I love a challenge. I probably bit off more than I could chew at the beginning, but it’s come a long way. I’m very proud of it—proud of the business, my family, and everyone that works for us.
— Rob Torrey eSafety
“At eSafety, we provide online safety training for businesses that need to train their employees. We put a lot of time and energy into creating a great platform that is as intuitive as possible—easy to use, easy to administer. We want to make sure that the courses that we’re building are ones where employees actually learn something—they’re going to be safer at work, they’re going to be safer at home.
We started in manufacturing, and that is the largest group that we still work with. But we also work with other industries like health and education, and they use our learning management system and add their content and customize it to fit their specifics. We started from a safety company, and now we’ve kind of—without even realizing it—morphed into a tech company.
One nice thing about our business is that you really need to be flexible and be able to adjust. Life throws you a lot of curveballs, and business sure does. So being able to deal with a lot of things—having to move again—it’s just another thing to deal with, and we’ll make the best of it. Might turn out for the better.
We’re fortunate. COVID hit—we could be remote. We’ve been able to work and have a lot of flexibility within our schedules and what we do. As we grow—which is always the nicest thing about a small business—roles change, and you get to expand your own skill base and knowledge. I’ve seen this happen with not only my kids here but with everybody in the business. That keeps everybody enthused. Nothing’s worse than being bored at work. Then you’re watching the clock. Who hasn’t been in a job like that?”
“But I can honestly say it’s not a boring business. If something goes wrong, we’ve got people we can talk to—clients we can reach out to. We really try to build it on relationships. Even though we’ve probably never met our clients face to face, we have over 250,000 people training on our system at any given time, over 700 different companies across the United States. We have a relationship with how we deal with them, and they know how we respond. It’s a different world out there, but some of the same principles apply no matter who you are or what you’re doing.
You’ll see one of the things we do is put our values up on the wall. We definitely try to live those, and when we have tough decisions, we go back to those. We have 11 different people with 11 families counting on us to provide, because they offer something to us, and hopefully we offer something to them and their family. That’s the kind of company we want to be..
I’m just very proud. I look at what eSafety is today and this isn’t how I started it. I just wanted to have a business where I could provide for my family. I was told the worst thing you do is have employees—they’re just trouble. But I also found out, as I went from being an employee to a businessman, that the only way you can grow is to have employees and have people working for you. As that grew, we got better and better at how we hired. And to be able to work with my kids? It’s the best thing.
I love a challenge. I probably bit off more than I could chew at the beginning, but it’s come a long way. I look back and I go, “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe this is how it evolved.” But yeah, I’m very proud of it—proud of the business, my family, and everyone that works for us.”
