Marc HIll (Teaching, Fire Service Leadership and Volunteerism) - Episode 1101

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transcendcompany .com. Welcome to the Pioneer Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing, and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show teacher, fire chief, and the man behind Two Dark Thirty, Mark Hill. Now, in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his journey into the world of teaching, firefighting, leadership, writing, the firefighter work week, volunteerism, and so much more. Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say

every week, please just take a moment. Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback, and leave a rating. Every single five -star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find. And this is a free library of over 1 ,100 episodes now. So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women's stories so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.

So with that being said, I introduce to you Mark Hill. Enjoy. Well, Mark, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today. Well, thank you, James, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm honored to be on your show. So where on planet Earth are we finding you this afternoon? I am right now in chilly 44 degree Fahrenheit, Wausau, Wisconsin, which is in the middle of the state. I wish I was still in Florida.

We were in Florida back. When was that? For my girl's spring break. End of March. And it was sunny and... 75 and 80 degrees the whole time we were there in beautiful Cocoa Beach, Florida. It's amazing how you get depressed when you lack that sunshine. It's unbelievable. You don't realize how much you like it until it's gone. Then you're like, I want that back. I like that. I love that. Vitamin D, natural vitamin D. That's what I find. People ask me, do I miss the UK? And of course

I do. I miss many, many things about it. My family, the comedy, you know, the, the manners, some of the other areas, but, and then on the roads too, my God, I mean, talk about driving, totally different experience than over here. But when I look out my window and it's sunny every day, it's like a solar panel. You know, when, when I go home, it's cloudy and drizzling. It really does kind of drain me. So very, very appreciative to live here in Florida. Nick, I was going to

say, are you in the Orlando area? Yeah, just north of Orlando. Yeah. Yeah. See, I want to, if I could, my wife, she's still working. I'm now obviously retired, but I tell her every day, I look at the weather and I'm like, hey, you know what? It's sunny and 75 in Cocoa Beach right now. She's like, oh, really? Yeah, that's great. Good for them. I'm like, yeah, I know. Let's go. Let's get out of here, you know. I grew up in the UP of Michigan. That's where I actually

grew up. That's where my family's from. And I was used to literally, cripes, we would have snow. I remember trick -or -treating in Halloween in snowsuits. You know, you try to squeeze your costume on under a snowsuit or over a snowsuit. And we would have snow literally until June. You know, there was still dirty, you know, dirty snow banks or whatever, you know, from all the, you know, sand and grass, you know, stuff they put in the road. But there were still snow banks

in the middle of June, you know. So it's just, yeah, talk about gray, cloudy, overcast, never seeing the sun, you know, depressing. Yeah, there is a reason why there's so many bars up there. But, you know, it can get to you. You don't realize how good it is in the sunshine when you don't

have the sunshine. One of my friends, well, my wife grew up in North Canton and one of her best friends who sadly we lost not too long ago, her husband is, I think he's from Michigan originally, if I'm not mistaken, but they would talk about, yeah, they get all their Arctic suits on and then they go and saw a hole in the ice and they

sit there and fish. And I'm like, I look out my window and I'm like, I don't know, maybe you should come to Florida for a bit because you can do a lot more than cut a hole in the ice down here. But it, you know, everything has pros and cons. We are just starting to get that heat now that makes a lot of the snowbirds then turn around and fly back the other way because our summer's here, especially in bunker gear. I mean, kudos to everyone in the state of Florida, California,

Texas, the hot, hot states. Firefighting in this kind of heat and humidity, it's an experience, that's for sure. Well, that's the thing, too. I remember when I've done different conferences, you know how it is. You go and you talk to people.

you know i was that was one of the things you know because on you know on tv you know they it looks it looks totally different you know what i mean it's like those guys that's not turnout gear they're wearing you know what i mean you could just totally tell you know or like when some of those guys are doing those uh you know the stair climbs and stuff like that i'm like that's yeah that's your shell you're not you're not climbing in your bunker gear those are tennis

shoes those aren't boots you know and it's just like yeah i wouldn't want to Like you said, I wouldn't, if I was in Florida, if I'm on Orlando fire, you know, running out of, you know, something and you know, you know how it is. Most of our calls are EMS anyway. I'm not going to be in my full turnout gear, you know, while I'm doing

whatever, you know what I mean? It's like, no, if it's a structural fire, we, we know we have smoke and flame show in the, I'll put my turnouts on, but nine times out of 10, you're going to wear the other stuff, you know? And we actually, we, right before I was put to pasture, We had a set of, it was both wildland rated and it was also rated for extrication and stuff. And we ended up wearing that all the time. Because it looked like shells. It looked like your normal

bunker gear, your turnout shells. And it was great. it was like, yeah, I could work. Yeah. This is, this has got to be what they do. Yeah. You know, this is, this has to be it. Cause otherwise, yeah, I'm walking around with my, you know, all my turnout gear on weighing another 300 pounds. It's like, yeah, no way. Sweating my fricking whatever off and, you know, wishing I'd, you know, put deodorant in places that deodorant's not meant to be. So, you know, I couldn't imagine,

you know, doing that. Well, you mentioned about growing up in Michigan. So let's go back there. Tell me about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings? So I'm the oldest of three. I'm the lone son. I'm the last, actually. I'm the last hill. I have three daughters. So I have no male heir. This is it. The line ends with me, right? So my dad. All the way back, even though my last name is Hill, I'm actually

more Finnish than I am English. My great -great -grandpa, when he came over here from Finland, which was a part of Russia at the time, back in the 1870s, Finland was a principality of Russia. So when they came over, they actually changed their last name from Ottahilli to Hill. Because Hill, English, Hill. If you wanted to work in the copper mines up in the UP and, you know, in the Upper Peninsula, if you wanted a good

job, you need to be English. And they would have you be a mine boss, you know, a captain or something. So you need to be English. So my great -great -grandpa changed. He was like, all right, I can be English. You know, so he changed his last name. So everyone assumed, oh, he's a hill. Okay,

you know, he's from Cornwall. Ironically. after all these years of generations i actually am a little more english than i am finnish anymore so it actually makes sense now my last name but um yeah i am the first i'm the first hill not to work in the mines in the up i was my my great grandpa worked in underground um in the copper mines and then he transferred over to the iron mines later on uh you know like i said my great great grandpa when he you know when everyone

came over everyone was working the mines my dad worked in the mines everyone worked in the mines and that but that's how it was it was literally company towns you know um the upper peninsula of michigan especially at the time when we're talking you know early 1900s there was very little there was a railroad system but it was just for the mines I mean, almost all of the copper in the entire United States, almost all of the iron ore for the entire United States came from the

upper peninsula of Michigan. Until they found new deposits of ore out in Utah, which is where some of the bigger mines are now, big open pit mines. It was all coming out of the ground from upper peninsula of Michigan. So there was a lot of mines everywhere. I mean, literally hundreds of hundreds of mines. Everyone worked for the mine. Either you worked for the mine or you worked for the company that dealt with the mine. It was literally company towns. I am the first of

that generation not to work in the mine. Some of the mines are still there. I've got an uncle that still works up at the mine. He's going to retire actually this year. I've got some cousins too. I've got some friends that are still up there. What my dad calls knuckle draggers. you know, you know, walking around constantly, you know, uh, your, your hands are permanently stained.

The cracks of your hands are permanently stained with this pink hue from the mind, from the iron ore that they're, they're chopping out of the, out of the rock. So, um, yeah, he wanted me to go to school. So I, I went to school. I went to Michigan tech university up in Houghton, Michigan, and I went into engineering. Um, this is back in the late late 90s, early 2000s. So, you know, obviously Dell computers and gateway computers and, you know, the internet was just getting

big and things like that. So my friends that were going to school there, they're like, let's make a computer company. So I'm like, all right, yeah, we'll jump on that bandwagon, right? Well, I am not a math guy. So I ended up getting... I was pleasantly surprised to be, Mark, you know what? Engineering is probably not for you kind of a discussion. So I was taking social studies classes to offset my bad grades. So my advisors were like, Mark, you've got so many social studies

credits. You could just go be a teacher. I'm like, all right, I'll do that, sure. So then I went into teaching when I graduated. Taught for many, many years. Taught in middle and high school. Football coach, track coach, powerlifting coach, all that stuff. Got my master's degree in leadership to be a principal. And in Wisconsin back in 2010, they had this law called Act 10 that was passed, and they got rid of collective bargaining rights for most teachers. So at that

time, I got laid off. They made budget cuts at the middle school and I got bumped or they got they made budget cuts at the high school. I got bumped out of my job at the middle school. And consequently, at the same time was when we had our first daughter. So I'm like, well, I guess I'll be stay at home dad for a while. So while I was doing that and my wife, thankfully, my sugar mama, she was still working. I'm like, well, you know, I always had done the volunteer

fire thing when I was teaching. I was a volunteer firefighter for many, many years. I got my EMT license. So I was also a first responder. You know, we were in a rural area. So I was one of the first ones always on scene, depending on where we were. But I always liked that. My dad had been a volunteer firefighter. So I grew up going to the fire hall and rolling hose and, you know, being on the fire trucks during parades and stuff like that. And my grandpa was a fireman.

And, you know, so there was a history going back for me of being in that service. But my dad did not want me to go into the service full time because he had tried and failed back in the 80s. He's like, no, no, no. Go to school. Actually, you know, go do something, you know. So I thought it was a little ironic that once I did go to school and I did get a teaching job, I then found myself in the position where like, no, I want

to go and try to get a full -time job. And here in Wisconsin, if you want to be a full -time firefighter, you need to be a paramedic. So while I was home with my daughter, I took the paramedic classes, got my paramedic license. And then at the same time, while I was doing that, I was on my local fire department. They had an opening for a fire chief role. And I was like, well, you know, I'll throw my hat in the ring. You can't win the lottery until you buy a ticket,

right? So I threw my hat in the ring and they, for whatever reason, thought that I would be a great candidate. And they hired me as their first full -time fire chief. So I did that for a year. That was one of the longest years of my life, which is where that second book comes from. All the mistakes I made coming along the way when I when I was fire chief. And then, you know how things are, you know, you you interact with different people and, you know, different

opportunities come up. So I ended up from that position. I got hired with the city of Wausau and was a full time for them for eight years until I finally hurt my back and they put me to pasture. So it's a, it's a long answer, but yeah, I am the oldest of three and I've got two younger sisters, you know, and I've got three daughters, beautiful wife who, like I said, I don't know why she married down to me to marry

me for sure. So, you know. Trying to find the path, as they say, new paths, new pathways, new doors. Doors closed, doors open. So that's the beauty of life, right? Well, going back to the mining, let's go all the way back to your father's generation. When I asked people that were children of firefighters, career firefighters, it's interesting getting their perspective as a child. When you reflect back now, what were the pros and what

were the cons? of you seeing your father's experience in the mining industry well the one thing when you're working in a mine and you know i guess it kind of it correlates and com you know there's a lot of comparisons probably to different industrial type jobs right so my dad even though he had a he had a bachelor's degree he went to you know he played football at northern michigan university he got he you know had a degree but he never used it not once he never used that degree not

one time he because it was kind of a a generational and a family thing right it was a traditional stuff so a lot of like the fire service like well my dad was a firefighter and you know grandpa was a firefighter my uncle was a firefighter you know same thing with the with the mind so with my dad he as soon as he got done with school my grandpa which we call papa art hill um you know Papa gave my dad literally, I think it was, how much was it? It was like 50 or a hundred

bucks. I forget what it was. He literally gave him 50 or a hundred bucks. He's like, go to the union hall, tell him art sent you and you're going to get your card. So he did, he went down to union hall, gave him the, you know, gave him the money and they, he got his, he got his union card. And so at that point he was going to be

in the mill rights with my grandpa. So my grandpa would take my dad, you'd request him as part of his crew, and then he taught him basically a lot of the stuff that he needed to know, pipe fitting, millerite work, you know, all those different trade skills. So then when he got a full -time job at the mine, my dad was in maintenance.

So they were constantly going around and making sure the, you know, machines were working and, you know, making sure everything was working appropriately and, you know, all that stuff. Well, the thing with the mine is he worked shift work. So he would work. Oh, what was it? He'd work like four days of days. Then he'd work four days of nights or afternoon shift. And then he'd work four days of nights and then he'd have a few days off. So as a kid growing up, you had

to be quiet, like shut up. you know because dad was either at work or he was home sleeping to work the night you know what i mean so you had to be out of the house like go find something to do you know and my mom had always worked as well so you know it was classic you know latchkey like hey there's there's stuff in the fridge when you get home from school and you know shut up and be quiet you know don't bother anybody you know what i mean so you learned i you know

you'll learn real real quick that You know, in order to get ahead in the world, you've got to do there's certain steps you have to do. You have to work hard. You have to get education. You have to get training. You have to do all these things and earn your way through, you know, call it merit based, all the different stuff you have to go through the process. Right. And so, you know, I learned that really, really early on that. Hey, you know, be quiet. Your dad's

sleeping or whatever's going on. Or because I was the oldest, no one else was home. Mark is in charge of my two little sisters. So I'm making sure that they are quiet, that they have what they, you know. So it's just, that's just kind of what happened. That was the, you know, the beauty or the downfall of the 80s and early 90s. That's the way it was, you know. And, you know, you learn to be self -reliant. You learn to, you know, take care of the problems. If you've

got a problem, you take care of it. You know, you figure it out. You know, and there's no Internet to look things up. There's no YouTube to find a video. There's none of that stuff. You know, you've got to figure it out on your own. So, you know, a lot of the things that, you know, I learned from my dad and my grandpa, too, was, you know, it takes it takes sacrifice to truly get what you want done for your family, you know, and provide for them the life that you want to

provide for them. or to save the money that you need to save to do the things that you want to do. And, you know, those are all very good life lessons that I learned when I was growing up that, you know, carrying on forward now, you know, myself, you know, I've tried to instill both in my daughters and in the things that I've done myself. So what about from the union perspective? On one hand, you saw union busting happening that literally cost you your career in the education

space. We have a union here in the fire service. What is the strength of the mining union? And then what did you see that worked well with that union that maybe we need to lean into in education or firefighting? Well, the thing that's always interesting, especially with unions, because I've been a union president, I've been a steward. So when you're in the upper echelons of the union, It's a lot like being a fire chief, right? Everyone kind of looks from the down, like from the bottom,

like bottom up, right? And you think, why aren't they doing this? Why aren't they doing that? They need to be doing more, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Insert usual gripes and complaints here, right? The thing is, once you get to those positions, especially at those top levels, it's all about politics at that point, literally and figuratively. It's trying to not it's trying not to upset, you know, from the school day when I was I was a school board president or the school,

our union president for the teachers union. So I wanted to have a good relationship with the superintendent of the school district. Right. They want to piss him off because if him and I got into a disagreement or if he didn't him and I didn't see eye to eye or, you know, whatever the issue was. Then when it came time to contract negotiations, instead of having, you know, like you and me right now sitting down and having a discussion like, OK, this is what we'd like

to do. This is what we'd like to offer, you know, a back and forth instead of having, you know, an applicable, you know, actual discussion. It would be, no, we're going to go to arbitration. I'm getting the lawyer and we're not going to talk. Well, the negotiations are now over and now we're left to an arbitration judge or lawyers now that we have to settle whatever the disagreement is. It's much better to have a discussion and have a conversation, right? So you have to grease

the wheels. You got to be a politician where we have to work together. So we have to go to lunches. We have to go to dinners. We have to do these things to try to make sure that. Our relationship is good and on speaking terms. From the bottom, we don't see that. We don't see all the hand -holding and the handshaking. We don't see that from the bottom. All we see from the bottom is they're not doing enough. We need more overtime pay. We need this. We need that, right?

And to get those things is like literally the phrase of getting blood out of a turnip. It's

incredibly difficult, right? Everyone would love to have... you know freaking eight percent raises every year and everyone would love to have you know no deductibles for our health insurance and everyone would you know of course we would everyone would love those different things right but it's just not reality you know the administration and the municipality or whatever they are set with their they're literally their hands are tied with what they are able to do be it from

a, you know, from a standpoint of their tax base, you know, and it depends on where you live, right? Orlando's got a different tax base. They've got different hotel revenue that are coming in. There's different, you know, Florida's got different laws than the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin's got different municipal codes where, you know, our state, you know, we have different funding regulations that, you know, so it's just, it's amazing where we are literally 50. People always

forget, well, it's the U .S. system. When you go back over to U .K., why does the U .S. do this thing? They should do this differently or you should do this or whatever. People forget the United States of America, we are 50 independent states that come together to form a federal democracy republic. You know, imagine the state of Florida with like 25 million plus people. Right. That's as big as Canada, the entire country. Right. So Florida, you know, is different than here

in Wisconsin. We've barely got eight million people. Right. Or think of Alaska. You know, Alaska is a third the size of the continental United States. But yet the population is, you know what I mean? So we are all different. Because we all have separate and different laws. So when it comes to union regulations on a national scope, right? Like say the IAFF, right? The International Associated Firefighters or even the fire chiefs,

right? You know, they have separate, there's things they can do nationally to talk for all

of us. on a national level dealing with like the you know the afg grants or maybe the nfa courses or things like that or maybe trying to trying to spur on the the the cancer you know uh databases or trying to get uh the ability for people to collect social security earlier as a firefighter things like that right there's national things they can do on a national level as a union base but Nine out of 10 things that we decide or that we that really affects us is

on the local level. It's not on that national level. Right. There's there's a little bit. Yeah, sure. We can, you know, maybe poke someone to say, hey, give us a good word when we apply for this AFG grant or the safer grant or whatever. But, you know, it's not really up to our union members to to help us get those things. Right.

It's all about local. It's about. what we can do with your local base salaries, about what you can do with your local health insurance coverages, your local liabilities dealing with, you know, workers' comp, you know, coverages, you know, duty disability stuff, things of those natures. That's what the union needs to concentrate more on. I think a lot of people, like I said, people get too into the weeds of national politics and

national BS when it's local first. There are some things that affect us nationally, but nine out of 10 of them is going to be right down the street at your local city hall or the municipality government center, wherever you're at. That's where... that's where the nuts and the bolts and the actual, where the rubber meets the road.

That's where it happens. It's not on these national big, Oh, you know what someone's doing or what they're not doing or what things are cut or, you know, it's at the local level that we need to spend more of our time doing those things. And like I said, a lot of it comes, we don't see from the bottom what happens on that top level. And it's all about politics. It's all about trying to, you know, trying to make the best out of a lot of bad situations. It really

is. Well, I mean, I, firstly, I'm nauseated by the fact that a group, a room of grownups can't make a decision. So this whole politicking grease in the wheel, like that needs to go full stop. It sucks. And then on a national standard, one conversation should have been happening for, I would argue 20 years now is a national standard work week for the fire service. And the current IFF leadership are in the city of Boston, which

is a 42 hour work week. So nationally, where is that voice saying, hey, rest of the country that are working 56 plus hours, we need to fight for you to have the same work week. So, yeah, I agree. There's some minutiae like, do you get polo shirts and all that kind of stuff? Yeah, that's a very local thing. But the simple standard

of living, the working. week is standardized in every other national institution trucking aviation shipping but our profession as long as i've been you know in uniform and then back out the other end has never even mentioned why so many of our firefighters are working these insane work weeks so this is where you know two things that are pulling from what you said firstly if grown -ups can't talk without needing dinners and lunches and massages and shame on you you're

in the wrong fucking position And secondly, if you don't have a backbone to advocate for the people and you yourself and enjoying a 42 -hour work week, also shame on you. Yeah, the problem is, and it goes back to, like I said, it's hard to do things nationally because every state's different. But that's not the same with, I'm saying, trucking, shipping, all those ones as a national standard. You as a pilot cannot fly for X amount of hours. You are regulated to have

a break. It does depend, though. For example, the state of Wisconsin, when they passed Act 10, they got rid of the teachers' collective bargaining rights. Police and fire were exempt from Act 10. So the police and fire unions were exempted from those collective bargaining right pull -aways from that law. Now, why was that? Well, because the police and fire unions lobbied, played politics. And then they so it's it's it's it's not they're looking out for themselves.

They're looking out for their best interests. But at the same time, you're then screwing the teachers. Right. Or you're then screwing the nurses or you're then screw. You know what I mean? So and as a union, my number one, you know, my number one job and concern is just the firefighters. You know, and the Teamsters, their number one concern and their number one job are the truckers. Right. Same thing with the, you know, the airline pilots, the, you know, we, you know, air traffic

controllers is a little separate. It's a little different because of the number and what happened to them back in the 80s under Reagan. But at the same time, every single union is only interested in their own selective collective self -interest. And unfortunately, you're right. And fortunately, when push comes to shove, the union is going to take the position of what's best for them and their membership only. So if that means leaving the teachers hanging out to dry, like what happened

here, then that's what's going to happen. You know what I mean? I can't fault them for that. I, you know, I don't blame them for doing that, you know, because they are doing what their job is. They are supposed to be looking out just for their membership and just for, you know, what's in the best interest of the, of the firefighters of the state of Wisconsin. And, you know, God bless them for doing it. Right. But at the same time, you know, there's, it's goes back to politics.

I, I totally agree with you, James. Politics sucks. It's a, Big freaking, you know, yeah, it's a giant albatross and it shouldn't happen like that, you know, and things should be different, you know, and it would be awesome if it was different. It would be great if it would be different, you know, but, you know, unfortunately, the system that we have is the system we have and we can only make, you know, small adjustments to how

things are. And, you know. It's almost to the point, at least a little bit, depending on what you want to talk about, but it's, it's to the point where you have to, you have to choose the,

choose your poison, right? I can choose to take the high road and not to, you know, to be a hundred percent totally committed with all these different things and just be the, the, you know, the, the solid stonework in the, in the foundation, or I can try to get the best deal for my, for my people that are under me that, yeah, it may, you know, some of it may suck, but a lot of it may be great. You know, maybe it's a 80, 20 thing where 80 % of it's fantastic, but we're still

missing on that 20%. So then it's like, okay, then you come to your membership. You say, listen, this is the deal that's presented before us. You know, we're a union. We can decide, do we want to take the 80 % and get most of what we want? Or do we want to get zero? I'm not talking about negotiations. I'm talking about a standardized work week that will impact mental health, cancer, relationships. I mean, all the things that we suffer from, it's not mentioned. So it's not

a negotiation. It's an absolute must. What's happening in Florida is there is people that are starting to realize this. And the crazy thing is, I am by no means an economist. I'm not a business person. But when you look forensically at the economics, the reason that these people are changing is because they're drowning in debt because of the vacancies they have in the fire service. So this is a national recruitment crisis.

So it's not even a negotiation. You're literally pointing out to these cities and counties, if you do not change, you're going to lose your fire department. So this is a great opportunity to finally change. But this isn't about, you know... protecting a few dollars of a pay raise or anything like that. This is something that is literally the elephant in the room or the herd of elephants in the room in the physical, mental health crisis, relationship, I mean, everything

that we suffer from. And yet, you know, when it's cancer, oh, we've got this, you know, this study in Miami and they're looking at carcinogens and, okay, that's great. But what are you doing about sleep deprivation that is a known carcinogen? The mental health thing, oh, we've got the IFF peer support team. That's still reactive. Really? What are you doing about the thing that's known to break down the brain, the mental health, the

sleep deprivation? So this is what angers me is I've been talking about this for eight and a half years just on this podcast alone. And there's, you know, real experts that have been talking about this for a long, long time. So this isn't about all what will they give us? This is about us as a united front standing up and saying this needs to change. you know, like the suffragettes, like the people that opposed, you know, child labor, which is being reversed

in some states again, which blows my mind. But this is not about negotiations and politicking. This is about all of us standing side by side and saying enough is enough. And if the union isn't going to fix it, then all right, well then, you know, whatever, we're still going to demand this is changing because every single day there are Maltese crosses with black bands in them.

This is the thing that I'm talking about. Meanwhile, nothing is happening from and again i'm not tarring everyone with the same brush but if you are a union that's this opposing fitness standards it's not talking about the work week or opposing it because you want more overtime or whatever the thing is you are part of the problem yeah no i i i agree with you i do part of though that like you said the work week thing For me, I see I look at it a little different. So for me, I

understand what you're saying. And it would be great if we could do it nationally. However, like I said, every state's different. So every state has different laws about what is, you know, accepted. So in our contract, in our local contract, our work week is specified in our contract. How many hours do your cops work? I have no idea. Probably 40 hours. I never bothered what their contract said. I guarantee you it's 40 hours. This is my point. It doesn't matter at this stage.

I know they work 12s. I think it's some definition or some variation of 12s. I know they work 12s. I think they work like three 12s and then they're off for like three days or something like that. But to make it even worse, you want to talk about making things not better but worse. there are many departments that are switching to the 4896

shift, which is insane, which is insane. You know, our shift that when I, they are my local department just switched to the 4896, which I can't believe that they did that, but they did. We, when I was working, it was 24. It was the California swing 24 on 24 off 24 on 24 off 24 on. Then we had 72 off. So that's the way we had it, and it worked out fine. But even that is a bad swing. 100%. When I was down in Alabama doing my hazmat technician, we had a guy instructing

us from Washington, D .C., and their schedule

was a 24 with a 72 off. yeah which is what the national that's what i'm saying the whole northeast works that would be absolutely awesome if we could do that you know new york fdny i forget the last time they they run a weird modified like they'll work a 10 then they work a 14 you know and then they've got a weird kind of uh they break their 24 day down into you know stuff like that but you know there's a lot of different there's a lot of different ways to do it This

is the problem though, James, everybody wants something differently. So for like, just as a, for example, and this goes back to the fricking politics again, say, say the city of Wausau wants to change to the, the 2472, right? That means we have to add an entire fourth shift, right? You can't do that with a three platoon system. It has to be four. So that means that we would have to hire the city of Wausau would have to

hire. an additional an entire an entire crew to do that kind of shift work which would mean i don't even know how many millions of dollars that would mean is the city of wasa fully staffed now have they got people banging on the door to work for them has they got got a huge list like used to have 20 years ago no exactly this is the problem and people are wising up at the working work week now and it's creating vacancies which is creating overtime which is where the

money is for these extra people but people i mean that's the thing people get hurt they're out on workers comp and they're out on light duty for how many days and they're doing you know they're you know yeah absolutely i don't part of it i don't think the Recruitment and retention problems are from the work week. I

really don't. I think the recruitment and retention problems are really a lot of it stems from the fact that our entire culture and the history and the way things happen in our local communities is completely different than it was when I was growing up as a kid, right? There's very few people that are volunteer firefighters anymore. For instance, in the state of Florida, there's very few fire departments that are volunteer, right? Most of it's countywide system. They're

all full time. If you're a kid, for instance, in the state of Florida, if you want to go and be a firefighter, you go to your local community or technical college, where then you have to pay for your firefighter one class, your EMT class, you pay all that 100%, right? That's the state of Florida rules. Well, guess what? Here in Wisconsin, in Wisconsin, it's completely different. In Wisconsin, you can get your firefighter certifications for free. You don't pay a dime. You can get your

EMT license for free. You don't pay a dime. Well, if we're getting, if you can, if you're a kid in Wisconsin and you can get everything for free, literally all of your education, fire one, fire two, driver operator. Pumper, Ariel, you can get everything for free. Absolutely free, James. 100 % free. Why the hell are we having recruitment and retention issues? Well, I can tell you. I can tell you. It's not the sleep. It's not the sleep for us. In Wisconsin here, it's not a sleep

thing. Even though I think that that schedule, which my department went to, is crazy. I would never want to work it myself. It's not for me. That's not the answer. For me, the answer is kids aren't growing up in the firehouse anymore. They're not they're not growing up in the firehouse like I did. Rolling hoes with my dad while he was on the fire station. They're hearing my dad's pager go off at night and him leaving the middle

of the night to go to go to a fire. Right. In my little town where I grew up, when there was a fire, there was a siren. It was like a tornado siren that went off. for the whole town. That, hey, there's a fire, get to the fire hall, get your butt on the truck and get going. Everyone's dad was a part of that system, right? I rode the fight. Like I said, I rode those fire trucks in the parades, throwing out candy to the other kids. My Cub Scout meetings were all at the fire

station. My birthday parties were all at the fire station. My friends, their dads were in the fire station. It was a community thing. Why did your dad not want you mining anymore? Why did your dad not want you mining anymore? Why didn't he want you to be a miner too? He wanted me to not be in the mine. That was not the fire department. The fire department was volunteer. So no, but I'm saying this is what's happening now. Like the best recruitment tool that we have

are firefighters. The best recruitment tool the military used to have were the members of the military. But you're getting a generation now that are being worked into the ground. I don't know your specific department. If you barely run any calls and 56 hours is a wonderful experience for your firefighters, then I'm not using you

as an example. But every fire department that I've worked for that is running most of 24 hours at a time for 56 hours a week, that's getting their mandatory overtime for like 20 years of my career. My generation. are not telling their children, you should be a firefighter. And I would argue it's probably the same thing that your dad as a miner was telling you, I don't want you to go in the mines. And so, yes, it's a different generation with this young group.

But the thing is, people are looking always at the negative. The positive of this generation is they're growing up appreciating physical health, mental health, relationships. And they're looking, because the Wall Street Journal did a thing recently, they are going into the trades. The Gen Zs are going into the trades. Because they're looking at college and going, this is ridiculous. $40 ,000, $60 ,000 worth of debt. And like your dad,

a bachelor's that you never use. But they're looking at the work week and they're going, well, wait a second, 56 hours a week. And then when I Google, is it healthy to be a firefighter? All I see is cancer, divorce, heart disease, strokes, all the things. It is the working environment. It's not the job. I think if we actually showed these young people that we care enough to give them in a working environment that actually allows them to perform at a higher level and have longevity,

I think we'd have them back in droves. I really, really do. But we have allowed, going back to the unions, our men and women to be worked into the ground, you know, literally. Like we know on a daily basis, we see all these firefighters that we lose. And until we change the working environment, the profession itself that we love is truly at risk. Because as you said, one day the tones will go off and no one will be there

to respond. So I disagree with it. It's not the sleep because I think it's exactly what it is. It's the lack of rest and recovery, the lack of value of the men and women that are in uniform. by departments, by arguably even our own union, who has not fought for us to have this standardized work week. That is the reason that we have this

national recruitment crisis. And if we fix the things that are glaringly broken, as many departments have started to do in Florida now, they have already seen a complete 180 and they have people lining up around the building now to work for them. But if we bury our head in the sand and say, oh, it's not the work week. then I disagree completely. It absolutely is the work week that is the biggest thing. Now, is it only the work

week? Of course not. It's culture, it's fitness standards, it's all these other things that we've got to put in place. But that is what has dissuaded these people. And the fewer people that go into the service, the more mandatory overtime that's put on the shoulders of the men and women still in uniform. And that is unfair to them and it's

unfair to their families. Yes. No, you're right in the fact that... you know i do think yes sleep obviously has a huge component to it you know but it's it's it's it's hard to It's hard to do something like that on a national level, unfortunately. It really is. It wasn't hard to shut down the whole country when COVID come in. This is the thing that blows me away. And again, it goes back to that politicking. If you had a group of men or women. That's politics. That's different.

It depends on which state you lived in, whether you were shut down or not. You literally go, do you want to close the buildings or not? And someone said, yes, like overnight, everything's going to be closed. It's the same thing. Do you want to take that money from downstream, invest in, like you said, a D -shift? and therefore stop the bleeding financially and then improving recruitment again. That is literally a group of grownups in a room, one day conversation.

But this is the thing, the pushback you get is, oh, but it's complicated. It is not complicated. The way that we're doing it now is not working. And it's nauseating. And I'm not saying this is what you're saying, but national organizations, oh, but, no, oh, but. The science is irrefutable. Just even if you just listen to the people I've had on the show. completely irrefutable. I've had experts in the military, sporting communities, every parallel kind of profession. And, you know,

like I said, the proof is in the pudding. These Florida departments are showing that it's working and showing that now we're fully staffed. So there's no more overtime. Apart from obviously occasional ones and, you know, the hurricanes and that kind of thing. So it's really about like exactly like you said, dissolving this. Oh, I need blue M &Ms in my green room bullshit that I hear from the IFF. And I literally had

that. They came to Disney and they literally were specifying they needed these kind of sweets. And, you know, I mean, just ridiculous. And getting back to, like you said, rolling up your sleeves and fighting for the actual men and women. Like being about them, not about you. And we've allowed so many layers of red tape that it's literally created complete inertia. And meanwhile, our men and women are dying. So I think that this is a kind of, all right, enough is enough conversation.

We need to figure out who's doing it right. Well, the Northeast has been doing it right for decades. And we copy their hose lays and their high rise tactics, but we turn our heads to their work. And we need to say, all right, but then this is what we need to do nationally. And I think that the work week should be a professional national standard. I agree. It should, but it never will. I will agree to disagree that because I'm going to make sure that it does. Well, I would love

for that to happen. It's just because we're 50 different states, in order to have that happen, you would have to have. Every state passed the same rules. So what about bank clerks, baristas in Starbucks? What about them? They work 40 hours. Sure. That's what I'm saying. So that's a national standard. Why is it any different for the fire service? Well, because the fire service is, we have certain protections and exemptions from all those different things. But why? You know

what I mean? It's not for our benefit. No, it's for the municipality's benefit. But unfortunately, I agree with you, James. Yeah, like I said, I would love to see those things. But the way the municipalities and the way the state constitutions and the way the laws are in every state, it is not written that way. It's not. I agree. I 100 % agree with you, James. It's not fair. It's not fair. No, I'm not saying about fair. The municipalities that made it change just said,

well, we're changing it anyway. So it's not like a binding thing where you cannot work 40 hours. The whole FLMA thing, if I'm getting this right, that's your overtime over and above whatever it is, 42, 44 hours. Well, FLMA only guarantees you certain times off for certain family medical leave. That's a little different. You'd have to have a FLASA cycle, the Fair Labor Share Agreement. Sorry, I'm getting my acronym. That's what I meant to say. No, no, it's fine. I'm removed

from all that. That's the difference. Yeah, FLASA cycles are different. But it all depends. It goes back. It depends on what your contract says for what you have agreed to your work week in your contract. Yeah, but the thing is that people agreed that once. People can now change that. And I know, for example, Pasco County. They were like, look, it kicks in after, you know, 40 whatever hours. Well, if we don't get there, it becomes a moot point at this point. So this is the thing.

Everyone feels like they're shackled by these, you know, these certain areas. And then you look at the departments that did it. They're like, yeah, we just, you know, we just like, OK, well, we're not going to be working overtime if we do. The first few hours will be straight time. But, you know, we get to be home with our family every three days at a time. That's far greater than a few bucks. on these few hours of overtime. So I keep hearing, oh, we can't because rather

than, well, how can we? And this is what these departments have done. They've looked at it and go, well, yeah. And it's not just Florida. I got a department in Texas is about to go to it. I just heard one in North Carolina is about to go to it. So if these departments can look at it and go, well, we're going to change that. And then imagine when there's that national push and everyone starts questioning these kind of, you know, it's like the horse tethered to the

plastic chair. At what point do you realize that, you know, again, like I always tell people, the people that tell you you can't work less than 56 hours a week work 40 hours. The admin chiefs, you know, the city and county council members. So at what point do we say enough is enough? When we used to run one fire a week, I'm sure it worked back then. But that hasn't been the case for decades and decades. So now we have to advocate and bring our work week down to everyone

else's. Well, I think the other problem, too, when you look at it is we in the fire service, we are our own worst enemies. Think about how much work that we do that people just call us to go do that's not part of our job description. You know, look at fire prevention, you know, the fire educations, you know, depending on your municipality and depending on where you're at, you know, you could wear 20 different hats, right? I was a hazmat technician. I was a paramedic.

I was, you know, fire one, fire two. I had my officer certification. I was also, you know, I was entry -level fire investigations. You're going out doing public education, you know, with the fire. You're doing fire prevention inspections, you know, doing code violations. So depending on your municipality, you can have 20 different roles, right? then if you enter that same mentality, we shouldn't be doing anything more than what we should be doing, right? And we are always

our worst enemies. We're always taking on more jobs. Yes, we'll do that. Yes, we can do that. Yeah, we'll do this. And yes, we'll do that. When these other jobs want to talk about police, if someone comes in and asks someone for directions, asks a cop for directions, he counts that as a call. He counts that as a contact. Now, if someone stops by the fire station and asks for directions, do we file an incident report saying that we had a public community contact? No. We

don't bother with that. But the cops do. Why do they do that? Well, because they know that numbers, data, matters to them. And to enable that they have the shifts that they have on the police side, they need to account for all of the contacts they have with the public. Right? So they count those things where we don't. And I got reprimanded once for pulling my ambulance over and helping someone push their car out of an intersection. I got reprimanded because I

didn't create an incident. So yeah, we are our own worst enemies a lot of the time. We are doing more work. Want to talk about work? We're doing more work than we should be doing. But again, that goes back to the mentality of what's going on, you know, in the service itself, you know.

And until we stop doing those other jobs that other people should be doing or enables the department to argue for more workers, right, to have more crews, then you're never going to get back to the thing that you want in the first place, right? Because if you created a precedent. where you've done all this work for all these years and you've never bitched and complained, but now all of a sudden you're bitching and complaining about the work that you're doing. You see what I'm

saying? That's when you get to the municipalities are saying, well, it's been fine for 50 years. It's been fine for 100 years. You never said anything about this for the past 50, you know, whatever. Everything was fine before. Why all of a sudden is there different? And that's where the politics, I know it's unfortunate, but that's where that comes in. Because when I was a fire chief and I wanted a new fire truck, I couldn't just go buy one myself. I needed to get approval

for that. I needed to get spending from the municipality to approve that spending, to approve that truck purchase, right? I couldn't just go and do it. I would love to have gone and done whatever the hell I wanted to, but I needed permission. Right. Because that's the system that we had. So I had to work with the system and I had a great PowerPoint, James. It was fantastic. It had all kinds of data, you know, how we needed a new truck and we were spending this on maintenance and all

these different things. And I went on and on and on and that on that public budget meeting, I went on for 45 minutes, James. And you know what they asked me in the end? How much? They

could give two shits. about my data they could give two shits about all the things all the reasons all the blah blah blah blah everything it was awesome they could give two shits about any of that how much and literally they were like we're you got i got no time to listen anymore how much do you want well it's gonna cost 750 do we have the money then the budget guy comes in well we can do this this and this Great. We'll do it. You're approved. Next. That's the reality of

what we're dealing with, you know? Well, this is why we've got a hook now is because if you get exactly like you said, the budget guy of cities and counties to say, how much are you spending on overtime? How much are you spending on training young recruits? And then they walk out the back door one, two, three years later.

workman's comp claims you know lawsuits when you guys are tired you look at the money now because i've seen this i mean don't get me wrong it's sadly it is acutely you know obvious that there's a lot of people especially in those positions that these suicides these cancers these you know all these deaths don't move them At all. It makes no difference. Even some fire chiefs, it's the same thing. And it's all the same on union presidents too. It doesn't seem to make any difference.

Nothing is done. So money is the, you know, money talks, bullshit walks, as they say. So it's like, all right, well then here is the money that you're all wasting. And this is the, I think where we have the ability now to make a difference is the fire service can say, there's your money. And by the way, this is your annual amount that you're bleeding. when these vacancies are all filled with the right kind of candidate, again, not lowering the bar and taking anyone who's

going to then be another problem. Now we're going to save you a bunch of money. And then I agree with you a hundred percent. I think where the greatest abuse of EMS is, you know, the 911 system at the bottom tier. And I love the concept that GMR talks about is a three tier system. So then let's also talk about calls that we shouldn't be responding to there. You know, the whole telehealth thing now. gives you the ability to have, whether it's GMR or another company, embed in a 911.

You get the 18 -month -old thrown up once, and the parents think they're going to die from dehydration. They're offered a consultation with a nurse. They take that. They get the treat at home, or they get to schedule an urgent care clinic appointment the next day. An ER bed stays open. The fire department was never called. And that patient gets a bill that's a fraction of the ER cost.

So there are really great innovative solutions that we can now bring in and address the call load as well, because I agree with you 100%. We've said yes to everything. Call 911. I've done, you know, snake retrievals and all kinds of, when there's Orange County has a massive animal control department. I'm like, why are

we standing here with a bucket and a stick? when we've got experts you know so this is this is the thing but again it's flipping it so all right this is an opportunity for us to change because what i've realized is that there's been so many finger pointing that you know nothing gets done everyone's just blaming the other one and it's all of us i mean you talk about the fire service being at fault like my rank we go home and we tell our neighbors we've got the best job in

the world and i only work 10 days a month and it's bullshit A 24 -hour shift is three eight -hour days crammed together. We work 30 days a month. Yes, we're working every day. Exactly. So this has been a great conversation. This is not a debate. This is a conversation. But it's like, what a beautiful opportunity for us to finally say, I don't care how long we've been doing it for. We are at a point now where it

needs to change. Like I said, whether it's children going up a chimney or women be able to vote or whatever the thing, the way we've always done it. There's this line in the sand, and we're there now. Because as you and I both know, our men and women are dying. Our young people really don't want to do this job anymore. And they're amazing human beings. There's as many great firefighters as when you and I came on. So what an amazing opportunity for us to go, all right, we need

to do something differently. And I think this is the thing. But we have to have the courage to say what we're doing isn't working. Yes, 100%. And I think, I think for me, I think it really relies more on doing it locally than nationally. We have to start at the grassroots. We have to start on our own, what we can change, right? It goes back to the classic phrase, you know, you can only worry about what you can have control

over, right? And when we, at the local level, we have control over who are, You know what our contract says, what jobs we do, what time we spend on this, what time we spend on that. You know, we control our destinies and we we can only start that and change process can only start at the bottom. It's not going to come from on high. It's not going to come from the top down. I agree. We have to be honest and realize that,

you know, and until like you said, until. And it's like anything, like, you know, we have so many little fiefdoms, you know, because it's the problem with the fire services, like you said before, it can drastically be different between one municipality to another, between one county to another, right? Orange County in Florida is completely different than Brevard County, which is completely different than, you

know, Seminole County. Here, Marathon County, we are the largest county in the state of Wisconsin. We have tried numerous times to try to county -wide our fire and EMS system. It never gets approved because the local townships like to keep their responsibility. They like to keep their name on the truck, even though it would be better to do it a county way. let alone a statewide or national level. They just won't even do it at the county level. You know? And

unfortunately, yeah. How do you, because that's a really great kind of, you know, lens that you've got. How do you, if this was to be approved, how do you absorb cities like that into a county, but allow them to maintain their identity? Because having worked for county departments myself and city departments, there is that element where you do become a number. In a county. So you can see why people want to hang on to a town identity.

So how do you fuse those two together? So you have the best of both worlds, obviously, you know, a greater ability to respond and maybe better equipment and that kind of thing that you'd have on a county level, but still allowing a kind of local element to it. So the men and women of certain areas of that county still feel like they're part of something smaller. Well, and this goes back to some of the detriments

of the union. So, for example, our union would not allow us to volunteer on another department. Not allowed. The municipality would not allow it. The city of Wausau would not allow it. Our contract did not allow it. So if we lived in a rural area and a lot of it because we didn't

have. uh we didn't have a residency requirement so there were some guys on the department that lived an hour and a half two hours away they would just drive in to work and then they drive home so we didn't have really well there was technically a residency requirement it was like 60 60 miles as the bird flies kind of thing you know but it's just like okay whatever you know but anyway but the rules were you could not all right so And then it goes back to why. Why was

this? Well, because the city didn't want you volunteering at a local department, getting hurt on the job, coming back to work for the city, say, the next day, and then going out and working a job and then being hurt. And then they're like, well, how do we prove that you got hurt with us versus you got hurt with somebody else? So, which goes back to lawyers, workers' comp, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So that was the rules that we had. There's another department

about 45 minutes from here. They allowed their, they were professional, they were full time, but they only had one station. So they were lower call volume. Okay. In a more rural community, they, their contract did allow for their firefighters to volunteer on other departments. So you still had that aspect. When we had our county meetings

talking about. making it a county -wide system the iaia our union did not want a volunteer aspect to be part of the system because they felt from a union standpoint if we allowed volunteers on or allowed part -time people on then we would not have a lot of full -time guys that they would only hire part -time guys And then they would staff everyone with part time. We would lose control. We would lose membership. We would lose

a contract. We would lose all the things that they quote unquote thought they had having one solid union leadership. So they fought against having volunteers and part time part of the system. Here, however. Chief Probowski out in Santa Clara County, California, outside of San Francisco, they have a county system. They also have full -time guys, but they also have part -time people. They also have volunteers in an auxiliary where what happens is you kind of get in on the bottom

level. You work as a part -time guy. or girl i'm using it as a gender gender neutral word you know but you you start out volunteering or being part of the auxiliary or being part of like an explorer program right in the high school you work your way up They pay for you or part of their system is you go to the local tech school, you get your fire certifications, then you work into a part -time position where you then get shifted around to different houses. You kind

of learn different jobs, right? You learn more about being on the job. You learn about all these different processes. Then when there's a full -time opening, guess who gets first dibs? These part -time people, because you've been in the system, you've been trained all the way up. There's a whole reason why they do it like that. But again, going back to the local ways, That's how their local does it. We tried to get our local to see that that way. They didn't want to have

anything to do with it. So, again, it all depends on how things are written locally. It all depends on how people see things and how you want to try to interact and how you want to try to get people to be brought on. I think the way they have that out in Santa Clara County would be great. It'd be awesome. I think that would behoove everyone. It would be fantastic. Because you get a group of people who are volunteering or in an auxiliary position or even in a fire explorer

program. You get all those people that are interested in the position. You get them in. You get them trained. They learn the ways you do things. This is our way. They learn all that stuff so that when you have a full -time position open up or you've got a bunch of different things open up, you've got a huge group of people. You've got all these people to choose from then, right?

It would be great. Trying to have other people, goes back to the politics, unfortunately, of trying to have them and convince them this is a better way takes a lot of work and a lot of effort. And like you said, a lot of people don't want to give up their control. And when you have a countywide system, the best way you can do that is by incorporating the station and not closing the stations down. I think a lot of people

worry about consolidation. If we consolidate our departments together, we're going to lose our department. Nine times out of 10, that's not the case, right? We still need the location. We still need the vehicles, the apparatus. We still need that station to be active because of the response time or whatever we're trying to recover. But what we're going to consolidate is management. What we're going to consolidate is top -level positions, right? That's what we

are going to consolidate. And then you get into the politics of chiefs where they're looking out for themselves. Why should I consolidate with you when I'm going to end up losing my job? Or you get into the like, I think a lot of people and a lot of some of the things that are going on right now, you've got a lot of people that are Gen Xers that are in their 50s early, you know, that are in their mid 50s, that when these

consolidation efforts, they're three. or five years out from retirement they're not looking to make any changes whether it's for the benefit you know better betterment of everyone or not they're looking you know i've only got three more years i need to coast for three more years then you can change whatever the hell you want you know and that's again going back to like you said that's not right and that's not doing it for the right reason and you're not helping

anybody but yourself absolutely but you know it's yeah it's kind of the crap sandwich that you're dealt with unfortunately well this is what i struggle with because basically all those people were my academy mates you know at that time period you know we're all like post 2000 i mean there's don't get me wrong there's obviously some that have been on for like 60 years that are literally probably gonna die as part of the station but the average you know person now i

mean i would have been uh hit in 22 years i think well 21 years excuse me if i not you know transitioned out and done this so now you're talking about people that are in these positions and you say i see that i agree with you 100 well i have got three years left i don't want to do anything and it's like this complete shift well hold on it's not about you and i mean just putting it all the way back to the firefighters like a lot of the firefighters i see now on social media

it's look at me with my big mustache and my leather helmet and i'm forcing a door and i videoed it so you can all see it even though i'm wearing my shorts and t -shirt but i'm wearing my leather helmet because i'm a fucking firefighter it's me me me me me and it's like where is the shift it used to be them for them but it's become very very self -serving and i think even that A good example, if you look at the Northeast, you talked about the volunteers. I mean, there's no question

that there are many areas of rural the U .S., rural U .S., that absolutely are going to need volunteers. You know, that's just, you know, if you're a town of 100 and it's all farms. Yeah, you don't get more than 35 calls a year. You cannot have a full -time crew. And of course, you don't have, you know, have mutual aid and all that kind of thing. But then you see a lot

of. suburban areas like the northeast still has volunteers so then the conversation to me comes well should we even have volunteers anymore and in those densely populated areas not like you talked about other areas and i i love the idea of a tier system of a mentorship program where you are air quotes volunteering but you're not really you're climbing the ladder to a career but there's a lot of areas again they don't have volunteer cops they don't volunteer er doctors

But again, our profession, once again, well, they'll be fine. They'll do it. They'll do it for free. They'll do 56 hours a week. Just, you know, because we are. We are going to respond regardless. But there's a certain point where we've got to say, okay, time out. We've got to put some parameters. And there's a lot of amazing volunteer firefighters in the Northeast that should be given a career position because that

area should have full -time firefighters. So that's the other conversation nationally is where. Where are areas where really that volunteerism has been taken advantage of and people that really should have been given benefits and a pension and a career doing the very thing that they are doing for free? You know, where is that line that we need to draw in the sand as a profession as well? Because volunteerism is incredible, but it can be taken advantage of. Oh, 100 percent.

And, you know, going back to what we were saying before, like, you know, you're doing so much more than you should. Right. You know, and going back, yeah, you're right. How many volunteer cops are there? I can't think of any, right? You know, the outside constable, you know, position where, you know, some of, but it's a numbers game, right? A small town, you know, a small town of 4 ,000 people, they can get away with having three cops, right? You can get away with

it. We can get away with the chief and two deputies, you know, go back to, you know. Barney Fife, you know, Mayville and, you know, the good old days back, you know. Yeah, you can get away with three guys, you know. You can't get away with three people in a fire department for that same town, right? You can get away with having one doctor for the town. But you can't get away with having, you know, one firefighter for that town. You know, so some of it is a numbers, some of

it's a numbers problem, right? We require, and going back to NFPA, right, you know. If we ever had an actual high -rise structure fire, we had three stations here in Wausau. We had three stations. We ran about 6 ,000 to 7 ,000 calls, depending. Most of it was EMS. We were a paramedic base. We transported, so we had ambulances. Three stations covering just the city itself. which our city

was just shy of 40 ,000 people, right? If we had an actual high -rise structure fire, right, our full -time crew component per shift was 16 people. We did not have enough people. According to NFPA, we did not have enough people to fight that fire, right? So then it gets to... Do we need, for example, you want to talk about doing too much, James. So our stations, right, had four guys, each station. Downtown had more because

we had a ladder truck. We had an actual tower that was out of there and we had our hazmat out of downtown. But anyway, so they had more guys. But the outside two stations, we had four people. That was it. Two guys were in the ambulance. Two guys were on the engine. That was it. If the ambulance was out, if we were busy and there was a structure fire in our area, you got an engine with a driver and an officer. That's it.

And you had maybe another crew coming from across town with two guys, or you had the truck company coming from downtown with two guys. If all the ambulances were out, which happened all the frigging time. We barely had staffing. Want to talk about staffing? We barely had enough people just for a residential fire of the two in, two out, let alone if we had an actual working high -rise fire. We would never, even at maximum staffing,

we'd never have enough people. How did it even get to the point where there was only two on a rig, where you simply cannot operate with two on a rig? It was a money thing. But I mean, if there was a school and there were 10 classrooms and they hired four teachers, that would never fly because you'd have six classrooms of kids not being taught. As we both know, especially if you're not, you know, truck and engine running, you cannot safely operate at a fire with a captain

and an engineer. You've got someone on the radio doing a size up, you've got someone pumping, and you've got no one actually going in to facilitate

a rescue. Not legally. i mean not safely not effectively no i mean people can beat their chest oh we just went in with one and we took the line yeah but that's that's the chances of you effectively doing it have gone down immensely and then now you go down now you're the victim and that child burns so i it blows me away again how yeah because you see him all the time you you there's that one on the history channel the um inside the fire was it called i'm forgetting but it was

a guy that was a single engineer on a ladder truck at an apartment fire. And the guy's talking about it like 30 years later, and he's still in tears as he heard the thud of the infant being thrown out by the mother of this, because there was wires everywhere. He couldn't even set the aerial, and he couldn't set a 35 on his own. So this is the point, is that I don't understand how we even got to the point where, well, two will be okay. Two is never okay. On an ambulance,

absolutely. I was on a two -man ambulance my whole career apart from my very first department. But on a fire engine or a truck, I mean, it's completely unsafe to just have two people. So I don't know how so many departments even allow that to happen in the first place. Well, it goes, like I said, unfortunately, it goes back to leadership and what they are or are not advocating for for the department. When you're in those, like I

said, I know it sucks, but it's politics. You're trying to maintain your department's budget. If you're in a full -time department with full -time people, most of your budget, almost 85 plus percent of your budget is what? Salary and benefits. Most of it. Almost all of it, call it. If you're the municipality and you say, well, our state funding now goes down, right? Where are we going to make the cut? So there's now a 10 % cut across the board. Every department

has to cut 10%. Well, if you're the fire department and your budget is, say, $8 million, you've got to cut 10 % of $8 million. You've got to cut $800 ,000. Where is that going to come from, right? Salary and benefits. What does that mean? That means less guys. We don't have a training budget. Most departments barely have a training budget already, right? There's no education budget, barely. We're barely getting the equipment that we want because salary and benefits constitute

so much of our budget. Well, if the municipality tells you you're going to cut. That's the problem. So then it becomes, okay, well, we're not going to hire. These two guys are retiring. We're not going to rehire those two positions then. Or you come to everyone as the chief and you say, listen, this is the shit sandwich we're dealt with. We got these options, right? We can lay off three guys, one per crew. We can, everyone can do more work. Right? Instead of laying off

three guys, what we're going to do is this. All right? We're going to, those three, these two other people, or maybe these four guys that are going to retire, we're not going to hire them back. These people also happen to be, say, in the prevention bureau. So instead of hiring for prevention, we're not going to, all the crews now, we're going to go out and do inspections. Or we lay off three guys. Your choice. So what

do you do? Well, I think, I mean, the three or four on a rig with the prevention thing, that's in hard times. Okay, during COVID, during the 08 recession. Okay, but at that, what point do you tell your city, we cannot operate with less than three, I mean, ideally four on an engine. And again, it goes back to the classrooms, the roads. Oh, we can't finish that freeway that goes halfway through our town. They'll find the

money for that. You know what I mean? So at what point do people say, look, I mean, it's like having a police car with no police officer in there. I mean, even having one to a car. I mean, the ridiculous nature of a single officer responding to someone who's going to try and hurt them is mind blowing and the richest nation on the planet. So this is what blows me away. We're not, you know, the Sudan. We're the United States of America. We have the most wealth of anyone on the planet.

And yet you've got, you know, arguably not. poverty stricken neighborhoods that have two firefighters on a rig and then everyone wonders why they weren't able to make a rescue when god forbid their family was burning to death in the third floor window so this you know where i think again i understand the economics but it's higher you know maslow's hierarchy of needs you know security is the first thing so your police your fire you know if that's being cut and cut and cut which we know in our

profession happens all the time Where is that voice to be like, Oh, just so you know, like three is the bare minimum nationally. We cannot operate a fire engine or a fire truck with less than three. I mean, obviously a truck, arguably four. So, you know, but people like one, one person rig, two person rig. And it's just, it's.

pure insanity and i think again now do we have this opportunity to finally turn things around and not only in this recruitment for crisis help all the urban and suburban departments but even again the volunteer and and these areas where they're just woefully understaffed can we shine a spotlight and be like let us explain to you what happens when your family is trapped and all that's available are these two firefighters let me show you what they would want to do and

let me show you what they're able to do but that's not story told is it Where is that voice? Well, it is, but the people, again, it goes back to like I told you with the budget committee. How much is it going to cost? They want to know. So it gets back to funding. So in Florida, when we were in Cocoa Beach during spring break, I was looking at different, you know, how much you guys pay for property taxes. And I was shocked how much you pay. It's outrageous. Outrageous.

The property taxes that you guys are paying. And then I did a deep dive into, I'm like, but their school, like you drive by the elementary school and it looks like shit. And your playground looks like garbage, you know? And there's literally like garbage on the fence and, you know, yada, yada, yada. It's like, you're paying what in property taxes? And especially in Cocoa Beach,

I was like, you've got. all these high rises or you know multi i mean these are million dollars every unit's a million freaking dollars you're collecting property taxes where is the freaking money going like what the frick and then you're adding all these hoa fees and blah blah blah blah blah i was like no i couldn't imagine owning anything down here but that was the thing like where is this freaking money going if you're a municipality if you're coco beach right or

you're cape canaveral which has a Between the two of them, I think the total population is like permanent populations, like 12 ,000 people. Cape Canaveral's got a quasi department where they're part -time with some full -time guys. Cocoa Beach, though, is part of Brevard County, so they've got two stations that are fully staffed.

with full -time people both running ambulances out of both of them i think bravard certainly used to be two -person rigs as well if i'm not mistaken for a long time so you you but you you've got but the point i'm making is all the money that you're collecting and all that property tax holy shit where's it going exactly my point two -person rigs you're telling me that that tourist destination with that transient exact coming in that's exactly right and then i i did

a deep dive Because I'm like, why does the school look so bad then? What is going on here? Where's the money going? Roads are the same roads that I've been driving on since I've been going down there for the last 10 years. You know what I mean? Yeah, you got hurricane fixings and you got all that other kind. They're redoing the beach again. But that's all a state thing and all this different stuff. So I did a deep dive into your property tax, what you guys are paying

for. And I was shocked to find out that. Part of your property tax bill is separated for your school districts and your teacher salaries. They separate those two things out. Here in Wisconsin, you get one tax bill for your millage rates for your school districts is brought up by the district. Then you have your local municipal rates are set by the county itself. And that's it. That's it. So that's the money you're getting. The other part of that comes from the state of Wisconsin

itself. And some of the things we do in the fire department here in Wisconsin, the state of Wisconsin charges every commercial area, every insurance agent is called a 2 % due. They have to pay 2 % of their fire insurance coverage to the state. The state then takes that money and they divvy that out to the technical colleges and the departments to pay for the free education for Firefighter 1, Firefighter 2, all those different things. That's why those programs are free here in the

state of Wisconsin. But again, my property taxes, I live in a nice house. It's great. My property taxes are only $3 ,500. They haven't gone up for 10 years. Haven't changed. That's the difference. When I talk about it deals with municipalities and it deals with locals and it deals with your county and it deals with your state. That's what I'm talking about. It's all so it is so incredibly different between every county and every state in this entire country that we have to understand

that, you know. What we can do here in Wausau, Wisconsin, with what our state law literally says, what we can do on a tax roll and what we can charge municipalities or what we can offer for services, that all deals with what the state allows in their budgeting process. And the state has capped. They have not allowed any kind of increases to be done in education or municipal.

tax bases which is why my taxes haven't gone up for as long as they have now is that for the benefit of the community or is it for the benefit of keeping your taxes low okay so it's me not we again it's it's about taking your ca keeping your taxes low our school district just failed another tax referent they are it was a referendum to exceed their revenue limit to exceed the budget they wanted to pay for other things and they said straight up if we don't pass this referendum

we're going to have to probably lay off teachers we're going to have to get rid of curricular activities we're going to have to get rid of sports we may consolidate high schools we're going to have to get rid of elementary schools we're going to have to do all these things the vote said no do it And that is after listening sessions. That is after public comment areas. That is after blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because when it comes down to it,

how much am I paying? Yeah, that's what they want to know. How much am I paying? How much am I paying? The issue that we have, you know, when you think about the narrative, and this is apolitical, this is both freaking sides of the aisle. But when was the last time you really heard the word us from any, you know, national stage? Like us coming together, making sure that our schools are safe, that our teachers are well paid. I mean, my son's about to graduate high

school. Ever since he was tiny, the teachers were begging for, and I mean begging in a positive way, like they needed school supplies and cleaning supplies. And, you know, and so. The parents all chipped in, but these are really things that should have been included. So the teachers had all the ability to, you know, for the books and the papers and the pens and things that I would imagine that we had that were taken care of when

we were little. And then you look at the fire service, like I said, low balling these figures. So you've got two on a rig and then God forbid, you know, people are killed in the fire. Then there's this big investigation and there's millions of dollars of lawsuits that could have been simply put into hiring those firefighters in the first place. At what point do we go, where are our priorities? And I'll give you a perfect example.

For arguably 30 plus years now, the obesity epidemic, probably more in the US, has been getting worse and worse and worse. And the drain on the Medicare, Medicaid system from that alone is in the, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, the trillions. It's a ridiculous amount of money. So that alone, to me, it's like we... We don't want more money. Fire departments don't want more money. Teachers don't want more money than is already being spent. We just want you to proactively invest. So you

make the nation healthy. Imagine all the funds that will become available for all these other programs. You, you, you know, you'd be proactive when it comes to drug prohibition, stop arresting addicts, unless they've done an actual crime, you know, like beating someone up or robbing the house and put it into the healthcare system. Let them actually get the help that they truly need. Addiction, mental health counseling, all the things. And now all of a sudden the crime

goes down. So it's another place. Now our police officers maybe don't have to wear all this tactical gear like they go into Fallujah. Like everything gets safer. The schools get safer. And it's not an oversimplification because we all know that the people that are real experts in all these areas, the economics is undeniable. And countries that have done it differently have seen, you know, an immense saving. So I think this is the

conversation. Fire departments and teachers and all these different groups are labeled as greedy. We want more money, more money. We need the funds, but we don't want more money. We want the real leaders of the world to step up, be proactive, take the money that's being wasted and invest it in the people. And it's the same with the firefighter work week. It's the same with the obesity crisis. We've got to stop the downstream bleeding. But there needs to be a national conversation.

And even most recently, we were told that we're supposedly going to make America healthy again. Well, I haven't heard anything apart from food dies. And here we are now in basically May. So the money is there. We are such an affluent country, but we have to be proactive and invest. The areas that stop us spending money needlessly, then take that money and really invest in schools and public safety and pedestrianized public areas where people can be out and move and play and

get sunshine and have community. But you don't hear that. It's just, oh, we need more money, more money, more money. And that's when you get this chopping block mentality in these cities and counties. Yeah. Like you said, I think a lot of it. You know, talking about, you know, if we want to go back to the sleep issue, I think we could work the shifts we're working if our

call volume was normal, right? If we had, like you said, if we had that tiered 911 system where we triaged the calls and appropriately put the, you know, the rescue resources where they were

needed. you know a true medical emergency as opposed to someone calling 911 because they have a headache and they think they can get into the er faster right if we would have a normal call volume that was true like think about when you were working right all the calls you went on how many actually were 911 like actual emergencies right yeah how many of them required a paramedic probably 20 You know what I mean? So if we could solve that, that problem I think is probably

easier to solve, right? If you want to talk about the hierarchy of what we could solve, like right now, that would be one that could easily be solved, right? 911 system, triaging the system, getting those things, getting appropriate resources to where they need to be, and having the fixes to

that. which would deplete the call volumes, take away all the runs that we don't need to do five times a night after three o 'clock in the morning, and then bringing these people to the ER and waiting for an hour because no one's available in the ER because it's full of people that don't need to be there in the first place, right? If we could get that solved, you're right. I think we would have a giant, huge relief off the call

volumes. that we could then then we could maybe talk about and really actually hamper down into how much staffing we really have and all those different things you know i mean i remember i was reading an article oh this is probably years and years ago back when philadelphia was trying to cut their budget for the fire department And it was in one of the IAFF magazines, blah, blah, blah. And they were talking about how they were looking to consolidate. They wanted to brown

out stations and all this different stuff. Well, then I did a deep dive. I'm like, well, how many stations does Philly have and where are they and all those different things? Well, it turns out Philadelphia's locations of where their fire stations were was the distance a horse could travel at full gallop. That's how they determined where their stations were. And that became a set number. So that's where their stations were.

It had nothing to do with call volume. It had nothing to do with where the resources were needed and adequately staffed. None of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was the distance a traveling horse could go at full gallop in 1900 when they were pulling a freaking steamer. So when they're talking about consolidating stations, their stations are a mile and a half or two miles away from each other. I couldn't imagine having a station that close. Or closer. What about the

population, though? I mean, if it's New York. It's a population. I know. But what I'm saying is it goes into this is the problem with, you know, how do we fix all this stuff? And there's so many minutiae of history. and levels of bureaucracy and the reasons why so many things are the way they're done that we just have no idea. We just have no idea. And like you said, we need to go back to call volume is super high. Absolutely.

Stress, sleeplessness, those are all huge things and they're all the reasons why we're having a lot of the problems we're having. But what is the root cause of that? The calls. Well, can we do anything about the call volume? Can we can we actually control that? Can we actually make a big dent in a big difference into taking that call volume down? Right. What do we really have control over? We can really control a 911 system, you know, and again, it goes back to

municipalities. So in our county, the sheriff's department controls 911. They do not want to have a tier system. Why? I'll tell you why. Because that would mean that every dispatcher would have to get trained as an EMD, an emergency medical dispatcher, which would mean more training, which would mean more money, which would mean they'd have to pay them more. And they have no interest in doing that. How do they receive medical calls if they're not trained? It's a dispatcher. You're

literally just... You're an operator on the phone. So they don't have any ability to... 911, what's your emergency? I'm having a heart attack. What's your address? You're in this municipality. Page them. Oh my goodness. So they can't tell you it's Delta Echo, Charlie, none of that. Nope, doesn't matter. Crazy. Doesn't matter. So there we go. It's another issue that needs to be addressed then. So yeah, like I was saying, it's complicated. It's way more complicated than people realize.

That's on a county level. That's not even a state level. That's not even on a municipality level. That's just that's just one county of 72 in the state of Wisconsin. Now, multiply that by how many counties we have in the country. Every county is different. Every single county is different. So they're not even able to give advice. They can't talk through someone through CPR or a choking incident. That doesn't take medical training

to do that. It doesn't take training to. Tell someone to keep thumping on someone's chest? The correct way? They can't tell you. They have no idea if they're doing it correctly or not. They can just tell you, keep doing chest compressions. Help is on the way. That sounds to me like that's another thing that should be a national standard in the world of dispatch. If you're dealing with medical and fire 911 calls, you should have the relevant training. You want to get into more

of it, I can tell you more stories. So here in the city of Wausau, before the sheriff's department took over 9 -1 -1, 9 -1 -1 was done by our fire department. Any 9 -1 -1 call that would come in would come into the city fire department. Whoever was the lowest man on the totem pole at the fire department at the time, it was called desk duty. You got the desk, you would take shifts over your 24 hours. The young guy would do the

desk. He'd answer all the 911 calls. And that firefighter would determine what the situation was and who would have to get dispatched out. That was it. How long ago was this? That was changed in the mid -90s. They changed that. It was called the doghouse rule. Because that's the old school way of doing it. That was until the mid -90s here. But since the mid -90s, they've never been trained on fire and medical EMS. They've never had to have the EMD. No. I mean, to me,

that sounds crazy. I don't know. Maybe that's how it is in other countries, but it sounds crazy to me. No, that's how it is. I'm trying to think. I think there's only a couple of counties in the entire state of Wisconsin that have actual EMD of all the 72. I think you can count on one hand how many there are, and they're all urban. See, what's interesting as well is that they're not the rural counties. And that's just 911.

That's just on a county level. You've talked about a really amazing initiative, which is paying for fire school. Like free education, I think, is, you know, you want to invest in your people that's going to give back for 20 plus years. Putting young people, you know, obviously with a testing initiative through all this training and then creating all these great firefighter EMTs and paramedics. Amazing. But then on the other side, when it comes to the dispatch side,

not so amazing. And just like you said, this has been really eye -opening for me. And working either side of the country really started opening my eyes initially, was we are so siloed that you have these two departments right next to each other, doing it completely different, sometimes not even talking to each other. God forbid you get a multi -agency incident. But that means that people aren't sharing all the things that are working well. Like Wisconsin, education.

Yeah, we'll definitely take this. Well, California, can we borrow your EMD? Because we're really behind on this area. Then the Northeast, hey, well, California, tell me about your volunteer. We still want to have a volunteer tier, but we really need to start making these positions career now. So how can we use that to filter through young people and give them an opportunity to be exposed to this profession? So this is what's so interesting with this podcast is I get to

speak to people from all over the world. But yeah, I mean, some areas it blows me away how innovative and how they have amazing solutions to some of our problems. But then as you touched on. you know, two people on a rig and, you know, the police person, police dispatcher answering a medical call, having no real way of really relaying what might be a lifesaving intervention.

You know, this is not ridiculing Wisconsin in any way, but it just highlights that if we just dropped our humility, got rid of the red tape and the politics and actually said, how collectively can we share each other's knowledge and, you

know, the rising tide lift all ships. our whole profession would would elevate but we don't you know we're these little pockets that that more often than not don't even talk to each other and it's crazy yep and it's it's complicated and it's and it's it's different like i said in michigan most most of the ems in michigan is hospital based they're not run out of the fire department There's only a couple of municipalities there where they actually run EMS, but most of

them, most of the ambulances and most of the EMS system is run out of the hospital. Same thing in Minnesota. Most of it's run out of the, out of the hospital based systems, you know? So again, you know, LA County, look at LA County, LA County. So the city of LA runs ambulance, but LA County. They still run the rescues like they did back in emergency back in the 70s. Right. Two guys on a rescue truck. But their funding, how they charge and what their funding model. You know

what I mean? Like it's it's complicated and it's completely different than it would be in Orange County, which would be in Marathon County here. It's it's just it's so it's just it is it is

a it's unfortunate that it has to be. so convoluted and complicated and the intricacies and the webs and the you know the connections and the disconnections you know it really is it would just be simpler if things were more straightforward and people would leave their egos aside you know and they would you know do really what's the best thing for the entire group you know it would be awesome but People are the people are the way they are.

And, you know, we've we've unfortunately we have to work and try to do the best job we can, you know, doing with what we can control. And, you know, just again, going back to the local level, I got to worry about if I'm a lieutenant or captain of my station, I'm going to try to advocate the best for them. I'm going to make sure that my people have the tools and training that they

need, because that's what I can control. And if, you know, something happens, I got to make sure that, you know, I am there to help them and support them and to do what I can do to help those people get through the job and come home safely. That's what I can control, you know, and I can't, I can only deal with that. And I can't, you know, I can change what I can change, you know, myself and what I have control over. And I can advocate and I can try to put up the

chain the best, you know. best facts and figures and stuff that's possible but like i said you know in order for anything to change truly change it has to come from the bottom up it really does absolutely and i agree with you completely like you know you want to change the world start a home well if that's a fire station then that's where you start your crew and i think what's been pretty amazing to watch is the podcast has become a way to circumnavigate politics, you

know, union politics, the walls between cities and counties and PD and FD and EMS and these, just like we've had, you know, we've gone back and forth and had an amazing conversation with different perspectives. And this is what needs to happen. Like in less than two hours, you know, all the things that we've covered and now thousands of people are going to listen to this and they're probably going to go, wow, I didn't think of it this way, you know, from whatever perspective.

And the goal for the whole podcast is to get people what I call educated and angry. you know, understand, you know, the whys and then go, well, wait a second, why are we doing it this way? Why do I not deserve to be home as much as the cop? So, you know, this is what's so important, but that's exactly like you said, because I believe that the base of the pyramid is the most important. There's only one person at the very tip. But imagine if everyone at the bottom started shaking

the pyramid. Well, things would start changing. You don't need your chief to be on board. You don't need your union president to be on board. You as a collective department need to get together and say, these need to change. You know, we need to get more people in the engine. We are going to kill someone one day. And yet they just keep, you know, doing the same thing or the work week or fitness standards or, you know, insert whatever

here. So, yeah, I mean, I agree completely. And this has been a vehicle for that to try and speak

for. our profession that absolutely are focused on their home and their crew and rightly so and this is why i like to take on this fight myself so i can be a voice for them that being said we've been talking for an hour 45 minutes i want to make sure that we would talk about your books and you know the the uh the teachings and coaching that you offer now so as a precursor you had this interesting career through the education system that into the fire system ultimately as

a leader in the fire service at what point did you decide that you look to things a little differently and wanted to write books about your perspective well it goes back to like we were talking about before what what can you control is really what you can really worry about right you can't really worry about stuff you that's completely outside of your control. So when I was fire chief, I

did a horrible job. 100%. I will fully admit, I was a massive failure on everything and everything, you know, that I could possibly do to go wrong or to, you know, I was ripping band -aids off and blowing bridges up. And I did not play politics. I did it because I don't, I agree with you. I

hate politics, James. I can't stand it. i think it's it's horrible it's a waste of time it's screw it's it's it's the root of almost all evils right politics and money and i 100 and i did not play politics when i was the chief and i tried to force change and i tried to do things you know that did not um didn't go with the flow of what's been done for the past 100 years i tried to you know nope we're just going to make this change because this is the right thing to

do And I didn't spend the time educating, even though I had been a teacher and have been a teacher for over 20 some years, right? Even though I've got a master's degree in educational leadership. I knew better, but I did not. I was trying to force round pegs and square holes. Or I should say square pegs and round holes, right? Because obviously a circle is going to fit in a square. But, you know, I didn't do a good job communicating. I didn't do a good job of shaking hands and doing

the things I needed to do as a chief. I didn't. And I paid the price for it myself. And the department paid a price for it because I didn't act in the role that I should have acted in. And I didn't. I didn't. I don't want to call it a value in politics, but I didn't see how important it really was to really getting things done or to really making the changes that need to be made. So my second book, Read Before Leading, that's where

that book comes up. That's all the massive problems that I caused and the things that I did and the things I wish I wouldn't have done. You know, that book was written purely as a leadership book. Don't do what I did. Don't rip those Band -Aids off. Politics sucks, but it's a part of the position, especially at the higher levels, where you're going to have to do the things. And it's going to take time. That's the thing that I hated and I still have a hard time with

is I don't have a lot of patience. Right. We're especially in this service. We're all type A personalities and we want to get things done. Let's just do it right now. What are we waiting for? We know it has to be done. Just freaking get it done. And the thing I learned on the backside of that was patience. And it's going to take time. And, you know, especially big changes, big changes are going to take time. And if you want to get things done right. And if that's

your goal. Right. If this is the goal, it's not going to happen. In six months, it's not going to happen maybe in two, three, four years. It may be a five -year plan or a 10 -year plan to get to where you want to get. But I needed to learn that I needed to have the patience to investigate all the things we had just talked about. I didn't do a good job finding out who the political players were. I didn't find out who the different advocacy or different agencies that I would need to pull

on board. to support me. I was trying to do everything by myself. And it doesn't work like that, right? Especially when you're in the municipal level, it takes everyone to work together. Everyone needs to play together in the same sandbox. We can't just be throwing out everyone else's toys and digging a hole for myself in the corner. We all have to work together in that sandbox. And I did not do a good job of doing the things I needed to do to try to get everyone to work

together to help. Instead of building a sandcastle together, I was just trying to build one myself. And I was knocking everyone else's sandcastles down that were next to mine. Because I had my people and I had my department and I was in charge of, you know, that's not the way to do it. That's not going to be successful. And you're going to make more enemies than you're going to make friends. So that second book is all about that. My first book. Two Dark Thirty, I wrote because

of the teaching aspect. So when I got hurt on my first back injury, because of my history having been a teacher, I was kind of put into the position of, hey, Mark's the teacher. He can teach all the new guys. Fine. I like teaching. I don't have a problem with that. But what happens when you give someone the job and responsibility?

and then they then you take them out of that role or you or they get hurt and they get sidelined well now who fills the hole right so i was fielding phone calls i was getting emails about hey when you were doing this on that crew what were you doing or you know what was going on with this so i realized that i'm like you know what i've got experience and i kind of know what i'm doing teaching wise i should just put all my thoughts and ideas down so i did Well, that translated

then into the book Two Dark Thirty, which was all the summation of all the knowledge and all the things that I found out how to be a successful teacher, you know, how to break things down for students, how to look at, you know, what are they don't, you know, don't expect them to know things right away. Don't assume different things. Bring everyone again, a lot of the same kind of stuff where you're playing, where you're being

in a leadership position. Trying to break things down simply, try to get things in a logical order, try to make sure that you're evaluating people correctly, you're looking at the right things you want to look at. Because in the end, we want these people who are on the bottom of the, like you said, the bottom of the pyramid, we want to raise them up those hierarchy levels. We want to get them to positions where they can take control over what they're now knowledgeable of.

And we can, you know, let them go into the environment and, you know. God bless you and get out there and do it, right? So that book is purely about being a good teacher, how to be an educator, how to be a good instructor, how to be a good FTO, a mentor, coach, all those different things. So the two books, because in my opinion, to be a good leader, you need to be a good teacher.

If you can't teach someone well, at least remotely well, then... you're gonna have a hard time leading anything because part of your job as a leader at least the true job of the leader like we talked about is worrying about your crew your staff and making sure that you're supporting them and giving them everything that you need to get to them that their job is done successfully and safely that is the entire purpose of your job as a leader So if that means teaching, that means

teaching. If that means showing them how to do something and instructing them how to do it, that's what it means. So I think those two books are, they go hand in hand, you know, which is why I wrote them. But really, for me, it was about, you know, sharing all my knowledge and getting the word out. Because like you said, so many people are out there on social media,

you know, pounding their chest. you know having these salty mustaches and you know acting like they're the biggest king in the world and you know it's it's hard to watch sometimes and it's hard to listen to some of their views sometimes and it's just like oh you're not helping you know you that's not that's not the best way to do it um but we have to make mistakes you know Life's about making mistakes. Life is about failing

miserably and learning from those mistakes. And I wouldn't be where I am now if I hadn't have done all the screw -ups and all the mistakes I made either. So I wanted to write things that are conversational, that aren't written like a textbook, that you could sit down and just read like you and I are having a conversation. That's how I wrote them. And the audio books are, yep, that's me. Drone it on in my stupid

Midwestern accent. Yeah, that's me talking. That's me discussing what I know and what I've had and what I've done. And if you can grab something from it, great. If it can spur on a discussion with someone, fantastic. If we can have a new idea or, hey, I want to try that or I'm going to take that idea and I'm going to twist it to fit my situation, awesome. That's all I want.

That's all I want. Question for you. Yeah. If you were king for a day and you could literally, as they say in Disney, reimagine the group of people that you have to interact with as a fire chief so that that conversation would simply be, like I said, that room of grownups that were really just trying to do the best thing for their

community. What would need to be in place so that the other members of these departments were the right kind of people that wouldn't create all these barriers and you wouldn't have to politic with? You just simply have the same kind of conversation that we had today. Get to the root of the problem, figure out what is the path to the solution, and therefore grow and empower your community rather than what we're seeing recently, a crumbling

element. Well, number one, if I was king for a day, I would be probably assassinated right away. You know, because unfortunately, it was a lot like when I was fire chief. I tried to, you know, I tried to make the changes and force changes. And, you know, what I have learned. Over my time and what I learned in my leadership experiences was it's not as simple as just being king for a day, unfortunately. It's not just

being God, right? Go back to the classic Jim Carrey movie where he gets all the powers of God, right? And he's got to answer everyone's emails. People, everyone has, everybody, every single person, they all have our own wants, desires, needs. We all come with our different perspectives. We all come with our different histories. We all come with our different backgrounds. We all come with our different, you know, could be cultural

things. It could be even like we talked about differences in regionality, you know, weather regional differences. I was under a tornado warning last night, you know, so. There are so many parts to that puzzle that it's never easy to just come up with just one answer. It's not. Realistically, you know, in a perfect world that we don't live in, it should be easy to just make, you know, make consensus decisions and say, hey, we should

just, you know, why don't we do. You know, a certain percentage of the property tax is going to be just directly related to the fire and EMS service. And we're going to base it like this. And this is the tier structure. And we're going to incorporate all the best ideas across the nation. And this is how we're going to do it. That would be awesome, right? But again, it takes more than just fire and EMS, right? It's the

ER system. It's our healthcare system. You know, you just, you know, we just talked to, you mentioned the making America healthy again. Yeah, it's massive, you know, problems with obesity and, you know, the things that go into our foods and the sugar, the refining sugars that were, you know, all the, you know, junk food that's out

there. What's in the kids, what's in the kids' lunches at school or what kids are coming home to and eating or the, you know, shockingly, the shockingly high statistic of how many people

eat fast food. as their main food for the day you know they don't go they don't make their own food they just eat out every day every meal you know and that's huge hugely high in urban areas right they go out to lunch at their work they go out to lunch and then when they're coming home they don't make their own dinner they go out and have dinner at 8 30 at night on some restaurant and pay you know But that's their culture, but that's their way. But again, going

back, it's not just one simple thing. It's so many things that are together and it would be hard, almost impossible really to be the king for the day, to make all the decisions, to just make everything correct. Because like you said, it, it, it's not just one thing. It's the education system has to be changed. You know, the everything, everything has to be changed. It really does. And, you know, it's so much that has to be fixed that it can be overwhelming. And where do you

start? Well, you know, it's the old saying, you know, the journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. You know, and it goes back to what I said. We can only deal with what we can control. And for me, that's, you know, locally. You know, I can't worry about Florida. I can only worry about what we do here in Wisconsin, you know, and just vice versa. You can't worry about what goes on in Wisconsin. You can't worry

about what goes on in Minnesota. You know, I give my hope and I can give you my support and I can, you know, give you all the things that I can give you to help you in your process to get to where you want to go. But it's us. It's up to us individually, locally, that we're ever going to really see anything really. really change. Let me rephrase the question because that was a great answer to the question, but I want to

pinpoint it a little bit more. A lot of the issues that we discussed today, including obesity, including the understaffing of first responder and the overworking of first responder agencies, ultimately comes from the wrong people continuing to get at the top of the totem pole. How do we, as a principle, change the way That we choose people. So you actually get someone who is compassionate, who thinks about us rather than we to be at the

heads of them. It could be, you know, we're talking the president or simply the chief of fire department or even the lieutenant at a station. How do we get the right kind of person that has that community mind, that has that passion and caring for their people? Because if that happens in a station, in a household, that permeates then through the entire nation ultimately. Yeah, that's another million -dollar question with a million -dollar

answer, right? I mean, part of it has to be... I mean, the answer, the honest answer is we need to put people or... I know we shouldn't say put, maybe put's the wrong word, but like... we need to elect or we need to you know find or we need to recruit maybe um you know the people that don't want to be in those positions right i mean it's it's the classic you know i don't want to be in charge well that's why you should be in charge right because you don't want to be in

charge because the people that want to be in charge nine times out of ten They may have the best intentions and they may talk a good game and they may talk, you know, they walk the walk and, you know, they say all the right things. But when push comes to shove, when things, you know, come down or whatever, they're going to look out for themselves. And, you know, going back to, you know, how do we put the right just let's just let's just say the fire department.

Right. Let's just concentrate just on the fire department. How do we get the best leaders for the fire department? especially when they'll say, well, we only had two candidates. These are the two people that we got to choose from, right? If we only got two candidates, pick the lesser of two evils. Why does it have to be like that, right? Why does it have to be, well, those are the only two people that applied. Why isn't

it merit -based? Why isn't it, well... You know, James has been on this department for this many years and he's done all these different positions and, you know, he's a fantastic instructor. He's a fantastic leader. You know, I think he'd make a fantastic, you know, overall chief because I think he's got the best interest at heart and he wants to do the best job for everybody. Why is that not the qualification? Right? Why is it? Why does it have to be? Well. Mark was the

only person that applies. So we're going to hire Mark. And Mark sucks. And Mark doesn't know what the hell he's doing. And Mark's, you know, Mark only cares about himself. And Mark's only using this job as a stepping stone on a resume to make sure he can get, you know, the experience that he can get a different job at a different larger department or, you know, insert whatever there, right? That's the problem, right? We don't, we are not selecting people for positions of leadership.

That should be selected for leadership. We are going back to the easy way out of saying, well, that's just the way our process is. We're talking about process, right? Going back to the contract. Well, the contract says that we need to publish this position for 30 days. And these are the requirements of that position. And if you don't meet the requirements, then you cannot apply it. You know, yada, yada, yada. I worked for

a lieutenant. When I was first on the city of Wausau, who did not have an associate degree, was on the department for 25 plus years, had had every position, was now a lieutenant because of seniority, was a fantastic leader, a fantastic instructor, had everything for the right reasons. We would literally die for him, right? And he was overlooked all the time because he didn't have an associate degree or he didn't have this certification. Well, he didn't go to school because

blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, he was in the Marines and had experience. You know what I mean? Like he's got other things going on for him. Right? My resume. Go to my website. Go to my LinkedIn. Holy shit, Mark. Whoa, he's got a lot of shit. Yeah, yeah, I do. Guess what? It doesn't matter a hill of freaking beans if I can't put any of it to work. Like I said, I have a master's degree.

So freaking what? So what? Doesn't matter. If you can't apply what you know, if I can't help other people achieve things, which is the entire purpose of leadership. then it doesn't matter a hill of beans how many freaking degrees I have or what certifications I have or, you know, all the, you know, I have 10 different letters of recommendation from 10 of my best friends that happened. You know what I mean? Like so freaking

what? None of that matters. And the other thing that I think that, you know, we need to really look at besides really doing a merit -based system and finding the people that don't want to do it, that's why you should do it. is when the entire group tells, hey, James is the man. I would follow James. Let's get, you know, put him in that position, right? You may not want to do it, James, but we're going to all be here. We're going to be here with you. I think that's

the other thing. People, you know, we are so much in a cannibalistic, like, well, he stepped up, right? He's not one of them. and he's getting told from on high to do, you know, A, B, and C. And now we're going to give him the cold shoulder because he's not one of us anymore. And, you know, fuck him. And, you know, he's selling out and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now we're not, you know what I mean? We are horrible at that kind of stuff. Horrible at it. Just the

gossip train, stirring the pot. We're horrible at doing those things. Cutting people off at the knees, not giving them a chance, you know? They stuck their neck out. Maybe that's the other thing too. Like people are afraid to take the big step up because they've seen how many guys get chopped out from underneath, right? I'm not going to put myself in that position. Screw that. I'm fine just where I'm at. And then you have a leader who's fantastic sitting on the sidelines

who could really make a difference. And again, why? Because... We do it to ourselves. And, you know, that's sad and it's unfortunate. And it goes back to, you know, what I said before. We can only control what we can control and we can only help what we can really affect. And when we do those types of things and we don't change the system the way it is and we allow the other stuff to happen, nothing's ever going to make a difference. All the money in the world doesn't

make a difference. You could have the best system. You could have the most perfect system in the world, James. And unless you have the leadership and the right people in charge of it, doing the right things for the right reasons, it's never going to matter. It's never going to matter. Well, I think that's the perfect place to round this off. That was such a beautiful kind of, I mean, it was, it was exactly what needs to be said. And I agree with you wholeheartedly.

For people listening. If they want to find the books, if they want to reach out to you for the coaching and the other areas that you offer, where are the best places to find you? Website, social media? All my stuff. You can look me up on LinkedIn. Mark with a C, the appropriate way to spell Mark. Hill, obviously. My books are all on Amazon. You can look up either my name or you can look up 2Dark30 or look up Read Before Leading. Otherwise, my website, which is 2dark30

.com, it's all written out, no numbers. Or you can get a hold of me on my website as well. My email address is markhill, all one word, at 2dark30 .com. So I'm out there. You can look up 2dark30. That's where most of my stuff is found under. Beautiful. Well, Mark, I want to say thank you. I mean, just even for the conversation, just having the ability to explore areas and get two different perspectives, I think is so, so important.

So kind of taking this path down, you know, mining and education and talking about some of the working environments and then, you know, the leadership has been a phenomenal conversation. So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today. Thank you for having me, James. I loved being here. And if you want to have me come back, I'll come back anytime you want.