Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Jesse McNeely is the founder of Rescue Connect and also mentors industrial emergency response departments.
Having trained over 20,000 students with his work globally, Jesse is passionate about sharing knowledge so rescue teams can be safer, more capable and better prepared.
Jesse holds a medical science master's degree in disaster and emergency response. He has dedicated his professional life to his vocation of emergency response and rescue.
Jesse has worked in eight countries in a range of military, private security, disaster response training and leadership roles.
Jesse continues to develop his industry networks so rescue workers can learn from and help each other. Welcome to the Hybrid Author podcast.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Jesse, thank you so much. I appreciate it. It's nice to be here.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Oh, you're absolutely welcome. We're so thrilled to have you. You have had a seriously impressive career in your field, but today we are here to talk about your guidebook 101 Rescue Scenarios, Mines Emergency Respond 2025 Edition.
You described the product as decades of hands on experience, which clearly you have. Can you tell us what inspired you to compile this resource now and why is it so critical for today's industrial emergency response teams?
[00:01:22] Speaker B: All right, just to take a step back, I don't feel at heart like I own this information. So like all of the scenari and this content, when I train students, what I actually say is all I am is a glorified traffic cop that regards themselves as an elite performance coach. So hopefully that makes sense to the audience.
So it's one of those like imposter syndrome effects, right? The motivation has really come from being isolated is the easiest way I think I can sum it up. You're isolated, on site in industrial rescue, you have limited resources and we all aspire to be the very best at what we do, or we should anyway. And over time with, you know, again with that isolation in effect with some sort of suboptimal cultural kind of behaviors in our industry and a few other things. It's so easy to fall off the wagon. So 101 Rescue Scenarios is part of a series of books that is currently underway. Obviously this is released now available on Amazon. There you go.
To be an easy quick reference guide for people on site to sort of like follow along on how to craft good training iterations so they can be more effective at their job. So it's designed to help people and guide them.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing. And as you're flicking through, is it photographs that you've included in there full color or.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: Yep. So I used AI to help craft these different images and that was such an interesting journey. Some of Those images by the way, took nearly six hours.
Because you know, if you say Google like we were talking about before, if you go to Google plane crash at a mine site, how many available images? So you know, this is great because I own that content and I'm developing it. Some of them. I'll show you one actually just very briefly.
Personally when I made this one I couldn't distinguish this between a real photo and a. Here we go. Maybe some of the viewers might call me out on this one but I mean I think that looks pretty realistic.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: I'll put a trigger warning in that is the images of bloody hand, those that are listening on audio.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Dare enough of us.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Oh goodness. Well yeah, we'll definitely talk about the product and how you compiled it. But peddling back, you've spoke to 20,000 students globally. You work in these high stakes environments and things jumped countries to countries doing this kind of stuff. How has your experience led to shape the scenarios that you've chosen for the guidebook?
[00:03:42] Speaker B: That's a really good question. I've had a very mixed career so from military, private security, including bodyguarding high net worth individuals.
Getting my medical science degree in disaster and emergency response, working in places like Ukraine, other countries in the Asia Pacific region and yeah like doing tactical medical training over in Ukraine. A year and a half since I was there last, but I've been there five times in total and that was by choice by the way. So. And this is what I think makes my crew quite unique where it's active participation and a willingness to go. It's not just paid work to get on a plane and you know, I've got a, essentially an industry or departmental badge behind me. It's more what I call the pirate effect or the sort of contracting effect where I'll decide to go and do something and then get amongst it and learn it, adapt those skills and knowledge. So it's quite a bastardized mix of different experiences that are sort of added to the motivation to want to write this to help people.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's amazing. I'm really interested to know about all the stuff you've actually included in there and how you kind of made it with emergency rescue response teams. I suppose with your experience with all these different ones, the private security, the military is. And I'm not anybody with this background so I mean there's an emergency rescue response for each of these different professions type things. So for like military and security and.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: No, no, I mean there's different like operating environments in different capacities. So for example, in Private security. You know what, what you have is you have medics and then you have operators that, you know, essentially if required, can engage with the enemy and evacuate people or respond to lots and lots of different types of situations.
So, you know, you've got an industrial site, a mine site. It could also be like a major hazard facility, like a chemical plant. It's. When we use the term industrial rescue, that's what we're actually referring to, some type of an industrial application. Yeah. And you know, these types of people, they have normal jobs on site. They could be a boilermaker, they could be an electrician, a plumber, a cook, and they formulate part of the emergency response team in a part time capacity. The capacity of us is essentially is mentors and guides, which is you have an emergency service officer. There's lots of different acronyms for this, by the way, but at heart you're an emergency service officer. Could be a dual role, you could be medically trained as well.
And then of course you've got levels above that. My role is predominantly a relief emergency service officer and a trainer, mentor and guide to assist people on this evolution. That's where my passion actually lies, is in training and development.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: So in my mind that's probably how the guidebooks come out, like training, training guide, like you said. So that's been one of the inspirations for that. You do so much. You've got your hand in a lot of different things. How long has it taken for you to get this, to compile this together, you know, from the initial idea to even having the time to write and publish it, everybody listening, especially authors or just anyone who knows how to sit down and dedicate the time, have the discipline, have, like you said, the motivation, everything to do this. It's quite a long.
It's, it's hard, it's hard for some people. So it's.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. It's. It's a lot harder than I thought. And writing out the content and like, you know, I had help with AI, with imagery, which was great, but like I said, you know, six hours on one image, you know, you're not getting paid for that. And you know, it's pretty obvious this thing isn't going to make $3 million. That's actually not the purpose of this book.
So you've got to be dedicated beyond what a reasonable person would want to put up with because they're going to quit well before you actually have your hands on something tangible.
So, yeah, I think it's 20 months or 21 months before I actually committed to starting to write it. I mean, I'll have the evidence in my phone. So it's been a long journey. It's actually interestingly and I think the audience will appreciate this even if they're not working in my sector.
It's actually been incredibly motivating and it's lit a passion and a fire inside me to go, you know what? I'll use G rated swear word stuff it. I'm going to crack on. I'm going to do more of these series and we're going to keep helping people beyond what, you know. I again, having imposter syndrome. What I think is, you know, the highest possible quality. I mean, I think this is pretty good. But any author will see flaws in their work and go, oh, that could be better. We'll just crack on with your series and make more content then.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think imposter syndromes is something that I'm familiar with and a lot of people listening would get it as well. Because even though, you know, you've got so much experience to draw upon and this becomes almost like a labor of love, you're pouring yourself out into it, aren't you? And then you're sharing it with the world effectively for people to judge in your field. So that's where it's a bit like, oh, you know, who am I to say this or do this?
[00:08:33] Speaker B: But exactly.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: You've got a long list there to say I'm this person. So you know what you're talking about. Clearly.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: I just actually want to say something that. So it's 100% agree with everything you said. That's, that was actually a clear purpose of calling it a guidebook. I believe I've articulated, articulated myself fairly well. But it's just, you know, the purposes of the guide, how to use the guidebook, the fact that it is a guidebook and it's not a manual. Yeah, that was all very strategic because I didn't want to basically say this is exactly how you do these things. And there's nine disciplines in that book. I'm not by any means hazmat expert, I'm a hazmat trainer. Right.
So I didn't want to leave it open to that level of criticism, nor do I want to instruct people to that level of detail as well. It's to guide them through how to facilitate the structures of a scenario.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: And I suppose when it comes to like emergency response scenarios and things, there might be correct procedures, but then would it depend on the actual scenario that then you're in that moment you need to think.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Actually it would be different each time, wouldn't it? Depending on the scenario. So you couldn't put something and say this is how it's done every time. Because it's. Yes, isn't it? Yeah.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Well, when people identify with that, I mean, this is some of the stuff I say when I train is like, you know, each emergency, disaster, critical incident, it's like a fingerprint, it's unique. We operate with a structured response to protocols with an open mind to see specific hazards, dangerous threats, including our threat landscape, whilst communicating under pressure, facilitating resources, you know, working with off site resources and assistance, incident management teams. Crisis management teams. Yeah, I could just go on and on. Right. And that is summed up into a small ball here is operate as, and I use the term pirate again or you know, ninja, so to speak. Learn how to be a ninja with minimal information to be as effective as you can with the right end state in mind.
So 100%, that's exactly. You've just summed up an emergency really, really well.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, well, thank you.
New career? I don't think so, but I had.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Written two rescue scenarios.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Well, you said it's a series as well. So is that. What have you thought is how many books and what's next with the topics and stuff?
[00:10:44] Speaker B: There's more books that I'm willing to admit and throw myself under the bus too. That's the motivation there. But yeah, one that's currently underway, it's around about a third complete. It's a lot shorter, by the way. It's not 298 pages, so it's leadership and group activities. Can I just provide one? Yeah. Cool. All right. Except there's lots and ironically I'm saying 50, but I could see it growing a little bit. But like I said, it won't be this extensive. Something I learned in the military and we do it all the time and it's super, super fun.
It's called a Kims game k I m s keep in memory system. You get 10 objects, it could be more, it could be a little bit less. You put it on a table, you cover it, say with a towel. You get everyone around the table and you say, right, you've got a minute to memorize these items. You don't have to say the amount.
And you can't talk and you can't use any recording devices. People love pulling their phones out and being all cheeky about it. All right, time starts now. You do that at the end of the minute, you Cover it back up and you, you see what people's memory recall actually is and that develops the critical skills that we need on a job. There's tons of others. I don't want to sort of let all the cats out of the bag, but yeah, it's pretty exciting.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, you held it up and you showed us some of the images. It's mentioned that there's interactive elements in there. So what's the interactive elements that are in there and why are they detrimental to emergency response teams?
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Yeah, so briefly on here. So what I've got is a 30 minute consult, someone buys the book and I wanted that deliberately to say, hey, look, we're all human, reach out, have a chat to us. That's absolutely fine. I've combined the book, that's why I'm wearing this shirt and obviously the logo on here. I build a rescue app and that's a free app designed to bring community together to share, learn and grow. Which, you know, obviously this is a stepping stone for that.
Some of the other QR codes lead you to the app itself. You can check that out.
And also in some of the scenarios, I wanted to add more, but then my motivation for releasing the book took over and I'm working with the technology to facilitate that.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: What's the app? Is that Rescue Connect?
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. With Rescue Connect, you know, the concept and idea came out of that approximately two years ago. Oh, sorry, I've released that just under two years ago and I had that idea for almost three years.
Again, it's coming back to working in isolation and I thought to myself, this might sound corny to some people, but if not me, then who?
And I'm going to do something about it. And one thing. Can I swear on here or just to keep it?
Not the senior one thing that really.
No, no, no. Just too Aussie. One thing that actually does shit me and really pissed me off about our industry is the level of arrogance and rumors and you know, this professional pride that masks over people actually being pretty average at their jobs and, you know, putting fingers going, oh, that person's, you know, does this or that or whatever it is.
Failing to support each other. And again, I'll repeat myself here, probably sound like a broken record. Share, learn and grow.
The only way we get better at what we do is by, by sharing content, learning and growing as a team. We actually encourage that as trainers and then you see some other people that kind of hoard information.
And also the fact that our industry is heavily privatized it's all basically training companies talking crap about other training companies and. And people telling war stories about how they used to be a fiery 10 years ago. Like, no one cares. It's the same as the Army. Like no one actually cares. Sure, you can touch base on that type of stuff, but how are you actually using skills like this to be better functionally and to come back to the question here. So these QR codes, people can scan it and then it can take them to videos that kind of show them, you know, it makes that picture come to life, so to speak.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Is that on each picture you've done that?
[00:14:30] Speaker B: No, it's not. I wanted it to mention how many.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Pictures are in now.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: It's not that many. No, it's not that many. I think it's about six or so. Like I said, I had a moment in time, an intersection of expectations meeting reality. And I just internally said to myself, dude, just get it out there. See how it goes. If there's a high demand, you can put the additional 148 hours into your QR codes.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: That's it. Or pay someone else to do it.
[00:14:55] Speaker B: Full honesty. There you go.
Yeah.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: No, I love it. It's such a hybrid product, as we say on the Hybrid Author podcast, because you're taking something that is print and then making it digital as well. It's a mix of things, which is fantastic. I absolutely love it. So who are your target audience? Who do you want to be purchasing this product? Who's going to use it to help each other? Obviously, emergency response teams, maybe in the mining industry.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: I'm showing people how to reference the actual guidebook. So it is in here as industrial rescue technicians, emergency service officers, emergency response supervisors, emergency response teams, incident management teams, industrial rescue trainers, industrial rescue committees, industrial training providers, industrial corporate leadership teams, and mining companies.
And the reason I just did that is to show people that it does explain this stuff. But also I didn't want to forget anyone. So thank you.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: No, that's amazing.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: There's a book for that.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Well, you've done this now. You've done this process.
How would you tackle the next in series differently from this? Would you do it differently? Is there things that you've learned or anything like that?
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Don't be afraid to use formatting tools to help you with the book. So when I say formatting tools, I'm talking about AI guides out there chatting to people like yourself. You know, how am I going to do this? How am I going to do that? I'll give you one example So I was recently sitting down with someone and, you know, I was experiencing this struggle about how to get this thing on kdp, which is Amazon, by the way. You go through this whole process with uploading a book. You have to get ISBN numbers and all sorts of stuff like this. Right.
Anyway, I get all that sorted and I just cannot get the COVID uploaded or the manuscript, which is the actual book content.
And I left it for about three weeks and this person just said to me, why don't you speak to some other people about getting help? And long story short, I went on fiverr. I put it as a job and within or less than 24 hours, my book's on there. So don't be afraid to seek help. If anyone wants to, through the content on this book, reach out to me. I'm more than happy to have that conversation. I'm actually looking to collaborate, as we are already, with as many people in my industry as possible. It's so important. Again, going to sound corny for a sec. Probably sound like I've indoctrinated myself, but share, learn and grow, otherwise we just don't advance as individuals or as a community.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And so did you always see this as a product you wanted to control? You didn't think about maybe approaching niche sort of publishers or anything like that to produce it for you?
[00:17:37] Speaker B: No. Some people told me about it. I think for me it was more of a I want to be able to get as much done as I can.
Who am I? Some people said, oh, you're an orphan. I'm like, no.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: And effectively a publisher.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: No, it's weird. And I don't want that to become an ego thing. I am bloody proud of this. I mean, as I should be. It looks great, but. Yeah, thank you. I think.
No, I think I just want to do as much as I can for, you know, learning and developing. Maybe in the future, who knows, but we'll see.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Yeah. No, that's absolutely incredible. And, you know, you've obviously shared so much already. Do you have any further advice to anybody who wants to utilize their skill set? Not, not necessarily in your field, but just in general that you want to share or to produce a guidebook?
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Don't be afraid to have a crack.
I think what's motivating too is journaling and producing content. If you're the type of person that likes writing your thoughts down, then you are your own author already. Right.
So what if you can write your thoughts down and share it? Then you're an author or whatever, but, you know, there's real value in that. And to me anyway, if you make a book and no one else buys it and you look at that as your own mental trophy in life, like, you know, proud of you.
Just do it. Who cares? You know, I'd rather do that on a, you know, Wednesday night and limit my Netflix to 20 minutes, to 40 minutes and spend two hours a couple of nights a week doing something like that because that's life changing for me. Anyway, I'm quite proud of it.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Oh, you should be. It's, it's absolutely excellent. And have you ever come across anything like that before? Like in that format?
[00:19:22] Speaker B: Not in my industry. And that was part of the research did before releasing it. I'm identifying things that don't exist in our industry and then offering these conduits for people to reach out and then collaborate, connect, share, learn, grow, type stuff. So no, I think there should be a lot more of it. And I think the more people that get together and collaborate, if you're watching this talking to you, let's have at it.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Well, it's all about that, isn't it? Finding a need for what people need and going that way.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Listen, if you're an emergency response technician, a rescue worker in any field, particularly a volunteer or part time basis, know that there's, there's great people out there that want to see you thrive and grow and that want to support you. So don't be afraid to reach out to those people. If and when you come across the sort of bad actors in our world, just skip over them and connect with people that want to see you thrive. And don't be afraid to do that. And constantly work on your skills because it's places like this and by reading content like this that actually saves lives before the fact. And that's a never ending journey.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's amazing. And you've, you have stated 2025 edition. So are you gonna keep updating it? If you're saying you keep evolving, that's.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: The intent behind it? Yeah, again, and that comes with more collaboration and modifications to it. So I'm gonna, look, I'm gonna do it myself anyway, stuff it. But collaborating with people to work with them on future content is the whole intent behind it. Cause it does, you know, technology changes is one example.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah, that's it. Absolutely. Very fast. How did you find with the AI like doing the images and all the information and stu quite quicker or was it really hard to gasp? I haven't played around with any imagery or any videos, but I actually did.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Two courses online for AI.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Around one was 20 hours, the other one was about 40 hours.
And learning how to prompt was super important. So, like, essentially what I'm saying here is how to ask the question and then how to refine the question and then you can re ask the question several different ways to then create what I needed. Are the images absolutely perfect to what I want? No. Do they hit the mark? I think absolutely.
So, yeah, that was very interesting working with AI.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: And you mentioned, like, copyright on that. Is that that lies with you then with the imagery?
[00:21:43] Speaker B: That's correct, yeah. So the images that you take and form become your property because it's original work and it's like, yep, that's mine.
So it was super handy.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: By the way, it's in the next book, the leadership and group activities and please try. That's actually really fun to try. So I supplied an image and then I said, remake this image for me and in the style that you want.
A cartoon, a photorealistic image and it changes it and then it becomes an original work. It was super cool seeing that process.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting. For sure, I've been incorporating into things, but, yeah, I haven't played with video or imagery or anything like that, so. Yeah, well, I know everybody's dying to know, where can they find the book? Is it. Or have you got it online?
Are you going to put it out to bookstores and things like that? Have you got a plan in place?
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Yeah, just send us a million bucks and I'll send you a cop. Now it's available on Amazon. Just jump on Amazon, type in 101 rescue scenarios.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Jesse. Congratulations on the book and everything. Your messages, super strong. Congratulations. Thank you so much for coming on Legend.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: Cheers.
