Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Joffe.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I started the company as a CPR and First Aid Training business. At the time, I was in EMS and thought it’d be fun to do some basic training to give back, make some extra money and have something to do with my time off.
Interestingly, as I was initially looking at where I could do training, I was encouraged to call schools. It made good business sense – they were large groups, they always paid their bills and most of all, they were excited about the training courses (you know, not everyone is excited to go through a CPR course).
Once I got “in” to the school market, I found a great deal of success and the revenue I started generating allowed me to hire my first employee. From then on, it’s been a team of us working to provide service to the school world. What we realized, though, is that while we could teach schools during the week, in order to keep a part-time staff engaged, we had to give them stuff to do on the weekend, too. So, we started providing medical coverage for events. Again, that started as a few events here and there. As we stabilized the team, we found schools asking questions like “How should we do our lockdown drills?” and “Can you help us build out an incident command system that people really enjoy?”. Well, in small business, as much as possible, the answer is always “yes”. At the time, we had a team of EMTs, Paramedics, Firefighters, Police Officers, and people like that. We very much knew how to build out an ICS system and using the skills that engaged people in our CPR Courses, it was easy to get them excited.
Organically, that grew.
Today, we have four concrete divisions – each with its own plan for growth and its own opportunities for continued, organic and enthusiastic expansion.
School safety has become the core of our work – so I’ll start there. Our team of Response Managers works with schools across the country ranging from those that serve the most well-off communities to those that serve the most economically and otherwise challenged communities. What’s neat about emergencies – they don’t care who you are, they just happen. We train schools on their responses to crises ranging from active shooter to earthquake and from fire to zombie apocalypse.
To complement that, we have a CPR Training Division, now called Get CPR Done. Get CPR Done continues to provide the CPR training that we started out with 10 years ago. It’s a team of some of the best trainers who have learned over the years the most effective ways to educate the communities we serve (if you’ve ever heard that teachers are the worst students…Give me a call, we’ll chat.).
Just in the last year, we developed a security division. Our schools constantly shared with us that the security teams on the market have too broad a focus. In some cases, a security guard would be working at a mall one day and our school the next and (not at all to discredit the work that goes into keeping a mall safe), it’s a completely different risk profile in a school. Moreover, we believe there’s a fundamental difference in the way that you secure a school – and that starts with compassion, connection, and communication.
Finally, and the way this integrates is fascinating to those who haven’t gotten to experience it, we have an event safety division. Our event safety team provides medical and security coverage for events around the country. Like our schools, the events we serve range from very small horse shows and picnics to 20,000+ participant runs, walks, camps and the like. The way we provide service, though, is unique in that we take the principals we teach schools (Incident Command) and we apply those to the events we serve. Ultimately, we plan to bring school administrators who’ve yet to experience the challenge of being an incident commander out to an event to allow them the opportunity to manage what amounts to a massive incident.
Each of our programs are developed on the idea that one person’s compassion and enthusiasm can trigger a more positive outcome – whether for the patient, the family, the student or all of the above and we’re incredibly proud to work with some of the most community focused organizations in the country (if not the world).
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
No. I‘ve read all the books, talked to a lot of successful business folks and watched every Ted Talk you could imagine – but none of it really articulates the pure challenge of starting a business, growing a business or managing the immense challenges that go along with existing in a high-risk industry. To simply call them challenges is contumely to the sheer agony that one experiences when starting and growing a business.
Learning to manage cashflow when the day before, you were learning to start an IV…. Remember those fundamental differences I was talking about earlier? Losing a client because of a stupid mistake that you could have prevented if only you’d thought to look farther ahead. Eating ramen, well beyond when it was “cool”. Being the one to break the news to a community that a student has died, being the one to craft the message that the community hears after a sexual abuse case has occurred. Terminating an employee who was a dear friend to you while they were at the company. Maintaining a relationship with that employee beyond that termination.
Steve Jobs spoke about the fact that in order to succeed in business, you have to absolutely love what you were doing. He said if you didn’t, you’d quit – because it meant you were sane. I talk a lot about risk and the fact that in everything you do, the way to avoid the risk of failure is to just not do it at all. But, ultimately, each of those challenges makes one a stronger leader; a stronger person. You overcome obstacles as a small business leader – personally, I don’t know how and sometimes it’s hard to remember why, but it’s part of what you must do in order to get to the next day. And, come hell or high water, you’ll get there.
Joffe Emergency Services – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Our mission focusses on empowering organizations (schools, businesses, events) to create safer communities – but the road to resilience is ironically full of small failures and breakdowns. In a lot of ways, organizations hire us so that we can be their uber driver to the destination of resilience. Sure, we tell stories along the way and listen to their challenges, but ultimately, we’re taking them on this journey of practice, experience, training, and learning.
I think what really sets us apart is that we create an inherent excitement and enthusiasm for the destination and that helps clients see the road through and arrive at a state of organizational resilience that’s been tried and tested, but that everyone genuinely believes in.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Success for us is different than perhaps most (maybe all?) other businesses. Success for us is when our clients graduate and no longer need us. To stay in business, we’ve developed some divisions that clients will need forever – you’ll always need medical and security at your events, you’ll always need security at your school, but you won’t always need a dedicated response manager there to consult with you on issues or to train you to effectively lockdown.
Our consulting practice is largely built around the idea that organizations need us to create a culture of safety, install the appropriate processes and procedures and even embed the natural curiosity within the community – so that the effort towards an even safer community never fades away. That said, we believe we’re successful when our client calls us after an emergency and says “we just had (you fill in the blank) happen. We handled it, we responded well and we learned something from it, but we got through it.”
Contact Info:
- Website: Joffe Emergency Services
- Phone: 800-913-6270
- Email: Support@JoffeEmergencyServices.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoffeEmergencyServices/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/joffeemergency
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCirB56ZGD2X9ch6GiKBpxDg
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