Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates
Courageous Leadership with Dr. Travis Yates Podcast examines what it means to be a Courageous Police Leader. Join us weekly as the concepts of Courageous Leadership are detailed along with interviews with influencers that are committed to leading with courage. You can find out more about Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates at: www.TravisYates.org
Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates
Police Chief to Entrepreneur with Dr. Richard Weinblatt
What does it take to lead courageously in law enforcement, academia, and business? Find out as we sit down with Dr. Richard Weinblatt, a retired police chief, former dean at Ivy Tech Community College, and the entrepreneurial force behind Bio-One, a crime, trauma, hoarding cleanup and remediation company in five states
Metro Crime Scene Holdings LLC. Richard reveals how his rigorous training in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a mindset of giving 150% effort have been pivotal to his diverse and successful career. From bodybuilding discipline to fostering positive corporate culture, Richard shares actionable insights that can transform your approach to leadership.
Throughout this episode, we dissect the principles of commitment and perseverance that have driven Richard's success in law enforcement and beyond. With over 40 years of experience in a wide variety of roles, Richard underscores the importance of strategic problem-solving and treating employees well. He offers a unique perspective on how logical problem-solving skills honed in law enforcement can be seamlessly applied to business management, all while nurturing a team-oriented environment.
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I have always had adventures, whether it was a public relations firm I owned in New York City in the 1980s which had some fascinating high-profile clients to the higher ed work, other businesses, some nonprofits I ran law enforcement and then, of course, finally these businesses.
Intro/Outro:Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
Travis Yates:Welcome back to the show and I'm so excited about today's guest. It's an old friend and you're going to be amazed by his philosophy, his experience, the things that he did and the things that he's doing. You're going to want to buckle up for this one. On today's episode we have Richard Weinblatt. He's a retired police chief and previously served as the dean at Ivy Tech Community College, a 200,000 student statewide system based in Indianapolis, indiana. He's held more titles than we can mention today, including, but not limited to, criminal justice and business professor, department chair, director, dean, vice chancellor, educational executive, police academy director, trainer, patrol deputy sheriff, and today he's the current president and owner of Metro Crime Scene Holdings LLC, with ownership in six crime scene remediation companies in several stakes, called Bio One. Richard, how are you doing, sir?
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Good, good. It is nice to see you Dr and Major Travis Yates again.
Travis Yates:Well, listen, I've been called a lot worse and you did not. You were one of the first doctors that I knew and you did not warn me about that nonsense, but I'm stubborn, so I stuck it out. So here I am.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Well, you know what the PhD stands for a pile higher and deeper Right. And you know what, travis. It's the recipe for success, which is basically what what your show and a lot of good shows like this are about, which is how do people become successful at whatever endeavor they're doing? And however you measure success, whether it's in a law enforcement arena, a business arena and I credit my time in a border state, new Mexico, first on the border and then as a patrol deputy sheriff for the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office, just north of Albuquerque, and it was the highest crime jurisdiction I've ever worked.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:I've worked a lot of different places around the country, both as a full-time officer and as a reserve officer, including being a police chief, and that place was like a movie in the 90s and I learned so much. And what I learned is kind of like you know, I wasn't in the Marine Corps, unfortunately, but a lot of my Marine buddies have this philosophy, which is the recipe of success, which is just you commit yourself 150 percent to accomplishing it, no excuses, we got to get it done. Whether it's bodybuilding that I've been into for 42 years, since I was a freshman in college in 1982 to you know, running organizations such as a municipal law enforcement agency, a college or running businesses like I'm doing now. I mean, we've been phenomenally successful in a relatively short amount of time in an environment where most businesses fail in the first year. And I bring it all back to my law enforcement background in Santa Fe, where I was in a 2,500 square mile county 20 to 40 minutes away from my backup. If I have old police academy students listening here they'll laugh, because they heard that phrase a million times back when I was doing academy stuff and I had to succeed.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:You could not turn tail. You know that from your extent in Oklahoma. You can't just be like oh you know what, I'm a little outnumbered here, I'll just back off. You guys, just you know you take all that marijuana, you take your domestic violence charge, you take all this stuff and you just go have a good day. You'll never police in that county or that city again. And that's what I knew, not to mention the fact that you know you get pegged and targeted. And so you know I had to learn there. I can't say my dog ate my homework. It's no excuses. You have to succeed.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:So when you did your doctorate, you had to succeed. You had to put it in a way mentally yeah, it was a lot of work, but it's like I tell people who go through it you have to look at it literally like chapters and you can't look at the whole thing. You take off one bite at a time, one foot in front of the other and before you know it you're done with it, right, and you've succeeded. And most people can't do that. That's why most people are ABD is all but dissertations, and it's the same thing with bodybuilding. It's the same thing with running a police department or a sheriff's office. It's the same thing running a business. You just got to be 150 percent committed, 150 percent engaged and you got to be very thoughtful about what you're people. You know I have people that jump into.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:We have a weekly Zoom leadership meeting with all the general managers and the staff in my offices all around the country and people are amazed by the corporate culture and I'm like this isn't rocket science, this shouldn't be that hard. I just treat my people well. They, everybody goes. You make them do a Sunday? No, they pick the Sunday morning. That's how good they are. They realize that Sunday morning was the least likely because we're a 24-7 business, much like a law enforcement agency. We're a crime scene and trauma scene remediation company.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:If a loved one God forbid kills themselves or gets killed or has an unattended death as you and I both know, it's called in the business, in your home that is the most traumatic event that you've ever had. And, as I would tell people for the last couple of years doing this and even back over 40 years of law enforcement experience look, I do this every day. Thankfully you don't. We are here to help guide you through this process, because they have no idea how do they file the homeowners insurance claim. We'll take care of that for you, you know. So that way, hopefully, you have no financial burden on top of all the rest of the emotional burden that you have to deal with and funeral arrangements and everything else overwhelms families. It's the worst day of their life, especially if it's a suicide.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:So we just my people are so dedicated and motivated by this. They're like Sunday is a time that we least likely have a call. Sunday morning they pick the time. That's participatory leadership. I didn't pick the time. I have very little turnover, you know, and it speaks for itself. And we have people tell us all the time, clients, guests that have come in to help give us some expertise on an area in the Zoom call, and they'll say wow, you guys are joking together. They're friendly all across the country. I just had the general manager of Reno meet up with a general manager of our three Arizona offices Glendale, scottsdale and Phoenix, and Flagstaff in Northern Arizona, and they went to fentanyl training in Virginia. Well, they're best buddies but they already knew each other through the Zoom thing. Now they're really inseparable and we joke with them all the time.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:But it's a corporate culture that you build. That's what leads your success. People go how do you make money? Because some people, obviously that's their definition of success and you and I both know there are different definitions of success and it's a very personal decision what you consider success. Some people consider making money success. They're like how do you make money with a business like this? You have the best people, you empower them, you train them, so they're professionals, you have their back. If they get in trouble, you back them up, which is something we do not see in a lot of law enforcement agencies today, unfortunately, as you and I both know, and the money just follows.
Travis Yates:The five-star reviews follow.
Travis Yates:Richard, and you said so much there and you're right. I think we live in this culture where we think success is overnight. And I'm going to go from a street cop to a chief, I'm going to do my doctorate in this and that. But you're right, it's piece by piece by piece. It's getting up every day doing the right things. You can't beat hard work. Hard work beats talent. All day long we see the success of that and I have to think that your law enforcement background, as you said, sets you up because I tell this to law enforcement all the time Like law enforcement is almost brainwashed to think this is all you can do.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:But there's a big problem solvers, and you can apply that anywhere Business you know there is a certain amount of logic that you have to have. One of the things I saw I've worked academia and I've worked the law enforcement side of the business side. One of the things I saw in academia is you could have different measures of intelligence people that were super intelligent, that could put together doctoral dissertation, can write peer-reviewed journal articles, all sorts of really, really high-level, high-thinking stuff but they can't work their way out of a paper bag and you've seen that before. Right? How many PhD criminal justice professors are teaching criminal justice classes in some of our universities? And I'm not saying all of them. Some of them are very good, but there are some that it's like if you put them into a patrol car, they could not think logically how do I solve this person's problem that's in front of me, right? One of the other things that's come out of this is you become an excellent communicator because you learn to listen and you learn to read body language.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:I have watched cops and live PD and all those shows for years and I'll watch it with family or friends and I'll say that guy is about to run, this officer lost control of the scene already and they're like what do you mean, and sure enough, and you've seen it. Two seconds later, the person runs. How do you mean? And sure enough, and you've seen it. Two seconds later, the person runs. How do you know? And I'll back up the DVR and I'll break it down frame by frame. You see where he was, target glancing. Watch the body language. Was he looking at the officer's firearm? Was he looking over his shoulder at a field where he's going to run? Is he looking at a buddy? He's thinking, hey, you going to jump with me, right? What's he doing? Watch the eyes Remember Buck Savage, right? Oh yeah, dave Smith, yeah, he's there in your backyard right now, him and Betsy.
Travis Yates:Brantner Smith right.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:You know the Buck Savage character rookie always watch the hands, right, it's true, you watch the hands, you watch the eyes. That has made me into an excellent negotiator. When I'm negotiating with clients, especially if they're being difficult and they're giving our general managers a hard time, I can step in, usually on a Zoom call or a phone call, even if I'm not present physically in that state, and I can usually smooth it over. We are experts at negotiating, at de-escalating, at reading people's body language, seeing what is this really about, what do they really want? How do I get them to merge what they want with what I need to happen? That's what I mean.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:I remember when I was running police academies and I was a police chief, I would have, you know, young, young, I say kids. You know, to you and me they're kids, right, but I, you know young men, young women. That would be like no-transcript, but that's what helps us learn. I credit all that to my time in Santa Fe. It wasn't like I was in high school and say, hey, you know, my dog ate my homework. Oh well, no problem, you get an A for effort. I mean, there is no A for effort when you're standing with a guy who's drunk and has a gun, 40 minutes from your backup, and you're the only thing that separates him from freedom and he has nothing to lose, right, right. And so you have to know how to handle this person, and I'm not just talking physically. You have to know how to talk with them, because the best fight to be in is the one that you're.
Travis Yates:Yeah, man, I mean I'm so glad you said that, because I talk to cops probably on a weekly basis and I've got to spend a significant amount of time of convincing them of what you just said, of the skills they have and what they can do with it, because they're so put in a box and I got to ask you. So obviously you've lived several lives here and we don't have time to go into all of it. It's so fascinating. I'm so glad you came on, but you've got to tell me you know, uh, the business you're in now, uh, how did that come about? I mean, obviously you were in a, you were in law enforcement, you were in education for a number of years, Uh, and, and then you found yourself where most people are looking to maybe retire right which I don't believe in, I know you don't believe in it and you find yourself getting into into bio one, being a business owner expanding quickly. You turn that around quickly. How did that interest come about and what were some of your challenges when you started?
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:out. So so that's, that's a great question, travis. It was very interesting. So I have never had a job, I have always had adventures, whether it was a public relations firm I owned in New York City in the 1980s which had some fascinating high profile clients to, you know the higher ed work. You know other businesses, some nonprofits I ran law enforcement and then, of course, finally, these businesses COVID happened. Everything shut down. I'm a guy, I joke with people. I don't have any real vices. I drink very, very little. I don't use drugs, I don't gamble. I don't hang out and watch porn. I don't hang out and watch video games. Um, you know I, I can't sit there for hours watching YouTube like the young kids can today. Um, I don't watch Tik TOK. I mean, I don't, I don't get into any of that stuff. So I had seven gym memberships, because you know different atmospheres for different, different types of bodybuilder people and different gyms. You know everything from an LA fitness national membership you know to you know Iron Valley Barbel in Indianapolis, where it's an old-style powerlifting gym.
Travis Yates:How about that one where they give you pizza? You weren't a member of that one, were you? Which one? That one, what was that? Planet Fitness? You don't remember Planet Fitness, do you? Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Actually, actually I do have. That was one of the seven memberships.
Travis Yates:I do have a Planet Fitness black card not to work out there, but in indianapolis there's no sun in the winter.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Yeah, so I would use the tanning beds there because you know all bodybuilders they got the red lot and all that other stuff. That was the only reason I use that. But yeah, I, I, I kind of quietly omit the planet fitness one because I'm kind of embarrassed by it don't drop the weights.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:But but that was, that was. Those are my advice. Well then COVID happened and everything shut down, work, gym, everything. And you know my, my son observed. He was like, oh my God, this is like the most depressed I've ever seen you. You have aged overnight. And then, once I started thinking I've got to find an adventure, this is clear to me. This is almost like a forced retirement. Obviously, I can't retire. I'm like you, travis, it's not going to work. I need another adventure. My life has been an adventure, one after the other after the other, and so I kind of put feelers out. I had a business broker out of Las Vegas contact me in Indianapolis and say, hey, with your background, we have an interesting business called Bio One. It's a franchise, you know, like McDonald's. You might want to buy into it. So I looked at it and I did, and my son made the additional observation.
Travis Yates:My son, michael, said by the way, the last time, I think. I don't even want to ask how old Michael is, because I remember him as a little kid hanging out with you. I bet he's a lot bigger than that now.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:He's 22 years old, he is six foot three I am not six foot three, by the way, so he towers over me and he finished his bachelor's degree in business at Indiana University and he's now in the same MBA program. I have a couple of master's degrees. One of them is a master of business administration from the University of Southern Indiana, so he's in that program now.
Travis Yates:Well, I'll catch up to you. I'll catch up to you. My 24-year-old got his degree in business last year and my 21-year-old is entering Oral Roberts University after just getting his associate's degree. So they're getting big too.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:They're getting bigger too. That's good, and Michael works full time for me. Now here's the interesting thing. You know, I did not want him to be the typical boss's son, you know. So for the first year, we started Bio One Indianapolis operations October of 2021. And we did really, really well in 2022, our first full year of operation, which is highly new for any business, let alone a bio one. So that was interesting. But I had Michael ride on the trucks until not too long ago, and then he became director of administration. Now he's learning the back end of the business, but I didn't want him to be the spoiled boss's son. I said no, you're going to go in the truck.
Travis Yates:Well, that's the Donald Trump rule. Right, You're going to shovel. He made his kids start at the bottom. They say Trump made his kids start doing bottom level work before he moved them up.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Yeah, you can't, because the problem is I do him no service. If I coddle him Someday he's going to be responsible for all this. You know different bio one owners. There's about 140 bio one officers around the nation. I own seven of them Um, and which, which is the largest by far of anybody the next you'll see is a handful to have three. Most have one Um and so I appreciate bio one and the leadership the president, danessa Taya, and the leadership for having faith in me, because they don't approve that so easily. They don't want you to implode, so I appreciate them having faith. They saw my track record and how I turned these offices around pretty quickly. We bought Reno, for example.
Travis Yates:Reno, nevada, northern Nevada. Lots of work in Reno, by the way. I've been to Reno. Yeah, yeah, yeah Actually it's a great office.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:The prior owner had it for six years, did not make any money on it. We bought it November 1. By December we turned an operational profit and we have every month since then. It's the fastest turnaround in any bio.
Travis Yates:That's an incredible story and we can apply it to law enforcement right when you look at crime rates and the metrics we look at. How did you turn?
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:that around so quickly, and you're right, but it's a little more complicated than that. Just can't go into an area that has a high crime rate because, even though we're a community service, we are still a business and we have to have positive cashflow in order to survive right, just like anybody in the real world, and so you have to have things like a base that has homeowner's insurance available to them, so the homeowner's insurance pays. When we work directly, we'll initiate with the insurance claims adjusters and we'll try to make it as easy as possible for the homeowner, both logistically as well as financially, so that crime scene and trauma scene remediation is paid for by the know, by the premiums that they are what was the secret if it was losing money and you immediately were able to turn it around?
Travis Yates:What was the key difference?
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Well, we were very, very aggressive, very customer service focused. If somebody wanted us to come by, we were there in 20 minutes. Whatever the driving time was, we were there. They also had a couple of talented guys, clay Rossini and Colton Combo, the manager and assistant managers. I've made them in Reno and their hands were kind of tied and they were micromanaged. Now once we spent a month bringing them up to speed, coaching them, kind of saying no, when you come out and do an estimate, you do the estimate right away. You don't wait and send the estimate two or three weeks later in writing, all sorts of things like that.
Travis Yates:You do this little thing called empowerment right, a whole leadership concept where you trusted your people and tell them to do a great job.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Yeah, and now, in the very beginning. Obviously they go someplace, come out to the car. We have apps where we can look at the pictures together and stuff like that in real time. I'm talking to them as they're sitting in the car and I'm sitting in my interceptor. We have a fleet of Ford police interceptors because you know, once you drive these police cars, you know you don't want to get rid of them.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:You know you get used to driving those kind of vehicles. So you know especially me, coming out of New Mexico, I was used to driving 140 miles an hour every day. I mean, you know you had a huge jurisdiction and high priority calls, a lot of them. And so you know we're sitting there and we're comparing notes and say, okay, yeah, this is what I'd go back in, this is how we frame it to the client, this is what we can do for them, and now I don't hardly have to do that anymore. They know what they're doing. So you hire intelligent people. You treat them like professionals. I mean it goes back to the old saying treat others as you would like to be treated. That's true in organizational leadership.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:You know how would I want to be treated, you know, and I had some terrible bosses, and sometimes those were the ones that taught me what not to do, and a lot of them were in law enforcement, because law enforcement tends to attract these type A egotistical people, particularly those that go up in the ranks, and I'm sitting here saying this as a guy who was a police chief, so, you know, not everybody that's wearing those things really deserves to be in that spot. As you know, you were a high ranking person in a major metropolitan police agency, right? Some of your colleagues you thought were fantastic, but some of these guys that had gold on their collar, you're scratching your head, going how the heck.
Travis Yates:Well, it's an accountability issue in business. You really can't get away with that, because you'll be bankrupt.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Right, you're out of a job, but absolutely, absolutely. And that's why one of the things we're talking about before we went on air is one of the things I learned in Santa Fe, even though it was a government agency, even though it was a political sheriff's office with an elected sheriff, when you're standing out in the high desert of northern New Mexico and you've got some guy that's drunk, who has a gun which is the case with everybody in the state of New Mexico, it's the Wild West. I mean, I used to sit where Billy the Kid you know was shot. I mean so, I mean I know these areas, so I, you have, you had to deliver.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:At that moment it didn't matter the process as much, it matters the substance, the result. Right now I'm not saying anything illegal or anything like that, that's not what I'm referring to, but the result matters. Well, in business that's especially true, and one of the things I found in government and in higher education, where I had high level positions I eventually got into, whether it was police chief or dean and then vice chancellor is there's often an emphasis on process over substance. The other thing is is you have organizations that have long institutional memory, so they always come up for an excuse to say no, and I used to hear this all the time as vice chancellor. People would be really frustrated till they finally worked their way to that corner office right on the top floor, and it wasn't something that somebody else at a lower level could have done. They needed my title to cut through the bureaucracy, and then I would get to somebody who'd been sitting in the same seat for 30 years. Right, you know what I'm talking about here, right? Travis.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Well, Dr Weinblatt, we've never done it this way.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:That's not what I'm asking you. What I'm saying is show me a policy, show me a regulation, show me a statute, show me something that says we can't help this employee or we can't help this student. Why can't we help this person? Well, because we can't. No, no, no, no, because is what a five-year-old says. Point to some evidence that tells me that stops us. And in business you have to help people unless there is a, in our case, an OSHA regulation, an EPA regulation. Different states have different regulations, like in Arizona. We have the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. We have to follow their standards for biohazard and crime scene remediation. But unless there's something that tells us we can't do this, we're going to do whatever we can to help the client, as long as it's legal and it's ethical. But you find in these organizations that it just becomes default no, it's easier to say no, it's safer to say no.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:I did background investigations, very, very different when I was a police chief than my colleagues that I saw. I was always looking for the reason to hire the person. I wasn't looking for the reason to not hire the person. So we actually hired. Several of our hires that were the best hires were people that were fired from other law enforcement agencies Because I went through back channels and found out was this really a legitimate thing or is this a little political game that was played and that this actually is a good officer or a good deputy sheriff, as the case was, and we should give this person a shot?
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:And I did that and it worked out well. One was involved in an officer-involved shooting and it was a good shoot. Another one is a major high-ranking person now in the county sheriff's office, like number three position. So I mean these were good hires. But if I had just been the traditional guy that just looked for a default reason to say no, they never would have gotten a second chance and the community would not have gotten the benefit of particularly these two guys that I'm thinking of that were extraordinary law enforcement officers and proved themselves.
Travis Yates:Well, you're talking about the, the, the comfort way of doing things and the courageous way of doing things Right.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:I mean, we see that all the time you talk a lot about courageous leadership and you know, and it's sad that you have to call it courageous leadership, you shouldn't have to.
Travis Yates:Yeah, it's just kind of normal leadership, right it should be normal leadership.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:But you're right In our society. It has to have the name of courageous leadership, and I think that's a phenomenal name, both in concept and in application, because for people to do the right thing they often have to buck everybody else saying no. If I listened to everybody, I wouldn't have bought the first business, I wouldn't have bought the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh right. You have to have a little bit of courage, you have to believe in yourself, you have to have that confidence and that confidence again I track back to being a patrol deputy too, which is like a senior deputy position in Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office Patrol Division. I had to stand my ground. I had to make big decisions every single day. That was a department that is unlike most policing in the country. You and I both know that the majority of policing in the country tends to be a little bit boring.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:On a daily basis you know, hours of boredom followed by moments of sheer terror. Right, santa Fe was a little different One. We were far away from our backup. Two, it was the 90s, right, so things were a little different back then.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:I would talk to buddies of mine that were New York City police officers or New Jersey police officers, back where I came from the Northeast, and they'd be like so, richard, what are you doing today? Sitting behind a cactus or a nuclear silo waiting for a speeder? I'm like you don't understand. I'm like when's the last time you did a felony arrest? Oh, we don't do felony arrests, we have to turn it over to investigations. Really, I do felony arrests every single night I work. When's the last time that you had to put your hands on somebody? Well, about six months ago really. I've put my hands on people every single time. I work, every call, practically. And we would go to in the summer We'd have the seasonal spikes in crime. We have eight to 10 violent domestics in progress and we would go by ourselves. No backup. Now, that has changed in the years since, but back when I did it, we would joke that it was a variation of the Marine Corps. Mind over matter. We don't mind, you don't matter, right, we would go into open door residential and commercial burglar alarms and clear that residence by ourselves, right? So it was very different back then. Now, fantastic department.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Only as a police chief later did I realize in some ways how far ahead they were. They were among the first in the nation to have take-home cars. I had a take-home car right in the 90s. They were among the first in the nation to have no pursuit unless it's a forcible felony. Right when I came from in southern New Mexico, before that I was just chasing cars at 140, 50 miles an hour, you know, back and forth across a 4,000 square mile county, you know, for two hours until they crashed because they were drunk and we weren't, thankfully, and we were better drivers and over a busted taillight because you could do that. Back then Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office and I give the Sheriff, benji Montano at the time credit.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:I didn't realize it until I was a police chief later that he was very progressive. So he had his version of courageous leadership. He bucked what other agencies were doing and you know some of the things, like the pursuit policies, came under some fire because guys were so used to having free reign, you know. But it was a good decision because as a police chief, I realized and I had to redo all of the high liability policies you know, firearms, use of force, pursuits. I had to redo all of that when I was a police chief and I remember one of the officers who got he was always the one that got kicked by the guys in the briefing room to go up to the chief's office to ask him the question that everybody wanted to ask, but they didn't want to ask, so they'd send him. You know what I'm talking about. There's only that one guy that you know gets voluntold by the other guys, and so he got voluntold and so he comes knocking on the door, hey, chief.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:So I hear we're not going to be able to pursue that. No, I'm going to put the responsibility on you guys. And it's it's the stuff this was accept, right. It's things like you're going to make sure a supervisor is aware of what you're doing, the reason for the pursuit None of that was done before Right? The conditions of the roadway, the direction of travel, how much traffic pedestrian and vehicle all the stuff that we're supposed to do and that you did as a supervisor, supervising your folks when they were in pursuit. Right, you guys kept an eye on that Because you want to do it. It's an out of control dynamic incident and you got to control it to some degree.
Travis Yates:Yeah, I think so much of what you're talking about, richard, is about culture. Whether it's success in law enforcement, success in education, success in business, it's building a culture that enables that. What advice would you give our listeners? Because if I was to barrel law enforcement down into the problem we're facing is it's a cultural problem. I'll hear from people like, oh, our, our chief's leaving and it's going to get better. And I said it won't get any better if it's the culture Right. And so what? What advice would you give our listeners?
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:You need to have people agree on the culture that you want to have. I mean, one of the things I'm the most proud of is my team in all the different states, all the different cities that we have for Bio One Scottsdale, Bio One NW Indianapolis, Bio One Reno, Bio One Fort Myers in Florida. I mean we've got all of these offices Bio One Glendale, Bio One Flagstaff those are in Arizona. We have all of these offices and all of our our men and women, agree that they want to be here, they want to be part of the mission, they believe in what we're doing. They know that we all each other have each other's backs. It's not just me, we all have each other's backs. And it goes back to what you said. I think you came up with a perfect phrase, Travis courageous leadership. You have to have courage to do the right thing. I think most of the time when you do the right thing, everybody else starts to fall in line, but you got to be able to take that step.
Travis Yates:It takes one right, it takes one, it takes one person to have a leader that's willing to take that step.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Now some reality and some political reality. Sometimes you have to work behind the scenes to coalesce a support system so that when you step out on that public stage whether it's a city council meeting or a Zoom meeting or whatever it is, whether you're in law enforcement, business or higher ed or, let's say, a church organization, whatever it is where you have multiple people involved and you're trying to shift the corporate culture, you're trying to do a paradigm shift, a different way of thinking. You've got to do a little behind the scenes work. You just can't jump out on that ledge without thinking it through and working a little behind the scenes. So the reality is there has to be a little bit of prep work. You know, because you say how do you do that? Well, it's easy to say just have courage.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Well, the pragmatic side of that is you've got to work the people. You've got to get individuals to believe in you. Once you get enough individuals to believe in you, now you have a group that's coalescing around you. Now you have a mass. And what happens as that mass starts to actually do things? It's like a snowball rolling downhill. It gathers speed and size and it keeps pulling more. I don't want to say snowflakes, because that has a different meaning in our society, but more particles get added to it, more people get added to it. People tend to want to hitch themselves to a rising star. That's part of what we've seen here. Right, you know, with my businesses, nobody wants to be with a loser, right?
Travis Yates:They don't want to be with the dog, yeah, and I think it's so fascinating. Oh, go ahead, I'm sorry.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:No, no, no. But there's power in having a track record. There also is power in being wrong. Every one of my people could tell you that at one point or another, either collectively or individually. I've said you know what guys? I'm sorry I had that wrong. If they feel strongly about it, I want them to advocate. I don't want a bunch of yes, people around me I never have.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:When I was at Ivy Tech Community College, which is a huge or big, big bureaucratic organization, and I had a leadership team of 33 with 19 direct reports, I would tell them in this big conference room on the fifth floor, you know, overlooking downtown India, and I would tell them don't let me drive this car off the cliff. I have a lot of people depending on me. You guys depend on me, I depend on you. We need to make sure that we are responsible in our stewardship. Here we have a greater responsibility. So I don't care what the title is, as long as it's done respectfully, in a nice way, obviously not in some public forum, within this confines, this conference room or whatever. If we see a mistake happening, including by me, tell me Now. I may have some additional background and then you go oh okay, now that makes sense, but maybe I don't. Maybe I'm screwing up, so don't let me drive this car off the cliff. All of them have to be courageous leaders also.
Travis Yates:Yeah, it's so important. That speaks to culture, because the higher you go up in an organization, especially where you are, richard, you're in a dangerous position. You have all these people that work for you. They don't want to upset you, they want to tell you what you like, what you don't like. You have to build the culture to where they're comfortable to come tell you things that they may not think you like. And in law enforcement we see that problem manifesting over and over again.
Travis Yates:I will go crazy the next time I hear some chief say I have an open door policy. No, you don't. No, you need to go to their door because they don't feel comfortable coming into your door. So quit saying that and checking the box and moving on. So good stuff. Man, we're drinking from a fire hose If you're just listening to us. We're speaking to Richard Weinblatt and man, I can't get enough of Richard. But before we get off, I got to ask you one more question and I was actually in Phoenix a few months ago. I was scared to call you because I was afraid you would take me to the gym. You've been in the gym for close to five decades. If people could see you, I'm going to put a picture of you in our podcast logo. You're in your sixties and you look like the Jack LaLanne of 2024, right? So kind of tell us about how you got into bodybuilding weightlifting but how that has made you better as a leader. Right, because there's a lot of transition there.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:It absolutely has. It has become part of my identity. Admittedly, it has become part of how people perceive me, and not just perceive me physically, but they perceive me because when they see somebody that looks really squared away and this is true in law enforcement. I have quite a few guys because I had and you've seen this right Travis, you probably did it yourself, if I know you where your shirts are tailored. I had my biceps pulled into my uniform shirts. I had shirt stays that pulled a shirt tight. So when I got out of the car and I was off and by myself, far away from my backup, I didn't look like a soup sandwich, right, I didn't look disheveled and I had quite a few guys. They were drunk, of course, and when I'd get them being processed down at the adult detention center it would be like man, I was going to jump you and then when you got out of the car, you look kind of squared away. And even guys that were bigger than me I'm not the biggest man in terms of height and frame and everything, but I've got a very high percentage of muscle and I'm fairly defined, you know, and so, and when you have the uniform looking sharp, it makes people think twice. He probably knows what he's doing and it'd be a little too difficult.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:And most bad guys, the way I see it is, they want to take the path of least resistance. 're like water, you know. Um, they're kind of if you were into martial arts. They're kind of like kung fu. You want to take the path of least resistance. So they, they don't want to do that. But how I got into it is I was a skinny, scrawny little high school kid and, you know, didn't have the kind of confidence that I had to have later on. And thank, thank goodness for my college roommate who later became one of my closest friends. He was into bodybuilding. Every day we'd say we'd go across the football gym and start lifting weights and every morning I'd find an excuse not to get up. You know what I'm talking about right and it's a metaphor for everything in life.
Travis Yates:Yep.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:An excuse not to have it happen and it becomes a pattern. And so, like most cops and same thing in business, I look at everybody in terms of patterns. That's how I look at my employees. You know, do something once, fine, twice. Okay. Now we're starting to see a pattern, three, four times. I know who you are right.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:So it's the same in law enforcement no-transcript. You know, the grasshopper has surpassed the master because he's still into weightlifting, but not to the degree I am and I tend to be, again because of my Santa Fe experience 150% into it and that's it. And it's diet. I have eaten the same way for decades. I don't eat bread, I drink very little, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs. I have tuna, fish, I have ground beef, I have eggs, I have olive oil, mayonnaise, so I have good fats, I mean.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:And I have eaten the same way to the point that some years back, when I was a reserve captain running a police academy for an Indiana agency, we stopped to check on some defensive tactics training that was going on and I had instructors underneath me that were doing that and we stopped really quickly to Wendy's and I thought I'd be safe. I had a plain Wendy's burger, double burger, with ketchup only and the bread. I was sick of the dog for two days. I can't do it. There was another time years ago when I was a reserve deputy sheriff with the Orange County Sheriff's Office in Orlando, which is a large 3000 law enforcement deputy agency, and we stopped at a barbecue place and I knew I shouldn't have any, but the three deputies sitting there with me were like kind of pushing me into it and so I'm like, oh, I'll have a couple of nibbles. Again sick of the dog for a couple of days because it's off the regular diet, so that's the downside of it. I don't mind it.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:I am such a disciplined person which again came out of my law enforcement period that I can just continue doing the things that work. Now I've had some people say I don't want to give up all this other food that much, and I'm like that's fine. I have no criticism of you, no judgment. Everybody makes their choices. I am more comfortable feeling and looking the way I am, especially 61, visceral fat, all these problems. I have a 10 pack. I mean I'm not obese. There's a lot of my contemporaries that are dealing with all sorts of health issues that I don't have to deal with. So to me that's a priority. I'm not saying it's the right choice Everybody has to make their own choice but I'm just 150% driven into it, just like I was building the business.
Travis Yates:Well, I don't think it's a coincidence. The discipline you built there has bled over into your endeavors today and all the success you had. Richard Weinblatt, I can't thank you enough. I remember you all those years back on the Cop Doc radio show. We had a good time back then.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:And remember you and I, I I think we first met when you were writing a lot of articles and I was writing a lot of articles back in in the 90s a late 80s and early 90s for law and order magazine, for police, one law and order, all that director bruce cameron of law and order magazine, the magazine for police management.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:I think that was one of my first exposures to you and other colleagues of yours, like Dave Smith, JD Buck Savage and Tim Dees and a lot of other people that were part of that universe back then. So we've actually gone through a lot, you and I.
Travis Yates:It's exciting that you're doing so well. Man. It's an honor to speak to you. I'm going to be in Phoenix in the next few months and I am going to look you up. Even if you drag me to the gym, I'm not scared anymore. I'm going to be ready for it.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:I won't drag you to the gym, but you know we'll go eat, hang out. If you want to see some of our operations, we have an interesting facility in Phoenix. Hey we've got a homeless camp right near it If you want to go hang out.
Travis Yates:It'd be great.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:I know you're used to hanging out with homeless people from your cop days.
Travis Yates:Of course, man. Richard man, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for being on.
Dr. Richard Weinblatt:Thank you, Travis, and keep doing courageous leadership and all that stuff. I mean, that's what our society needs.
Travis Yates:Thank you, sir, and if you're listening, thank you for doing that, thank you for your time and thank you to Richard. And just remember lead on and stay courageous.
Intro/Outro:Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www. travisyates. org.
