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AcadianaCasts Presents:
AcadianaCasts Presents:
Behavioral Safety, Emerging Musicians, and Community Harmony with Ray Flores
In this episode of AcadianaCasts Presents, Ray Flores, owner of Industrial Safety Solutions, shares how behavioral sciences can transform safety culture in high-risk industries. Drawing on his background in psychology and experience in the oil sector, Ray discusses using positive reinforcement, trust, and cultural awareness to empower employees and create safer workplaces.
We also dive into innovative paramedic training programs, exploring how to prepare teams to excel in safety and communication during chaotic scenarios. Insights from the Equilibria program show how understanding personality profiles can strengthen teamwork and collaboration.
Plus, hear the story behind Pink Trailer Productions, from its roots as a jam session space to a thriving music studio, and learn about Love of People's Community Thanksgiving event that feeds thousands while fostering connections. This episode celebrates the power of community, innovation, and service in Acadiana.
AcadianaCasts Presents: Ray Flores!
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Thank you to our sponsor, Industrial Safety Soultions! Visit them at IndSafetySolutions.com —because when safety is personal, everyone wins.
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"AcadianaCasts Presents" is the Flagship Podcast of the ACADIANACASTS NETWORK. Lafayette, LA based host, Carter Simoneaux talks with entertainers, business owners, athletes, chefs, and more - anyone who can help tell the story of Acadiana.
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If you want to watch this episode on YouTube, check out our channel!
If you walk into a child's room and you say, clean your room, and you come back and everything's picked up perfectly, but they left a pair of socks on the floor, if the only thing you observe is but you left socks on the floor, then the philosophies begin to back up from there. So we began to realize that wait a minute, if we catch people doing things right and we reinforce that eight times, it gives you a lot of room and leverage to move for the 20% when you have to talk to them about something that's at risk.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Acadiana Cast Presents. I'm your host, carter Semino. We're going to get to the conversation with Ray Flores in just a bit. He's the owner of Industrial Safety Solutions and that is who our title sponsor of today's episode is. Let me tell you a little bit about my friends over at ISS Now.
Speaker 2:Every day, thousands of workers step onto industry worksites brave, skilled and ready to get the job done. But here's the question Are they safe? At Industrial Safety Solutions, we don't just focus on safety policies. We focus on behaviors, cultures and human performance elements. Our top-notch safety professionals build trust with your team, working directly with them to build a culture where everyone looks out for each other, because getting home safe at the end of every hitch is what matters most. With industrial safety solutions on your site, you're not just getting compliance, you're getting commitment. We bring safety supplies, equipment and, most importantly, a human approach to risk reduction. Our experts work side-by-side with your team, earning their trust and creating habits that protect them on and off the job. Ready to make safety your priority? Contact Industrial Safety Solutions today and let's secure your teams tomorrow.
Speaker 2:We're going to learn a lot about industrial safety solutions and Ray Flores and some of the things that he does with his business and outside of his business and some other ventures. But if you want to contact them today, visit us at indsafetysolutionscom. That's indsafetysolutionscom Because when safety is personal wins all right. Here he is mr ray flores and talking to you in the past. Um, I I've told you that my dad was in uh safety sales his entire career. Uh used to mostly sell like scbas to to fire departments across Louisiana, oklahoma, arkansas, mississippi. Now he's mainly working for 3M doing more of the industrial side of things. But what got you into the safety business?
Speaker 1:I didn't really think much about it when I was a young man. I went to school on a seven and seven program that USL offered and of course part of that curriculum had to do with safety, code of federal regulations, that kind had to to do with safety code of federal regulations, that kind of thing. But I spent most of my my the first 13 years of my oil field career followed my dad into the industry, went to work on a drilling rig and then wound up working in uh production operations for amico, which was a great job and um, I think I knew I was watching. You know, good company with good people, with what was then a good safety program. But people were still getting hurt and um, you know the the the sign said please report all accidents. And when you did report your accidents, sometimes not so nice things happen, so it was kind of counterproductive. So so, as a you know industry goes on, I began to understand that there were incidents that were happening that were simply not getting reported and I always thought that was kind of a sad thing. Um, which started pulling me more into cultural identifications of what you know what makes organizations safe, unsafe Went back to school as a 27-year-old and began studying psychology and communications and understanding the behaviors and that there was a movement happening in the industry coming out of the West Coast and some of the East Coast philosophies driving behavioral sciences towards safety management, and that's what I focused on.
Speaker 1:So I went back to school and continued to take industrial psychology, grabbing every communications excuse me, industrial technology, grabbing every communications and psychology course that I could. That helped me understand fundamentally what's a behavior then. What's an at-risk behavior versus a safe behavior? How do you identify? And then incorporating, you know, Deming's total quality management philosophies embedded in that Helps you monitor, measure and manage. If we can observe it, you know we can measure it. If we can measure it, we can manage it, and built a company on that in the early 90s, focused just on those principles, and then I've been in the industry ever since and it's evolved a lot.
Speaker 2:It's cycled back through so whenever you're starting industrial safety solutions, how do you get your first client?
Speaker 1:Well, it wasn't industrial safety solutions. Back then I started the organization with a guy named Mike Marino who was our fearless leader. He was a master degree, an MBA guy from UL who studied a master's degree, an MBA guy from UL who studied organizational behavior. And he was the one that kind of introduced those concepts to me as I was returning to school. And we popped out and we started a company and you know, mike went on to do his thing in the construction industry at an international level and I just love the safety business so I've been anchored in it since that time.
Speaker 2:That time, so yeah, so I mean this. It's such a foreign world to me. You know, the oil and gas world and and even you know, with the, the risks that that come with that. So, when studying and learning and implementing these, these communication or these pattern behaviors, uh, like what? What is unique to oil and gas that you guys face when it comes to?
Speaker 1:honestly it's.
Speaker 1:It's nothing unique it's, uh, it's a it's a behavior it's a, yeah, humans is the common, the common factor, right, uh, but a behavior is a behavior, whether it's in a refinery or an oil and gas rig or driving an 18 wheeler. So these systems and these processes apply pretty much to any industry. It was the way that we began to implement and maintain the system. So most of the companies that we were competing with had a great philosophy to design these systems and teach people how to use it and then send them to their locations with a big binder and instructions on how to operate the system. We did that. Plus, because of my industrial offshore background, I went offshore with the people who are going to be implementing this and I began walking the platforms with them and just kind of took it to the field level. Before you know it, I'm walking around with cameras and shooting videos and taking pictures and we're analyzing and seeing. What do we like about what we're seeing, what are some identifiable behaviors where we're at risk and what do we do about them? That's that's what we did, and I did that first with a couple of small companies for free, just to try to load, test the systems and kind of refine our, our, our, our process.
Speaker 1:And then one day I had an opportunity to talk to some people at shell and shell at that time was just emerging into the gulf of mexico with these, uh, world-class deep water projects and, um, we gave them a sales pitch and said, hey, here's how we think we can help.
Speaker 1:And, um, the first project I went on with shell was the auger project and it was, uh, it was already installed. Uh, they had yet to bring first project and it was already installed. They had yet to bring first oil in, but it was like the cream of the crop people who were really, really smart, very accomplished in their careers, that I had the privilege to work with to help me refine my systems and processes, with people who were genuinely interested to understand how can they enhance their own professionalism as well, and that's where we honed our skills. And then there were, you know, three or four more deepwater projects behind that. It was Auger, mars, rand, powell and Ursa. And once we did those projects it was kind of like we could just storyboard who we wanted to work with next.
Speaker 2:Well, so you said you know kind of backtracking, that you know some of these philosophies were coming from the West and the East coasts, um, probably in academia first and then, you know, implemented into the workforce. But uh, I'm wondering, like you know, chicken or the egg thing like, what came first, like federal safety regulations, or did it come from the private sector?
Speaker 1:No, it came, uh, federal regulations. Um, the private sector no, it came. Federal regulations holding operators accountable for their incidents became a big deal recordable incidents. If you had a contractor in the early days, if you had a contractor, you said, well, we, you know, dow Chemical or Shell Oil or whoever the company is, we didn't have an accident. It was that contractor had the accident. So the record doesn't go on ours, the record goes on them. And then one day the regulators came in and said okay, you can't do that anymore. That contractor has an incident on your location, you're held accountable for that incident. Grab your contractors, engage them to support their training initiatives. So that was fundamentally where it started.
Speaker 1:And then and the behavioral sciences have been around for a very, very long time, um, I mean probably since the 30s and the 40s, if you really want to go back and do them, you know, trace the, uh, the origins. But, um, what we, what we learned, was that, as we, as we move forward, was that observing these behaviors, these particular behaviors, let's just say lifting techniques, okay, um, if I said to you, carter, uh, there are 10 boxes on the wall over there, can you mind taking those boxes and move them and relocate them to this wall. I would simply watch you pick up the boxes and, um, then I would observe like, how many times are you using proper lifting techniques? So I I'll just ask you a question. Fundamentally speaking, if I simply said, hey, carter, can you move those boxes, how many times do you think you would use proper lifting techniques?
Speaker 2:Zero Okay.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to give you more credit.
Speaker 2:Luckily, our friends at Arise Physical Therapy and Sports Lab have helped me out.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, so you've had some training and some awareness since then yeah, okay, so fundamentally. Let's just say you would do five. Let's say you pick up five boxes by bending at your knees and, you know, not leveraging your lower back as a as a mechanism.
Speaker 2:Yeah, probably the first two. I would do right and then I would. You know I'm kind of antsy and and and uh, impatient okay, so.
Speaker 1:So we measured. Okay, so two times out of ten times you use proper lifting techniques. Um, so that would be 20%. So what we would say is Carter, 20% of the time you're lifting things, we see that you're using good lifting techniques at a boy way to go, but we have to understand how can we get you to 50%, right? So my next question would be Carter, have you ever had any training and lifting techniques? And if the answer is no, I've never been to a training course. Okay, let's start there. So I send you to a training awareness class and then you come back the next week and you said I've been through the lifting techniques class and I say great, 10 more boxes showed up. Now go pick them up and move them. And now, how many times do you think that you would pick up those 10 boxes using proper lifting techniques?
Speaker 2:I think I get a solid eight.
Speaker 1:Okay, great. So we went from 20% to 80%. So you can see the measure, we can observe it, we can measure it, we can manage it. So we now know we went from 20% to 80% is 100% realistic, is certainly achievable, but not necessarily realistic. But I would say, if we can hang out at that 80% range, we're probably doing pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But then now we rotate you know random observations through other people, and now we have a collective observation in our database so I can tell you specifically this is where we were. The next week you come back, you go back to 40% because you got in a hurry or whatever the case may be. But now we have these, these tools that can help us measure and have some predictive concept of where do we think that next accident is going to occur. In other words, if you're wearing your safety glasses, 100% of the time we can say it's probably not going to be an eye injury. However, we see these lifting techniques are cycling back down. So what do we need to do? We need to increase awareness. How do you maintain awareness? So then we started working on feedback, coaching, development, observe, perform feedback and then let's go back and let's measure it again over the course of time.
Speaker 1:And those proved to be outstanding, right, but the first behavioral system that I really understood to exist at that level was developed by DuPont. It was a DuPont STOP program and the theory was they created an observation card and I'm thinking like hey, carter, you and me are buddies, right, so I'm going to observe you doing some things, but it only measured at-risk behaviors, and so the only time I would put a mark on that card is if you had an at-risk behavior. Now I don't have to put your name on it or anything, but when you're just measuring at-risk behaviors and the only time you're talking to people about safety is when they're doing things wrong, eventually you're going to get tired of hearing from me, right, right. But then the system said but wait a minute. When these cards first came out, incidents plummeted and went down. Now they're creeping back up. We need more cards. You must continue to tell each other every time you see each other doing something wrong.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine the impact on a culture when the only communication regarding safety is based on pure negative or at-risk scenarios? It's exhausting. So the new principles that were coming out of the West Coast by Dr Thomas Krauss and the Behavioral Science Technology Group were highly inspirational to a lot of organizations like ours that were emerging, because they were like but wait a minute, if you walk into a child's room and you say clean your room, and you come back and everything's picked up perfectly, but they left a pair of socks on the floor, if the only thing you observe is but you left socks on the floor. Then the philosophies began to back up from there. So we began to realize that, wait a minute, if we catch people doing things right and we reinforce that eight times, it gives you a lot of room and leverage to move for the 20% when you have to talk to them about something that's at risk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you're not just they're more willing to receive it because yeah, because we're humans.
Speaker 1:It's, it's 110 degrees outside, you're, you're 11 hours into a 12-hour shift and you know someone like me is going to walk up and go. Hey, I see that you have an electrical cord in the walkway. I mean, sometimes you just don't want to hear the timings off right the white collar walks up and tells you what to do not good.
Speaker 1:So we developed systems a long time ago that opened up that level of communication to bring a two-way opening up with the positive and then ending with the. But I was concerned about some at-risk behaviors learning how to use a lot of um open-ended questions. So I'm not directing to you. You know you did this wrong and if you did it this way it would be correct, they know. So if you just say, is there a better way to do this? And let them kind of talk it out, and they go like, well, yeah, if I would have done this or that and hung it over the walkway, I mean yeah, that's it. I mean they just basically self-corrected, adjusted, provided their own feedback and we just created the awareness.
Speaker 1:So the next time that individual has to work in an area similar to that, when they think about obstructions and walkways or trip hazards, they're more likely to to just think about what they said, not necessarily what we told them. Yeah, and that philosophy began to take hold and we had very, we had great success with it. And then the next tier from that was getting into the paramedic business. You know our friends here in Acadiana. I'm sure everybody knows Acadian Ambulance.
Speaker 1:They are world-class. They are the, the tippy top, in my opinion, of the pyramid of all things medical, especially emergency medical. So we thought that it would be a good idea to compete with them, and we did, but only in remote locations and offshore locations. And the way that we did that and, trust me, I competed with those guys on a very respectful, very open market, right. So we, you know, we would chat from time to times and, um, you know about our our, you know what we were doing, what our philosophies were. So they were the first people organization, I should say to basically put paramedics in remote locations, paramedics on a drilling rig, etc. And, uh, they did. That was a great thing, right, you have. If somebody falls, you have a paramedics on a drilling rig, et cetera. And they did. That was a great thing, right you have. If somebody falls, you have a paramedic, world-class pharmaceuticals emergency room situation set up with a. You know, chances are they had a.
Speaker 1:We weren't FaceTiming then, but they had some method of working with a medical director to look at what they were doing on Zoom. They doing on Zoom, they went to Zoom. I can't even think of the names. How long it's been so long. Maybe Skype? No, it was way before that.
Speaker 1:Way before that, but they were on the front end of the technology and the fact of emphasizing professional medical care in remote locations. So in order for us to be able to compete with that level of service which, by the way, I don't think I completely understood how sophisticated they were, because I probably would never have done this it's kind of ignorance, is a bliss, but in my mind it became more about raising the bar in the industry. And what can we bring to the industry? Paramedics who had experience some of them previously worked for Acadian or other providers to come to work in my organization and we trained them on the safety side and we trained them on the art of communication and observation and feedback. So now I've got a paramedic on a drilling rig who has instant credibility because he's a paramedic and everybody knows if I get thumped that's the guy or the girl that's going to save my butt. Now we have them talking to you in the field about, like I was noticing you were, you know, climbing the ladder and working at a height and you weren't you weren't tied off, you didn't have any fall protection that that communication could be so well received by those people. And that's where we began to fortify these paramedics with these skills and these tools.
Speaker 1:Additionally, because they weren't riding necessarily riding ambulances to hone their skills and ivs, our training program became very, very intense when they were in, like, we had this box that we built, um, that had a you know uh entrance and uh for um I'm sorry for um we had an entrance for confined space entry and confined space, rescue this box.
Speaker 1:And we would get the box and we'd shoot videos of these paramedics going into confined space with their air packs and we would create a chaotic situation where we'd pump smoke into the room, we'd turn the lights on and off and then we'd put high-noise speakers so that if there was an emergency situation or a remote location, our guys were you're going to be conditioned to not be on standby until somebody brings you somebody hurt, but you're going to be part of mitigating the actual identifying, mitigating the actual event. So the chaos. So we would. We would have these dummies. We paid thousands and thousands of dollars that we could administer these IVs to, we could simulate compound fractures and everything else and we'd send these guys into this confined space, seal the door, puppet full of smoke, bang on space seal the door, pump it full of smoke, bang on the side of the door, scream, just create a chaotic situation and say oh, by the way, you have to stick this IV in that dummy.
Speaker 1:Then the door closes and the lights go out.
Speaker 2:Then we open the door and throw in a couple of glow sticks and say oh, by the way, this is your source of light Now do it.
Speaker 1:God bless these guys. Source of light now do it. God bless these guys. Nice nightmare feel. No, we did so so.
Speaker 1:So our guys were just so intensely trained for that remote location that in the event of an emergency situation, we were prepared and we were confident. And then after that, we just to a classroom to talk about communication styles, observations, providing feedback, identifying, um, emotional distress. Uh, you know, somebody might be totally depressed. You don't really understand their circumstances, but it's about who we're talking to, first and foremost, before we start talking, where their circumstances and let's get them in the right area to have those conversations. So our effectiveness was more than proven in the industry and the people that worked for us were extremely well trained. And I can't tell you how proud I am to have left that mark on the industry and the people that work for us were extremely well trained.
Speaker 1:And I can't tell you how proud I am to have left that mark on the industry, because when I was knocking on doors asking people to please let me have a you know, a bunk bed and three square meals a day and I want to put a safety guy in their location, I was literally laughed at. Like you're kidding, right? You want me to give you three squares and a bunk for a dude. Who's going to manage what? Like you're kidding, right, you only give you three squares and a bunk for a dude. Who's going to manage what? Your safety, sir, um, and managing your pre, your pre, your pre-job, uh, meetings and um. That's where it started.
Speaker 1:And and, and you know, then we had one and then two, and then you know, at the um, I mean right now, uh, then here we are in the fourth quarter of 2024. I think we have about 130 field reps. I'm not in the paramedic business anymore because that last downturn wiped us out and it's a very high cost, high. The financial expectations to be effective in that industry are quite significant and, to be honest with you, I I think we made a mark and it's not something I care to do. First responders we do great training for that, but I'll leave the paramedic business to the people that do it best, and I think Acadian is probably that group. Right, but yeah, we raised the bar on each other because they were doing similar things. They were hiring some of the same professors that I was idolizing to come work for them to compete with us.
Speaker 2:It's amazing what effective communication can do for any sort of organization, and I learned some skills actually at ISS during a little leadership seminar talking about learning different personality types and how to communicate with that personality type. If you're this personality type right, can you kind of you know and you've you've probably taken that class a thousand times at this point or or enacted it no, actually I have not, but the thank you for referencing that, because that was a pretty quick we.
Speaker 1:We created that class actually for the music industry, right.
Speaker 1:But communications it's all about humans and regardless of what field you're in, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:It's about identifying who we're talking to, how do we get a message across, but equally as important is how do we listen. So the program that we use is one that was given high accolades and is still used to this day by Chevron, and it's called Equilibria Equilibria with an A at the end, and that program has four colors profiles, just like a lot of them do. And the way it works at Chevron is so fascinating to this day is that when you walk into one of their locations, you have the little man stick character on your hard hat and it tells us what your top color and bottom colors are, so as, even as a safety person walking into a group, at a quick glance, I can look around and see do I have primarily reds or do I have primarily yellows? I mean, fundamentally speaking, I'm top color yellow, which means I, as you can probably tell, like to express myself and I want to color the landscape so you can get all the beautiful details. Reds don't like that, so much Reds like straight to the point.
Speaker 1:Give it to me, man, and let me take my medicine and move on, Right? So if I see that I'm talking to a top color red, I have to conscientiously fine tune my conversation to let me just get to some quick points.
Speaker 2:Otherwise the eyes are gonna start glazing over and if this person right.
Speaker 1:And if a red wants to engage me more, then he'll ask me questions and we'll move on from there. Top color yellow, like here's a picture of my puppy dog, here's my baby and look, my new grandbaby. And yeah, reds kind of don't care too much Not that they're not compassionate people, but just under those circumstances, just be mindful, right. But in the way that I'm describing how we outwardly communicate to these color references, it's also critical that we listen, right. So Mr Red talking to Mr Yellow here has got to go.
Speaker 1:Oh God, he's, he's a yellow, it's Ray, he's so yellow he's freaking me out. But I'm going to sit here and I'm going'm gonna be real quiet and I'm gonna listen very politely with my hands in my lap. I'm gonna thank him very much and we're gonna move on, right? Uh, so I? We have to be mindful both in how we deliver information, but, equally as important, in how we receive and how we process information yeah, I think I was a top yellow, uh, or maybe I know I was like yellow and blue I think you were were yeah, and so those, yeah, the blue and the green colors.
Speaker 1:You know more about analytics and you know just consciousness, but the bottom line is that the profile will tell you and, by the way, it's a free profile that you can go take online and just set it to you know, if you want to just do an assessment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can put the link in the description.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, without you know, bogging down in all the details, fundamentally a yellow and a red. Just make it real easy comparison. Other than that, you're kind of getting into the analytics. So, yeah, those tools are very powerful and we have. Most of my field representatives understand those colors and the interplay and how they work so they can walk up to an individual like, for example, you and I are going into a meeting and I'm going hey man, we're going to go talk to Luke and you know this guy, john Williams. John Williams is very, very yellow, but that guy, luke, is very red. So just keep that in mind. I can just tell you that before we walk into a room and if you know those two colors, you know exactly I just gave you the key to the kingdom and how to relate to both of them. Send the flowers to John, but be more direct when you're talking to Luke. He likes it that way, right?
Speaker 3:You like it that way, luke yeah he nailed it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and fundamentally that's how it works. So yeah, all these tools, these communication tools, observation tools, and now the cycle has gone from the behavioral sciences and the communication side to, uh, industry really wants to understand the human performance element. So, like when we know what a behavior is and, uh, you know, we know what an observation is and we understand the communication tools. But let's back up and figure out this human performance element is what's triggering these behaviors? Why do people conduct these behaviors? To begin with, because sometimes you say, well, he did that or she did that. You might say, oh, how brilliant. Or you might say, oh, how unintelligent, whatever the case is, but there's always reasons, right, and one example I'll use is that if I said, quick, carter, go turn the water valve off, you're going to go turn the valve clockwise right. Clockwise turns typically turns things off and counterclockwise typically opens the valve. Every life experience you've ever had, that's what it told you. But what you didn't know was that that valve was manufactured overseas and it's actually a left thread valve right now. So the whole time that you're trying to close it, you're really opening it, and that's a fact.
Speaker 1:This happened on one of the most tragic um offshore accidents. You know, back in the early 90s, maybe late 80s, uh, the piper alpha, because the the. It was a deep water facility that was uh, in rough seas and it was. It began to list and when the individual went to open the valve to shift the water balance from one side to the other, to bring it in balance, unbeknownst to that individual, they were actually opening the valve and created more and it turned into a catastrophic event.
Speaker 1:There's much more to the root cause analysis than that, but that's a fundamental example. Does that make that individual a bad person? Or was that individual just leveraging their human performance, which was everything I've ever been taught? This is how you do it right. So we begin to look at it and peel the layers off and now we're at the human performance level. Industry is getting real sophisticated and I think most people, especially those on the outside of the oil and gas industry who might have an unfavorable opinion of our industry, would be shocked to understand how sophisticated many of the systems that we run really are.
Speaker 2:Well, I definitely got a peek under the hood of not only the industry but industrial safety solutions and kind of how you guys operate, but kind of shifting gears here. You mentioned that this, you know this system. You first implemented it with musicians. Now you've been very involved with the Blue Monday mission, with Love of People, and you've also started kind of a new side project, pink Trailer Productions, and I kind of want you to kind of get into that. But tell me if I'm wrong here. But the goal behind it is to create almost an affordable place for young or up-and-coming musicians to have a place to go record in a professional setting and have a nice, either a demo or even an album recorded, or EP, whatever it might be, and kind of helping offset those costs at another studio or something like that. Am I on the right page there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you, I on the right page there. Yeah, yeah, you're, you're on the right page. Um, I think I'd like to back it up a little bit to explain how we got to where we. Yeah, please do so.
Speaker 1:Um, I've always loved music. I'm, I've always been, kind of a wannabe musician. I can play a little bit of bass, a little bit of guitar and just enough drums to get me in trouble, but I have fun with it, right. And so I built this little studio. One time we had we had mixing equipment I wouldn't say necessarily recording equipment, but we could record and I invited my musical buddies from Lafayette to come and participate. And I found myself with guys like Major Handy. Lee Allen would come in a couple of times the old days, david Egan would come by and play piano, so you never knew who was going to show up on a Sunday afternoon. I'd get somebody to come cook a gumbo or fire up a barbecue pit and turn on the instruments and we were just having fun. And that was my beginning of like, hey, there's something here, right? And the idea was guys like me who can kind of play a little bit but want to be inspired to step up and play some more. These older musicians were there having fun with us. They were patient and they were allowing us to kind of just keep cycling until the music shows up, right. And then eventually we you know, we we had fun and it was, it was a great experience.
Speaker 1:Then the industry crashed and I had to put all that stuff in storage for a long time and that was, you know, back in 15 through 17.
Speaker 1:In 19 and 20, I began to think about like, okay, I've always had that vision. All of that equipment was in storage. I was aware of the fact that I wanted to start doing something again, maybe a little bit with a little bit more of a statement, a little more towards the recording side. And I was made aware of a fact that there was a guy in town by the name of John Williams doing something with these aging blues musicians and Zydeco musicians. And I got to meet John and understand personally and I thought, oh my gosh, this guy, he's taken the model that I've always dreamed of wanting to operate and he's actually doing something about it. He's actually bringing these musicians in and he's actually allowing these younger musicians that are emerging to come up and, you know, play two or three songs, uh, on a blue monday night with these bands, right that would be the art of business that was the art of business.
Speaker 1:It was crazy. And I looked at it and I was like, oh my gosh, this guy's ringing my bell. He, he motivated me, john williams did and inspired me to get involved, to participate. And the more I saw that model, the more I began to realize that this thing that I wanted to build was now something that could tag along, drag along, be a part of the Blue Monday mission, but maybe peel it off, where it's going to have to have its own identity, sure.
Speaker 1:So I'm on the phone with a friend of mine one day who called me up. He lives in Austin, he's a great singer-songwriter, we grew up together in Franklin, his name is Brent Cormier and Brent calls me one day and says well, tell me what's the latest greatest? And I said you know, things are good. A little bit about the business, so much. But then he said, well, you know, regarding your business, he said, man, you've come such a long way since that little pink trailer you grew up in in franklin. I honestly forgot that anybody even knew I grew up in a trailer that was pink and so the story there was like it was a small trailer. It was eight feet by like 65 feet. It was, um, you know my parents and, uh, you know we were five siblings. Um, never needed for anything. It was intensely packed with love. Mom made beans and tortillas and enchiladas and we were just a happy, warm little family. And um, and he told me he says, man, I said he said that little trailer was just full of love. I mean, we always enjoyed going there. Your mother, your family were always so nice and so gracious.
Speaker 1:Um, he said, so, what's next? And I'm like you know, I think I want to build this recording studio, but I have an idea that I want to give people that might not afford the opportunity to record a place to come and lay down tracks and work with. You know, musicians that are local and event, kind of like I was doing with my jam sessions back in the old days. And he said, man, that's that cool. He says, why don't you call it Pink Trailer Productions, where you're trying to help them make their dreams come true, just the same way that yours did? Right, there was a lot of magic that came out of that little pink trailer. Ray Flores, and I'm like it's seared into my skull when he said that. And I'm like, okay, that's it, and so that's how Pink Trailer concept was born. And then seeing what John was doing with Love of People and the Blue Monday Mission and getting to become friends with a lot of those guys, sealed the deal for me.
Speaker 1:And so now Pink Trailer exists, it's got its own little building in Youngsville south of Youngsville, and we've had a chance to do some pretty good recordings and I've got some of these great aging but still good-looking musicians you know that want to come play, and Lee Allen is a part of that, and we have Keith Saunier, who used to play with Terrence Simeon on drums, and, look, most of those musicians they all have open invitations to come and play or perform record on any event. But I've had to kind of formalize it a bit. So, uh, lee allen has sets up, uh, the tone for how we organize and, um, maybe make some arrangements. Um, but we just had a young lady by the name of mary broussard come through I say just it was the november of 2023 to record a christmas song called wish you were here. It's like a brainstorm.
Speaker 1:She had one day running in like I got to record the song, I just wrote it and, and so we got people like julie williams to come in and play or the piano and, uh, jb sax to do the saxophone, and I'm really proud to say that that song was just officially nominated for a grammy, wow, yeah. So, like pink trailer, check the box, you got the t-shirt kind of don't what exceeded my expectations on a very fast pace, but we're excited. And then we had this young man by the name of Dom Ellis, when we were emerging, trying to figure out how the studio was going to function and still look, it's still a work in progress, but Dom recorded some great songs and one of them that we recorded was Simple Guitar. It was just him and his guitar a song that he wrote that has now got about three and a half million streams on Spotify.
Speaker 1:So Pink, uh, a song that he wrote that has now got about three and a half million streams on spotify. So, um, pink trailer mission is alive and well and I feel like we're still just learning how to use this thing and it's going to be fun to watch. So, yes, we have afforded a lot of young musicians the opportunity to record with musicians they would not normally be able to have access to, and what we're asking for is a payback is, like, you know, we don't necessarily need your money. I mean, we want it. Okay, you got to pay something, we got to keep the electricity on, but we're not, we're not trying to, we're not loading up the bank with it.
Speaker 1:My company, industrial safety solutions, industrial solutions group, affords the opportunity for me to be able to to lay down these opportunities right, and what we ask for them to do is like, if we need something, we're going to call you to come back. So, for example, the community Thanksgiving dinner that we're going to do, I'm going to send a message to all of them saying you know, this is, this is, you know, uncle Ray's calling and he wants you to come serve some turkey at Thanksgiving dinner. So hopefully we get some of these musicians to come back and help out. But along the lines of that, or to come back and help other emerging musicians to come and be a part of their lives and part of their stories that's so cool, man.
Speaker 2:I mean I say this all the time, but you could throw a rock in any direction into katie and I hit a great player. Yeah, and and to to build resources to keep them playing and engaged and and inspiring and helping the next generation of artists such as myself. It's so valuable and you kind of like what you were saying earlier with. You know how patient some of these guys are with you and other quasi, I guess, musicians, emerging musicians. I've experienced that in this very room practicing with the Blue Monday guys. I've been fortunate enough to be able to play on stage with them a couple times, and I grew up in the wedding scene around the New Orleans area. Both my parents are musicians in their band and so I've got a lot of playing experience. But it's still intimidating walking to a room with Grammy Award winners and having to play A lot of Grammy Award winners, tons of Grammy nominated and a lot of winners.
Speaker 1:And you're right. And Carter, I've seen you perform with the blue Monday band, both in rehearsal and on stage. I got to tell you, man, you know you do great on stage, but during those rehearsals, when you just kind of letting it fly like you're nobody, like nobody's watching, that's fun to watch too and we'd love to have you out. Know you have access to all the recording facilities you need, but we just want to create an atmosphere where you can come out and feel comfortable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I've been there a couple times. I haven't played there yet, but it's definitely on the to-do list. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:We'll put some meat on the barbecue for you.
Speaker 2:All right, I love it. Well, kind of getting close to wrapping up, you just mentioned community thanksgiving. Uh, it's love of people's. 11th annual community thanksgiving. This year our goal is to feed 5 000 people across acadiana and the saint landry, lafayette and iberia parish areas, and that's an increase from 3600 meals that we donated last year, of which you were able to help with a few of them, about 200, so meals. And this year you're up in the up in the ante, as you've said before in another conversation. We just had, and you're going to be creating, like usually we have, our kind of our headquarters in sunset where we create the meals, package them up and then we send them out to all the distribution locations or the pickup locations. And this year you're creating one of those at iss in youngsville, and you're going to be creating and delivering or sending out 2,000 meals. How's that process been?
Speaker 1:It's emerging, we're still learning and every now and again I wake up and said I said we're going to do what? 2,000 meals?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you record it and I put it out on YouTube.
Speaker 1:You have me on tape so we have to do it now, gotcha, seriously. So the way it worked for me when I was aware of this, I was a supporter on the fringe, I was a contributor to the cause. Last year I made it out to sunset with my family and we actually participated in the event of the meal preps. That was very rewarding. I guess I have to tell you that the part that surprised me was how well organized it was. They knew exactly where you needed to be, you had a designated job and by 11 o'clock in the morning you were done and you could go home with some of those meals and go and have a dinner with your family. So you didn't really miss anything. I mean, like I'm the traditional guy, I love to wake up early and start the turkey and prep and bake, and you know I've just been that way since, you know, I was a kid. But so the departure from that norm is a new tradition, can be evolved, and because it was so rewarding for me, I've decided to take it to the next level.
Speaker 1:I started out this there's a little church in my community, in Youngsville, called the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church. It's an aging church. It's historically significant. It's established in 1917. It's a traditional white church, painted church with the patina tin roof. Uh, who, whenever it rains, they, they have a hard time parking. I drove by one day with some friends and we said, hey, let's go see if we can help this, this little church, out. And so we contribute to try to you know, uh, to help the church have some sustainability and in the um, in a sense that water gathers underneath it can create, you know, floor problems. So I began to connect with the little church on that level and I enjoyed attending their service there from time to time and they're a wonderful, wonderful little congregation.
Speaker 1:So two years ago we did 150 meals. I said, look, I'm supporting this organization. You think this church would be interested in distributing 150 meals. And we did, we set them up and they drove those meals out to their communities. And then the next, uh, last year, I said, you know, let's up the ante. So we did 200 meals, and so to go from 200 to 2000.
Speaker 1:So I went to the little congregation the other day and said, hey, we're going to do 2000 meals. I thought they were going to fall out of the pews but I explained to them like, no, it's a much bigger operation than that, but I wanted you to understand that the motivation for this to be in Youngsville actually started in this little community church and I thought you guys would be interested to know and, of course, to invite them to come and volunteer and to participate, which I think that you probably made some video, if I'm not mistaken, with Reverend Minister Bill Boudreau. So we're excited about that. And so now we have 2,000 meals to be prepared at my facility, industrial Safety Solutions. It's on Guernsey Lane in Youngsville and it's the right facility.
Speaker 1:You guys came out and you know, thanks to Luke for his help and support and for Chad to come out and help us. You know, know, kind of assess how we're going to prepare these meals. I feel very confident that we have the right people, we have the right facility, we have the right access to the tools, including pots, burners and everything else that goes with it. Uh, all we need now are the volunteers to come in and help us out, and I feel confident that we're going to have a good show. But I would really need to. I need to learn how to appeal to people to say would you please consider coming out to help, because you guys have made that easy too right. I mean, just click on the link and then it shows the schedule of the time that you can come.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you go to love peopleorg slash community Thanksgiving, um, and you can go and sign up for the sunset location and the youngsville location makes it super easy to volunteer and you know, I've seen in my involvement the past few years I've seen families similar to yours go for the first time, start in the morning. You know, packaging these meals and now they're, they're coming back every single year. They're, they're forming their. Like you said, they an evolved tradition.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you've already kind of made your call to action to some of your musicians Come visit Uncle Ray on Community Thanksgiving. Come help out a little bit. But what Love of People does so well is? Our mantra is helping others, help others, and a lot of it is through the business community, such as ISS, cbm Technology with Chad Terrio, who you mentioned. We've got Rise Physical Therapy, and Sports Lab does a lot. Taco Sisters is the ones that are cooking the turkeys. But the business community at large can play a role in this. So what would be any sort of call to action or a message to your fellow businessmen and women across Acadiana?
Speaker 1:That's a good point. I've said this before in some other interviews that I've done, but I can't emphasize enough how love of people helps people help people. So you don't have to go invent the wheel. The wheel is already invented and it's got some really nice spokes and it's got a lot of grease on the axle. All you have to do is grab on, and love of people can make it very, very easy. First and foremost, love of people is a nonprofit organization, so the support that you give to them is certainly advantageous at the end of the year when it's time to write those checks to the, to the government.
Speaker 1:Second thing I will tell you is that the resources from love of people to include yourself, people like Luke, for example, to come out and help us make sure that we're tight and organized and ready to roll it makes it easy. So now all I have to do is go to my employees and say, hey, come participate. Now don't get me wrong, there's some work to be done on our end. I don't want to understate that. We have, you know, a couple of people in my company for that specifically that are handling that, and that be julie este and chris la flor are the two designated point of contacts that are going to help to make sure that we we get this done without issue. But love of people just makes it easy and I'm so proud to be associated with this organization. There's so much happening here, from diaper drives to the blue monday all-star supporting aging, bringing emerging people to the forefront, supporting even Pink Trailer, what I'm doing and giving ISS Industrial Safety Solutions an opportunity to participate as well. It's just a real powerful movement and I think it makes a statement. I think that this is a model that a lot of people, not just in our community, but it's a model that is it could be very well represented across the nation. I'm not saying we're ready to push that button, but this model literally fits anywhere in any community.
Speaker 1:The part that I want to emphasize on the on the volunteerism is that when you say volunteers like my wife sent the video out on her Facebook page before I really had a chance to you know, to express a request for volunteerisms and I can't tell you how many people went big Ray cool, oh my gosh. Congratulations. This is excellent, but I didn't really get anybody going. Hey, man, you know where can I sign up? This sounds like something I want to do and I think that the reason is because when you say volunteer Thanksgiving Day, you think am I whole day shot? I got family, I have other traditions, I need to do Good job, but no thank you. I think if you could say well, look, all we need is two hours. If you have two hours, there's a time frame that you can actually check a box where you and two or three or four members of your family can come participate for a couple of hours or your organization or your organization can come, participate for a couple of hours and just pick your time slots.
Speaker 1:you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:If you can come early and maybe leave by nine, great.
Speaker 1:Come at nine and leave at 11, great.
Speaker 1:Um, all I can say is that it's going to be so well organized that you're not going to have to sit there and wonder, gee, is there something for me to do? There's going to be very designated tasks that you're going to be able to support, and I'm telling you at the end of the day when you leave this thing and you realize how many meals went out and how many people shut-ins, people in senior citizens' homes and facilities, members of our community that are underserved nobody should be hungry in Acadiana. And so the cool part about what Youngsville brings to the table is migrating it out towards the New Iberia, jenneret, hitting St Mary Parish, western St Mary Parish, going into Franklin and finding opportunities for them to come to help support, and then, at the end of the day or end of the morning, when they drive back to franklin or jennerette or wherever they're going to come from, that they can take, you know, some of these meals with them, but we're also going to have transportation is going to be arranged for those meals to be just to be distributed?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's it's I've seen it grow in my few years interacting with love of people and, you know, helping them with their marketing and content creation and things like that and and it's it's so cool to see and it's it's really cool to see people like you, who I've seen engage in other things, kind of get wind of this and get more involved and more involved and and not just that, but inspire and call others to to to come to the table and, like you said, like this is definitely a model that can be created, and not just in Acadiana, but across the state and in the country and wherever else, and I won't say much more on that, but there are some things that are coming in that direction.
Speaker 2:I can definitely say that with confidence. But, mr Ray, I know I got to get you out of here. Final kind of question I want to toss your way. You know you mentioned your humble beginnings in this, in this pink trailer, and, and, and you, you had, you had a good little life, um, but yet you, you, you worked very, very hard and built a beautiful family and a life for yourself and and for several employees, uh, giving them opportunities, and you've, you've, you've made a good name for yourself and both you know, financially and morally, spiritually, whatever it might be. My question is, coming from those humble beginnings how do you keep not just yourself but your family humble when they're blessed with so much?
Speaker 1:Carter, that is a fabulous question, man. First of all, thank you so much for the compliments. I really do appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Well-deserved?
Speaker 1:I don't really think about it on that level very much. I would just say first and foremost that you know these ideas that I have. I'm a pretty idealistic person. Sometimes, when I spring some of these things into action, I have to go home and explain to my family this is what we're doing and this is why I'm doing it. I have to say my wife gives me a lot of lead weight, a lot of slack and a lot of support to say, okay, you're going to do this right. I'm like, yes, and here's my vision and here's where I think we're going to land with it.
Speaker 1:When I say we, yes, I certainly mean us as a family, but we as a collective group who are going to take on one of these organizational you know experiences, organizational experiences. So I think I'm just blessed in a sense of just having people that look at me sometimes like I'm kind of crazy, but they roll with it and say, well, we'll see what this is going to make a splash right, and so far, so good. And I don't think I've really let anybody down. But getting my family to come and participate at the Thanksgiving event last year, I think dialed it in for everybody to say, okay, we know you're out there doing a lot of things and you're touching a lot of parts of the community, but this one is tangible, this one touches home. This one gave us something that we can latch onto and something we know that we can participate in the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as a family, yeah, as a family, as a family first and foremost, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you're certainly part of the love of people family, now officially part of the Acadiana cast family. Uh, can't appreciate and thank you enough for for giving us your time. I know you got to get out of here. Um, I like to end every episode with given the guests camera right here and it can be a word, a phrase, some advice, maybe something we didn't touch on, anything that you want to end the episode on to give to the internet world at large yes, um.
Speaker 1:So the first thing that comes to mind as um we put a close to this particular podcast is uh, I want to give recognition to my friend, carter simono. Uh, carter is an incredible asset to our community. He's an incredible musician but seriously, his ability to do these podcasts and to generate really, really good questions and his editing skills are extraordinary. Carter's contribution to organizations such as Industrial Safety Solutions and certainly Pink Trailer, by conducting these kinds of interviews and allowing his Katie Anacast podcast to be a part of what's going to be my organization as we continue to evolve, is a big part of getting these messages out effectively. So I just want to say thank you, carter. You do a great job. I look forward to working with you more and I look forward to being able to support, as a sponsorship, katie Anacast as the opportunities present themselves.
Speaker 2:I love it Okay.
Speaker 1:Appreciate you, the sponsorship, katie and a cast, as opportunities present themselves. I love it. Okay, um, the. The next thing that I would like to say, uh, as a result of these interviews with the katie and a cast and carter, is that he brings out the best in people and helps me understand and validate sometimes, the things that I'm doing that I don't really get asked about at the levels that carter uh really pulls me into. Uh, to make me do a little bit of self-examination and recognize that we're on the right path. We have an amazing community. I'm so blessed to be surrounded by such gifted and talented people who are inspired to want to know, like, what's next? What are we going to do? We're in, and I just want to encourage Carter and the people here at Love of People keep it up. You know we're going to continue to be part of your family for as long as you guys are going to allow us to, and we can't wait to see what's next.
Speaker 2:Well, there's your AcadianaCastcom testimonial right there, folks.
Speaker 3:Right, flores, I appreciate you as show. Since you made it this far, might as well give us a like, a follow, a subscribe. You know whatever you gotta do to alert you that there's a new episode out. Look, it helps us grow and it allows us to give you the content that well you deserve. If you wanna be a sponsor, if you want to be a guest, if you just wanna berate me, hey, all goes in the same place. All goes in the same place. Info at AcadianaCastcom, email info at AcadianaCastcom and for more locally sourced podcasts, go to AcadianaCastcom. Bye.
