 This is Starb to Storefront. This month is Women's History Month, and we've partnered with Cat Footwear to bring you stories from female entrepreneurs in the construction industry. This is the first episode of our four-part series. The goal is to highlight some of the female movers and shakers in an industry where they make up only around 10% of the workforce. Our guest today is Katie Frank, founder of EMOD, a company focused on improving safety on construction sites. Katie's story is a deeply personal one, and she's helping to modernize construction safety so that every worker can go home to their families every night. So listen in as we cover everything from why there's a lack of respect inherent in the construction industry, the importance of keeping your cool in high-pressure scenarios, and why easy fixes have high costs. Now, on to the episode. Welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Katie, founder CEO of EMOD. Thanks for joining. Thanks for having me. Also, Natalia's joining us, which is rare form. Welcome back, Natalia. So Natalia's back. As you guys know, we're doing a whole campaign with Cat Footwear around Do More Her Way. Caitlyn's story is quite incredible. So first of all, you both went to school together. Yes. Right? So let's go to the beginning. So you're in school. How many women are in your class? You're at Wentworth in Boston. How many women are in the class? We're 19% women in the entire school. And the whole school. And this isn't just construction. We're across the board at the university. Okay, so a fifth. And did you guys see a lot of women switching majors at the beginning? Or did 20% of them, 19% of them actually make it to graduation day? Well, do you remember what they said to us? Yes, look to your left. Look to your right. They won't be there. They won't be here. And it happened. We dropped by 50% within the first semester. But that's male and female, right? Yeah. But it was probably 80% male architecture as well. And what was your first job out of school? Right out of school. I went to work for Commodore Builders. As a PM? No. I wanted to go right into the field. So I was an assistant superintendent there and just dove right in. Assistant super? Female? Yep. Any issues? Oh. Day one on the job site, they walk in and I'm measuring for some opening that we're going to be cutting in a concrete wall. And I'm young. I don't know what I'm doing at this point. The superintendent sends me out there and I'm measuring. And this guy walks up to me behind me. He's like, oh, are you the architect? Are you measuring for curtains? I was so insulted. Yeah. Wow. Just like day one on the job site. You know, I'm nervous enough. And now you're thinking I'm someone else that I'm not. But you were in all your PPE and your Commodore stuff. So I don't, that's crazy. It was just, you know, as soon as I saw a female on the job site, they just made that assumption that either. Casual sexism? Yeah. Wild. So I'm either there with my dad. Typically that was another question I got asked a lot. Or I was the architect. What did they say? Where is your dad? Oh, are you here with your dad today? Bring your kid to work. My response was always no, were you? Yeah. That's such a good comeback, by the way. I love that. And then for you, what was your first job? My first job was, so it was kind of quasi in the field but also sending the office. So, you know, it was building information modeling. It was the 3D stuff. But a lot of that required me to be on site every week on multiple job sites for meetings with the subs, going through coordination, going through and mapping out problems in the field. And I fell in love with being in the field. I loved like actually seeing something that we had put together get built in front of my eyes. And I fell in love with it. And then how long were you in the field before you became a super? Only maybe a year and a half. Which is a fast trajectory. So for most people, for people listening, it's like APNPM, assistant super. Yeah. And you can be an assistant super for like five years. Oh yeah. Easily. Six years. And you're like just crushing the game. I was probably 23. As a super, which is rare. I would say most people, people listening, like it's like 30 becomes, it's usually 30. Yeah. Yeah. And you've had to have like three huge projects, multi-year projects under your belt. And you were always the youngest, right? And I looked the youngest. I had that baby face of, you know, I probably looked like I was 18. That was probably something else you had to overcome then all the ageism as well. Oh yeah. I mean, that's kind of where the, are you at work? Your dad kind of comes. Yeah. Always came in. Yeah. I mean, I'm enjoying it now. Yeah. What was the decision to start the tech company? And so here you are in a male dominated industry. You're doing really well. You're successful. You're making good money. You're being respected by your peers. And all of a sudden you're like, I'm going to start something else. So let's start with a few things. When I was a superintendent running work, I grew up around construction. And my dad was a general contractor. And I always wanted him to come home. And so I saw all these safety things happening on job sites, knowing that like one wrong step, someone else making a mistake, like that could have been my dad. And watching these guys, and you know, I'd always walk up to him, is that smart? What are you thinking? Like let's talk through it. And there was actually this one electrician named Bill. I was building out a yoga studio in San Francisco. And we had to install a step down transformer for the power. And he said to me, I don't want to do your paperwork. It's just stupid paperwork. It doesn't actually provide anything. It just covers your ass. The safety checklist. The safety checklist. And I looked at him and I'd worked with him for years. And I said, Bill, I'm not doing this for you. I'm not doing it for me. I'm doing it for your daughters. Because we were at the same age. And I was like, I'm not calling them to sell them. You're not coming home today. And so safety in the industry has really turned into checklist and paperwork. And the reality is like these guys, guys and gals, want to just build. They have a passion for building. They want to be in the field. How do we get them back to that faster? Instead of doing this, you know, CYA checklist type of functionality. Yeah. I'll tell my story. So when I first got into the, I was like a field engineer. And so my first job was the safety checklist. And so it's just, you're in a trailer. There's a bunch of paper. There's a binder. You're in charge of it. So you're three hole punching paper. Like it's like that dumb. And then you go out into the field and you walk around. You make some observations. And you're looking for things like are people tying off ladders on scaffolding is another one. Cords, like a lot of like a lot. You see the one you see all the time is all huge extension cord. That's got all this duct tape all over. And that's an instant. No, no, like you should just go buy a new cord because that has the ability to like if water is pooling, it's like people die. And it's a real thing. And, but it's at the same time, it's like left to me, right? So it's left to the junior person on site that knows nothing. And it's the first thing they do in the morning on Monday, which is usually when the site's the safest. And it's this thing that it covers your ass. That's really, that's a CYA mechanism. And so for me, it was like, how do we get back to safety? How as a superintendent, can I be proactive with safety instead of reacting to safety issues all the time? And I went out and I looked for like a solution, a tool that would actually, you know, fit what we needed. Like an app or something you can implement. Exactly. It would be easy for the guys. And something that was built for the field, not for, you know, the office, that junior level person, because they're not the ones getting hurt. Like, why wasn't there an app or a platform or something for the electrician, for the person in the field. For the person with the flip phone. Like that's the person it's for. Exactly. Yeah. That's a hard problem. So one of the things that throughout my career, no matter where I've worked, everyone has had to fill out pre-task plan, JHA, JSA, whatever you want to call it, these hazard assessments. So like, what are you working on today? What are the steps? What are the hazards and what are your safe plans? People just pencil whip them when they're on paper because they don't know how to fill them out. You know, they don't understand when you say like you're installing glass. One of the ones that I got was, install glass, steps where don't break glass. Hazard was gravity. What? And the safe plan was be safe. Signed by six adult men. Oh my God. The hazard was gravity. I mean gravity. It's very creative. It's always hazard. It's kind of funny. So funny. It's very creative. The mental gymnastics involved in creating that is probably more difficult than actually doing it correctly. Yeah. And so, of course I had to stop them, get them to revise it, and resubmit it. But that piece of paper didn't do anything for them. It gave them everyone a good laugh and that was about it. Don't break glass. If someone had gotten hurt, as a superintendent, I'm liable. Right, it's on you. It's on me. If I'm completely negligent and something really bad happens, I go to jail. The CEO goes to jail. So when you're running work at that capacity and you're thinking about things that way, you're like, I can't just let these things happen. And so you decided to, I guess, embark on building this thing in-house, some sort of app. Nothing's on the market. Yep. And then seeing if these guys would use it. Yep. And what was that like? So we started off with that one kind of feature of that pre-task plan. We got that built out. And then we thought about, there's also additional site-specific safe plans that need to be built out. How do we tie these together? And then we rolled it out into the field. The first round, it was clunky. It was trying to figure out it's different. It's an industry that doesn't like change. They don't want to adopt new technology. And they pushed through it. But the biggest thing was, after the first couple of days of using it, they stopped complaining. Yeah. And so once they got used to it, that's all it was. And if I have my investor head on, like, how big of a problem is this? Like, how big of a market would a people spend on safety every year? So I was on site the other day talking to a mechanical foreman. And I asked him, do you know who I am? He's like, no. I was like, what do you use for safety? He says, oh, the contractor requires me to use EMOD. I was like, OK. And I was like, would you ever go back to paper? He says, no. EMOD saves me 55 minutes a day. Just on the one form. He said, if he had to write it out by hand, it would have taken him an hour. He said, I can submit it for my entire crew within five minutes. And so that's just a foreman. That's just one person saving them. Imagine getting back essentially five hours if you're working five days a week, five hours on your work day. That's almost another work day you're getting back. Yeah. And if an incident does happen, how much does that cost? What are the potential costs? Well, let's include time to shut down the project, all that. So there's actually an OSHA calculator. So you can go online, for example, a sprained wrist. There's the direct cost and indirect cost. And both of them are around $30,000 a piece. And so that's $60,000, meaning you need to do $2.2 million for a sprained wrist. More work. And that's one sprained wrist. So think about elaceration. Someone losing something. Like, you know, a much bigger injury. And investing into safety just seems like a no-brainer at that point. If you can prevent one of those things from happening, you've already paid for the software. So it starts as liability. And I think you touched on something earlier where you were talking with the guys and saying, I'm not worried about your safety just for this piece of paper. I'm worried about so that your sons and your daughters can have you come home to them. And to me, that's a big part of the problem with just safety on work sites in general is it's twofold. The first fold is like the people who are actually getting injured may not see it as personal as what you just put it. And they might see it as some, you know, like the company's problem, the supervisor's problem, like not my problem. I'm just here to get the job done. And then the second fold is like even if they see something unsafe, I feel like OSHA these days is so understaffed that they are not able to go around to all the work sites that they should be going around to. So these holdups in the system just enable more problems to proliferate because they're not being checked on by anyone in any authority. So I mean, how do you then address that problem on a large scale because you can't go to everyone and be like, look, I'm just doing this so that you can go home to your family at the end of the night. I mean, I think a lot of it starts with the lack of respect in the field. And that's, you know, there's a respect at a foreman level. You know, the foremen talk to each other. They're constantly talking with superintendents and project managers. But how often is like a thank you given in the field? You know, I appreciate what you're doing. And I think once that changes in the industry, that like respect for people and that we actually care what happens to them and that's communicated down of like, why are you implementing a safety program? You know, why are you forcing them to fill out this paperwork or do additional documentation? It's because we care about you. We respect you as a human. We want you to go home safe. I think having those kind of conversations changes the whole atmosphere around safety. And like when a safety officer shows up on a job site, everyone's like running around, grabbing hard hats, trying to make sure everything's perfect. When the reality is like a safety officer should show up and they're there to help. And that's just not how the environment is right now. What has the transition been like from superintendent to then getting this off the ground to now CEO, tech company, hiring, people in development, people in marketing, people in sales, right? And running like a whole new operation. I'm definitely, you know, I'm drinking from fire hose. And I've loved it. And it's almost like being a superintendent all over again. You know, I just need to get the right people in the right seats to do their job. You know, I have a sales guy. He's great. He knows exactly what he needs to be doing. He's my electrician. You know, I have a business operations guy. He knows what he needs to be doing. He's my drywaller. And it's just hitting, I'm here to make sure we hit our milestones and that we're hitting our quarterly goals. It is a different, you know, completely different job. But what's been fun about it is having that like same type of environment to just hit those goals and work through things. And having that real life field experience. So when I'm talking to a development team of what's going to work, why simplicity is so important when we're building out an app. Right. Because your user is such a unique user. Yeah. And so you're like a product market expert in that world. As it relates to like going out in the VC world, what has that been like for you? Is it challenging? Let's see. We're about to enter February, March, March. And so like this is the time. All the VCs are back in the office. So you're embarking on fundraising. We are. So we are working on fundraising. I have a passion for building. I have a passion for construction. I have a passion for sending these people home safe and just the overall morale of a job site. And so I can talk about myself. I can talk about what EMOD does, the problems we're solving and why it's so important that we're doing it. This is a completely different world for me though, talking to VCs and trying to have these conversations where the only budget reports I was reading were my labor and my material reports before. And so I've had to learn a ton this year so far. But again, I have the right people in the right places to help support me and teach me and help with growth of the company. How many customers do you have right now? So we have just under a thousand companies on the platform and we have 17,000 users. I'm hoping that we jump again. Is it centered in any one specific area of the country or is it pretty diversified across the whole United States? So we're across the United States. I'd say most of our users are probably in the Bay Area, primarily because we dog-fooded this for a while. We wanted to make sure it worked before we put it out to market and we put it out to a bunch of local contractors that we could actually go to the field with and watch them use it so that we could see the feedback instead of jumping on a Zoom call and them telling us what was it working. We saw where they wanted to click. We saw what they were trying to do so that we could make those adjustments quickly. But in terms of outside of the Bay Area, are you seeing expansion or growth in any one specific market? Or project size. Project size. We're targeting or working with mostly, I'd say contractors between the $50 million to $200 million range who are focused on safety, may not have the perfect scenario of how they want to roll out a safety program or they're looking for an avenue to execute a safety program through and that's essentially what EMOD is. We have a platform where you can execute your safety program. You can show your clients that you have that program so there's a whole reputation side of this. If you want to be known as that safety contractor, well here's visibility into everything that I'm doing to make sure that my job sites are safe and then we actually have an insurance side of it as well so that your insurer can see that you're actually doing these things as well. So once you raise the money from the VC firms, what is your plan on where do you want to apply that and where can it best be used? So we really want to grow our sales team, get that up and running, but also grow our dev team and some of that is to enhance some of our current features but also make sure that we're constantly going back to our core, built for the field, by the field. Making sure that we simplify things and that our end users are gaining the benefit of it. The data that we collect, that's just an added benefit really. What we really want to do is make sure that we are focused on the field. What is the data that you're collecting? What's the secret sauce that you think you could turn into something later? Like percentages of reports filed on time and that are accurate. So I think that our biggest differentiator against anyone else who is out there right now is that let's say you're an electrician, you throw up on a job site and you're installing lights. You can go into the pre-task plan, click on install lights. It's going to say, here are 10 possible steps for your installing lights. And once you click through those, here are your 10 possible hazards and your 10 possible safe plans to go with those hazards. And so we're helping them proactively think about what some of the hazards and some of the steps may be because they don't know what to fill out on that blank piece of paper. And so because we're contractors at our core, we have that ability to pre-create all this information for them. And so I see it like that being. And you have to give all the foreman's iPad or are they using their phones? We see actually 70% of them using their phones. It is an iOS app so they can definitely use it on their iPad as well. I'd say the bigger mechanical drywall MEP subs are probably on iPads, but some of the smaller subs are on their phones. What I love about the industry for people at a really high level, there's two behemoths in the space. You have Autodesk and Procore at this stage where the Procore was supposed to IPO pre-pandemic. I don't know what happened there. But what's happening is you have all these tech companies that can emerge and as long as they can get market share, these behemoths will buy them for like 20 to 50 X revenue, which is huge. And so it creates sort of this interesting market where it allows tech companies to have lower price offerings so that they can get adoption. And so you're trading adoption for market share. And then you have two players that are at the top just trying to buy market share. And so it's a bit of a shark tank, so very profitable if you can pull it off in a five to seven-year window. Yeah, and then those companies can roll it out in an entirely massive way. And then they package it, right. So then they buy it, they package it, and they make it subscription-based, which helps their, I mean, the earnings go through the roof. Yeah, it's simple because they have a customer for seven, 10, 12 years that they can monetize in different ways. And on the insurance side, that's so interesting and it just feels like such a natural progression because it is so in line with the way that the insurance industry is going these days. I mean, think about progressive and companies like that. I mean, they're installing devices in your car so that they can give you savings based on real-time feedback. And what you're doing is the same exact thing, essentially, right? I mean, you're giving them data about the companies they're insuring and saying, look how safe these companies are and look at all this data and that they can give those companies discounts and it's in their favor. And I mean, honestly, more than anything, like right now, everything is on paper or multiple apps. That's how most companies are doing it. So having everything in one centralized location and how everything talks to each other, now you can see where you have holes, where you have issues and actually address them so that when your insurance company does come back around, you can say, I found this. You know, maybe it was hand lacerations where like an issue or injuries were an issue on a certain project or with a certain trade. We did XYZ training to make sure that this doesn't happen again in the future. And so it's giving you insight to things that you didn't even know you had issues on before. Would you ever create your own insurance company? Like Elon, right? So they have all the data with the Teslas and so, super fun. Since we have the data on the driver, let's create an insurance company. They'll cost insurance for them because they know if they're safe drivers. I mean, right now we're partnering with insurance companies. So we've partnered with a few insurance companies to do discounts to our clients, but who knows? Yeah, the interesting thing about the data, like when I first heard that you're collecting all this data, my mind really went to when Diego was in the parking industry and they had all this data collected from the cars themselves where the auto manufacturers weren't doing anything with it. They would track, you know, how long you were parked at one point, like where you traveled to, all that stuff. And then, you know, these secondary businesses came up and realized that they could do something with that data. I mean, for your data, the insurance is a really nice derivative from that. But I'm also thinking like you could then contract with the people who manufacture the safety helmets and gloves and workwear, whatever it might be, to supply these places with things that they might need, job specific. Has it crossed your desk at all? Yeah, we've talked about specifically tool companies. Being able to link a tool to a task and if that tool requires a certification, does that user have the certificate? You know, maybe it's a scissor lift. And so, like, do they have a certificate to actually be using that piece of equipment and tracking it that way and letting them know it's about to expire? We have that in some capacity now, but the actual linking of a specific, you know, branded tool we don't have at the moment. Can users upload, like, OSHA certifications as well? Yeah, and what's great is that, let's say they're on my job today and they go to your job tomorrow, all this information travels with them. And remember, they don't need to put an email address. They can create just a username. We do ask the form and put phone numbers in our email so we can contact them, but we're like a field crew worker, just a username. We're not, you know, trying to track any of their personal information because that is a problem in the field. Specifically with the union contractors, like, they don't want to be tracked. You know, the goal isn't to collect the data and be tracking them. The goal is to make sure they go home safe. But this is an added benefit, essentially, that we are able to figure out where the holes are. Okay, the OSHA card anymore. Which is crazy, by the way. The fact that I always had to have something in my back pocket was insanity. In case an OSHA inspector showed up. Do you ever see yourself getting back into construction? Do you think you'll miss being a superintendent? Do you think you'll miss being a project executive? Like, what does that look like for you? I definitely miss it. Again, I have this passion for building and problem solving, but I'm still doing that. I'm just doing it in different capacity. You know, I was with Joan, and when the pandemic hit, I started building out a field bootcamp to train superintendents. And so I wasn't on the job every day, but I think my passion is for helping people and helping them figure out, like, if I can just help someone problem-solve in one day, like, I'm happy. I want to go, like, in five years. What are you doing, you think? In five years' time, what's going on? Where are you going? Emod has taken off. Industry-wide for safety. You know, it's the one everyone goes to. Everyone talks about playing grid, pro-core, auto desk. They're all great project management solutions, but they're not safety solutions. And so how do we become that known safety solution where I can go from job site to job site, and it just comes with me, and all my information is there, and we can really start using this information to benefit, but also become like an education platform at some capacity. Throughout your entire career, like, a special story that sticks out to you as to when you had to, like, do more? Yes. I was working in Salesforce Tower in downtown San Francisco. Okay, huge, ugly building in San Francisco. Massive building. I argue, but it's not people ever. I'm not sure I do. The biggest project in San Francisco, the biggest project in probably California. Yeah, I was running three floors, and I was supposed to have, like, my first Saturday off in forever. And I had Lauren, who I call my mini-me. They had a few trades working. I'm like, you know, all you got to do is make sure that no one gets hurt, and, you know, they finished taping this wall. So they go in, they do it. Apparently they had closed down the garage, and all the guys' trucks got stuck in the garage. And we had an issue where they couldn't get the trucks out of the garage, and it was, you know, everyone was mad, and there's just a big blowout happening on the job site. And I walked up to the superintendent from another company that was, you know, preventing my guys from leaving and just said, you know, this is what needs to happen. This is, like, this isn't fair. You didn't notify, explain to you whatever the situation was. And he blew up on me. Like, he had steam coming out of his ears. He was bright red. He parked his truck across the parking lot, so, like, people physically couldn't get out and just threw a fit. And there's me. I'm tired. I just want to go home. It's Saturday. And I was like, come on, buddy. We got to fix this. I'm not doing this right now. And I kept my cool the entire time. And Lauren walked up to me after, and I, you know, I'm sitting on the floor on the job site, like, thank God it's over. Everyone got home. She's like, I am so proud to work for you. She's like, you kept your cool the entire time. She's like, you showed them who was boss. You did your job. You didn't blow up. You didn't throw a tantrum like they did. And you just did it. And it didn't even phase you. I've had people blow up on me before in the past. And my response is always like, do you feel better now? Yeah. Yeah, you got that out. But having a mentality like that, you know, I didn't want to go on that Saturday. She called me to come help her. And I'm so happy I did. Because it gave her that confidence the next time, like, she had an issue where someone was blowing up on her to just you keep your cool. Like, you don't raise your voice. You don't yell. That's not who you are. You're national and respected. And, you know, throwing a tantrum is not going to make you be respected as a superintendent. I think this is, so this is interesting. So this is a, it came up on a podcast we did yesterday actually with Stephanie of She Builds. And so she said, because I was asking her like, I think women care more. And so I think there are a few inherent superpowers women have in construction or anything else. And I think one is caring. And she brought up this one. She's like, the second one is we deal with children and people who make us all the time, whether they're hitting on us or whether they're kids or men. And so we're just used to staying in the pocket and watching other humans be crazy. And that makes us super well equipped to deal with unruly men. And I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. And they say that women are the more emotional species. I don't know. I mean working in construction, it's definitely not women. There is like a whole side of this where we shouldn't have to deal with that. Right. Agreed. There should be professionalism on all sides no matter who you're talking to. But part of me feels like women who are in the field right now have to have big shoulders and they need to take one for the team for the future generations. We were talking earlier about the book Atomic Habits and easy has a cost. By not pushing back, by not saying something it's not going to change. Push technology. They're not going to adopt technology. If we don't say something they're going to continue to call us hey hon, sweetheart, you know I've always thrown back, yeah pumpkin, what do you need? Yeah. And it's just like, it's things like that that if you don't call them out they may not even recognize that they're doing it and it may not be intentional but easy has a cost. If we just let it happen it's going to continue to happen and the industry's not going to change. I know an iron worker that she got completely burnt out she's been in the industry for 30 years and she's like I just couldn't deal with the massage anymore and she just she said good luck with your career and I hope that things change and that you are experiencing change but I can't do it anymore and I just thought like what a shame because we're in this time now where I think things are actually changing and people aren't just saying they're changing I am experiencing the change and it's happening and it's wonderful it's so bad for those previous generations of women that went into the field and were just treated like horribly and now they're burnt out and they're turned off from construction forever and it's just too bad because they're so good at what they do and they just they don't have the patience for it anymore but I definitely feel like there's a change happening. The last 10 years have been a huge change. Massive. Over the last decade from day one for me what it looked like first now it's so different. What advice do you guys have for either women today that could be in high school or are considering dabbling into the trades or into getting in construction what's the key piece that you guys have really like the cornerstone of something you might go back to when things get rough. I would say don't be intimidated by it just because it is a historically male dominated field it is so much fun construction is so much fun I'm on the job site every day because I want to be on the job site every day because I'm watching what's happening it's efficient it's fun it's like you're like Katie said every day is different no two days are the same and you're problem solving all day and it's empowering it's 100% empowering and seeing something that you physically had a hand in just go up right in front of you it's instant gratification I mean what could be better than that and I'd say just do not be intimidated by it and that I think women are especially good at this at this industry because we care and because we're always invested in the details and it's personal to us I agree with you completely I'd say also say like a diverse team is probably a more functional team you know they're more successful not butting heads I mean the whole conversation around like right now it's women in construction like LGBTQ community like getting them involved there's going to be so many other issues like moving forward where we're going women's just the first step like we need to be more inclusive we need a more diverse community in general than just women everyone I see all the women at work signs it needs to be a human at work like people at work and to show all genders all different types of people and not just pink shirts no more pink hard hats don't talk about the pink hard hat I'm like are you kidding me where did that come from I do them as visitors if you don't bring your hard hat to my job set you end up in a pink hard hat I like that punishment I remember the next day pink duct tape so that no one takes them because they won't touch it but my tape measures disappear it happens on job sites but I'll wrap them in pink duct tape and no one will touch it I know there are some women who love the pink boots the pink hard hats and whatnot I associate it with do you remember back in Boston that's what I associate it with and so for me Ask a Pink Hat is like you don't know anything about the game you don't know anything about baseball so Ask a Pink Hat on a job site to me that's what I correlated with so as the only non-Bostonian can you explain to me what Ask a Pink Hat was it was always like women at the Red Sox games that would be wearing these baby pink hats so the Red Sox are red and blue who are the Red Sox? what? he's from Maryland the hat became a fashion trend but it was also kind of jabby it was meant to get women in baseball in a safe way and it was kind of like but you understood why they were doing it in today's world it would not exist they would boycott the whole game but at that time it was like how do we get more women it was all about getting more women fans that's what I wanted to think back on that's what I connected with the hat was cool but the women on our job sites and the women that I see in the field and most of my friends are GCs I've never seen them in that kind of equipment I've never seen that it's the same thing that the guys wear the same thing we all wear but I've never seen anyone actually wear it I would also say women in construction are a bunch of badasses you meet another female in construction and you know especially if they're passionate about it they're just like you know you're going to connect with them because they're excited they have the same passions and a lot of the same drive and determination to work through what's out there I still feel like I have more to prove I have to be the best I have to be because as soon as I walk on the site I think it's just kind of intrinsic and it's not meant to be malicious I think like okay does she know what she's talking about and I have to build it and I have to be the one to take care of them to go through things with them and to help them and now I have subcontractors for those that are not in the industry that say to me we only want to work for female GCs now because they actually take the time you guys actually take the time to go through details with us and you don't just brush us off and say like hey it's in your contract figure it out like that's not my job and we actually spend the time in care and so I feel like needing to go above and beyond and be the best is it's still kind of like a chip and that's why I think we're also just so good at it we're constantly trying to prove ourselves that we belong there exactly is there anything you want to share about EMOT anything else that we may have missed we are growing company we're doing great things 2022 is our year this is the year it's going to take off we're traveling to all these conferences we're going to be all over the country and a lot of speaking panels you're on I can't mention one of them yet but there's a big conference in May in San Francisco that we will be on a panel with which is very exciting just real quick do you ever see a government contract in your future like maybe partnering up with OSHA to distribute EMOT to every job site we've actually met with retired OSHA inspectors and we've walked them through we want to make sure we want to make sure that we're not just wearing our blinders and that we've built it for one general contract we want to make sure that we are actually hitting the marks absolutely love to partner with OSHA in some capacity there's a lot of steps there are also frankly trying to monetize in their own capacity a lot of these things the problem these groups have is like staying relevant in a way that doesn't give very obvious advantages to companies advantages to companies so they have to stay like Switzerland but it's also like what makes them disappear and so getting a team at OSHA to commit to a partnership is I would say probably not high yield but maybe I would take an OSHA approval I would absolutely love that OSHA compliant that it checks all the boxes exactly our other big thing that I'm really focused on in the future is hiring retired contractors for our deployment team oh nice that's super smart and it's just like the sales pitch right there pro tip, pro tip right there they are living an example of what can happen if you are not thinking about safety 100% you know you have a young tech kid show up on your job site teaching 20 contractors how to use it verse having someone who got injured on a job site who was in the field for 20 years who are you going to listen to right and it's again built for the field by the field really what we want to focus on I have another question too because there's so many other industries that would I think would benefit from this like we are in Los Angeles production you know for one I mean there's so many regulations and rules and people there's tons of people everywhere I mean they definitely have things they have equipment everywhere you know safe paths of travel like ladders the same kind of scaffolding lifts things that we deal with in construction they deal with as well and then you know like are people eating it could be 105 degrees out those things like those checklists and making sure are you guys expanding into other industries like that we have one client right now who is in manufacturing and I can see it's headed in that way our bread and butter is construction that's what we know you want to plant your flag there first yeah I will say a lot of the processes we're seeing even in some government entities are very similar obviously the terminology is all different but the workflows are exactly the same and so I think once we get up off the ground hit the ground running then opportunities will be there tell everyone where they can find you where they can find EMOD well we're on emodsafety.com we can follow us on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn definitely reach out our team is awesome we're excited especially if you are retired or formerly an engineer contractor looking for a job Katie thank you pleasure having us this was part one in our four part series highlighting women in construction we'd like to thank Cat Footwear for helping us to share their stories I think it's safe to assume that if you made it this far you've enjoyed the show so consider subscribing or better yet leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify it's one of the best and easiest ways you can support us we are at Startup Storefront on every social media platform on Twitter where you can find us at STS Podcast LA the team consists of Diego Torres Palma, Natalia Capolini Lexie Jamison, Owen Capolini and me, Nick Conrad our music is by DoubleTouch thank you for listening we'll see you next time