Your Proposal Isn’t Expensive—Their Non-Compliance Is

Show Notes

Most proposals fight on price instead of value. In this episode, we flip the script: anchor your price to the real cost of non-compliance (penalties, repeat findings, injury costs), prove ROI on a single screen, and give buyers a simple plan they can approve fast. We cover the one-screen justification, how to pick the right leading metric, and common traps like vanity metrics and tool sprawl. Walk away with a week-one checklist, a reusable template, and a mini-course to make “no-brainer” proposals your default.

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The Safety Consultant Podcast with Sheldon Primus is your ultimate weekly guide to starting or growing a profitable occupational safety and health consulting business. Are you ready to be your own boss and make a greater impact? Your expertise can help more people create safer workplaces, and your skills deserve a platform where they can truly shine. If you feel limited in your current role and believe your knowledge could serve the broader workforce more effectively, this podcast is for you. Join us as we explore the steps to launch your own safety consulting business, share insights on navigating the industry, and provide strategies to maximize your impact on workplace health and safety. Now is the perfect time to take control of your career and make a difference!

[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the Safety Consultant podcast on your host Sheldon primus.

[SPEAKER_02]: Going to give you guys this week a component of proposals.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mentioned to you, get one of my free proposals.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you go to safetyconsultant.au and also mini course on proposals, you're going to help you stretch your business right, and that's what we're going for this week.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, so far, this year, looking at that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So today we're going to talk about making it worth the client's time making it worth their money for your services and this will also help you with your pricing too.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you need to... don't think about a bunch with your...

[SPEAKER_02]: You're hourly rate, and then I'm gonna get you guys focused on not thinking hourly rate and well how much is this service gonna cost if it's not done So I want you to get a compelling story as to why this client Potential client should choose you.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what we're gonna go over here.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll give you an example of how to do this So when we come back That's what we're gonna go over

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Safety Consultant Show with Sheldon primus, where we blend safety sparks with business brilliance and the pitch of Sheldon's signature wit, whether you're a safety pro of fresh face consultant, or just safety curious, get ready for a show that will educate, entertain and elevate your safety game.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's dive into the art of consulting with your safety shirt for himself, Sheldon primus.

[SPEAKER_01]: This episode is powered by Safety FM.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're right.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're welcome back everybody to the Safety Consultant Podcast.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you haven't noticed, they changed the name from Safety Consultant with Children's Promise to Safety Consultant Podcast.

[SPEAKER_02]: Get a brand new logo and everything for there's 2026.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're killing it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Alright, so before you even get started, go to safetyconsultant.au and if that doesn't work with her, you then go to safety.contractors and what you're going to get there is you're going to get the opportunity to download my proposal so you can see what it looks like and then also you're going to get a mini course.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the mini course you don't have to do right now because you're listening to me, but that's real later But the proposal will be helpful so you can at least take a look at some of the components because I'm gonna talk about one particular component right now and I'm gonna use the US OSHA

[SPEAKER_02]: As my actual way to navigate, to get your worth, prove your worth to a client.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just gonna also help you with pricing.

[SPEAKER_02]: But for those of you outside of the OSHA jurisdiction, I know many of you are listening to me all over the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for that and I appreciate you and You're gonna have to fight the equivalent for your country unfortunately.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have the capacity to do this for every single jurisdiction in the world But I know OSHA.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm gonna do this activity with OSHA.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're in a follow along

[SPEAKER_02]: And for your jurisdiction, I want you to just kind of see if you can find the equivalent, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's my disclaimer for those of you that are outside the U.S.

[SPEAKER_02]: So let's get into it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Alright, so you're trying to figure out how to get your first client or get a client, maybe a new client.

[SPEAKER_02]: I am newly in an area in Washington State, so I'm doing this kind of stuff myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just trying to get some local clients, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It makes a lot of these here for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: So this is, here's a mindset.

[SPEAKER_02]: You first, you have to figure out what is your service worth and the best way to think about it is what's the cost of noncompliance in this context.

[SPEAKER_02]: So for instance, now what I'm going to teach you here is something that you can do again with different industries and those you are in different jurisdictions, you can do the same thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to select one hazard, which is trenching and excavation because I know that one a lot being in a wastewater field before you even got into doing any other safety.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was one of those guys who had to work in the plant But we had to take care of our own underground stuff when everything went wrong Being a city And as a special district the state and other police are work for so I have been really familiar with excavation throughout my career So I'm going to use this as our example

[SPEAKER_02]: So first, if you're on the OSHA website, OSHA.gov, now, but again, I haven't had to say this in a while, but I am going to say it now.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you're driving, you're listening.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're not looking up anything at stop lights.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're waiting until you get home to look stuff up.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right now, you're just listening.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when you're at home, real listening to this,

[SPEAKER_02]: And those of you that are ready at Homer would say, please go to osha.gov and what you want to get to is the enforcement section.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if you were to do osha.gov and you have your mouse over the little blue tab that says osha standards enforcement topics, health and resources and use, you're going to see a little part that has an enforcement section.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you want to actually hit the osha enforcement tab.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that enforcement tab is going to get you to a Hobbit page that has many different links to it.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're looking for targeted enforcement, which is going to be on the left side of the page.

[SPEAKER_02]: Underneath that, you'll see national emphasis programs.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what we're going to start in our example, national emphasis program.

[SPEAKER_02]: Open that right-click and open it into a separate tab because we're going to go back to this page because you're also going to want to see the penalties And So right now You're going to click and you're probably going to hear me clicking as well because I'm trying to make sure I see what you're seeing So when I scroll down

[SPEAKER_02]: On this enforcement directive page, one of the things that OSHA Federal OSHA is mandating enforcement is trenching an excavation, so that's why I made it easy to use this topic.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you'll see compliance letter, which is CPL 020161, that's the trenching an excavation compliance letter.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, what you're going to do at that point is go to the PDF version, so just click at the PDF version, I want you guys to be ready, because I'm going to lead you to page 3, and I want you to look at the procedures, I'm going to read this, and this is justification for why someone could use your service.

[SPEAKER_02]: Compliance, safety, and health officers, so that equals her co-shadows rate.

[SPEAKER_02]: So compliance, safety, and health officers shall initiate inspections under this MEP.

[SPEAKER_02]: Whenever there's observed, and they observe an open trench or an open exigration, regardless whether or not a violation is readily observed.

[SPEAKER_02]: justification number one, new window, oh no.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you get this justification, what this is meaning right now is no matter what the OSHA compliance officer is told to stop.

[SPEAKER_02]: and they're told to stop to do see any kind of observed excavation.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're going to have to start an inspection and there's even rules in here that says, if they don't kept time or whatever, you got to do this, this and this, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: They're all stepped out.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the first thing that we're looking at.

[SPEAKER_02]: like aka person who does excavation, you need my services because OSHA is going to be very likely to stop at your excavation site so therefore think about me, that's the conversation that's starting right now.

[SPEAKER_02]: The next thing that we need to figure out is who are these people that are going to end up being somebody that's going to do the excavation service, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So let's look at that right now.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to do this in a different way.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to show you guys what I'm doing this.

[SPEAKER_02]: But first I'm going to do an industry search.

[SPEAKER_02]: And what you're going to do is get to the industry search.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, you're going to go up to that little blue tab on OSHA's website and for those of you that are OSHA does change their website from time to time.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if it's not looking like this then unfortunately you're listening to this several years after I have done this How's the future?

[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't get to be finally get those flying cars, actually China's got them now, but anyway, and not the cars per se, but they look like giant drones, but anyway, I digress.

[SPEAKER_02]: So anyway, what I'm going to ask you to do next,

[SPEAKER_02]: is in order for you to figure out your NAICS code, which is North American industry classification system code.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want you to go back to that enforcement tab.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when you get to that enforcement tab, what you're going to be looking for is, I want you to start looking for

[SPEAKER_02]: I'll see ocean enforcement, we're going to look for, they switch to supple it also.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to have to take a little time here, oh, no, even better.

[SPEAKER_02]: I am changing my mind.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to under-help it resources.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to see data.

[SPEAKER_02]: We want that page.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to go to that data page, and then look up Investigations Summaries.

[SPEAKER_02]: So click on the tab that says Investigations Summaries, Linear Ocean Spection Data, and then when you get there, do a keyword search for Trenching, Excavation, something like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's what your keyword search is going to say.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to do those keywords in the description.

[SPEAKER_02]: Abstract or keyword.

[SPEAKER_02]: One of those three fields is where you want to do this.

[SPEAKER_02]: So again it's going to be into description field in the Abstract fields or into keyword field.

[SPEAKER_02]: Once you get that, then that's going to lead you towards where whoever gets cited for this.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're going to have their own NAICS code, and that code is going to be something that you're going to need to use.

[SPEAKER_02]: And where you're going to use that code is going to go to census.gov.

[SPEAKER_02]: forward slash N-A-I-C-S. All right, since it's dot go of forward slash N-A-I-C-S.

[SPEAKER_02]: So once you select that, then that's going to lead you just to make sure that you're going to figure out who are the people.

[SPEAKER_02]: In that certain code that you found, that is going to lead you to figuring out what code you should be looking up.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's the companies, North American industrial classification system code is just the company codes and those codes are the ones that will tell you these are the people that have been inspected for excavation in our example.

[SPEAKER_02]: And now these are the type of companies I'm going to be looking up for.

[SPEAKER_02]: And how you're going to find these companies is you're going to drive around, you see an open excavation, don't stop and talk to the guys because at that point you plug in them, all right?

[SPEAKER_02]: But their vehicles are going to have company names.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you want to make sure you write down the company names as best as you can and safely as you can.

[SPEAKER_02]: Take a picture if you need to.

[SPEAKER_02]: And now we'll go from there, get a LinkedIn, you're going to look up the LinkedIn company.

[SPEAKER_02]: Look for the safety officer there, look for whoever's in charge of human resource, look who's VP or whatever, and try to do a connection with them if they're on LinkedIn.

[SPEAKER_02]: If not, then that's okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'll look for their company website, and go through the about us page, and you're going to try to see a good contact from there.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's how you're finding your clients for these type of services.

[SPEAKER_02]: The next thing that we're going to do after we find people we're trying to build a justification of why you need our service, okay?

[SPEAKER_02]: That's what we're on.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we got the NASCS code.

[SPEAKER_02]: I told you the OSHA directive, which is a driver.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to make people want to do some protection.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now let's look at the penalties.

[SPEAKER_02]: Remember I told you about the penalties section.

[SPEAKER_02]: for every serious violation right now, and this is about the change, because I'm recording this January 10th, 2026, so these numbers are going to be old, like almost immediately, because the US government updates

[SPEAKER_02]: Every January, they'll update these penalties to be fixed for inflation.

[SPEAKER_02]: So this 16,550 dollars per violation for serious other than serious end requirements.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's the max that they're going to chart.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, that's going to actually change.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to go higher for inflation.

[SPEAKER_02]: Failure to debate, meaning you didn't fix things, 16,550 and then will fuller repeat.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's $165,000.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, will full on the Pete Violet repeat violation.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a big one.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, let's say you get the company that you've just saw an open excavation.

[SPEAKER_02]: And at this point you're going to go ahead and look to contact this company.

[SPEAKER_02]: You could also look them up in the Establishment Search, remember I gave you guys the Establishment Area Data and Statistics.

[SPEAKER_02]: You could do an Establishment Search and you could look this company up See if they have any prior anything and at this point you're going to be saying hey my Sir, is this going to stop you from getting a willful or it's going to be a repeat violation and again just vacation

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's starting to see dollars, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Who's starting to see dollar figures here?

[SPEAKER_02]: So going back, I'm doing the industry search under the any ICS codes.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is telling you some more data on this.

[SPEAKER_02]: So remember, I told you you're looking up the one any ICS code.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's going to give you the understanding of who are the companies or type of companies, OSHAs going to be citing for this violation.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then when you search for that industry you could also see some new data under the industry search results.

[SPEAKER_02]: I normally just search for the code under like a two-year period or something which is viable because that's within the repeat violation time period so you don't want to search for a time period over five years.

[SPEAKER_02]: So two years is a good window.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when you get that search what you're going to be looking

[SPEAKER_02]: break it down into state or offices.

[SPEAKER_02]: So now you're going to see what is the OCH activity for your state or even your actual area office.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's going to build urgency.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a driver.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if you see a lot of activity in your particular topic you're trying to

[SPEAKER_02]: build some urgency on for your potential client.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is going to help you because what you're going to end up seeing is the activity of that compliance area, that region, that area office is even better.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what this search is going to help you with, that industry search.

[SPEAKER_02]: So then we know the penalty amount, we know the industry amount,

[SPEAKER_02]: We now need to get a good understanding of a couple of things.

[SPEAKER_02]: First thing that we want to get an understanding of is going to be the dollar figure.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you have a selector service, are you training them?

[SPEAKER_02]: Are you doing a new trenching excavation plan?

[SPEAKER_02]: Are you doing some sort of work to reduce the risk for these workers in this type of activity?

[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever that service is, you're not charging how much you think you're hourly rate is, you're charging how much a discount to the OSHA citation would be and then also you're looking for If this person or any of these workers gets susceptible to an injury, there's an additional cost That's the medical cost and all that so Where you're gonna go is OSHA.gov for slash safety pays

[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you get to that safety page, play page, you're gonna look up the type of injury that is likely to happen.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I looked up an injury like a fracture.

[SPEAKER_02]: So let's say something falls and it's somebody on the head, hits him on the arm or something.

[SPEAKER_02]: it falls into an excavation.

[SPEAKER_02]: Probably going to get some sort of fracture.

[SPEAKER_02]: So looking at this data, we'll tell you that one fracture is going to end up costing that company around $60,000 on average.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's not what they're going to pay, that's the indirect cost.

[SPEAKER_02]: Depends on their profit margin.

[SPEAKER_02]: So let's say the company has 10 cents out of every dollar's profit.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're actually going to be working for free for $603,000.

[SPEAKER_02]: So now, if your service is training, and you're going to offer a 10-hour OSHA training for construction to this company, which will include the topic of excavation,

[SPEAKER_02]: You're not gonna charge them, you know, $20 an hour.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's, you know, one-autious citation for the excavations.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna be far less than that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Let's see.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna click on one of these companies.

[SPEAKER_02]: Here's a company who had an excavation issue.

[SPEAKER_02]: They got seven serious violations, which was $91,500 violation dollars.

[SPEAKER_02]: the average violation that I'm looking at on this page is about $12,000 each.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this company looks like they're contesting it, but anyway, $12,000 per violation.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then you're going to pay work for free for $160,000.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then I'll ask you to give me 600 and $3,000 really get that number from $603,000.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if that's the case, then honestly what you're looking at is you're going to end up telling and deans you're helping them see that this organization you're saving them money.

[SPEAKER_02]: All right, so you're saving this organization X amount of dollars up to $603,000 in injury cost.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're saving them rarefly about $12,000 in citation cost, especially when you narrow down to your area.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're now proposing actual work,

[SPEAKER_02]: Again, you're not thinking how much is a 10 hour class going to cost me 10 hours of doing the class two hours of paperwork 12 hours, my salary is 20 dollars an hour, which you know, that's fallacy most of us are going to at least charge a lot 100 dollars an hour for consulting work So even that 2,200 dollars for the training However

[SPEAKER_02]: They're getting a savings, a potential savings of 600 in $12,000.

[SPEAKER_02]: So now you could justify charging more and here's another thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: OSHA has found in their OSHA white paper.

[SPEAKER_02]: You could go to OSHA.gov and do a search for OSHA white paper.

[SPEAKER_02]: that for every dollar spent in safety, you can now expect a return of three to six dollars back.

[SPEAKER_02]: Put that in your quote so that you can show, hey, I'm charging you $5,500 for this training, and now this training is going to $5,500 times three times six.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is the range that you're going to expect to get a return of your investment.

[SPEAKER_02]: So now you're making it easier for this person to say, hey, this training, this service is a no-brainer.

[SPEAKER_02]: This proposal is awesome.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's showing me the summary of what to expect in my industry for this service.

[SPEAKER_02]: And now you're helping the decision-maker say,

[SPEAKER_02]: We need you.

[SPEAKER_02]: We need this guy.

[SPEAKER_02]: We need this girl.

[SPEAKER_02]: We need this team.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's what you're looking for.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I gave you the thought process.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's up to you guys to find your niche.

[SPEAKER_02]: I gave you the one thing that I was looking at was the excavation.

[SPEAKER_02]: I showed you how I worked at OSHA website and that's the price.

[SPEAKER_02]: And go to safetyconsultant.au and you're going to find my

[SPEAKER_02]: I even gave you guys an example of my bio.

[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, you're not going to give them my bio, you're going to do your own.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then you're also going to get a mini course on proposal writing.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, I'm going to save to consultant.ai or safety.contractors.

[SPEAKER_02]: And once you get there, then go ahead and you'll have the ability to download this information.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay?

[SPEAKER_02]: So,

[SPEAKER_02]: I gave you a lot to think about.

[SPEAKER_02]: I hope that you guys are going to join me in my Safety Consultant 101 course.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I got that coming.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a free online event.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be on January 31st.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you just go to Safety Consultant101.com.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you'll be able to sign up for that free course.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you guys got a lot to think about.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Go Canada.

[SPEAKER_00]: The views in the opinion you expressed on this podcast or broadcast are those of the host in its guest and not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company.

[SPEAKER_00]: Examples of analysis discussed within the past hour only examples.

[SPEAKER_00]: It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available, as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information.

[SPEAKER_00]: Assumption made within this analysis are not reflective of the positions of the company.

[SPEAKER_00]: No part of this podcast of broadcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means mechanical electronic recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast or broadcast, Sheldon Primes.

[SPEAKER_01]: This episode has been powered by Safety FM.

[SPEAKER_02]: Never catch yourself thinking I could do this on my own.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you're a safety officer with real-world skills, you'll have to wait for permission to build your freedom.

[SPEAKER_02]: But Saturday, January 31st, I'm hosting Safety Consultant 101, a free live workshop.

[SPEAKER_02]: In two hours, I hope you package your expertise into a service clients will pay for, and set pricing boundaries so you don't get stuck doing free advice forever.

[SPEAKER_02]: Register now at safetyconsultant101.com.

[SPEAKER_02]: Let's build your freedom.