Blake Underhill is the President and Co-founder of Industrial Safety & Rescue, a Massachusetts-based company that provides specialized safety and rescue services for high-risk industrial environments. At IS&R, he oversees all financial, legal, and contractual matters, ensuring the company’s operations align with industry standards and client expectations. With over 20 years of experience in construction and safety, he has earned multiple certifications — including OSHA 500 Outreach Construction Trainer and PADI Certified Diver — and serves on the board of Notch Mechanical Constructors. Blake also volunteers with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, helping students develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:37] Blake Underhill on growing up with a single mom and hustling from a young age
- [5:16] How dyslexia affected Blake’s career
- [12:29] Financial struggles and the importance of work ethic
- [17:29] The difference between work ethic and business ownership
- [20:31] What led Blake to buy his stepfather’s business?
- [23:00] The challenges of managing multiple businesses
- [28:26] How Blake started using AI, specifically ChatGPT
- [32:28] The benefits of using AI for delegation
In this episode…
In today’s fast-paced world, many entrepreneurs juggle multiple responsibilities, often leading to burnout and inefficiencies. How can one effectively manage various business ventures without feeling overwhelmed? Is there a secret tool or strategy that can offer a much-needed respite from the chaos?
Blake Underhill, a seasoned entrepreneur with deep experience in operations and safety services, shares his journey of discovering the importance of focus and delegation to tackle these challenges. Growing up with limited resources, Blake learned to hustle and adapt, cultivating skills that later translated into managing multiple businesses. He emphasizes the significance of leveraging AI to streamline operations and reduce workload. By embracing AI, Blake efficiently manages his businesses while focusing on innovation and quality service.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Blake Underhill, President and Co-founder of Industrial Safety & Rescue, about balancing entrepreneurship with AI solutions. Blake shares the power of delegation and how AI can act as an enabler, allowing entrepreneurs to focus on scaling their businesses without being bogged down by minutiae. This episode offers valuable lessons on resilience, adaptability, and the innovative use of technology in entrepreneurship.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Blake Underhill: LinkedIn | Email
- Industrial Safety & Rescue
Quotable Moments:
- “You assume that what you see is what everyone else sees, and then later on, you find out like, oh, you don’t see that?”
- “You had to hustle. You just knew you had to hustle. You didn’t get the nice things, so you built a sense of humor.”
- “One of the things I learned is that you can’t solve dyslexia by just working harder at it.”
- “You learn to be part of the joke. Make the joke before you. My last name is Underhill, so initially, you know, underwear.”
- “None of us do this alone.”
Action Steps:
- Focus on leveraging AI for efficiency: By allowing AI to handle repetitive and time-consuming tasks, you can free up time to focus on strategic activities, addressing the challenge of managing multiple business facets effectively.
- Embrace delegating tasks: Delegating not only empowers your team but also allows you to concentrate on higher-level decision-making, helping to overcome the limitations of trying to do too much yourself.
- Identify and develop unique strengths: By focusing on areas where you excel, you can navigate challenges with confidence and leverage opportunities that align with your natural abilities.
- Seek mentors for guidance: Learning from others who have faced similar challenges can offer new perspectives and strategies, aiding in overcoming obstacles effectively.
- Build a supportive network: Engaging with others who understand entrepreneurial struggles can offer practical advice and emotional support, turning potential setbacks into manageable situations.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about the perils of doing too many things at once. When you are an entrepreneur, and even how leveraging AI can help to minimize the different things that you are doing all at once. My guest today is Blake Underhill. I’ll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:18
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now, let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:34
Hi. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of this show. And you know, each week we get to talk to smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies.
And if you look at the archives, we’ve got Netflix and Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos, lots of great episodes in there for you. And before we get into this, this episode is brought to you by Rise25. We help businesses to give to and connect their dream, connect with their dream relationships and partners. How do we do that? We do that by helping you to run your podcast and through strategic gifting, two different related sections of our business.
But we are an easy button for companies, especially B2B companies, to launch and run a podcast and also to give strategic relationships, build strategic relationships with people that are important for them. And we do strategy, accountability, full execution for all of these things. And so, you know, I know, Blake, you know, we’ve talked about this before, the importance of relationships throughout our career. And I like to think that what we do here at Rise25 is kind of like where the team of magic elves that allows people, you know, to do that work, to make it look easy for them to build relationships just like we’re doing here today, or strengthen relationships, just what you’re doing here today. So if you want to learn more about what we do, you can go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].
All right. My guest here today is Blake Underhill. He’s the President and Co-founder at Industrial Safety and Rescue. He has over two decades of experience in the construction industry. Got his degree, even in construction management.
And he also has started a number of other companies and been involved with different companies as well, including New England Abatement Resources. AF Underhill was another one as well, and we’re going to get into his whole story about all those different companies he’s involved in. But Blake, you know, I love to get to know my guests a little bit about what they were like as a kid. And you grew up with a single mom, and had one sibling. Mom worked really hard to support you guys. And when I asked you if you did Paper route, Lemonade stand, any of that kind of stuff, you said yes and all that stuff. So tell me a little bit about young Blake, what you’re doing.
Blake Underhill: 02:36
Yeah. So I said my brother and I did not make it easy for my mom. She was working, you know, 50, 60 hours a week as a nurse. And we were latchkey kids that really didn’t have an allowance or, or money. So we had to go make it. So we did. I did bicycle repair for my friends. Took over a friend’s paper route for about two weeks and then left that because that was not. That seemed like a lot of work for very little reward. We.
John Corcoran: 03:14
Especially in Massachusetts. Oh, yeah. And I remember a kid a couple a block away when I lived in Massachusetts. I remember a kid a block or two away that did it. I couldn’t understand it. And he’s probably a multi-millionaire now because he had the discipline to do it at age 11 or whatever.
Blake Underhill: 03:29
So yeah, it was, I would say, the main hurdle there was hills biking uphill with a basket full of newspapers. For, I don’t know, 5 or $0.10 a newspaper just seemed like a lot of work for little reward. So I learned to scrap and just do anything that was needed to get done. It’s funny, there was at one point we lived close to the center of town and they were renovating a building, and I just walked onto the construction site asking questions. And even though they, you know, a couple of people told me to scream.
A couple of people didn’t, and they would send me to go get coffees and I’d run out, grab the coffees, come back, they’d give me $0.50. So I was a fixture during that construction and really loved that. Loved what was going on, to see how things were being built. And I was very visual and I was not a great student. So I’m dyslexic, and especially in the 70s and 80s there, our public school system was really not designed for dyslexic students.
So a lot of the people in my life, because I wasn’t a great student in that I really didn’t get to show off any skills in that theater. Very low expectations were, were expected, were put on me and, and were really telegraphed to me that I was not expected to do much or be much.
John Corcoran: 05:06
And you were drawn to something that had a physical component to it, like construction, where you didn’t have to, you know, be reading or writing and stuff like that.
Blake Underhill: 05:16
Well, and it’s also very three dimensional, and I’ve definitely learned throughout my life that I’m a. Looking at things three dimensionally, actually. We’ll get to it later. But I studied architecture for about a year and a half, and I found that one of the skills I have is I can look at blueprints and see the three dimensionality of it, even though it’s a two dimensional surface. And no one, no one explains what skills are special to you. That’s one of the challenges in life.
John Corcoran: 05:50
If you discover them later. Yeah.
Blake Underhill: 05:52
Right. So there’s some you assume. You assume that what you see is what everyone else sees. And then later on, you kind of find out like, oh, you don’t see that?
John Corcoran: 06:02
Yeah, yeah. I look at it and it’s just a flat piece of paper with a lot of lines on it.
Blake Underhill: 06:07
Right. And even people in architecture school would look at two dimensional drawings and I’d be like, well, I’d be able to talk about the space and the volume and how things move, and you could move throughout space. And people were like, wait, wait, wait, wait. And I’m like, what do you mean wait? Wait? It’s like, it’s right there. You can’t.
John Corcoran: 06:24
Like.
Blake Underhill: 06:24
I just assume that other people thought like I did, and I was aware I was dyslexic. I was aware that I was not a great student, that I had these problems, I couldn’t spell transverse letters, I had all these other very classic dyslexic issues. And so what I kind of internalized was that I was broken and that I wasn’t good at things. And what happens in school is they tell you to really work hard on the things you’re not good at.
John Corcoran: 07:00
And when you’re the worst, right. Instead of doubling down on the things that you are good at.
Blake Underhill: 07:05
Right. And so when you’re dyslexic, it’s like that. Like you can’t like you can’t solve dyslexia by just, like, working harder at it. Yeah. And then but the good side of it is because I had to get through school. I had to get through these things. It builds up your coping skills, your mechanisms.
John Corcoran: 07:24
Which I think is why so many entrepreneurs are dyslexic.
Blake Underhill: 07:29
Exactly. It is you see the world differently and you behave in the world differently. And like one of the things I learned, which I still use today, is that be the first one to raise your hand. If you’re the kid who always raises your hand. The teacher never calls on you.
So even though I didn’t know the answer, I would raise my hand because I knew. I knew the teacher would always go to the. Except there were 1 or 2 students that would have 1 or 2 teachers that would call on that student. So I knew in that class not to raise my hand.
John Corcoran: 08:02
These are all the coping skills you’re talking about here.
Blake Underhill: 08:04
Exactly. You learn. You learn how to read people. You learn how to adjust. And I got into theater, and I did well in theater because I learned that if I was outgoing, people didn’t question me.
So that was my defense mechanism. So I don’t I don’t have a fear of public speaking. I say, and I’ve been challenged on this, and I think I’ve met the challenge every time I can literally walk into a theater full of people. Go on stage with nothing to talk about. And if they said vamp for five minutes, I can. I’ll grab the microphone.
John Corcoran: 08:43
Oh, that’s definitely super. That’s definitely a superpower because there’s a lot of people who struggle with that mightily, including myself. I mean, I’m a former speechwriter and I get nervous with public speaking. I want to ask you about yourself. You grew up, in your words, disadvantaged, in a wonderful small town, and you said that you didn’t have a lot of money. You and your brother. What did that do for you psychically? Growing up in a nice town where kids had things and you didn’t?
Blake Underhill: 09:13
You had to hustle. You just knew you had to hustle. And you know, you didn’t. You didn’t get the nice things. So you built a sense of humor. You know, everyone there, the pants I wore, I wore toughskins. If you remember toughskins from the 70s, you know, the Sears. Sears.
John Corcoran: 09:32