radio, TV, billboards, large digital campaigns. And I'm used to working with those kind of media budgets. And then I start Weapon Brand and we don't have that kind of money to spend like I spend for my other clients. So really just trying to figure out like, okay, how can I do what I do for my other clients with a very limited budget? So that's like one roadblock is obviously budget, time, and then not having the budget to be able to hire people to do a lot of the things that Brian and I do ourselves because, you know, we're not at the point where we have enough money to bring on other people full time, pay them benefits, pay them what they're worth to be able to get that job done.

Dan: I love what you're saying about advertising and this reminds me of Dallin Huso. I spoke with him last, maybe it was like February of 2025. He started his own pool cleaning business. And one of the really cool things, he said he started out with a net and no money. And actually I absolutely love that. He has this empire, I'm gonna call it now. But one of the things we talked about were some methods of advertising, low budget advertising that really paid back dividends for him. So I'm curious from your perspective in this industry, what are some of those like low budget advertising that just really paid off?

Jamie: Networking, networking, networking, just being out there all day, every day, going to the Chamber of Commerce meetings. In St. Pete here, I'm part of a group called the St. Pete Girl Bosses. And there's a network of about, I don't know, gosh, about 10,000 women who are all self-employed. In St. Pete, we refer each other, business and professional women's groups, the women's chamber. I'm part of something called Leadership St. Pete that is a business program to help connect business leaders. So everything that I've done, mostly all of our business comes from networking through social media, which is also free unless you're paying for ads. You know, in the beginning I was posting on all the different groups. Now I'm a little bit more choosy, but yeah, it's really been word of mouth and networking and social media. And we would do events as well. Right now we put on a lot of free community events. So we have a sponsor for them. And then we put on these free community events. People come, they hear us, they love us, and they want to take us to their work then.

Dan: That's very cool. I'm glad you mentioned the community events. I actually wanted to ask you about that earlier and it got overtaken with another question instead. So that's really cool that you're working with in the community still from that aspect.

Jamie: Yeah, we probably do about eight a month.

Dan: Jamie, that is awesome. But unfortunately I am running out of time. Before I hand the floor over to you, I want to take a second and thank Diane Crespo for introducing us. Diane was in episode 56 as a professional organizer. Please everyone go check out that episode. Link is in the description. Jamie, this is the part of the show where I'd like to offer the guests an opportunity to talk about a project they're working on, a cause they believe in, more about their business. So if there's something specific you'd like to discuss, the floor is yours.

Jamie: One out of every three or one out of every four women is sexually assaulted every year. And I, or some, sorry, at some point in time in their life. And I was thinking about like, as a mother, how would I not be putting my kids into some sort of program to help them learn to protect themselves? As an employer, how can I not be training my employees for an active shooter response event? Because it's not when it happens. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but it will happen sometime around you in your lifetime. If you Google your birthday and put in active shooter, active, aggressive, violent attacks, something will come up, right? Happens every day of the year. So as an employer, why would you not protect your biggest assets? So those are kind of the things that are running around in my head. Like why wouldn't you? Like what is stopping people from doing this? And so we're just out there to spread the word of protect your people, protect the people that you love, and it doesn't cost a ton of money. And if you don't want to do it from us, because we do cost money, call your local police station, sheriff's office, see if they have something that you can offer your team, because we only get one life to live. And you want to do the best to get home safely to your families at night.

Dan: Jamie, this is really, really good information. I love that you call out, check with your local companies, your local community, see what they offer. If you don't want to use your company, that is just awesome, very admirable. Jamie, it's been absolutely awesome having you on time we discuss and We learned all about Weapon Brand and corporate safety training.

Jamie: Thanks, Dan.