REVENUE DRIVEN FOR OUR CLIENTS
$500 million and countingIn this episode, Laura Faye interviews David Cotterell, founder of Downers Grove CPR Limited, to discuss his journey from being a firefighter to establishing his CPR training company. David shares how the company started as a hobby and evolved into a life-saving business. He highlights the importance of thorough CPR training, the challenges of running a training business, and how Downers Grove CPR sets itself apart by focusing on quality education. David also talks about their upcoming program designed to ensure compliance for AED owners and certified rescuers.
Downers Grove CPR Limited, led by David Cotterell, provides comprehensive CPR, AED, and first-aid training to individuals and organisations, ensuring emergency preparedness and compliance.
Hi, I’m Laura Faye. I’m the host of Wytpod. And today we have a special guest with us. We have David from Downers Grove CPR Limited. David, welcome. I’m happy to have you with us today.
I appreciate you inviting me on. We’re excited.
Of course, my pleasure, my pleasure. Why don’t we just jump right into it? Share with me a little bit about yourself and your journey, how you got here?
How I got to starting my company. So my company actually started off as beer money, kind of a hobby. So I joined the fire service about 23 years ago. So 1999 is actually when I started. So I guess it’s been longer than 23 years ago. So I started with a part -time fire department. My ex -wife and I were, I don’t know how to explain it.
Yeah.
Can we start all over? I’m sorry. crap. I’m so bad. Cause I got so many like, I got like so many different things. Like, you know, I was unhappy with my previous job. So my ex -wife and I went for a bike ride. She saw this fire department. They were playing frisbee, mowing the lawn and cooking out. And she’s like, Hey, you love all those things. Why don’t you check that job out? So I did. And that’s how I got into the fire service, especially with the amount of times like if a car was pulled over and looked like they needed help, I’d be the one pulling over and trying to help them, right? So she knew that that was kind of in my blood to try and help people. Got hired in 1999 by a part -time fire department, local to me. So there’s a paid call. I got my foot in the door. They put me through paramedic school.
Right.
And right as I was starting or ending paramedic school, the Academy for a full -time department that I tested for was starting and started the Academy for Full -Time Fire Department, Glenview, on 6 -4 -01. And through my journey with them, just enjoyed the EMS side, the medical side, making differences in people’s lives through calls that nobody wants to make the call for, but we were there to help them potentially have a better day in the long run, became an instructor because we instruct on our own as firemen need their CPR training, we would just be our own instructors. So I would instruct a class of my, at my station of the guys on shift. And then I would have to attend a class through them. And then about 10 years ago, my brother asked me about some CPR training and I just started helping him with that because I was a trainer through my fire department.
And it just kind of snowballed from there. My wife suggested that I host classes at her facility because she owns a Pilates studio and classes just kept on getting bigger. And finally she kicked me out and said, go find yourself a place to teach classes and have your own classroom. So it’s just been a snowball. In fact, I did not set out to start this company. It started off as beer money and that was about it.
Wow. I love that. I love that. And sometimes that’s what happens in life. You wind up somewhere that you never expected to go, but the journey there is always one of interest. Tell me about your company. Tell me about Downers Grove CPR.
All right, so Downers Grove CPR, we’re a first aid CPR, AD training, as well as supply company. Our first model was just training through the American Heart Association. So BLS provider is the level of training, all paramedics, doctors, nurses, anybody in the medical field needs. And then just below that is your layperson certification, which is called Heart Saver. So you have the warehouse workers, Anybody who owns an AD is supposed to have certain amount of people trained. So that’s the level of training with a card. Then even below that is called friends and family community CPR. So those were the three that I was really offering initially. I brought on one of my co -hires. So he and I started the Academy together in Glenview. He has gone on to become a nurse. He’s now a lieutenant in Glenview, but
He came on as our ACLS instructor, which is advanced cardiac life support, as well as paediatric advanced life support. So that’s what we started with for, I don’t know, good five years. And then we added a couple other items, AED sales. So we sell AEDs and the supplies that go with that. And then we started offering other curriculums, Health Safety Institute and American Red Cross are the other two curriculums that we now offer. So we’re trying to be that one stop shop to be prepared to react in an emergency.
I love that. I would love that. And you may have just answered my next question that I was thinking up for you, which was, how would you say that your company differs from another that offers training? Would you say because you’re striving to be the one -stop shop, is it your background? What would you say differentiates you?
So I don’t necessarily think it’s the background that differentiates an instructor. I honestly feel like it’s the instructors want and desire to pass along that education. I know lots of different instructors and I know great instructors. I know very poor instructors, and everywhere in between and all of them have all backgrounds. So some of the poorest instructors are firemen or paramedics and it’s nothing against what they do. It’s just sometimes the education portion is hard to convey and you might be great at your job, but sometimes you’re not a great teacher and that’s fine.
So what I feel differentiates us is we make sure that we definitely provide the product properly. There have been so many phone calls I feel that where people ask me, your class is three hours long. And like the last class I was in was like 45 minutes, like 45 minutes doesn’t hardly scratch the surface of your education. These are life -saving skills that should not be shortchanged, right?
Great.
Yeah. Yeah, of course.
I actually had somebody call me up and say, I’d like to get my CPR card. Do I actually have to attend the class? Last time I didn’t.
Wow, wow, that’s interesting.
So my goal was seeing how well people were cared for prior to our arrival as a paramedic and what the outcomes typically were. Now, don’t get me wrong, you could have everything in place. You could have the best person there for care and the patient still doesn’t make it. It’s just, sometimes it doesn’t happen, right? And we would have
Typically the patients who had proper care before our arrival had a better chance of survival. So that’s what I wanted to do was help people be able to react and give a potential person the best chance of survival by their actions.
Yeah, absolutely. What, how would somebody find out about your company? In other words, what has been your most effective marketing strategy so that you can educate as many people as possible? Because this is such an important thing.
So my sales and our marketing is really almost non -existent, honestly. There’s a couple different ways that we’ve had help through organisations like the American Heart Association. There’s a way to post your classes online and people could find you that way. That’s a whole nother story, but that’s one potential way if somebody finds you. My Google reviews never solicit saying, I’ll give you a $5 gift card. If you leave me a review, all of my reviews are organic. I do give them a link and say, Hey, if you enjoyed the class, please, please share that with our Google review but we never compensate anybody for any reviews. So our Google reviews are huge and then word of mouth. Typically when somebody takes a class, I get a lot of other people coming in saying, Hey, so -and -so told me about your classes. Phenomenal blah, blah.
Right.
I want to take a class with you. So word of mouth is probably the biggest one next to Google reviews. And then like I said, the HAs was where I got my start.
Yeah, right. What would you say has been your biggest challenge along the path and how have you been able to overcome that?
So again, try without trying to diss any other companies. Like I said before, people would come to me and say their class was only 45 minutes. So my biggest challenge is having people understand that this education is supposed to be done in a specific way. People take shortcuts and we’re not about that. We’re about making sure that you get all the education, all the practices and feel confident and empowered in the skills that you’re receiving. Not just that you sat in a class and got a card saying, I sat in a class. We want to make sure that you’re empowered, right? So that’s one of the biggest hurdles is people find out how long our classes are and say like, that’s too long. We want it done in and out.
I’m like, well, I’m not the person for you and I hope to God nothing ever happens to you or somebody within your facility because that can’t come back and bite you.
Right, right. That makes perfect sense. That really doesn’t make sense. If I had a crystal ball in front of me and I was able to look into the future, do you have a goal that you haven’t achieved for the company that you’re striving for? Is there something bigger that you’re looking? Are you happy where you are? What do you see in the future for your company?
So it’s funny because we are right in the middle of working on a program. It’ll be a website. There are certain things that you have to do to be compliant in owning an AED. One of them is, like we talked earlier, having some rescuers. There’s no like law that says 20 % of your staff has to be certified or trained, but you’re supposed to have some people trained. You’re also supposed to check your AED on a regular basis and make sure that your pads battery are all there. Nothing’s wrong with it. Do a visual check of it. Notify EMS that you have an AED on your premise. And then some states do also require that you have a medical director. Illinois is not one of those. But our program that we’re bringing up and there are other programs like this, but ours,
I plan on offering for a nominal fee, if any fee, is an accountability system that will allow people who own ADs to log their AD into this system. It will send them a reminder email every month if they do not go in and document that they checked it. It’ll have a list of all of the people within their facility that are trained and when their training is due to expire so it will keep the management on top of how prepared they are for an emergency by making sure that their AED is in compliance and that they have rescuers who are trained to react. And all of that is geared so that when a client customer needs something, they could come to me and we could supply it for them.
Yeah, excellent. I love it. I love it. It’s been such a pleasure learning about you, how you got here, your company and all the good that you’re doing. And it’s clear that you take it very seriously and offer only the best because you want only the best. So I want to thank you so much for taking the time today to share all of that with me.
I appreciate your time. I appreciate you trying to get this message out and hopefully we could save more lives in the future with your help.
Absolutely, that’s what it’s all about and I think we will. Thank you again for everything you’ve shared.
My pleasure.
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