February 17, 2025 • 46 mins
Lane and Fred speak with Zein Shamma of Gift of Life Surrogacy about her unique business located in Sylvania which works with couples unable through other methods to have children of their own. Gift of Life pairs them with surrogate mothers to help them create loving families.
Gift Of Life Surrogacy
Their second guest is Jason Wolbers of Northwest Ohio Protections based out of Tiffin, Ohio. The company installs high quality wireless smoke, heat, and carbon monoxide sensors for local homes and businesses.
Northwest Ohio Protections
Gift Of Life Surrogacy
Their second guest is Jason Wolbers of Northwest Ohio Protections based out of Tiffin, Ohio. The company installs high quality wireless smoke, heat, and carbon monoxide sensors for local homes and businesses.
Northwest Ohio Protections
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to a Heart for Business. I'm Fred Lafever and
along with Lane Mons, President CEO the Better Business Bureau
of Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan, we'll highlight a local
business weekly. You'll discover why these small local business owners
have a passion for what they do and why the
(00:26):
Better Business Bureau has a Heart for Business. Now here's
Lane Months.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Well, Welcome, everyone, Welcome to the program today BBB's a
Heart for Business podcast. I am Lane Monts. I'm here
in the studio with Fred Lafever. We've got two guests today.
The first one is Zane Shama from a Gift of
Life Surrogacy and the second is Jason Wolbers from Northwest
o Higher Protections. Jason is on deck, but Zaane, you
(00:52):
are up to bat today. Welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yes, are you excited to be here?
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I am very so.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I got to tell you, I'm personally very excited to
have you here because the business is unique as we're
going to get into and I am excited to talk
about it. Here about it, learn about it. Watch Fred's
face as we learn about it. You know that's going
to be fun. So tell us about zay Shama and
tell us about Gift of Life surrogacy and how it
came to be.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Which part of zay Shama you want to learn about the.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Part of zayane Shama that's mostly related to Gift of
life surrogacy sounds.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Good, Let's start there.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
So.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Gift of Life Surrogacy Agency is an agency that I
created with my husband, doctor Nicholas Shauma. He is a
fertility surgeon. He's been doing this for over thirty years.
He is the CEO and owner of IVF Michigan. We
have ten clinics in Michigan, Wow, and we have one
(01:47):
here in Toledo, Innsylvania. And he's been doing this for
thirty two years, treating his patients, helping them conceive, grow
their families, start their families. And after years and years
of working with all of his patients, he realized that
there is a fraction of those patients that leave his
(02:10):
clinic unsatisfied and not able to start their family or
grow their family, and he decided to start the agency.
We decided to start the agency and help those families
find a way to be able to actually conceive a baby.
(02:33):
These people, patients usually are start with the hope of
doing an IVF cycle. IVF is a cycle that they do.
They stimulate the intended the patients, stimulates the ovaries to
produce more eggs than what they usually do per month,
(02:57):
and they fertilize them using the husband's sperm, and they
fertilize the eggs with the sperm and they have their embryos.
A lot of patients are successful that way, but there's
a fraction of people who are actually not able to
get pregnant even from that, and so at that point
(03:19):
they need somebody to come in and carry their pregnancy
for them.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
So surrogacy is definitely just not the same as IVF.
There's a little bit of a difference going on.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
It's a marriage, it's it's it's two things that are
happening at once. And obviously you have the same sex
couples that cannot have a baby by themselves. They need
a surrogate, so that that comes it's the beginning of
the journey for them. We always have a saying in
our field saying like for them that that's the beginning
(03:50):
of the journey, not the end of their journey. Like
with heterosexual couples, they they get to surrogacy as their
last reasons sords. Okay, does that make sense?
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I know absolutely, And we've all seen, you know, the
stories on on TV that get blown out of proportion
sometimes about you know, this teenage mother decided to carry
the baby for somebody and then at the last minute
decides not to hand it over.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
That's such a bad wrap for the.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
That's what I was Is it add it is?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
It is absolutely not. Can I tell you that gestational
carries are so happy to help their match their intended parents,
but they are the happiest one they see the parents
carry the baby at the hospital and they're even happier
when they get to home, go home without the baby.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
That's a Hollywood concoction. Does not represent the true experience,
does it? But I can't believe that Hollywood would produce
Do they produce false tales? For?
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Sometimes? Sometimes they do?
Speaker 4 (04:53):
So.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Now you've been doing this, this part of the agency
for five years, I think you offline? Yes, what made
you decide or was it a choice between doctor u
Shama and you to start the agency?
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Then yes, because like I said, some a fraction of
his patients were leaving and wanting to do journeys by
themselves and what was happening is without the guidance of
people who are in the profession, they end up matching
with people individually, without the guidance of an agency, and
(05:29):
only to find out that, for instance, the gestational carrier
has some kind of disease that she that will not
will seclude her of being an actual good applicant to
be a gestational carrier. She could be potentially uh not
living in an ideal environment. Maybe her the household is
(05:50):
not an ideal situation for her. We do, we do
a lot of forensic uh searches on the person on
the app before we match them with their intended parents.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah, so well do that.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
What are you looking for when the young lady comes
to you, for instance, and the initial says, We'd like
to carry a baby for somebody. I'm never going to
get married, but I wouldn't mind giving birth to a
baby for someone else. What's the starting point?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
That's a great question. They apply into the agency, they
are first seen by me. We process their application, We
look at them, we look at their history. That's our
initial intention is to look into who they are and
whether they are actually capable of passing through the process.
(06:42):
The initial process for us is pretty unique because of
that marriage that we have with IVF Michigan and IVF
Ohio that allows us the backbone of the medical part
where they become patients of doctor Shama. We do medical
records for them, We collect all of their delivery.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So the potential surrogates because patients in a sense.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
They absolutely okay, wow, okay, absolutely are and that really
really gave us like a step ahead of most agencies
because of our sister company together. That gives us that
access to the medical screening that Doctor Shama is able
to do on those wonderful women that are able to
(07:22):
apply into the surrogacy. So the first part is you're
going through their medical records, their obg I n's, their
general practitioners, their delivery notes from their hospital. They their
nurses will look at all of that and kind of
build up a chart for those applicants, and then that
chart becomes for doctor Shama for him to go over
(07:45):
that chart to make sure that to give us thumbs
up or thumbs down.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
So you're really curating the surrogates through the process of
qualification so that when you present them to interested couples
that you've done so much of the background exactly which
is and when people try to do it themselves, they
do it yourself. Seems to be a common theme on
the show Fred. If they try to diy at themselves,
they're throwing darts in the dark.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
It's the biggest mistake. It's the biggest mistake because they
don't have the expertise to be able to look at
the proper things that they need to look at. And
that's one of the reasons why doctor Shauma actually wanted
to create that agency. It's because a lot of his
patients were doing the Doyi way and they would come
crying to him telling him. Our cirguit that we match
(08:31):
with ended up having, for instance, as actually transmitted diseases.
We're not able to continue with a transfer, or she
had some kind of dependency issue, or she's on some
kind of medication that is not friendly to the pregnancy.
So many things could be there or a lot of
times we also do background checks, we do preparedness and assessments,
which is kind of a psychological evaluation on them. So
(08:54):
so much goes into the clearance of an applicant before
we even think about her with their intended parents.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
And then once you have the match.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Once you found somebody who matches with a couple a
I'm going to assume because of doctor doctor Shama, do
you and by the way, do you always call him
doctor Shama.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
When I speak them?
Speaker 5 (09:16):
Can you come into the kitchen here? Dinner's read.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
It's funny, it's funny, but yeah, absolutely not, absolutely not.
But you know, you can ask a lot of our
clients and his patients. The best thing about this marriage
that we have and it's literally a marriage, yeah, is
that they have the access to the agency and to
him at the same time through me, And it's really
(09:40):
something that our clients really speak very highly of. It's
that seamless, transparent process that we have going on.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
And so once you have that person, once you have
that surrogate that you think is a good match, I'm
going to assume because of the connection with doctor Shama,
you're also that person is going to get pre natal care,
which is absolutely critical, watching for the birth weight, all
of those things that everything to do. Everything comes out.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Absolutely absolutely and these are all part of the criteria
that she has to have when day when they apply.
If the BMI is too high, then they are kind
of disqualified. So we look at them from every angle
and we develop. Most importantly about all of this is
the relationship that grows between the team of Gift of
(10:32):
Life and the surrogate, because the only way that we
can actually match them with a perfect match is because
we know the two parties very well and we're able
to say we're not the type of agency that goes
and just because we have a surrogate that's available for matching,
we just slap like a match with any of the
(10:53):
couple that is waiting.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Well, so you're the process you're following. I guess this
is my ignorance showing here and it's not a loaded question.
The audience will think it is. But isn't that what
all surrogacy centers do. Isn't that the same process?
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Well, I think a lot of the agencies become a
very growing business. And when I say this, I don't
say it with this respect at all, but things become
really out of proportion. When they start an agency, they
don't have a cap over what they are able to consume.
(11:29):
So there's no way an agency unless they put a
cap to the amount of matches that they're able to
do through their agency, which we do. We are a
boutique agency. I do anywhere fifty or less journeys a
year because I cannot be as personable as I am
with my clients having more. And one thing I do
(11:52):
want to comment on is we don't take international surrogacy applications.
We focus mostly on national journeys and actually I work
mostly with the Midwest.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well why is that?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Because it becomes overwhelming, it becomes too much to handle,
and I'm not able to grow and thrive in that
match if I don't, if I'm not able to grow
a relationship with those clients.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I get the feeling that that just watching your body
language and everything that that's kind of part of this
program is to talk about the passion that people have
for their business. The fact that you said you've got
a cap. You could take probably one hundred patients a
year if you really wanted to. There's probably that many
out there, but you have a cap because you want
to create that relationship. Is that where your passion comes from?
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Absolutely, folks, My passion comes through my personal relationships with
those people, because not just matching them, but seeing them
reach their goal at the end of the journey becomes personal.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
One reason for this program, Zane is. You know, there's
been a tendency in the last I don't know, maybe forever,
but I've seen it in the last fifteen to twenty
years for businesses to go to where they're just counting
the number of subscribers that they're counting the being counters
are counting the beans. And there are a lot of
stories out there of businesses small and medium size often
(13:19):
that are still devoted to doing things at a personal level.
And I'm just such a big believer and that when
I heard your story, I thought, this is a great
example of that. It's obviously you care about that we do.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
We do absolutely and you can feel it because we
are involved in every part of their aspect. We don't
just start the journeys. We are there along the way
till the last minute. Even Actually, I always make jokes
with the intended parents that work through the agency. I
always tell them, I'm going to have a hard time
(13:51):
separating now that you've had your baby. You know, I'll
be calling you a few times. Don't feel like you
have to take that call because it becomes like part
of your everyday life.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Are there babies out there named Zane? There are as
years but.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Not through the agency yet, but definitely through IVF Michigan.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
It does sound like you become immeshed in their lives,
which I think is key to the success because you,
like a lot of businesses, you have to have a
personal relationship, but in your case it has to go
even deeper because you're bringing a new life in.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
It's one way I express it is that they all
these families are part of my life every single day.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I can barely handle one. I've got three kids and
that's one family, and that's sometimes that's one family too much.
Speaker 5 (14:44):
It is a growing problem.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
I mean, obviously your husband, doctor Shama, has been dealing
with this for thirty years. Is it a growing problem
for our young people and people in their thirties and
stuff that they're unable to receive?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Call it a problem? Okay, it's more than life is
changing and life is evolving. People are putting putting away
the years of actually settling down and thinking about conceiving
and starting a family two later years, and that's what's
participating in the problem. Okay, yeah, that has a big
(15:20):
part of us.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
So it is more of a plan then too, you know,
because back in the day, you know, you get married.
When you get out of high school, you're eighteen nineteen,
Mom and dad, I'd really like to be a grandma.
So you go ahead and have a baby, whether you're
ready for it or not. And now people are getting
their careers in mine and maybe getting married late in
their twenties and talking about let's start a family, and
(15:43):
at that point they need a little.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Bit of help, right.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
What are some misconceptions when people come to you. What
are some mindsets or some misconceptions that you feel that
you see a lot and that you try to recalibrate.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
I think in that, I think for people who have
not started looking, they always worry that and don't think
through the fact that the embryo that will be transferred
to the gestational carrier to carry the pregnancy is not
biologically related to the gestational carrier. So this is something
(16:17):
that you have to explain to most people, is that
a surrogate carries a pregnancy for somebody, she is not
biologically related to that baby inside of her.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
That is a hard concept to get your mind around sometimes.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, and it sounds, you know, sometimes it just sounds
so impersonal, you know, when you say, oh, the gestational.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Blah, blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
How do you how do people the carrier, the surrogate,
and the family that wants to have the baby, how
did they make that more personal for themselves instead of
so clinical.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
It's a great question. So a lot of people look
at it, look at it in a sense, Oh, well,
the gestational carrier is going to be carrying the baby,
but she's getting compensated for it. What's wrong with the
getting compensated. She's giving them her body for a whole year.
Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, oh, I
just want to be a gestational carrier because I want
(17:12):
to make money. It doesn't work that way. There's so
much emotions, there's so much of their own lives that
are going through with this that no compensation can even
quantify what they're actually doing. But they do get compensated.
The intended parents compensate the gestational carrier through the whole pregnancy.
(17:33):
They make somewhere around seventy to eighty sometimes ninety thousand dollars,
and that is depending on how experienced they are. But
no amount of money can actually quantify what they're doing.
And they're not just putting their bodies through it. But
(17:54):
their kids, they have kids. A gestational carrier has to
have a family.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Okay, that's it.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
They cannot know that.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Yeah, they have to have been pregnant before, because otherwise
how would we know that it works.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Do all agencies have that requirement? Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
All agencies have that requirement. She has to have conceived
at least once full term no complications.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
So then just the mental I mean you're talking about
the impact on the families, the impact on their husband, absolutely,
the mental impact, the physical impact alone, and the changes
that her body is going to be going through nothing
even after the fact, the physical and mental changes that
she's going through. Right, do you what kind of follow up?
(18:39):
How long do you stay in touch with the surrogate?
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Me too much, But I don't know about.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
You.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
I keep checking on our gestational carriers way past their
six weeks post delivery appointment with their ob and until
I feel like everything is going great. And even then,
there's always that happy New Year and Birthday call, and they,
like I said, like it's the you know. And sometimes
(19:11):
i'd be driving and I'll think about Catherine or Lacey,
or I'll just you know, open up my phone and
say I, you know, I just want to check in
and see how you're doing. That's it.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
So there's an emotional well, I don't know if it
would be called a toll, but there's an emotional aspect
for you and all of this too. You're carrying all
this around all the time.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I know, but it doesn't feel like it's an effort.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Okay, Well, you are helping people's most important dream come true. Absolutely,
and you are helping that so so Zane, I think
our time is probably going to be running short here.
It goes fast when you have a conversation that's interesting
like this. What's something that you would like to leave
the audience with some fear that you see sometimes from
(19:53):
people that you'd like to put them at ease with.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Perhaps, Well, because we work with intended parents and gestational carriers,
I want to tell both parties that the journey is
always going to be ups and downs, and that is
always part of any journey anybody goes on. The role
(20:16):
of the agency is to minimize the emotional impact that's
going to have on them, and we will be there
to help them through the journey from A to Z
in a very personable, very human way. And we are
here to match them with their best match. The criteria
(20:38):
that each applicant in the in the agency, whether you're
an intended parent applying to be you know, to finding
a match. They come with their own criteria, and I'm
always encouraging them not to compromise what they are looking
for because we will help them find. For instance, people
(20:59):
who are looking to match with a carrier who will
not terminate a pregnancy if it ends up being a
pregnancy with a down down syndrome or something like that,
they have to match with a gestational carrier that has
that same view, and I'm always encouraging them to maintain
their views throughout their journey.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
So I just think this is a fascinating conversation. The
time has gone for me has gone very fast. Would
you come back again at some point?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
I would love to.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Do you feel like you have a close enough relationship
with a successful couple that they would maybe one of
them or both of them would be want to be
part of the program.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Absolutely, I would love that, even if it's a gestational
carrier or maybe a parent with their gestational carrier that
have had a journey together. A lot of people have
a lot to say.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
I don't think that's an information that people are going
to hear in a lot of other places now.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Absolutely not. Zay Shama has been our guest. She's with
the Gift of Life Surrogacy Agency. It's on Monroe Street,
sixty seven eleven Monroe Street, Building three, Site A. It's
right near the fire department across from the Municipal building
in downtown Sylvania. Zandy have a phone number that people
can use, or a website or Facebook.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
We do. But I also before you wrap up, I
just want to tell you that Michigan will also is
also now legal forg oh Okay. Yeah, the laws have
changed and as of April first, we are able to
proceed with matches in the state of Michigan. And we
are there and all of the offices of IVF Michigan,
(22:36):
and that's then offices. We have so many offices Macomb,
we have Traverse City, we have Grand Rapids, we have Dearborn,
we have Bloomfield Hills, so a whole bunch. The phone
number is for a Gift of Life Surrogacy four one
nine five seven five five five six.
Speaker 5 (22:54):
Thank you very much for being our guest today.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
We'll be back right after a short break. With our
second guest.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Did you know our area has over forty thousand businesses.
Some are old, some are new, but they all have
a story to tell about why they sell, How someone
took a chance once upon a time, someone with a
heart for business.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
This is Lane Monts, the host of the Better Business
Bureaus Heart for Business podcast. We know a thing or
two about our area's companies. After all, we've been keeping
tabs on them since nineteen nineteen. Join me in Toledo
radio legend Fred la Fever every week as our BBB
superheroes tell their origin story and share a few industry
secrets along the way. All right, welcome back everyone, Lane
(23:33):
Monts and Fred Lafever in the podcast Layer Today. Second
half of this show, I'm with Jason Woolbers from Northwest
Ohio Protections. Jason, you're out of Finley, right, We sure are,
and that's my hometown so I have a saft spot
for Finley and all things Finley. So welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Thanks, I'm glad to be here today.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Well, so we're going to talk about you and Northwest
Ohio Protections. What is Northwest Ohio Protections?
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Well, Northwest Ohiot is our to say it quickly. Our
motto is basically, our mantra is saving lives and changing lives.
Because we are a fire safety company. What we're trying
to do is go out in the community and educate
people about fire safety, and then we take it a
step further by offering products for the home.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Okay, so we're talking more like not just a smoke alarm.
You know, you can go to big lots and buy
one of those. Think we're talking a little more advanced
than that.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
That's right, Fred. It is a network of protection. So
we have smoke, heat, carbon monoxide, and then escape tools
and suppression tools, fire extinguishers, fire blankets. Most people have
seen the fire blankets advertised on social media. They somebody
was nice enough to spend a bunch of money on
ads on social media to help us out. Yes, so
now everybody knows what the fire blanket is. But then
(24:51):
we do it's mainly to early warning in a home,
to wake someone up if they are asleep when an
emergency happens.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
That's what we do, so homeowners pay attention. Correct, Yeah, okay, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
How important is that because we always hear about, you know,
early detection when it comes to like diseases and things
like that. How important is this early detection to saving
your life, saving your property, saving your family.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Well, it's very important. The thing of it is, experts
tell us we have about two minutes to escape a
fire most sent from the time you know there's a
fire in your home. That's the average. You have two
minutes to escape. So the thing of it is you better,
you better know what you're going to do. So we
don't just sell fire protection equipment. We do that because
we need to give them that time. We have to
(25:37):
get them awakened if there's a fire in their home.
Fire is fast. It's extremely fast, way faster than most
people think it is. Okay, the smoke in toxic gases
can overwhelm people too, So the early warning and then
the education we give is to help them to teach
their family to know what to do if and when
it happens, to get them out fast.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
So you know, there's no not much good that came
out of the California fires, But one thing that did
come out is I think people did get an eye
opener about how fast fire will consume a building.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
Oh yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Even I've been in the fire restoration industry, and even
I was surprised, and I am perpetually surprised when I'm
reminded how fast it moves.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Yeah, it is. It is quick. And the smoke is
really black, like you see smoke coming off a house,
and it's when you see a fire from the outside
looking in. It's nothing compared to seeing one from the inside,
because once it gets outside, it's it's getting out, it's
earing out inside the home. That smoke is thick, it's black,
and it's full of toxins, absolutely full of toxins, where
(26:37):
some of the toxic gases are worse than the smoke itself.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
I'm just going to say, and sometimes the smoke is
probably worse than the fire. The fire can be in
the bedroom and that smoke and be coming through the
vents and into a bedroom at the other end of
the house. You don't even know what's on fire yet, right.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
That's right, It's all pretty bad. So Jason, tell us
how your services and your products what exactly are they doing,
Like what are you setting up and putting into motion?
Because I don't know that a lot of people really
have an understanding of that.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Yeah, and that's why Square one for us, when we
first start talking to a potential client is to educate
them that there is a fire problem. So we educate
them of the problem first, We kind of bring them
up to speed on some of the things that the
general public just doesn't know about a fire. Okay. Another
thing is we educate people on how the different types
of fire protection work. Because the average store bought smoke
(27:27):
alarm does not work the same way as the one
that we're going to put into their home.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Does give me a difference because I have like a
regular smoke alarm that I bought, you know, yeah, twenty
bucks or something like that, that I got to change
of batteries every six months.
Speaker 5 (27:40):
How is that different than what you're going to get me.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Yeah, it's a lot different. The technology it's in most
of the big box stores is called an ionization detector,
and the way that detects fire is the easy way
to say it Layman's terms. It detects heat, not smoke, right,
It's detecting particles of combustion, which is fire, actual open flame,
free bird. I mean, that's why an ionization alarm is
better at detecting a free burning fire than it is
(28:04):
a slow smoldering fire. The problem with that is, a
slow smoldering fire is cold in nature. It's not going
to melt the alarm. But what's a hot, flaming fire
going to do to plastic, especially cheap plastic. Got it,
It's gonna melt it. Our smoke alarms and just real
quick are optical. That means there's an infred light on
the inside going back and forth every four seconds. When
smoke blocks that light beam, it cuts it in half.
(28:26):
That sets it up. Ours are visually seeing the smoke.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Oh, now, do you need as many of those?
Speaker 1 (28:33):
You know, because they always tell you, for once you
buy at the big box store, put one in the kitchen,
put one in every bedroom, put one in the hallway.
With this news system, do you still need as many?
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Yes, it's the way we say it is. You don't
want the alarm to have to find excuse me, you
don't want the fire to have to go around the
house to find the alarm. Ah, No matter how good
they are, you want the alarm to be there to
find the fire.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Okay, So it's more eyes really, That's what I'm talking
about it.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Yep. It'd be like putting a security camera on your
front door but not your back. If you don't fully
protect your home.
Speaker 5 (29:07):
It makes sense.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
So Jason, it almost seems like, uh, you know, you
got the one hand that you go to Low's or
a big box store you buy, you're buying a product,
You're putting it up yourself. And that's the kind of
the end of the story. You hope you remember to
keep tabs on it. And are they really forming a
long term partnership with you? I mean, once they once
they use you? Is that the difference? Are you in
it for the long I don't quite understand.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
Yeah, we are definitely in it for the long haul.
My phone rings every day. We have thousands and thousands
of customers in northwest Ohio. Really, we've been in business
since two thousand and one and we've got thousands of customers.
Our phone rings a lot, and when it does ring,
I have a service guy. He's actually my son, Dylan,
and he's an awesome guy. People love him and he
goes around and takes care of all my service. Now
(29:51):
he's full time. That's how many customers we have. Sure
he's your son, he is, but he's he takes after
his mother. Okay, so how did you get into this?
Were you a fire fighter? Or in rescue services or
something because you look like you might have been. That's
a good question. But no, I wasn't in the fire service,
but my dad was in the business before I got
into it. So my dad and my parents are the
reason that I ended up in the business that i'm in.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
So when you started, did you start as a kid
as a teenager helping your dad out in stuff?
Speaker 5 (30:17):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (30:17):
All right, So how has the business changed? And I'm
sure it has with the technology available from what your
dad was doing to what you're doing.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
Yeah, and I did it with my dad at the
time where when I started was nineteen ninety five, so
I worked for them for six years too before I
took my own office. Now i've been in the business.
May of this year will be thirty years that I've
been doing it. But it's different in the technology is
a lot different. It is, and the people's understanding of
fire has actually gotten better over the years too, I
(30:47):
think because of social media and because of the news
when you can you can learn about a fire in
Indiana now if you live in Ohio, whereas before you
would have never even known that happened, right, you know,
So people's awareness actually is a little better than what
it used to be, So it is a little easier
to get the message out. It's also easier to get
into people's houses. There's more ways to do that. But
(31:07):
the biggest difference would be probably the product. Because we
had a single station we call them single station smoke
alarms when they're not connected anything else. The system we
have now is fully interconnected. When one goes off, they
I'll go off without wires.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Oh really, I was just going to ask is it
interconnected wirelessly or through wires?
Speaker 4 (31:24):
It is wirelessly interconnected, yep. And it's also connected to
an We call it a calm link. It's a little
box that's connected to the Internet or hooked in through
Wi Fi. That is an information box. You might as
well call it a communication link colm link, okay, because
it communicates with every device that we install throughout their
(31:45):
home for smoke, heat, carbon monoxide. We even have water
and flood free sensors for the home too, by the way,
And if something would happen, it reports to the colm
link that sends a text out to the customer themselves
and up to a total of eight people text in
email lik.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
So it's using the it's using a phone tower terrestrial
network to relay the text, Right, it's an SMS message
or something.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
Yes, it's an SMS message, And we also use push
alerts for the customer themselves for testing and things like that.
It's done through push alert using the app on their phone.
But for an emergency, yes, it's SMS and it's an
actual text that the customer would receive, doesn't matter where
they are.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Know other people like in the family, So if I
want to be sure that my son or my daughter,
or my mom or my dad know that I've had
a problem, the message would go out to them. Also,
whoever's on your list of next of ken or whatever.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
That's correct up to an eight total. It does cap
at eight.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
And does it also alert the fire department or can
that be one of the people that you put on
your list if.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
You knew like a firefighter, you could probably do that
with their permission book. No, it's not linked to the
fire depile. Yeah, that's a good question though. When we
do get a lot from our customers, is this go
to the fire department? When if you're going to get
it to go to something like that, that's going to
be done through monitor that's going to be a monthly fee.
We don't charge a fee for ours. Ours is no monitoring.
It doesn't cost. They pay for the equipment, it's installed,
(33:08):
and it's done.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
So are you are these better for older homes newer homes?
Are you putting them in both? What are you doing
here with.
Speaker 4 (33:16):
We're putting them in both. For the most part, what
we're doing is we sit at people's kitchen tables and
in their living room. So it's an existing homeowner, typically
not the builder, if you will, okay, So we sit
down with the people that already are in the home, okay,
and we show it to them, and usually they're upgrading.
In other words, you mentioned earlier, Fred that you have
(33:36):
the twenty dollars big box set. That's what most people have, okay.
And by the way, I will put a disclaimer on
our company.
Speaker 5 (33:43):
We do believe.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
That that type of protection is better than nothing, and
most people need more of those in their home than
what they have. If they don't do something like we have.
We would be a tremendous upgrade to something like that
because we're covering all areas. We can cover the attic,
we can cover the garage. You're not supposed to put
an ionization alarm, or any smoke alarm for that matter,
in a garage or an attager and insect infested area.
(34:05):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Why is that because of the heat.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
And the summer and the dust and all that stuff,
it's too much for the smoke alarm, the circuit board
and all that can get ruined from it. Long term?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Car, how are your devices? Where do they draw power from?
Is it a battery? Testing?
Speaker 5 (34:19):
Tell?
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Is the battery along lasting? I mean, these are questions
that I'm having now as I know.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
No, I'm loving the questions. These are great. It's a
lithium manganese battery. Now, our battery is rated to up
to twenty years lane. But here's the big disclaimer. Now,
the new fire code just enforced. We are a new
smoke alarm that we're just coming out with soon. It's
actually done, but we need to just get them in
rolling has a ten year shut off because that's the
(34:46):
new code. You can't have a smoke alarm lasts longer
than ten years anymore.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Really, are there upgrades that they expect will be coming
or does it just have a shelf life?
Speaker 4 (34:55):
No, it's it's just it's hard to explain in a
short podcast. But the reality is all smoke alarms are
going to it eventually. It's already in the process, and
it just lasts ten years. But when you think about that,
it doesn't make sense because we replace everything but in
our home within ten years.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Mostly I would be personally nervous about I just I
guess I don't believe it. You tell me something, I
don't have to worry about it for twenty years. I
don't know if I would be comfortable with it.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
I do agree, And that's why even with the twenty
year length of the battery, that's how long it's estimated
it could last. And I mean, we see batteries on
these apps and these homes, from these alarms we've installed
three and four years ago. They're still at one hundred percent.
Speaker 5 (35:31):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
The app tells us, well, how much what the battery
strength is does they're still at one.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
Hundred That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
It is amazing the units that you're using, that you're installing.
Because you mentioned smoke and fire and carbon monoxia. I
have a friend who was staying at a hotel and
there carbon monoxide leak that obviously he didn't know about.
It was asleep and he slept through it. And the
only way they found out was he wasn't answering the
phone for his wife that morning, and they broke down
(36:00):
his door and he was, oh, yeah, he was Gary
in a coma for days, and the hyperbaric chambers and everything.
Do the units that you put in do they do
more than one thing? Or do I need one for
carbon monoxide, one for fire, one for water?
Speaker 5 (36:15):
You know, great question, Thank you. I'm the host.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
You're doing great. You guys are throwing me good pitches
here to it.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
I hate to pay Fred a compliment in his own studio.
He's already the king in here, but he was not
fed the companies or the issues, or the products or
anything ahead of time, so he's winging it. But it's
really important.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
Because I'm paying attention to what this guy says.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
You know, he's doing real good. Yeah, I'm a scattered rain.
So can you repeat the question?
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Is each unit separate? Does the smoke unit also do
carbon monoxide? Or do I need to get one for
all the things I'm concerned about.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
That's a really good question. And this is the neat
thing about what we do with the education process. First,
we go into somebody's home in the first forty five
to fifty minutes, maybe even hour, depending on how talkative
they are. All we're doing is educating about fire and
then we get into how our product works and things
like that. Only at the very end do we show
them what they would need and how much it would
cost and things like that. But we answer those questions
(37:11):
during the presentations. I'll answer it for you. Now. Our
heat sensors, the ones that go in addicts and garages
and you know areas where the temperature changes a lot.
That is heat only, but it tests for heat two
ways it goes. It's it's programmable, so we can set
it to one seventeen, one thirty five or one seventy five.
Oh okay. And all of our heat sensors, so all
(37:32):
three of our life saving sensors have the built in
heat sensor. All of them have it. It's just something
they thought, let's put it on all of them. It's
an easy thing to do, so they did. So they
all have rate of rise. That's what makes it really
special because that's a fast warning heat alarm. That means
that if your house is at sixty eight degrees right now,
lane right or Fred your house, that's sixty eight degrees
(37:54):
and it goes up to eighty eight within one minute.
If that where that alarm is sitting, If that temperature
ever rises by twenty degrees in less than a minute,
it's going off.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
So you think that's actually what we might have in
this particular.
Speaker 5 (38:08):
Room, that we're highly likely because.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
I came in one morning at four o'clock and the
alarm was going off and there was no fire, but
the voice kept saying, you know, hey, there's a fire
in the building. You know, get out, blah blah blah,
And I looked in every room I could look, and
then there was nothing and it ended up. But I
noticed that this particular studio was really super hot that day.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
He had to be.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Eighty degrees or something like that, when normally it's like
it's seventy two yep.
Speaker 4 (38:39):
And rate of rise. Heat sensors can be set at
different rises, so they might have it set lower in here.
Because of the cost of the equipment and things, they'd
want to know a little bit quicker. Probably you save equipment.
We're trying to save lives more than anything. So if
someone loses a little bit of property, I mean, you're
gonna lose some property if your house catches on fire.
But in this studio they're gonna You got suppression and sprinklers,
(38:59):
and they want to try to put it out too.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
It's too bad Jason doesn't have a passion for the business.
It's it really is hard to tease information out of him,
tease that energy out of him.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
Where does that come from?
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Because obviously you learn you got some of that from
your dad because he did it for a living. Did
you just naturally slide into it in a sense?
Speaker 4 (39:18):
Yeah, I liked what my dad was doing when I
was young. We always tell the story when we go
to functions and meetings. We lived in this two story
home and my dad drove this Pontiac Bonneville and it
was a lot of car, you know, And you could
hear him coming from about a half block away. So
at nighttime when he was coming home from his sales calls, right,
I'd run up to that window. It was my mom
and dad's room. Now I wasn't supposed to be in
(39:40):
that room either. I didn't care. I wanted to see
if my dad had empty boxes. I don't want to
see if he sold something.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Oh yeah, yeah, because then you go out to Pizza
Hut for dinner.
Speaker 5 (39:49):
Yeah, yeah, right, you talk shop?
Speaker 4 (39:51):
Yeah I could, then I could. I never bothered him
about the business if he if I knew he hadn't
sold none that day, I just something inside me told me, Oh,
leave him alone.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
So Jason doesn't want to mention this. Jason has written
a book you, yes, I have.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Yeah, so that and I think Lane knows where this
comes from.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
He asked me not to talk about it. But I
think it's part of your story. Care Yeah, it's part
of your story.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
Yeah. The book is called The Power of a Positive Mindset,
and that's where the energy comes from. Okay, But I
learned at a young age, Fred that that's the advantage
of being in business for yourself. At a young age.
You have to figure things out, and if you don't,
you won't be here anymore. You'll be doing something else. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
A lot of small businesses go out of business within
the first five years because they haven't planned properly with
the banks and with dealing with employees and what their
plan is. So, in your business, what's your plan for
the next five years?
Speaker 4 (40:44):
Our plan for the next five years is to continue
to grow Northwest Ohio Protections. But what we also do
there that we haven't talked about is we develop people.
That's a big part of my job is to develop people.
I don't sell fire protection anymore. I don't sit at
people's kitchen tables. I don't install it, I don't need
things like that. I work with our sales team trying
to develop them so that they can own their own
branch of the business that is possible. We've had a
(41:06):
lot of people do it. Okay, that's how I got
my opportunity. My dad finally said, hey, listen, you're starting
to get a kind of a good business head on you.
We already knew you could sell, but now can you
manage a business? And so you know, that's what that's
my next step, and that's what we've already been doing,
but we're going to continue to do.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
And it's so important because one of the things that
Northwest Ohio area is facing, one of the threats the
business community. And if the business community is facing threats,
then the consumers are facing it too. They just don't
know it. And that is that businesses, you know, to
some extent are closing or being purchased by out of
the area being larger companies and Fred, I mean, I
(41:43):
don't want to offend anybody that's listening, but it really
it causes me a lot of consternation. I don't like
what family businesses ended up ending up being owned by
a company in Seattle, and it's a big threat in
northwest Ohio. So when I when I hear about a
third generation because you got your son working in three right,
when I hear about that and plans to grow, I mean,
(42:03):
that's what gets the better business bureau, That's what gets
LAIN excited.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
So what kind of training did you go through other
than just learning things from your dad? Did you also
have to go through training and do the guys that
you're bringing up now or if the guys you are mentoring,
do they have to go through some kind of I
guess it would be fire training so they understand what
they're telling me about my home.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Yes, we put them through a pretty intensive training program
that we created basically. But and then in the state
of Ohio, the installers are licensed to put the product
into the home through the State Fire Marshal's office. Our
company has a permit or you have to be licensed
to do it. To do the installs Yeah, you can
go in and you can talk to people about fire
safety and you can even sell the product, but the
(42:45):
final install has to be done.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Did not know that?
Speaker 4 (42:48):
Yeah, oh, okay, and that's Ohio. Every state's different when
it comes to that.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Now, do you have plans to expand to you service
southeast Michigan yet or is that in the future or
maybe one of your employees at some point.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
Yeah, we some in southeast Michigan, and then we have
a distributor that lives in Flint, and she has a
couple of distributors that are south of her. Like I
can't remember the towns. I mean near ann Arbor, Okay, Detroit,
So I don't cover too much in that area because
someone else does that area. It's kind of it's not
a franchise, but it kind of acts like one in
that sense.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
That's a different BBB area. Jason just paid no attention
to them. Keep your focus down here, I will.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Well, it's always nice to have the BBB sign no
matter where you're at in the country because that speaks
to what a good company are. You've been through the
vetting process and everything is that important to you?
Speaker 5 (43:35):
Was it when you start?
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Did you say Oh, you know what, we better go
and talk to the BBB and get that sign up
in the window.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
Yeah. When I first started the business, I was eighteen
years old, so when somebody asked me about the BBB,
I was like, well, what's that and why do you care?
You know, but you get a little older. Well I
was eighteen though Lane. Yeah, you get a little older
and you get asked that question a few times. Then
you start researching, and of course it's very important to me.
I want to make sure that we're running the business
(44:02):
ethically and I want to do everything as right as
I possibly can. As the owner in Lane and the
team at the Better Business Bureau, they have helped me.
Stephanie Broadway sat in my living room when I lived
in an apartment, I know, to help us understand the
concept and the importance. That she did a wonderful job,
and that was like twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
I don't think there's any one organ I don't want
to talk too much about the BBB, but I don't
think there's any one organization in northwest Ohio that touches
as many businesses as we do. Fred we have almost
six thousand business members over twenty four counties. I don't
think there's any one single organization that has that constituency.
I agree, and they're scattered. If you can hear Fred's
voice on the radio, you can be a member.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
You know, we've got time for one more question, if
you have one more lane.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Well, I always ask a variation of this question, Jason,
what do you want the public? If they're public listening
right or it could be a business, but they own
homes too, what do you want them to know about,
not necessarily about your company, but about what they should
be thinking if they're considering a system like this.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Well, what I want the general public to know about
fire safety and fire protection in particular, is that a
smoke alarm is not a smoke alarm is a smoke alarm.
There are differences and the kind and the quality, and
the warranty and all of that stuff. But I also
want people to understand, probably more than anything, it's it
is a lot about the number of alarms that you
(45:27):
put in your home. You can't put one smoke alarm
per level in your home and expect to get out
of any kind of a fire that starts anywhere in
your home. You have to have them near the room
of origin or in the room of origin in order
for a smoke alarm to be able to be the
most effective. So I would recommend to everyone, whether you
do business with us or anywhere else, even if you're
(45:48):
just sticking with the big box stuff, get more of
them and read the manual, because the manual does tell
you what the fire code says.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Oh come on, really, I'm sorry, very tiny, tiny print decipher.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
I think it's just going to be easier to reach
out to Jason, soorry we do that well.
Speaker 4 (46:06):
You can reach out to us by checking out our
website at nwopgroup dot com. You can call us at
four one nine four two nine one two zero seven.
You can check us out on Facebook Northwest Ohio Protections.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Thanks Jason, Jason, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Jason Wolders was our guest. We'll be back again next week.
If you need to reach out to the BBB, go
to BBB dot org slash Toledo. You'll find them on Facebook.
Also for a phone call, it's four one nine five
seven eight six thousand. You've been listening to A Heart
for Business, a production of iHeartRadio and the Better Business Bureau.
(46:45):
You can access us on iHeartRadio dot com, or wherever
you get your podcasts from. We'll be back next week.
Welcome to a Heart for Business. I'm Fred Lafever and
along with Lane Mons, President CEO the Better Business Bureau
of Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan, we'll highlight a local
business weekly. You'll discover why these small local business owners
have a passion for what they do and why the
(00:26):
Better Business Bureau has a Heart for Business. Now here's
Lane Months.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Well, Welcome, everyone, Welcome to the program today BBB's a
Heart for Business podcast. I am Lane Monts. I'm here
in the studio with Fred Lafever. We've got two guests today.
The first one is Zane Shama from a Gift of
Life Surrogacy and the second is Jason Wolbers from Northwest
o Higher Protections. Jason is on deck, but Zaane, you
(00:52):
are up to bat today. Welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yes, are you excited to be here?
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I am very so.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I got to tell you, I'm personally very excited to
have you here because the business is unique as we're
going to get into and I am excited to talk
about it. Here about it, learn about it. Watch Fred's
face as we learn about it. You know that's going
to be fun. So tell us about zay Shama and
tell us about Gift of Life surrogacy and how it
came to be.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Which part of zay Shama you want to learn about the.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Part of zayane Shama that's mostly related to Gift of
life surrogacy sounds.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Good, Let's start there.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
So.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Gift of Life Surrogacy Agency is an agency that I
created with my husband, doctor Nicholas Shauma. He is a
fertility surgeon. He's been doing this for over thirty years.
He is the CEO and owner of IVF Michigan. We
have ten clinics in Michigan, Wow, and we have one
(01:47):
here in Toledo, Innsylvania. And he's been doing this for
thirty two years, treating his patients, helping them conceive, grow
their families, start their families. And after years and years
of working with all of his patients, he realized that
there is a fraction of those patients that leave his
(02:10):
clinic unsatisfied and not able to start their family or
grow their family, and he decided to start the agency.
We decided to start the agency and help those families
find a way to be able to actually conceive a baby.
(02:33):
These people, patients usually are start with the hope of
doing an IVF cycle. IVF is a cycle that they do.
They stimulate the intended the patients, stimulates the ovaries to
produce more eggs than what they usually do per month,
(02:57):
and they fertilize them using the husband's sperm, and they
fertilize the eggs with the sperm and they have their embryos.
A lot of patients are successful that way, but there's
a fraction of people who are actually not able to
get pregnant even from that, and so at that point
(03:19):
they need somebody to come in and carry their pregnancy
for them.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
So surrogacy is definitely just not the same as IVF.
There's a little bit of a difference going on.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
It's a marriage, it's it's it's two things that are
happening at once. And obviously you have the same sex
couples that cannot have a baby by themselves. They need
a surrogate, so that that comes it's the beginning of
the journey for them. We always have a saying in
our field saying like for them that that's the beginning
(03:50):
of the journey, not the end of their journey. Like
with heterosexual couples, they they get to surrogacy as their
last reasons sords. Okay, does that make sense?
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I know absolutely, And we've all seen, you know, the
stories on on TV that get blown out of proportion
sometimes about you know, this teenage mother decided to carry
the baby for somebody and then at the last minute
decides not to hand it over.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
That's such a bad wrap for the.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
That's what I was Is it add it is?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
It is absolutely not. Can I tell you that gestational
carries are so happy to help their match their intended parents,
but they are the happiest one they see the parents
carry the baby at the hospital and they're even happier
when they get to home, go home without the baby.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
That's a Hollywood concoction. Does not represent the true experience,
does it? But I can't believe that Hollywood would produce
Do they produce false tales? For?
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Sometimes? Sometimes they do?
Speaker 4 (04:53):
So.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Now you've been doing this, this part of the agency
for five years, I think you offline? Yes, what made
you decide or was it a choice between doctor u
Shama and you to start the agency?
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Then yes, because like I said, some a fraction of
his patients were leaving and wanting to do journeys by
themselves and what was happening is without the guidance of
people who are in the profession, they end up matching
with people individually, without the guidance of an agency, and
(05:29):
only to find out that, for instance, the gestational carrier
has some kind of disease that she that will not
will seclude her of being an actual good applicant to
be a gestational carrier. She could be potentially uh not
living in an ideal environment. Maybe her the household is
(05:50):
not an ideal situation for her. We do, we do
a lot of forensic uh searches on the person on
the app before we match them with their intended parents.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah, so well do that.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
What are you looking for when the young lady comes
to you, for instance, and the initial says, We'd like
to carry a baby for somebody. I'm never going to
get married, but I wouldn't mind giving birth to a
baby for someone else. What's the starting point?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
That's a great question. They apply into the agency, they
are first seen by me. We process their application, We
look at them, we look at their history. That's our
initial intention is to look into who they are and
whether they are actually capable of passing through the process.
(06:42):
The initial process for us is pretty unique because of
that marriage that we have with IVF Michigan and IVF
Ohio that allows us the backbone of the medical part
where they become patients of doctor Shama. We do medical
records for them, We collect all of their delivery.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So the potential surrogates because patients in a sense.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
They absolutely okay, wow, okay, absolutely are and that really
really gave us like a step ahead of most agencies
because of our sister company together. That gives us that
access to the medical screening that Doctor Shama is able
to do on those wonderful women that are able to
(07:22):
apply into the surrogacy. So the first part is you're
going through their medical records, their obg I n's, their
general practitioners, their delivery notes from their hospital. They their
nurses will look at all of that and kind of
build up a chart for those applicants, and then that
chart becomes for doctor Shama for him to go over
(07:45):
that chart to make sure that to give us thumbs
up or thumbs down.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
So you're really curating the surrogates through the process of
qualification so that when you present them to interested couples
that you've done so much of the background exactly which
is and when people try to do it themselves, they
do it yourself. Seems to be a common theme on
the show Fred. If they try to diy at themselves,
they're throwing darts in the dark.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
It's the biggest mistake. It's the biggest mistake because they
don't have the expertise to be able to look at
the proper things that they need to look at. And
that's one of the reasons why doctor Shauma actually wanted
to create that agency. It's because a lot of his
patients were doing the Doyi way and they would come
crying to him telling him. Our cirguit that we match
(08:31):
with ended up having, for instance, as actually transmitted diseases.
We're not able to continue with a transfer, or she
had some kind of dependency issue, or she's on some
kind of medication that is not friendly to the pregnancy.
So many things could be there or a lot of
times we also do background checks, we do preparedness and assessments,
which is kind of a psychological evaluation on them. So
(08:54):
so much goes into the clearance of an applicant before
we even think about her with their intended parents.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
And then once you have the match.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Once you found somebody who matches with a couple a
I'm going to assume because of doctor doctor Shama, do
you and by the way, do you always call him
doctor Shama.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
When I speak them?
Speaker 5 (09:16):
Can you come into the kitchen here? Dinner's read.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
It's funny, it's funny, but yeah, absolutely not, absolutely not.
But you know, you can ask a lot of our
clients and his patients. The best thing about this marriage
that we have and it's literally a marriage, yeah, is
that they have the access to the agency and to
him at the same time through me, And it's really
(09:40):
something that our clients really speak very highly of. It's
that seamless, transparent process that we have going on.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
And so once you have that person, once you have
that surrogate that you think is a good match, I'm
going to assume because of the connection with doctor Shama,
you're also that person is going to get pre natal care,
which is absolutely critical, watching for the birth weight, all
of those things that everything to do. Everything comes out.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Absolutely absolutely and these are all part of the criteria
that she has to have when day when they apply.
If the BMI is too high, then they are kind
of disqualified. So we look at them from every angle
and we develop. Most importantly about all of this is
the relationship that grows between the team of Gift of
(10:32):
Life and the surrogate, because the only way that we
can actually match them with a perfect match is because
we know the two parties very well and we're able
to say we're not the type of agency that goes
and just because we have a surrogate that's available for matching,
we just slap like a match with any of the
(10:53):
couple that is waiting.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Well, so you're the process you're following. I guess this
is my ignorance showing here and it's not a loaded question.
The audience will think it is. But isn't that what
all surrogacy centers do. Isn't that the same process?
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Well, I think a lot of the agencies become a
very growing business. And when I say this, I don't
say it with this respect at all, but things become
really out of proportion. When they start an agency, they
don't have a cap over what they are able to consume.
(11:29):
So there's no way an agency unless they put a
cap to the amount of matches that they're able to
do through their agency, which we do. We are a
boutique agency. I do anywhere fifty or less journeys a
year because I cannot be as personable as I am
with my clients having more. And one thing I do
(11:52):
want to comment on is we don't take international surrogacy applications.
We focus mostly on national journeys and actually I work
mostly with the Midwest.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well why is that?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Because it becomes overwhelming, it becomes too much to handle,
and I'm not able to grow and thrive in that
match if I don't, if I'm not able to grow
a relationship with those clients.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I get the feeling that that just watching your body
language and everything that that's kind of part of this
program is to talk about the passion that people have
for their business. The fact that you said you've got
a cap. You could take probably one hundred patients a
year if you really wanted to. There's probably that many
out there, but you have a cap because you want
to create that relationship. Is that where your passion comes from?
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Absolutely, folks, My passion comes through my personal relationships with
those people, because not just matching them, but seeing them
reach their goal at the end of the journey becomes personal.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
One reason for this program, Zane is. You know, there's
been a tendency in the last I don't know, maybe forever,
but I've seen it in the last fifteen to twenty
years for businesses to go to where they're just counting
the number of subscribers that they're counting the being counters
are counting the beans. And there are a lot of
stories out there of businesses small and medium size often
(13:19):
that are still devoted to doing things at a personal level.
And I'm just such a big believer and that when
I heard your story, I thought, this is a great
example of that. It's obviously you care about that we do.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
We do absolutely and you can feel it because we
are involved in every part of their aspect. We don't
just start the journeys. We are there along the way
till the last minute. Even Actually, I always make jokes
with the intended parents that work through the agency. I
always tell them, I'm going to have a hard time
(13:51):
separating now that you've had your baby. You know, I'll
be calling you a few times. Don't feel like you
have to take that call because it becomes like part
of your everyday life.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Are there babies out there named Zane? There are as
years but.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Not through the agency yet, but definitely through IVF Michigan.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
It does sound like you become immeshed in their lives,
which I think is key to the success because you,
like a lot of businesses, you have to have a
personal relationship, but in your case it has to go
even deeper because you're bringing a new life in.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
It's one way I express it is that they all
these families are part of my life every single day.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I can barely handle one. I've got three kids and
that's one family, and that's sometimes that's one family too much.
Speaker 5 (14:44):
It is a growing problem.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
I mean, obviously your husband, doctor Shama, has been dealing
with this for thirty years. Is it a growing problem
for our young people and people in their thirties and
stuff that they're unable to receive?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Call it a problem? Okay, it's more than life is
changing and life is evolving. People are putting putting away
the years of actually settling down and thinking about conceiving
and starting a family two later years, and that's what's
participating in the problem. Okay, yeah, that has a big
(15:20):
part of us.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
So it is more of a plan then too, you know,
because back in the day, you know, you get married.
When you get out of high school, you're eighteen nineteen,
Mom and dad, I'd really like to be a grandma.
So you go ahead and have a baby, whether you're
ready for it or not. And now people are getting
their careers in mine and maybe getting married late in
their twenties and talking about let's start a family, and
(15:43):
at that point they need a little.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Bit of help, right.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
What are some misconceptions when people come to you. What
are some mindsets or some misconceptions that you feel that
you see a lot and that you try to recalibrate.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
I think in that, I think for people who have
not started looking, they always worry that and don't think
through the fact that the embryo that will be transferred
to the gestational carrier to carry the pregnancy is not
biologically related to the gestational carrier. So this is something
(16:17):
that you have to explain to most people, is that
a surrogate carries a pregnancy for somebody, she is not
biologically related to that baby inside of her.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
That is a hard concept to get your mind around sometimes.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, and it sounds, you know, sometimes it just sounds
so impersonal, you know, when you say, oh, the gestational.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Blah, blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
How do you how do people the carrier, the surrogate,
and the family that wants to have the baby, how
did they make that more personal for themselves instead of
so clinical.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
It's a great question. So a lot of people look
at it, look at it in a sense, Oh, well,
the gestational carrier is going to be carrying the baby,
but she's getting compensated for it. What's wrong with the
getting compensated. She's giving them her body for a whole year.
Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, oh, I
just want to be a gestational carrier because I want
(17:12):
to make money. It doesn't work that way. There's so
much emotions, there's so much of their own lives that
are going through with this that no compensation can even
quantify what they're actually doing. But they do get compensated.
The intended parents compensate the gestational carrier through the whole pregnancy.
(17:33):
They make somewhere around seventy to eighty sometimes ninety thousand dollars,
and that is depending on how experienced they are. But
no amount of money can actually quantify what they're doing.
And they're not just putting their bodies through it. But
(17:54):
their kids, they have kids. A gestational carrier has to
have a family.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Okay, that's it.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
They cannot know that.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Yeah, they have to have been pregnant before, because otherwise
how would we know that it works.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Do all agencies have that requirement? Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
All agencies have that requirement. She has to have conceived
at least once full term no complications.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
So then just the mental I mean you're talking about
the impact on the families, the impact on their husband, absolutely,
the mental impact, the physical impact alone, and the changes
that her body is going to be going through nothing
even after the fact, the physical and mental changes that
she's going through. Right, do you what kind of follow up?
(18:39):
How long do you stay in touch with the surrogate?
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Me too much, But I don't know about.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
You.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
I keep checking on our gestational carriers way past their
six weeks post delivery appointment with their ob and until
I feel like everything is going great. And even then,
there's always that happy New Year and Birthday call, and they,
like I said, like it's the you know. And sometimes
(19:11):
i'd be driving and I'll think about Catherine or Lacey,
or I'll just you know, open up my phone and
say I, you know, I just want to check in
and see how you're doing. That's it.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
So there's an emotional well, I don't know if it
would be called a toll, but there's an emotional aspect
for you and all of this too. You're carrying all
this around all the time.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I know, but it doesn't feel like it's an effort.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Okay, Well, you are helping people's most important dream come true. Absolutely,
and you are helping that so so Zane, I think
our time is probably going to be running short here.
It goes fast when you have a conversation that's interesting
like this. What's something that you would like to leave
the audience with some fear that you see sometimes from
(19:53):
people that you'd like to put them at ease with.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Perhaps, Well, because we work with intended parents and gestational carriers,
I want to tell both parties that the journey is
always going to be ups and downs, and that is
always part of any journey anybody goes on. The role
(20:16):
of the agency is to minimize the emotional impact that's
going to have on them, and we will be there
to help them through the journey from A to Z
in a very personable, very human way. And we are
here to match them with their best match. The criteria
(20:38):
that each applicant in the in the agency, whether you're
an intended parent applying to be you know, to finding
a match. They come with their own criteria, and I'm
always encouraging them not to compromise what they are looking
for because we will help them find. For instance, people
(20:59):
who are looking to match with a carrier who will
not terminate a pregnancy if it ends up being a
pregnancy with a down down syndrome or something like that,
they have to match with a gestational carrier that has
that same view, and I'm always encouraging them to maintain
their views throughout their journey.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
So I just think this is a fascinating conversation. The
time has gone for me has gone very fast. Would
you come back again at some point?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
I would love to.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Do you feel like you have a close enough relationship
with a successful couple that they would maybe one of
them or both of them would be want to be
part of the program.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Absolutely, I would love that, even if it's a gestational
carrier or maybe a parent with their gestational carrier that
have had a journey together. A lot of people have
a lot to say.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
I don't think that's an information that people are going
to hear in a lot of other places now.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Absolutely not. Zay Shama has been our guest. She's with
the Gift of Life Surrogacy Agency. It's on Monroe Street,
sixty seven eleven Monroe Street, Building three, Site A. It's
right near the fire department across from the Municipal building
in downtown Sylvania. Zandy have a phone number that people
can use, or a website or Facebook.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
We do. But I also before you wrap up, I
just want to tell you that Michigan will also is
also now legal forg oh Okay. Yeah, the laws have
changed and as of April first, we are able to
proceed with matches in the state of Michigan. And we
are there and all of the offices of IVF Michigan,
(22:36):
and that's then offices. We have so many offices Macomb,
we have Traverse City, we have Grand Rapids, we have Dearborn,
we have Bloomfield Hills, so a whole bunch. The phone
number is for a Gift of Life Surrogacy four one
nine five seven five five five six.
Speaker 5 (22:54):
Thank you very much for being our guest today.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
We'll be back right after a short break. With our
second guest.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Did you know our area has over forty thousand businesses.
Some are old, some are new, but they all have
a story to tell about why they sell, How someone
took a chance once upon a time, someone with a
heart for business.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
This is Lane Monts, the host of the Better Business
Bureaus Heart for Business podcast. We know a thing or
two about our area's companies. After all, we've been keeping
tabs on them since nineteen nineteen. Join me in Toledo
radio legend Fred la Fever every week as our BBB
superheroes tell their origin story and share a few industry
secrets along the way. All right, welcome back everyone, Lane
(23:33):
Monts and Fred Lafever in the podcast Layer Today. Second
half of this show, I'm with Jason Woolbers from Northwest
Ohio Protections. Jason, you're out of Finley, right, We sure are,
and that's my hometown so I have a saft spot
for Finley and all things Finley. So welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Thanks, I'm glad to be here today.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Well, so we're going to talk about you and Northwest
Ohio Protections. What is Northwest Ohio Protections?
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Well, Northwest Ohiot is our to say it quickly. Our
motto is basically, our mantra is saving lives and changing lives.
Because we are a fire safety company. What we're trying
to do is go out in the community and educate
people about fire safety, and then we take it a
step further by offering products for the home.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Okay, so we're talking more like not just a smoke alarm.
You know, you can go to big lots and buy
one of those. Think we're talking a little more advanced
than that.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
That's right, Fred. It is a network of protection. So
we have smoke, heat, carbon monoxide, and then escape tools
and suppression tools, fire extinguishers, fire blankets. Most people have
seen the fire blankets advertised on social media. They somebody
was nice enough to spend a bunch of money on
ads on social media to help us out. Yes, so
now everybody knows what the fire blanket is. But then
(24:51):
we do it's mainly to early warning in a home,
to wake someone up if they are asleep when an
emergency happens.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
That's what we do, so homeowners pay attention. Correct, Yeah, okay, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
How important is that because we always hear about, you know,
early detection when it comes to like diseases and things
like that. How important is this early detection to saving
your life, saving your property, saving your family.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Well, it's very important. The thing of it is, experts
tell us we have about two minutes to escape a
fire most sent from the time you know there's a
fire in your home. That's the average. You have two
minutes to escape. So the thing of it is you better,
you better know what you're going to do. So we
don't just sell fire protection equipment. We do that because
we need to give them that time. We have to
(25:37):
get them awakened if there's a fire in their home.
Fire is fast. It's extremely fast, way faster than most
people think it is. Okay, the smoke in toxic gases
can overwhelm people too, So the early warning and then
the education we give is to help them to teach
their family to know what to do if and when
it happens, to get them out fast.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
So you know, there's no not much good that came
out of the California fires, But one thing that did
come out is I think people did get an eye
opener about how fast fire will consume a building.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
Oh yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Even I've been in the fire restoration industry, and even
I was surprised, and I am perpetually surprised when I'm
reminded how fast it moves.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Yeah, it is. It is quick. And the smoke is
really black, like you see smoke coming off a house,
and it's when you see a fire from the outside
looking in. It's nothing compared to seeing one from the inside,
because once it gets outside, it's it's getting out, it's
earing out inside the home. That smoke is thick, it's black,
and it's full of toxins, absolutely full of toxins, where
(26:37):
some of the toxic gases are worse than the smoke itself.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
I'm just going to say, and sometimes the smoke is
probably worse than the fire. The fire can be in
the bedroom and that smoke and be coming through the
vents and into a bedroom at the other end of
the house. You don't even know what's on fire yet, right.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
That's right, It's all pretty bad. So Jason, tell us
how your services and your products what exactly are they doing,
Like what are you setting up and putting into motion?
Because I don't know that a lot of people really
have an understanding of that.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Yeah, and that's why Square one for us, when we
first start talking to a potential client is to educate
them that there is a fire problem. So we educate
them of the problem first, We kind of bring them
up to speed on some of the things that the
general public just doesn't know about a fire. Okay. Another
thing is we educate people on how the different types
of fire protection work. Because the average store bought smoke
(27:27):
alarm does not work the same way as the one
that we're going to put into their home.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Does give me a difference because I have like a
regular smoke alarm that I bought, you know, yeah, twenty
bucks or something like that, that I got to change
of batteries every six months.
Speaker 5 (27:40):
How is that different than what you're going to get me.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Yeah, it's a lot different. The technology it's in most
of the big box stores is called an ionization detector,
and the way that detects fire is the easy way
to say it Layman's terms. It detects heat, not smoke, right,
It's detecting particles of combustion, which is fire, actual open flame,
free bird. I mean, that's why an ionization alarm is
better at detecting a free burning fire than it is
(28:04):
a slow smoldering fire. The problem with that is, a
slow smoldering fire is cold in nature. It's not going
to melt the alarm. But what's a hot, flaming fire
going to do to plastic, especially cheap plastic. Got it,
It's gonna melt it. Our smoke alarms and just real
quick are optical. That means there's an infred light on
the inside going back and forth every four seconds. When
smoke blocks that light beam, it cuts it in half.
(28:26):
That sets it up. Ours are visually seeing the smoke.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Oh, now, do you need as many of those?
Speaker 1 (28:33):
You know, because they always tell you, for once you
buy at the big box store, put one in the kitchen,
put one in every bedroom, put one in the hallway.
With this news system, do you still need as many?
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Yes, it's the way we say it is. You don't
want the alarm to have to find excuse me, you
don't want the fire to have to go around the
house to find the alarm. Ah, No matter how good
they are, you want the alarm to be there to
find the fire.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Okay, So it's more eyes really, That's what I'm talking
about it.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Yep. It'd be like putting a security camera on your
front door but not your back. If you don't fully
protect your home.
Speaker 5 (29:07):
It makes sense.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
So Jason, it almost seems like, uh, you know, you
got the one hand that you go to Low's or
a big box store you buy, you're buying a product,
You're putting it up yourself. And that's the kind of
the end of the story. You hope you remember to
keep tabs on it. And are they really forming a
long term partnership with you? I mean, once they once
they use you? Is that the difference? Are you in
it for the long I don't quite understand.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
Yeah, we are definitely in it for the long haul.
My phone rings every day. We have thousands and thousands
of customers in northwest Ohio. Really, we've been in business
since two thousand and one and we've got thousands of customers.
Our phone rings a lot, and when it does ring,
I have a service guy. He's actually my son, Dylan,
and he's an awesome guy. People love him and he
goes around and takes care of all my service. Now
(29:51):
he's full time. That's how many customers we have. Sure
he's your son, he is, but he's he takes after
his mother. Okay, so how did you get into this?
Were you a fire fighter? Or in rescue services or
something because you look like you might have been. That's
a good question. But no, I wasn't in the fire service,
but my dad was in the business before I got
into it. So my dad and my parents are the
reason that I ended up in the business that i'm in.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
So when you started, did you start as a kid
as a teenager helping your dad out in stuff?
Speaker 5 (30:17):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (30:17):
All right, So how has the business changed? And I'm
sure it has with the technology available from what your
dad was doing to what you're doing.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
Yeah, and I did it with my dad at the
time where when I started was nineteen ninety five, so
I worked for them for six years too before I
took my own office. Now i've been in the business.
May of this year will be thirty years that I've
been doing it. But it's different in the technology is
a lot different. It is, and the people's understanding of
fire has actually gotten better over the years too, I
(30:47):
think because of social media and because of the news
when you can you can learn about a fire in
Indiana now if you live in Ohio, whereas before you
would have never even known that happened, right, you know,
So people's awareness actually is a little better than what
it used to be, So it is a little easier
to get the message out. It's also easier to get
into people's houses. There's more ways to do that. But
(31:07):
the biggest difference would be probably the product. Because we
had a single station we call them single station smoke
alarms when they're not connected anything else. The system we
have now is fully interconnected. When one goes off, they
I'll go off without wires.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Oh really, I was just going to ask is it
interconnected wirelessly or through wires?
Speaker 4 (31:24):
It is wirelessly interconnected, yep. And it's also connected to
an We call it a calm link. It's a little
box that's connected to the Internet or hooked in through
Wi Fi. That is an information box. You might as
well call it a communication link colm link, okay, because
it communicates with every device that we install throughout their
(31:45):
home for smoke, heat, carbon monoxide. We even have water
and flood free sensors for the home too, by the way,
And if something would happen, it reports to the colm
link that sends a text out to the customer themselves
and up to a total of eight people text in
email lik.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
So it's using the it's using a phone tower terrestrial
network to relay the text, Right, it's an SMS message
or something.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
Yes, it's an SMS message, And we also use push
alerts for the customer themselves for testing and things like that.
It's done through push alert using the app on their phone.
But for an emergency, yes, it's SMS and it's an
actual text that the customer would receive, doesn't matter where
they are.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Know other people like in the family, So if I
want to be sure that my son or my daughter,
or my mom or my dad know that I've had
a problem, the message would go out to them. Also,
whoever's on your list of next of ken or whatever.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
That's correct up to an eight total. It does cap
at eight.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
And does it also alert the fire department or can
that be one of the people that you put on
your list if.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
You knew like a firefighter, you could probably do that
with their permission book. No, it's not linked to the
fire depile. Yeah, that's a good question though. When we
do get a lot from our customers, is this go
to the fire department? When if you're going to get
it to go to something like that, that's going to
be done through monitor that's going to be a monthly fee.
We don't charge a fee for ours. Ours is no monitoring.
It doesn't cost. They pay for the equipment, it's installed,
(33:08):
and it's done.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
So are you are these better for older homes newer homes?
Are you putting them in both? What are you doing
here with.
Speaker 4 (33:16):
We're putting them in both. For the most part, what
we're doing is we sit at people's kitchen tables and
in their living room. So it's an existing homeowner, typically
not the builder, if you will, okay, So we sit
down with the people that already are in the home, okay,
and we show it to them, and usually they're upgrading.
In other words, you mentioned earlier, Fred that you have
(33:36):
the twenty dollars big box set. That's what most people have, okay.
And by the way, I will put a disclaimer on
our company.
Speaker 5 (33:43):
We do believe.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
That that type of protection is better than nothing, and
most people need more of those in their home than
what they have. If they don't do something like we have.
We would be a tremendous upgrade to something like that
because we're covering all areas. We can cover the attic,
we can cover the garage. You're not supposed to put
an ionization alarm, or any smoke alarm for that matter,
in a garage or an attager and insect infested area.
(34:05):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Why is that because of the heat.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
And the summer and the dust and all that stuff,
it's too much for the smoke alarm, the circuit board
and all that can get ruined from it. Long term?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Car, how are your devices? Where do they draw power from?
Is it a battery? Testing?
Speaker 5 (34:19):
Tell?
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Is the battery along lasting? I mean, these are questions
that I'm having now as I know.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
No, I'm loving the questions. These are great. It's a
lithium manganese battery. Now, our battery is rated to up
to twenty years lane. But here's the big disclaimer. Now,
the new fire code just enforced. We are a new
smoke alarm that we're just coming out with soon. It's
actually done, but we need to just get them in
rolling has a ten year shut off because that's the
(34:46):
new code. You can't have a smoke alarm lasts longer
than ten years anymore.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Really, are there upgrades that they expect will be coming
or does it just have a shelf life?
Speaker 4 (34:55):
No, it's it's just it's hard to explain in a
short podcast. But the reality is all smoke alarms are
going to it eventually. It's already in the process, and
it just lasts ten years. But when you think about that,
it doesn't make sense because we replace everything but in
our home within ten years.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Mostly I would be personally nervous about I just I
guess I don't believe it. You tell me something, I
don't have to worry about it for twenty years. I
don't know if I would be comfortable with it.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
I do agree, And that's why even with the twenty
year length of the battery, that's how long it's estimated
it could last. And I mean, we see batteries on
these apps and these homes, from these alarms we've installed
three and four years ago. They're still at one hundred percent.
Speaker 5 (35:31):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
The app tells us, well, how much what the battery
strength is does they're still at one.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
Hundred That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
It is amazing the units that you're using, that you're installing.
Because you mentioned smoke and fire and carbon monoxia. I
have a friend who was staying at a hotel and
there carbon monoxide leak that obviously he didn't know about.
It was asleep and he slept through it. And the
only way they found out was he wasn't answering the
phone for his wife that morning, and they broke down
(36:00):
his door and he was, oh, yeah, he was Gary
in a coma for days, and the hyperbaric chambers and everything.
Do the units that you put in do they do
more than one thing? Or do I need one for
carbon monoxide, one for fire, one for water?
Speaker 5 (36:15):
You know, great question, Thank you. I'm the host.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
You're doing great. You guys are throwing me good pitches
here to it.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
I hate to pay Fred a compliment in his own studio.
He's already the king in here, but he was not
fed the companies or the issues, or the products or
anything ahead of time, so he's winging it. But it's
really important.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
Because I'm paying attention to what this guy says.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
You know, he's doing real good. Yeah, I'm a scattered rain.
So can you repeat the question?
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Is each unit separate? Does the smoke unit also do
carbon monoxide? Or do I need to get one for
all the things I'm concerned about.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
That's a really good question. And this is the neat
thing about what we do with the education process. First,
we go into somebody's home in the first forty five
to fifty minutes, maybe even hour, depending on how talkative
they are. All we're doing is educating about fire and
then we get into how our product works and things
like that. Only at the very end do we show
them what they would need and how much it would
cost and things like that. But we answer those questions
(37:11):
during the presentations. I'll answer it for you. Now. Our
heat sensors, the ones that go in addicts and garages
and you know areas where the temperature changes a lot.
That is heat only, but it tests for heat two
ways it goes. It's it's programmable, so we can set
it to one seventeen, one thirty five or one seventy five.
Oh okay. And all of our heat sensors, so all
(37:32):
three of our life saving sensors have the built in
heat sensor. All of them have it. It's just something
they thought, let's put it on all of them. It's
an easy thing to do, so they did. So they
all have rate of rise. That's what makes it really
special because that's a fast warning heat alarm. That means
that if your house is at sixty eight degrees right now,
lane right or Fred your house, that's sixty eight degrees
(37:54):
and it goes up to eighty eight within one minute.
If that where that alarm is sitting, If that temperature
ever rises by twenty degrees in less than a minute,
it's going off.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
So you think that's actually what we might have in
this particular.
Speaker 5 (38:08):
Room, that we're highly likely because.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
I came in one morning at four o'clock and the
alarm was going off and there was no fire, but
the voice kept saying, you know, hey, there's a fire
in the building. You know, get out, blah blah blah,
And I looked in every room I could look, and
then there was nothing and it ended up. But I
noticed that this particular studio was really super hot that day.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
He had to be.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Eighty degrees or something like that, when normally it's like
it's seventy two yep.
Speaker 4 (38:39):
And rate of rise. Heat sensors can be set at
different rises, so they might have it set lower in here.
Because of the cost of the equipment and things, they'd
want to know a little bit quicker. Probably you save equipment.
We're trying to save lives more than anything. So if
someone loses a little bit of property, I mean, you're
gonna lose some property if your house catches on fire.
But in this studio they're gonna You got suppression and sprinklers,
(38:59):
and they want to try to put it out too.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
It's too bad Jason doesn't have a passion for the business.
It's it really is hard to tease information out of him,
tease that energy out of him.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
Where does that come from?
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Because obviously you learn you got some of that from
your dad because he did it for a living. Did
you just naturally slide into it in a sense?
Speaker 4 (39:18):
Yeah, I liked what my dad was doing when I
was young. We always tell the story when we go
to functions and meetings. We lived in this two story
home and my dad drove this Pontiac Bonneville and it
was a lot of car, you know, And you could
hear him coming from about a half block away. So
at nighttime when he was coming home from his sales calls, right,
I'd run up to that window. It was my mom
and dad's room. Now I wasn't supposed to be in
(39:40):
that room either. I didn't care. I wanted to see
if my dad had empty boxes. I don't want to
see if he sold something.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Oh yeah, yeah, because then you go out to Pizza
Hut for dinner.
Speaker 5 (39:49):
Yeah, yeah, right, you talk shop?
Speaker 4 (39:51):
Yeah I could, then I could. I never bothered him
about the business if he if I knew he hadn't
sold none that day, I just something inside me told me, Oh,
leave him alone.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
So Jason doesn't want to mention this. Jason has written
a book you, yes, I have.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Yeah, so that and I think Lane knows where this
comes from.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
He asked me not to talk about it. But I
think it's part of your story. Care Yeah, it's part
of your story.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
Yeah. The book is called The Power of a Positive Mindset,
and that's where the energy comes from. Okay, But I
learned at a young age, Fred that that's the advantage
of being in business for yourself. At a young age.
You have to figure things out, and if you don't,
you won't be here anymore. You'll be doing something else. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
A lot of small businesses go out of business within
the first five years because they haven't planned properly with
the banks and with dealing with employees and what their
plan is. So, in your business, what's your plan for
the next five years?
Speaker 4 (40:44):
Our plan for the next five years is to continue
to grow Northwest Ohio Protections. But what we also do
there that we haven't talked about is we develop people.
That's a big part of my job is to develop people.
I don't sell fire protection anymore. I don't sit at
people's kitchen tables. I don't install it, I don't need
things like that. I work with our sales team trying
to develop them so that they can own their own
branch of the business that is possible. We've had a
(41:06):
lot of people do it. Okay, that's how I got
my opportunity. My dad finally said, hey, listen, you're starting
to get a kind of a good business head on you.
We already knew you could sell, but now can you
manage a business? And so you know, that's what that's
my next step, and that's what we've already been doing,
but we're going to continue to do.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
And it's so important because one of the things that
Northwest Ohio area is facing, one of the threats the
business community. And if the business community is facing threats,
then the consumers are facing it too. They just don't
know it. And that is that businesses, you know, to
some extent are closing or being purchased by out of
the area being larger companies and Fred, I mean, I
(41:43):
don't want to offend anybody that's listening, but it really
it causes me a lot of consternation. I don't like
what family businesses ended up ending up being owned by
a company in Seattle, and it's a big threat in
northwest Ohio. So when I when I hear about a
third generation because you got your son working in three right,
when I hear about that and plans to grow, I mean,
(42:03):
that's what gets the better business bureau, That's what gets
LAIN excited.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
So what kind of training did you go through other
than just learning things from your dad? Did you also
have to go through training and do the guys that
you're bringing up now or if the guys you are mentoring,
do they have to go through some kind of I
guess it would be fire training so they understand what
they're telling me about my home.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Yes, we put them through a pretty intensive training program
that we created basically. But and then in the state
of Ohio, the installers are licensed to put the product
into the home through the State Fire Marshal's office. Our
company has a permit or you have to be licensed
to do it. To do the installs Yeah, you can
go in and you can talk to people about fire
safety and you can even sell the product, but the
(42:45):
final install has to be done.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Did not know that?
Speaker 4 (42:48):
Yeah, oh, okay, and that's Ohio. Every state's different when
it comes to that.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Now, do you have plans to expand to you service
southeast Michigan yet or is that in the future or
maybe one of your employees at some point.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
Yeah, we some in southeast Michigan, and then we have
a distributor that lives in Flint, and she has a
couple of distributors that are south of her. Like I
can't remember the towns. I mean near ann Arbor, Okay, Detroit,
So I don't cover too much in that area because
someone else does that area. It's kind of it's not
a franchise, but it kind of acts like one in
that sense.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
That's a different BBB area. Jason just paid no attention
to them. Keep your focus down here, I will.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Well, it's always nice to have the BBB sign no
matter where you're at in the country because that speaks
to what a good company are. You've been through the
vetting process and everything is that important to you?
Speaker 5 (43:35):
Was it when you start?
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Did you say Oh, you know what, we better go
and talk to the BBB and get that sign up
in the window.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
Yeah. When I first started the business, I was eighteen
years old, so when somebody asked me about the BBB,
I was like, well, what's that and why do you care?
You know, but you get a little older. Well I
was eighteen though Lane. Yeah, you get a little older
and you get asked that question a few times. Then
you start researching, and of course it's very important to me.
I want to make sure that we're running the business
(44:02):
ethically and I want to do everything as right as
I possibly can. As the owner in Lane and the
team at the Better Business Bureau, they have helped me.
Stephanie Broadway sat in my living room when I lived
in an apartment, I know, to help us understand the
concept and the importance. That she did a wonderful job,
and that was like twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
I don't think there's any one organ I don't want
to talk too much about the BBB, but I don't
think there's any one organization in northwest Ohio that touches
as many businesses as we do. Fred we have almost
six thousand business members over twenty four counties. I don't
think there's any one single organization that has that constituency.
I agree, and they're scattered. If you can hear Fred's
voice on the radio, you can be a member.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
You know, we've got time for one more question, if
you have one more lane.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Well, I always ask a variation of this question, Jason,
what do you want the public? If they're public listening
right or it could be a business, but they own
homes too, what do you want them to know about,
not necessarily about your company, but about what they should
be thinking if they're considering a system like this.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Well, what I want the general public to know about
fire safety and fire protection in particular, is that a
smoke alarm is not a smoke alarm is a smoke alarm.
There are differences and the kind and the quality, and
the warranty and all of that stuff. But I also
want people to understand, probably more than anything, it's it
is a lot about the number of alarms that you
(45:27):
put in your home. You can't put one smoke alarm
per level in your home and expect to get out
of any kind of a fire that starts anywhere in
your home. You have to have them near the room
of origin or in the room of origin in order
for a smoke alarm to be able to be the
most effective. So I would recommend to everyone, whether you
do business with us or anywhere else, even if you're
(45:48):
just sticking with the big box stuff, get more of
them and read the manual, because the manual does tell
you what the fire code says.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Oh come on, really, I'm sorry, very tiny, tiny print decipher.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
I think it's just going to be easier to reach
out to Jason, soorry we do that well.
Speaker 4 (46:06):
You can reach out to us by checking out our
website at nwopgroup dot com. You can call us at
four one nine four two nine one two zero seven.
You can check us out on Facebook Northwest Ohio Protections.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Thanks Jason, Jason, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Jason Wolders was our guest. We'll be back again next week.
If you need to reach out to the BBB, go
to BBB dot org slash Toledo. You'll find them on Facebook.
Also for a phone call, it's four one nine five
seven eight six thousand. You've been listening to A Heart
for Business, a production of iHeartRadio and the Better Business Bureau.
(46:45):
You can access us on iHeartRadio dot com, or wherever
you get your podcasts from. We'll be back next week.
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