Revolutionizing Agri-Safety: AgriSphere's Innovative Solutions in Agriculture - An In-Depth Look with Frank Byers and Glenn Dickey

Safety Consultant with Sheldon Primus

Links mentioned in this episode:
COSS Training: https://cosstraining.org/
AgriSphere: https://agrisphere.com/
Announcer (00:00)
This episode is powered by Safety FM.
Sheldon Primus (00:13)
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to another exciting episode of Safety Consultant with Sheldon Primus. I'm your host, Sheldon. And today we're actually going to be diving into the world where agriculture meets advanced technology. I'm talking to the people from AgriSphere. But before we get to that, I just want to thank everybody for listening into the show and joining. This is the show I teach you about being a safety consultant. We talk about OSHA compliance, we talk about regulatory things. We also talk about mindset for your business, making sure you're ready. So that's what we're going to do.
Sheldon Primus (00:56)
So let's thank all the wonderful people that have been listening to this show. So let's start with the bCast because I want to make sure I get this in before our interview, right? So you guys know that I host on bCast, and let's see what their numbers are telling me by countries and listeners. US, number one. Finland, thank you. Number two, France, UK, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Bahrain, South Africa, Thailand, Singapore, Italy, Hong Kong, Australia, Hungary, Spain, Belgium, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Ireland, Chechnya, Cambodia, Israel, Denmark, Algeria, Rwanda, China, New Zealand, UAE, Uganda, Greece, Mauritania. Oh, God. I did it again, didn't I? Sorry. You guys are going to have to send me in the chat how to say that right. We have to look that one up. Norway, Japan, Egypt, Qatar, and Qatar. I don't know. You guys are going to have to help me out with that one, too. Sweden, Taiwan, Croatia, Kenya, and India. Welcome, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Let's go over to the charts. I use Chartable for this one, and this is going to be my category, the Apple podcast category for the show. Right now in Saudi Arabia, we are 114. Awesome. Thank you, gang. That means you're listening and sharing it with friends, and I really appreciate that. South Africa, we're at 222 right now. Turkey, number 27. What? Turkey, 27. Awesome. 75 in Chile, and Qatar, 26. Everyone, thank you. Thank you, thank you so much for listening to the You guys are all like super rock stars. Rock stars, you all. That is awesome. So let's give you the chartable one. And there's two in the global reach For my category in government, it's 234, and in the US, I am 186. So again, that's because you are listening, you're sharing it with friends, you're telling colleagues about the show, and that's awesome. So thank you.
Sheldon Primus (03:33)
So right now, I'm going to tell you a little bit about today's episode. I'm going to talk to AgriSphere, and I have a little accent when I say it, so forgive me. They're not just a regular company. They're truly like superheroes, you know? And it's just in the agriculture industry, they just blend all kinds of power, such as cloud-based solutions with Magic of Safety and Operation Management together. So they're pretty cool. So what happened is I had a student, Glenn, and Glenn Dickey is part of AgriSphere, and he was going through... Actually, Glenn had COSS with me and COSS-M. So some of you may know COSS as Certified Occupational Safety Specialist and COSM as Certificate Occupational Safety Manager. I am an instructor for both of those through the Alliance Safety Council. So just go to cosstraining.org, pick a class. If it's online, chances are you'll have me as your instructor. So we're talking in class and he's like, Oh, man, we do this. And it was just really cool hearing in class the experience and the knowledge that he had. And I figured, All right, let's get these two together. And that was Frank Byers and Glenn Dickey together. They're the dynamic duo of AgriSphere. And honestly, they've been- it was really eye-opening hearing them. The solutions that they have for their clients, they're like the Swiss Army knife of the agriculture industry. You need management consulting? All right, check. Training? All right, they got it. Site auditing, check. It's amazing. The cloud-based software that they created is like a genie in a bottle for the agriculture needs. Honestly, I thought it was really cool talking to them, getting a good idea of the All SAFE program that they have. They use it in many ways. But then also, it's like for every solution that their client needs, they have to think beyond the box for safety consulting, not just being consultants in safety and health, but then providing all other services for clients. It's just like they grew with their clients, if you would. The benefit of hearing Glenn and Frank today is Frank really talked a lot about how they developed different aspects of their company. I want you guys who are considering being safety consultants to listen real close just so that you could get an idea that you don't always have to think the audit part or the compliance part. There's a few other things that you mix in. Frank was kinda like a master chef, just mixing in a little EHS here, a little productivity here, a little quality here, and get you a nice little ingredient for his client. So truly had a great time talking with Frank and Glenn. You guys are going to have a wonderful time just listening. So just go ahead and let's sit back, just relax, and then let's get ahead and listen to a little bit of AgriSphere.
Sheldon Primus (06:59)
Welcome, Frank and Glenn. Tell everybody a a little bit about yourselves.
Frank Byers (07:33)
Good afternoon, Sheldon. As you said, my name is Frank, Frank Byers. I'm one of the co-founders and current President of AgriSphere Services, LLC. I'm joined here by my associate, Glenn Dickey.
Glenn Dickey (07:49)
I have been in Sheldon's COSS and COSM classes, both of them.
Frank Byers (07:56)
Absolutely.
Sheldon Primus (07:57)
You're still around? You haven't kicked me out yet?
Glenn Dickey (08:03)
No. In fact, we'll be sending another one your way here pretty soon.
Sheldon Primus (08:06)
That's great. That's excellent. For those of you that aren't familiar with the terminology, COSS is Certified Occupational Safety Specialist. COSM, Certificate of Occupational Safety Manager. I am one of those contract instructors for the program through Alliance Safety Council. So it's not my program, but I honestly enjoy teaching it because I get to meet these wonderful people who are currently doing safety and health. When Glenn took my class, he's like, We do the same thing. You got to get my boss Frank on and tell us a little bit about AgriSphere. See? My bad.
Frank Byers (08:51)
It's Agri-Sphere. So it's Agri-, like agriculture, and -sphere, as in just a 3D circle, basically. So the idea there is that we encompass quite a few elements to help our customers with occupational health and safety and some other things that are related and have touch points in that program. So when we were coming up with names, it just seemed to fit, and it sounded a little futuristic, considering we've got software and technology as a part of what we offer. So it's stuck.
Sheldon Primus (09:30)
Yeah. When you're doing the conceptual side, what were you doing before that?
Frank Byers (09:38)
You mean before, prior to AgriSphere forming? Yeah. I actually was a risk manager for a telecommunications company that provided off-campus student housing with IT services, video, Internet, WiFi. I worked in a lot of different markets across the US. And so working through business licenses, we did a lot of directional underground boring, so we had to get permits, the legalities thereof, et cetera, et cetera, which the field construction side is what initially got me more familiar with construction safety prior to really focusing on agriculture, which I'm sure we'll talk about at some point.
Sheldon Primus (10:28)
Wow. Cool. Glenn, what about yourself?
Glenn Dickey (10:32)
Well, as you know, I think we've talked this before. I worked at a plant, Archer Daniels Middle, ADM for 10 years. Then when I left there, I met up with Frank, and since we're both in the same field as far as safety, and it's been a rolling battle since then. I mean, it seems like we don't ever have enough time to get everybody in. During the class time, you and I discussed a few of our clients that we've been through, not necessarily the names, but the situations. So you know, have an understanding of what we deal with on a daily basis.
Frank Byers (11:06)
So one of the things that really brought Glenn and I together as far as building a partnership in working in AgriSphere is he's got tremendous operational background. He's got a lot of knowledge on not necessarily how it should work in theory, but in reality, how is it actually working? And more importantly, how are the employees behaving? How are they responding? How are they reacting to policies, procedures, safety regulations? When I had the pleasure and opportunity to meet Glenn, and we had the chance to start working together. He actually joined AgriSphere as a contractor, assisting me in some of the things that we do. And what we do is fairly widespread. It's pretty diverse. It's kinda complicated, and somebody can't necessarily just walk off the street and do everything we do, as you well know. And so seeing Glenn had that background and was willing and interested to try and grow into more of a managerial administrative role and take a totally different approach with that knowledge and experience. It's really been a home run for our company. Our customers really relate to what he does and how he does it. And more importantly, the folks out in the field that we're working with every day, that's where the rubber hits the road. And he's excelling at bringing those messages to those folks and really getting that buy-in.
Sheldon Primus (12:43)
Wow. And it sounds like the partnership as well as the way that you guys work together, how many years is that? Because it seems to me that you guys seem to be very connected.
Glenn Dickey (12:59)
Four years?
Frank Byers (13:01)
Yeah, just about four years. The way AgriSphere has developed our team, which is a very small team, very specialized team, is bringing them on as contractors. And they may have some past experience or some expertise or knowledge that they're bringing to our team in those key areas. But over time, what we like to do is develop contractors who maybe are looking for a new career opportunity or a full-time opportunity, maybe who had worked for previous larger companies and are looking for more of a consultant type of role, and then bring them on and teach them how to do things in our way how to interact with all of our other products, how to interact with our software, how to really tailor your approach for our target customer, which happens to be commercial agriculture operators. And that's its own niche in and of itself. So there's a lot of understanding that mentality, that business model, how things work, nomenclature, the language of that particular niche in the industry. But again, a lot of that, Glenn had already checked off the box, having that excellent previous experience and has really grown into a safety manager and a leader in our company with our customers.
Sheldon Primus (14:26)
Wow. And just on the back-end side, just trying to figure out when you're in the mode to grow. Being so niche as you guys are, how do you determine, all right, this is something we want to do, and we could grow into this, and it fits us, and something that you're like, I don't know if we could do this, but let's give it a shot. Do you ever get any of those?
Frank Byers (14:51)
All the time.
Glenn Dickey (14:52)
Yeah.
Frank Byers (14:52)
Yeah, all the time. So backing up one minute, and this should add a little clarity, then I can answer your question more effectively. So what does AgriSphere actually do? In short, we're a full service professional consulting firm that specializes in occupational health and safety, as well as preventive maintenance. In food safety, food defense compliance for commercial agriculture. We also offer a proprietary in-house developed enterprise management software platform that offers a lot of functions and features, learning management, mobile forms management, task management, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So when we work with a customer, there's a lot of moving parts, whether they're a software-only customer, whether they're a service only customer, whether they're a safety customer, whether they're a preventive maintenance customer, or maybe they're all of the above. And so we're trying to implement everything. So back to your initial question, it's a It's a very inclusive product suite and service suite that we offer. So we tend to lean more on "and" instead of "or". So can we do this and that? Typically, the answer is yes. The biggest factors for us to make those determinations, though, is does it really add value for our customer? And does it reemphasize our model?
Frank Byers (16:29)
If it It's something that's so far out in left field that it's going to be completely not indigenous to anything else that we do, and we're going to have to onboard maybe a third party or a contractor or something to try and make this service work. Sometimes it's not worth it. But for the most part, most of the things that we offer, we don't do everything. We're a small company and a small team. So we rely heavily on our channel partners, third party manufacturers, OEMs, vendors, third-party consultant companies with whom we work and partner that may be focused in, say, automotive and don't necessarily work in agriculture unless they are working for AgriSphere. And we bring those certified safety professionals or COSS individuals over to support Glenn, for example, doing a safety audit. So we try and find very creative ways to do more with less as long as it integrates efficiently, if you will, in our universe, if that makes sense. And it's not too far in left field. Are we going to be doing engineering, stamping on skyscraper drawings and signing off on that kind of thing? No. But would we be able to do time-weighted average studies for dust exposure or other industrial hygiene type of activities, even though we don't necessarily have an IH on staff? Absolutely. And we do those types of things all the time.
Sheldon Primus (18:08)
Wow. And the growth model seems to be maybe generated by customer need?
Glenn Dickey (18:17)
Well, yeah, since COVID put a stop to things, as you know, but then it's been picking up ever since. So we just got our fourth one today. As a matter of fact, he came in and signed the papers, which we-
Frank Byers (18:28)
Fourth employee
Sheldon Primus (18:29)
Congrats.
Glenn Dickey (18:31)
But there's not enough of us yet to go around. We're trying to fit everybody in. And luckily, all of our clients that we have are good people to work with. They're willing to work with us as we create their program specific to them.
Frank Byers (18:47)
Yeah. They're definitely partners and highly involved in the implementation and onboarding and just general success of what we do across the board as our customers. But what's unique for us, and Glenn hit the nail right on the head, and that's COVID. Prior to COVID, we had far more interest and engagement from our industry on the service side. So field audits, safety training, certifications, programmatic support policies, procedures, things like that. Post-covid, our software side of our business has really ramped up in terms of demand and the way customers are expecting that toolkit, those types of solutions to be a part of any safety program or management program in general that they're onboarding. When they had to send everybody home and realize, well, we can't track everybody's compliance and safety training with everybody at home. We can't do our Friday, shut down the plant and bring everybody together to whip it out, solution anymore. We have to rely more on technologies and systems. And that's really changed the nature of our engagements and the kinds of conversations that we're having with customers early on in our sales and our relationship building process.
Sheldon Primus (20:20)
That sounds like a winning formula would be for you to really know how to listen to what the customers are saying, understand what they really need. Sometimes they say things, but they don't know what they really need yet, and you know how to interpret that, and then putting that into some sort of either product or service that could make your company grow better.
Frank Byers (20:45)
So we work with a pretty diverse clientele in terms of the size and complexity of the business, everything from companies that have just over the OSHA compliance requirement of 10 employees to companies that have upwards of 2,500 employees. Those differences in our clients' organizations obviously change their demand, interests, and requirements in what services we provide. For our smaller, less sophisticated, more hands-on companies that don't necessarily have full-time safety professionals or an existing or strong, actual implemented existing safety program, if you will, they may get more benefit initially working with us on the field side, doing the audits, helping them with their safety training, and spending a lot of time on their actual programs. A lot of times in our industry, we find clients may have a three-ring binder filled with policies, procedures, things like that. But the person that photocopied them or printed them off the Internet is no longer around, and it hasn't been looked at in the last 10 years, and they couldn't even tell you what's happening.
Sheldon Primus (22:12)
So true.
Frank Byers (22:13)
Absolutely. And unfortunately, When something actually happens, an incident actually occurs, that's going to be called on the carpet, and it's a part of their liability and their exposure, as well as trying to be a tool to help train and educate and balance the safety with the employees. So there is a tremendous amount of value in going through that and ensuring, essentially educating the stakeholders of our customers, making sure they understand the ramifications, the requirements, what OSHA intends, what OSHA is requesting here, and how we may need to work with them to change the culture, change the behavior, update the training, modify physical controls, modify the administrative controls, so on and so forth. And that usually is kind of an ongoing process. The priorities tend to shift a little bit as time goes on. We always start with the more severe issues, the things that are more IDLF type of subjects, such as lockout-tagout, anything involving electricity, working from heights, rolling stock, those types of things. But you know, on the other side of the coin, the other end of the spectrum, if you will, of the customers that we interact with, now we're talking about companies that have upwards of hundreds, if not thousands of employees. So they've got a full-time safety team, certified safety professional, people with college degrees and occupational health and safety and industrial safety and health. So for them, they don't necessarily need the education. They don't necessarily need the handholding, the implementation, the argumentative back and forth, well, this is why you should do this, and this is why the benefit is, and what happens if you don't. What they're looking for more is support and tools to make their jobs easier. So on the support side, for example, I'll ask Glenn to talk about that a little bit. We can come in and provide a large scale training, full-blown training engagements that are planned at an enterprise level, pulling in people from multiple locations, running through a very organized, efficient manner to get things done like that. And then on the tool side, the software to track and manage, facilitate online training, self-directed learning of employees using videos, quizzes and exams, as well as all the other records keeping for live and in class training that is either provided by that company and their professionals on staff or their safety team, or third parties such as AgriSphere coming in and training their employees. But we do a lot of that. And that's become something more in demand the more that we do, I would say. So for example, we-
Sheldon Primus (25:27)
Would that an add-on service? Like when you do the actual quote, you give them a quote for, let's say, the OSHA walkthrough, and then you do the quote that say, If you also need training, we will add this on at a certain rate. And, okay,
Frank Byers (25:44)
Yeah.
Glenn Dickey (25:45)
A la carte, right?
Frank Byers (25:46)
Yeah. There's basically three buckets of service that we provide. The first is the field service. And so that would be the OSHA or not just OSHA safety audits, we also do preventive maintenance equipment condition audits. A lot of times we've got customers that are buying and selling facility assets like grain elevators, for example, and we can come in and provide an assessment of the quality of the equipment, the state that it's in, those types of things. So there's a lot of services that are fit into that bucket, but most of that is a one and done scope. We've got a clear scope of work. We're going to come, we're going to perform perform the service, whatever that might look like, whether it's a forklift training or a health and safety audit. And once we're done, we'll deliver the information to you. The second bucket is content, and that includes everything from policies, procedures, full programs, templates, forms, permits, essentially anything that you could think of that you would need to, say, stand up a OSHA compliant comprehensive company-specific program on pretty much any safety and health topic, as well as preventive maintenance and food safety topic that you would need. That also includes training. We've got a very robust training library that includes PowerPoints, videos, quizzes, exams, live training, packages and presentations, hands-on verification of understanding, documentation, checklists, sign-in sheets, the So the list goes on. But that content bucket usually is incorporated with the third bucket, and that is our software and our technical solutions. And that is everything that we do, essentially in the first two buckets, field work and content, we try and ultimately dump into the third bucket for a customer and deliver to them everything that we do preloaded, ready to go. They don't need to do any scanning. They don't need to put anything in their files. They literally have us come out. We do the training, and then when we're done, they get all their records uploaded, ready to report, track, and get added to as time moves on. So Try to be as, again, simple and turnkey as we can based on each client's needs or level of capability internally or level of knowledge or understanding finding of what needs to happen. One of the things that we want to make sure is we don't leave any of our customers hanging out to dry by doing something and then not fully walking them through the remaining process of what they need to do. For example, if we do an audit for them and we generate a report and deliver that to them, they need to be very understanding of what now needs to happen to address those issues, perform corrective actions, document the fact that they're following up and acknowledging all these that we've identified because failure to do so puts them in a much worse position from an exposure and liability standpoint than before they even had us come out to do the audit. So there's a lot to this approach, and it's different every single client and every single customer, to your point, Sheldon.
Sheldon Primus (29:21)
And I do see those that are listening to this, either they're the safety consultant for their company or they want to do this for a business. I always try to get them to think about, and just as a digression to those of you listening, my biggest people always say, You're training your own competitors, and I'm I'm like, They're not competitors because literally there's so many people, there's so many businesses around the world, and this is a global show. So around the world, how am I going to be competing with them? My mind doesn't compute like that. How I'm thinking it is, we're all out there in our particular discipline to help people stay safe and to keep them in compliance. So that's my mini digression there. But it seems like with you guys and The way that your approach to the business side of the safety consulting aspect is you want to think ahead for the client, and then whatever question they're going to ask, you already know the solution, or at least you could try to get that solution for them. So that would lead me to- Okay, that may lead me to say you probably are going to be working with more of a service contract than one-off things. Is that fair to say?
Frank Byers (30:50)
Yeah, that's fair. I mean, particularly on the software side, talking from just a pure business model standpoint on this, When we first started out, AgriSphere in general, my partners and I, we looked at being just a pure consultancy service company. The issue with that is, as I'm sure you and your listeners can appreciate, is that it's either feast or famine, typically. You either have too many projects that you can't get to and you got to turn away business, which may mean you won't get another call in the future, and it's just bad in general. And you can't necessarily go out and find somebody that you trust that you can hire as a contractor just to do this one project. So you wind up having to turn away opportunities. Or it's an off-season. In our industry, agriculture, we're very seasonal. So during harvest, during planting season, we're going months and months without a paycheck because our customers, our companies in our industry are busy doing their jobs, and they're not going to be hiring the safety consultant or the project manager or the preventive maintenance consultant or what have you. So how we were able to bridge that gap is the software component. The problem with the software component is that it's extremely expensive if you want to do it proprietarily. If you want to bring some software element or aspect in terms of a solution to your customer, in today's world, there's a lot of opportunity to do that, and it enhances your practice as a consultant. But it doesn't necessarily generate the gap filling recurring revenue that your practice would need in order to in a row and sustain yourself beyond a single person putting a shingle out and doing what you can as a consultant. So we made that decision early on. And I'm here to tell you, we're on the brink of bankruptcy. Covid It was not our friend. There's a lot of challenges associated with trying to come up with the millions of dollars that it truly, absolutely in this world takes to build software that's going to be able to generate revenue for a service company. And so there's a lot of options. You can find third party solutions. There are companies out there that make safety management software that you can white label, possibly rebrand, those types of things. But very little opportunity to really tailor fit a solution unless you're going to build it. And if you're going to build it, you got to be ready to buckle up whatever your dollar estimate is, add about two more zeros, three more zeros to that and get ready. So, yeah, from a business model standpoint for us in our industry, there's quite a few consultants out there that do what we do. A guy in his truck, and he comes out and he helps the co-op and he does what he does, safety training here and there. We also have different entities in our industry that are not for profit that provide some level of safety services, very high level, not bespoke in any way, shape, or form, not specific to that company, but is a good starting point. But nothing like what we do, and definitely no safety management software solutions that that really focus on the activities and requirements indigenous to our industry. I mean, lockout-tagout, every industry, but there's very specific practices in grain handling, for example, that you must follow with regards to grain storage, structure, entries, permit required confined space entries, et cetera. So exactly. So Having the knowledge of building that all together and integrating it in a way, in a package, in a formula that makes sense to a 65-year-old green elevator operator, that's the challenge, the opportunity, the frustration, and the bane of trying to build software to fit what we're doing, specifically for the types of services we're providing. And so I challenge anybody out there. If you can do it, it's definitely It's going to enhance your business. It's going to take it to the next level. Now you're talking about becoming a true software as a service, integrated service provider with recurring revenue potential, those types of things, versus just providing a human in service, but it's a whole other magnitude of complexity and cost as a business model in general.
Sheldon Primus (35:53)
Yeah, that's true. And if you can, even the white label side of it, it does help you. And for those of you listening, it's going to help you if you want to try to sole-source something, if it's a choice between you and a competitor to one client, and you have something that this competitor doesn't have, such as a software system or even a training or something similar, then you could actually come up with a sole source letter yourself to say, I could do this above my competitor and therefore give you the opportunity to get that bid, to get that job.
Frank Byers (36:32)
Absolutely. Most of the companies that are going to be looking for recurring service engagements are going to expect some level of enhanced reporting, transparency, records keeping, something beyond emailed spreadsheets or PDFs, something that's going to actually enhance and make it easy for them to take that information and integrate it in whatever records keeping system they're using. So some touch point, even if you keep it simple in the file transfer or portal, if you will, the access portal space makes sense. I mean, Even now, accountants, lawyers, doctors, they've got customer portals where documents can be shared, things like that. And those types of solutions exist out there pretty readily. But that's very basic. There's not a lot of intelligence there. There's not a lot of customization. So could you get something going relatively quickly? Absolutely. But then you got to gauge how much cost do you have in it, versus how much can you resell it, versus how much value there is, and go from there. But yeah, having that feather in your cap as a safety consultant is definitely almost a requirement, I would say, in 2023. Even if you don't have aspirations to be the next commercial agriculture SAP like we do.
Sheldon Primus (38:07)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you guys were going to give a tip... Oh, go ahead, Glenn.
Glenn Dickey (38:13)
One of the things that I can bring to that table with regards to what Frank said is we had a client last year that I think I talked to you about it. It was an amputation. Within an hour, they had every piece of paperwork documented, everything that OSHA required sent to them off just because of his program. There was no searching in three-ring binders, there was no looking for training records.
Frank Byers (38:37)
Emails.
Glenn Dickey (38:37)
All that was done. It was all in one client portal, which this is his baby here, I guess we'll call it. So it is beneficial, not necessarily just for the training, but you deal with OSHA before as well. When they want their documents, they want their documents.
Sheldon Primus (38:53)
Within four hours.
Glenn Dickey (38:56)
Yeah. Within an hour, they had every document they requested.
Sheldon Primus (39:01)
That's awesome. And that just put you pretty much above other competitors in most cases. One of the questions that just came to me is, I tell most people it's easiest to start your business with compliance things because that's a driver. It's always a driver with compliance. And then later on, you get them your client repeat business. And my model for repeat business is try to 4X a relationship, meaning if you get them the first time with a job or a service, then do your best to see if you could come back and do another job or service. And even if they refer you to someone else, that could be a third time. But I say in order for those to ebb and flow the peaks and valleys, a lot of the things that really would help you is repeat business, getting customers back. Does that hold true to what you guys are seeing as well?
Frank Byers (40:00)
Oh, absolutely. So first and foremost, with our business model, particularly with the software, we're signing long term multi-year agreements with our customers. So even though we may front load say, audits or certain training activities, we do have a recurring element. Then maybe every two years during that service agreement, we perform follow up audits or every year we're doing whatever is the current training requirement, we're coming and doing the annual training or whatever the case may be. And that term is being really dictated by the use and engagement of the software. That's the underlying recurring long term element there. That being said, what we're finding is using that model, those three buckets, everything that I mentioned as far as right fitting and right sizing the solution for our customer, that we're actually growing by expanding the amount of services and the diversity of services that we're providing to existing customers, versus adding new customers all the time. So exactly what you're saying, and the rule of four, the multiple of four is actually very telling from a realistic standpoint. Our experience is that we do one training, and then even though that training is done, we're getting invited back to do this or that or this or that. And it's been very easy, if you will, once our customers see the value of the initial touch point, it becomes a much different conversation. And they're the ones asking us to come back and do this. Once they see how it all works with our field work and our content and our software, and they say, I like this. This is easy. Now, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? And we've had more cases of customers at different levels within organizations being said, hey, if you're going to have AgriSphere do all these things, then why do we need Billy and Tom? So we have to be very careful of that. So we don't necessarily put our own champions out of a job necessarily. But at the same time, that's very normal and typical for us. Our industry is very antiquated, very it's archaic in its mindset and its look at technology and business practices. It's getting better. It's really a generational thing. It's as much an art to manage green and commodities in this industry as anything. The older generation really took that to heart. The newer, younger generation is more systems-oriented, wanting data, wanting dashboards, wanting key performance indicators and reports, and to see things, not just intrinsically understand it. And so it's really boding well for what we're doing. But at the same time, we have to be very willing to still work within the framework of the old ways, if you will, and bring that into the new method of doing things. And it's sometimes a painful process of change for our customers.
Sheldon Primus (43:24)
Yeah, especially since you first mentioned that a lot of your customers the smaller ones, are just really happy with simple. And then when you have to explain to them that simple will work for certain things, but then if you want to advance, then I guess part of your education would be, here's the compliance component, here's how you could advance your business if you could help me help you.
Frank Byers (43:50)
Exactly. There is so much ancillary value that is developed by having a more sophisticated safety program. There's so much crossover between your preventive maintenance, your operational efficiencies, your downtime, not to mention the obvious things with your insurance and all of your workers' comp and all of those direct cost things. But once you get data, you can start to really break down and analyze the indirect costs of safety and show the impact the impact of time off, time impacted injuries. Yeah, lost time injuries, work loss injuries. And how that has an impact in real dollars and cents on your operations.
Glenn Dickey (44:48)
Yeah. We just had a class. A preventative class.
Sheldon Primus (44:50)
And Glenn was great.
Frank Byers (44:50)
So there's a lot of opportunity for these solutions. I think in pretty much every industry, we just happen to be in one that's about 20 years behind the curve. And we're rapidly catching up. And again, that's very generational. Covid had an influence on that. A lot of people that have worked for 40 plus years in our industry took that cue to retire and didn't come back from the work from home. And so we've got a lot of newer, younger managers that are expecting to see things on their tablets and their computer screens, not sticking their finger in the wind and getting that pain in their left knee when it's time to sell a grain.
Sheldon Primus (45:38)
Oh, yes. Those are some of the old school stuff. Sometimes they're dead on, but you can't quantify it.
Glenn Dickey (45:45)
How do you transfer that?
Sheldon Primus (45:46)
How do you translate the pain to being this thing? But, oh, man, thank you guys so much for being on the show. Please tell everybody how to reach you.
Frank Byers (45:58)
Absolutely. Our website is www. Agrisphere A-G-R-I-S-P-H-E-R-E .Com. And you can reach us at [e-mail], as well as our toll free number, which is 1-844-424-7747.
Sheldon Primus (46:24)
All right. Yeah, I have to look for prompts, too, with stuff like that. I'm like, Hold on, where is it?
Frank Byers (46:29)
I have it written on the wall over here because I won't remember it off top of my head if I don't.
Sheldon Primus (46:34)
There you go. Oh, well, thank you so much. You guys really opened up the hood a little. Let everybody see how the business runs and then a little bit at the service side. So I'm sure the audience will appreciate that. And thank you so much.
Frank Byers (46:53)
Thank you.
Glenn Dickey (46:54)
Thank you.
Announcer (46:54)
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(47:04)
The views and opinions expressed on this podcast or broadcast are those of the host and its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within the past hour are only examples. They should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based on very limited and dated open source information. Assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast or broadcast may be reproduced, stored within a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast or broadcast, Sheldon Primus.

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