Supporting Families of First Responders.
Stacey Magovern is the Co-Founder of Blue Family Fund and the CEO and Founder of Point Blank Safety Services.
Blue Family Fund is a non-profit organization that provides scholarships and financial assistance to law enforcement families in need. Every dollar donated goes to one of these families. Point Blank Safety Services pairs active police officers with off-duty jobs when law enforcement presence is required.
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Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, we're all reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.
And with us right now we've got Stacy Magovern. Stacy, you are the CEO and Founder of Point Blank Safety Services. And you're the Co-Founder of the Blue Family Fund. Thank you so much for joining us.
0:48
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I love your podcasts. Love your story as well. So thank you so much,
0:56
you well I'm really excited to share what you created. It's so exciting that you filled such a valuable niche. And you know what it ended up to really taking off on you, which is kind of fun to hear. So, I'd love to hear the origin story of point blank safety services. Yeah, it's
1:14
really my version of the true American dream, if you will, I really went from zero to running a multi million dollar company sort of overnight. And I say overnight loosely because I worked on it for two years before it took off. You know, a lot of people think that when there is big success and you know, it was inherited or you know, you got some easy way and and that's just not the case. Right. So married to a police officer, and trying to run a household and and budget and do all the things that you need to do and police officers, especially in Texas, some of the smaller cities, they really don't make very much money. So we really relied and I was a commissioned salesperson, which as you know, and commissioned sales. That sort of, you know, one month is feast and next month is beans and weenies, you know. So he really needed the opportunity to work. But I was got frustrated because the jobs that would come available for off duty would be so random and, and we never knew when it was coming, or when we he was going to get paid for it. So being kind of the CEO of my family, there was no way to budget, no way to really count on that money for unexpected expenses. So I just said, You know, I looked at my husband, I said, There's got to be a better way. There's got to be a way for police officers to be able to go to a marketplace, if you will, and pick and choose what off duty work they want, how many days they want, know when they're going to work up to 30 days in advance know when they're going to get paid. And so this became my next big idea. And I was working a full time job raising two boys. So I went and got found a name, made a name public safety services, and I got a business card. And I mean, that was it. I was a name and a business card at that point. But I believed in it and you know, my husband had all the police contacts, and I had, you know, the corporate sales experience. So I thought, you know, I've got to be able to make this come together. And you know, the funny part is jasha, which my parents who you know, were in their 70s and, and I said, here's my idea and they both went well wait, what wait that that's not a thing like they're old school and not you know, brick and mortar and customers and retail and I said, No, I'm, I think I'm really gonna make this work. And so I worked for two years, we founded the LLC in 2012. And I worked in my spare time, which I joke, you know, I say spare time, but it was like, you know, midnight to 3am was the free time I had time to email and, and send presentations and convince people that you know, this will can really work and the benefit for the client is huge because they now have one point of contact for all their police officers that they need for highway construction or, or traffic safety or security. So it just took, you know, getting to the right person and getting them the message and making them understand that we were actually going to free up a whole position in their company. You know, that person could go do something more revenue generating and and all the contacts and all the scheduling and cancellations for officers will go through us. So, you know, two years of working on it, and in the big picture of life, I say two years is nothing right? It's really not it's really not not that long when you look at the big picture, and I was in my bathroom One morning, September of 2014 never forget it, get putting on the makeup just like always, and get ready for work. Then the doorbell rang and it was FedEx and I went to the door and it was a package for point like safety services and you have to understand poorly didn't packages like I was a business card and a name like Yeah, I was like, yeah. And I had multiple meetings with with some highway construction companies and I knew one company was about to win a big project in Dallas where they were adding a lane. And they use police officers to keep not only the construction worker safe, but the citizen safe. Anyway, long story short, I opened up that that package and it was a $1.5 million contract to use our police officers on this highway construction project for traffic safety for three years. Yeah, that's the moment when you go Wait, how many zeros are in a million and like?
5:41
That is, that's a lot of police officers, families that are now able to, you know, that's so valuable. You know, you and I talked before this, you know, and in law enforcement, you don't really do it for the money. You know, you do it because you feel the calling or you know, you can do something good or You know, it's a great fit with what you want to do in the world. But yeah, it's, it is nice that you do gain us a very valuable set of skills that you can use to help a, you know, with lots of other applications. And so, Stacey. Um, so, you know, again, a lot of groundwork to kind of create this. If you were to trace back to that really big deal. What were some of the things that you had done that made that a possibility?
6:34
Well, you know, this just goes to show how important connections are, and you know, every single connection throughout your life, I mean, it's a small world. Turns out the guy the guy that got the project manager position for this contract, I had sold a light bar for his truck, a very small sale, a $100 sale or something, two years before home He remembered me and he remembered how, you know how good I took care of him and the follow through and the follow up and, and so he was willing to listen to my my pitch and really, really well willing to listen to my idea. He had us out several times and met with some of the police officers and you know, he got it, he got the concept he understood the idea he understood that the relief it was going to put on his company as far as you know, he he's the one that in the past had been scheduling you know, 10 officers a night for a project and you know, he knew all the the trouble that difficulty that is management's that is and, and then you know, he would be the one that they would call it three in the morning, go and where's my check? So, for him, you know, he he really got it, but but it's still he was taking a chance. I mean, we were brand new, and we were just an idea at that point. So it really goes back to just, you know, every single interaction, make sure you hear your best Because you just never know when you're going to run into those people again. And you know, that's happened to me several times in my life. I've met someone or had an interaction and then a couple years later, it turns out they were a key key player in something big for me. So I'm just a huge networker always have been. And you know what, here we are today. So
8:22
yeah, you know, business like this, obviously, something that's going to come up is supply and demand. Right. So, you know, you've got, you know, you have to attract obviously, the law enforcement to come be a part of it. And of course, you also want plenty of jobs for them. What have you noticed over the years in that kind of that that balancing act?
8:40
Oh, it's, it's tough. It's kind of you know, what comes first the chicken or the egg. I mean, you have to have work to get the officers you have to have officers to get the work. So, you know, that's a continual job. For me. I'm always looking, when does this contract in and when can we get another one? And I'm not going to say there have been bumps along the way. But honestly, I owe everything to my husband who is an Excel genius. And he's created this whole scheduling system. So the officers can literally just go in mark the days that are available and then he matches that up with the contracts. So I'm the sales side of it. And he's that whole you know, I don't understand the whole math Excel II side, the geeky side. Yeah, he's, he's got that, that brain so it really really just like a good team because, you know, he'll say, okay, coming up for you know, the upcoming months, you know, we have this many officers available. We have this many slots open and you know, we can kind of do the math and see where we need to ramp up sales or where we need to ramp up or hurting,
9:44
huh, what do you end up having to do or what did you have to do when you got that big contract in terms of internal staffing?
9:54
Nothing in terms of internal staffing because I was handling all the payroll and all the The onboarding for officers and then my husband was doing all the scheduling. So nothing really internally. But here's here's the thing I want it I want people to take away is that when we got that contract, we sat down and started reading that contract. And realize, by the way, it's a 300 page contract. So we start, we start reading it and realize we need $5 million worth of insurance just to set foot on a Texas Highway Transportation job. We didn't have, you know, $5 million in insurance, if you don't know is about 20 grand. We didn't have 20 grand, you
10:38
know, so a lot of people at that point would go, Oh, well, I tried. I
10:45
mean, I
10:47
hopefully we wouldn't say a lot of people, but there would be some I'm sure. That's a problem we could fix. Let's see. 1.5 20,000 we grind away
10:59
right? And, you know, I just said, you know, no, no, no one, no way. There's no way $20,000 is going to stop me from not only changing my life but changing all these officers lives. So we literally sold everything, you know, went back to square one. And we had a garage sale every day for two weeks. And then, you know, we borrowed from friends and family and everyone was so supportive and really wanted us to see, you know, make this happen. And we made it come to me.
11:29
Wow, good Anya, for, for getting that figured out. And, you know, I know there's a lot of alternative lenders out there that would love to get involved in that, but boy, they're gonna rake you over the coals, I azules. So
11:44
finding a way to do that,
11:46
we could have done it that hard way. And yeah, it would have been it would have been difficult but like I said, Now we're at the point we have about 12 called contracts all over Texas about 200 officers that work for us. And that in itself is motivation to me. Cuz now I know there's 200 families relying on me. So I really get myself out there and, and make sure that we continue to have enough work. So these guys can work as much as they want,
12:10
what are the things that what are the things that you do for continued visibility, awareness, kind of position within the industry? How do you how do you get new business?
12:20
word of mouth is a lot of it. You know, you do a good job for a big company. And as you know, in different in certain industries, like for example, how it construction. It's kind of all the same people like they may, you know, one guy might work for this company this year, and then next year, he's with another company on a project. So, you know, there's a lot of that that, you know, a guy we work for the past hour for a new company, and he recommends us. You know, our officers are great. They, they want the work as well. So if they see anything, they refer a lot of companies to us. You know, Google is great. We get a lot things from our website, we have a pretty awesome website. So a lot of people just, you know, put in, you know, police for off duty work or or secure police for security or that sort of thing. And in this day and age, it's kind of a sad thing, but nobody really wants to just a security guard. Everybody wants to an off duty police officers, they can take action, you know, can withhold someone can can detain that sort of thing, instead of just a security guard with a flashlight that has to call 911. Just like me, are you? So yeah, it's just the state of the world that we're in.
13:35
And what what are your plans in terms of growth and scaling? Point Blank from the next year for the next three to five years?
13:44
Well, there's still there's still quite a few big markets in Texas that we haven't broken into yet. We're not in Houston yet.
13:52
So you know, that would be probably our next step. A lot of these companies are based in Houston. So that's probably the next next one. next stretch of growth that we would we would go through.
14:03
Yeah, amazing. Amazing. So talk to me about the Blue Family Fund.
14:09
Yeah. So, um, a couple of years ago 2017. My husband and I liked each other. And we said, You know what, we're just we're so blessed that this is taken off, and we're so successful, you know, what can we do to pay it forward or give back and we decided to start our own nonprofit and we founded blue family fund, it's a 501 c three, and it is totally self funded. We don't take salaries, we pay all the expenses ourselves. And so every single dollar either goes to a scholarship for a dependent of a first responder that wants to further their education, or to a family of a fallen or injured officer that needs financial aid, you know, in a desperate time.
14:53
So explain more like how is this just something that you are doing internally to support or Kind of give me an idea for some of the great things that you've been able to do so far and and what do you expect to do and how do you expect to expand your, you know, your charitable giving or your support?
15:13
Sure, absolutely. Well, ironically enough, we just came up with first a fundraiser, which was last Friday night. We had a bourbon house scotch tasting and Ranger Stadium, we were able to raise $11,000 just through auction items and, and donations. So we're very stoked on that. That's our first free fundraiser. But in the two years that we've been in existence, we've been able to help seven families have either fallen or injure officers. A lot of people don't know that if an officer is fallen in line of duty. Typically, there is some payout that may come to the family depending on the situation, but it may take eight months or six night for that to happen. So our mission is sort of we come in there and try to help fill in that gap because a lot of times the officer may be the sole income for that family. So when that's lost, they really struggle for that period until they maybe get their payout or, or whatever their situation may be. So we've been able to step in for seven families in two years, and we've been able to get three scholarships. Our last scholarship was at the first responders Hall at SMU Stadium on December 30. And we were able to get $5,000 to independent that got accepted to Texas Tech and is going to pursue nursing.
16:30
Yeah, that's that's incredible. Stacey, congratulations on all this I thank you so much for first off of creating a great service to link officers with opportunities to do good in their community and, and help take their skills and make them more valuable. Just connect those dots a lot easier, make it so much easier so that we can get this stuff happening. And then of course, the work you're doing with blue family fund is doesn't get a whole lot more noble than that. Thank you for that work.
17:00
Yeah, like, you know, if you have success, you gotta you gotta use it to pay it forward. So yeah, my mom always said, you know, you get what you give in life and I'm a big believer in that.
17:10
Yeah, that's it. That's it. Well, Stacy Magovern, you're the CEO and Founder, women a woman-owned business. Congratulations. I love it. Yeah. Point Blank Safety Services. You're on the web at PointBlankSafety.com. And you're the Co-Founder of the Blue Family Fund on the web at BlueFamilyFund.org. Stacey, thank you so much for joining us.
17:34
Yeah. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
17:38
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