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Welcome to another episode of Peskies Pest Control podcast here in Birmingham Alabama with Michael and Travis. We do this podcast as a community service for Birmingham, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Helena, Alabaster, Pelham and all other surrounding areas!
Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today on the peskiest Pest Control podcast, I have my personal friend Drew baby AK, and he owns rescuer, LLC. So we’re just promoting his business and kind of bringing his business to light what he does and what he can do for you. Take it away, Drew.
Drew Babyak
Hey, good morning. Appreciate you having me on excited to kind of shine a light on an important subject. And I appreciate you bringing me on today.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, definitely. So let’s talk about, you know, my favorite part about a business is kind of, you know, where’d you get your start, you know, as an entrepreneur, what, what, what just made you want to start this business.
Drew Babyak
So me and my business partner, Joseph Patton, we spent a lot of time working together at one of our fire departments, I left that second fire department. And we were just kind of discussing different things that we could do to with our free time, instead of working in a second fire department. And we were discussing CPR and kind of the needs for it, we knew a couple guys that taught a class here and there just were discussing it. And we kind of thought that a good idea to go after it because it was a need that we saw, we were going on scenes and seeing where people were either afraid to do CPR, or they weren’t doing CPR. And it’s just something that as firefighter paramedics, we know very well. So we’re like, we could go and teach this with extreme confidence, bring real life scenarios and real life knowledge to people. And hopefully, you know, educate people so that the they would act in scenes rather than be scared to help someone, especially when it comes to a loved one. Yeah.
Michael Wienecke
100%. And I mean, there’s no right or wrong CPR when somebody is down on the ground dying. I mean, as long as you’re pumping on that chest, you know, something’s better than nothing. Absolutely.
Drew Babyak
That’s, that’s what we try to get out of everybody’s just the confidence to at least act.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, yeah. Well, watch, come up with a name. So rescue
Drew Babyak
came around, we were talking about just different names. And we were, we kind of rescue we’re stuck. Because we’re like, when we teach the class, and you are now knowledgeable in this skill, you become a rescuer on the scene, you are the person that’s making the difference. So we felt like it kind of had a good meaning behind it, it kind of is catchy, it makes sense. So it was simple. So we wanted to we ran with it rescuers, just just that act of to helping somebody. And that’s what we want people to do. Awesome.
Michael Wienecke
Well, how did you get so what made you want to start just being an entrepreneur? I mean, what what got you kind of enter that, in that mindset.
Drew Babyak
So in the Forest Service, most guys, you know, they start with one job. And with our schedules, we work 24 hours on 48 hours off Well, with that other 48 hours, a lot of guys, you know, either find another side business, but what kind of comes naturally seems like people go work a second fire department, because the scheduling allows it. And when we got into it, we wanted to prevent people from working to fire departments, we, I left my second fire department because I loved it so much. But I was missing so much, so much on life, you know, being gone for 48 hours, you know, doesn’t sound like much to some people, but to other person, it’s a lot, you know, that’s as two nights away from being being away from your home from your family. So we went after it, because we wanted to kind of get away from that. See, try and best way describe it that what people that natural thing that people do. So we left got into it, and now you know, we get to work normal hours and spend more time with our families and enjoy, you know, improves our, our quality of life. So, rescue has definitely been a blessing to both of us.
Michael Wienecke
Oh, 100% I mean, I you know, I was in the fire service for 15 years. And I mean, you’d see these guys working 48 hours coming in like zombies. And it’s just, it’s not healthy. I’ve always been against it, I’ve never worked 48 And I always said I would never work 48 So I love that you’re giving these guys a chance to stay in that their field and be able to make some extra money in something that they already know and are good at. Absolutely.
Drew Babyak
Um, it has been great. Right now we we’ve we’ve been hiring just firefighter paramedics. Like I said strict goal is to get the guys away from the 40 eighths and we’re slowly working towards it. As we grow, I think we’ll be able to get more and more guys involved. Teaching. That’s our our ultimate goal is only to hire firefighter paramedics, just because that is something that they’re so knowledgeable in fire. They’re confident in that skill. So when we send them out to teach classes, you get a really good experience. You’re gonna leave with someone that was able to answer all your questions about CPR, you know, people start asking questions, we didn’t just go take a class to teach you. We took the class and we’ve used it so when you ask your questions during the class to, to kind of give you that comfortability or confidence, we’re able to answer the answer in the best way possible.
Michael Wienecke
Well, that to your class is fine. I mean, you got a lot of firemen teaching the class. So we know how firemen are they like to joke and have a good time. It’s not something that’s going to be boring, it’s going to be, it’s going to be entertaining, and it’s going to be educational at the same time. So Oh, yeah, we
Drew Babyak
definitely. So we know everybody, no one loves to sit in a class and just be read to from a PowerPoint, we, we try to make it as involved as possible, you know, we like to cut up and crack jokes and make it as light as possible. And you know, when we get in the hands on, we’d like to, to make it a little more fun. We don’t just sit there and ask you to do this, we give you a little fun scenarios and make you think, and it’s also a really good team building thing. So we, you know, we bring these companies in that like to invest in their in there people. And, you know, in the beginning, they might be a little, you know, unsure of what’s going to happen by the end there. Everybody’s laughing and having a good time. And while learning something that is so valuable. Yeah. So it’s it’s a lot of fun. These classes. I love teaching them.
Michael Wienecke
That’s great. So let’s talk about how important CPR is. I mean, you know, I know the American Heart Association says about 350,000 people die per year in cardiac arrest. And it’s something that’s, that’s pretty preventable. I know. You’ve got some stories, I’ve got some stories. So give me a scenario of a real life event where you know, you saw CPR work right then and there?
Drew Babyak
Absolutely, yeah, I have. This story is just, it’s unreal. So to put in perspective, the importance of CPR, I’ll start with that. So CPR, we do CPR when someone’s heart completely stopped. So if someone is not breathing and doesn’t have a pulse, we start CPR, what we’re doing is we’re mechanically pumping the heart to move the oxygen that’s inside the body, to perfuse the organs to keep them alive. So for every minute that we’re not moving the oxygen through their blood, their chance of survival drops, 10%. So put that in another perspective, when you call the fire department, and they’re dispatched to you, you know, a good response is going to be three to five minutes. Well, if you’re not doing anything, if you’re not performing CPR, well, they’re their chances, survivability has now dropped to 50 to 70%. So that’s something that we want to kind of change, we want people to act immediately so that whether it’s just a bystander or a loved one, we want to give them the opportunity to survive, you know, there’s only so much that we can do. But if the difference, you know, then walking out was just CPR. We want to if that’s that’s something we can control. The craziest story that I’ve had as a firefighter paramedic, we were dispatched to a cardiac arrest to a triathlon athlete, this mill, this was a male who was roughly, you know, young, early 50s, super healthy guy, he was running a triathlon, I mean, this guy’s an athlete. Well, he goes into cardiac arrest, mid mid race, to his look. And I mean, to his luck, a pediatric doctor was running in the race, and she was behind him, she witnessed him collapse and began CPR. She starts doing compressions, she activates the emergency system by calling 911. The paramedics that were on scene work in the event, got to the patient, put them on their ad, and they administered a shock to the patient. By the time that I got on scene, which is roughly eight to 10 minutes after the initial call, the patient was no longer in a full arrest. He was still, you know, still kind of having the effects from it. Well, I just went to a party. Yeah. He went from a really bad day. So to put in perspective, most time when we work, cardiac arrest, even if we get what we call, raw score, you know, get their heart rhythm back, most time, they still stay kind of unresponsive and just a different state. Well, this mill had immediate CPR, immediate defibrillation or shock to the heart. And by the time that I’ve got on scene, and we were loading him in the ambulance, somebody asked, Hey, what is this Mel’s name? And he lifted his head up and answered the question to us. I had never seen that and that and we give all the credit to the doctor that started immediate compressions. And our paramedics who were able to get on scene and give a quick defibrillation or shock to the heart. So that was a huge success story. This guy went to the hospital to get checked out. And by the next day, he was released and was able to go home to his family because of good CPR and quick action from bystanders. That’s
Michael Wienecke
awesome, man. Well, I mean, you have to understand, I mean, with the fire department, you know, they have to get in the truck, they have to go they have to get there. You’re talking one two minutes as fast as they can get there. But you know, and then you’ve got to take into account of when the person went down. And when that when the person that called found them. So you know it time was you can be five 610 minutes before before CPR has even started. Oh, absolutely.
Drew Babyak
If it’s been five minutes, like we said, if every minutes 10% We’re already down 50% And we want to give everybody the best chance possible.
Michael Wienecke
Oh, yeah. Well, man, I love the business. I mean, helping people and bringing someone’s you know, office together. teaching them a very valuable skill that they can help one of their co workers, one of their family members, you know, a random person rent running a marathon. So tell me tell everyone where you can work. What What areas do you service around here, local. So,
Drew Babyak
we are a Birmingham based company. But we are fully mobile. So we traveled to your business, to teach the classes that creates a huge convenience, especially for scheduling and trying to get your people together for these kinds of classes. But we’ll travel anywhere, we’ve traveled to Tampa to teach classes, Atlanta, Pensacola and Destin so there’s really not a spot that we won’t go we we like traveling and we really enjoy, just bring in our, our, our class t you know, we, we provide a really fun class, you know, we’ve got some good stories to bring and good attitudes that make this class a lot of fun. So we’d like to go wherever we’re needed.
Michael Wienecke
That’s awesome. And hey, I mean, I was looking on your website. I mean, you teach all of Alabama so that’s, that’s the
Drew Babyak
University of Alabama nursing. We teach them their BLS at the beginning of every semester. So the nursing students have to have what’s called basic life support, which is just the fancier version of CPR, but it’s for medical professionals. But they have to have that before they go do their clinicals in the hospital. So it’s really fun. The the Alabama nursing classes, a really great class to teach just because they’re all so young, and fresh in the profession. They’re super eager. And so we go teach these classes, they eat it up there. They’re super excited to learn that new skill.
Michael Wienecke
Well, good deal. Well, um, so anybody that’s looking to, you know, start a class with you, where can they find you phone number?
Drew Babyak
Yeah. So, you can reach us at our through either through email, our email is info inf o at rescuer, r e s e u e r llc.com. And you can reach us at my phone number is 334-595-2737. We take phone calls, text email, you can go to our Facebook at rescuer LLC, Instagram, whatever your choice of contact is, we we can respond through any of them to book classes, we just ask you to reach out and we will we’ll talk, you know, some people like say, hey, Mondays are a great day for us, because we have staff meetings from 10 to 12. We’re like, Well, great. So how about we meet you at? You know, 1231 o’clock. So our scheduling is super flexible with our you know, being firemen, where we don’t have a set schedule once our off days, or we’re off days. So you know, we like to create that convenience of coming to you and working around your schedule. We know that scheduling part of getting a lot of people together like herding cats, we know it gets tough, so we want to make that as easy as possible for you. Well,
Michael Wienecke
good deal. Well drew, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and again, I know it took a little while I was getting our schedules together but again, thanks, man.
Drew Babyak
Absolutely. Thank you for having me on.
