Rancho Mesa Hosts Hands-On SafetyOne™ Workshop

Author, Jadyn Brandt, Client Communications Coordinator, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.

On Friday, May 2nd, 2025 Rancho Mesa hosted The SafetyOne™ Advantage: Mastering Rancho Mesa’s Safety Platform, presented by Media Communications and Client Services Partner Alyssa Burley and Client Technology Specialist Brenda Khalil.

Attendees were given hands-on instruction on how to effectively use the SafetyOne website and mobile application to streamline safety practices within their company.

Participants were guided through key features on the administrative website including Mobile Forms, Observations and Toolbox Talks. The session also included an interactive overview of the mobile app.

Attendees were able to ask questions and receive answers from Rancho Mesa’s in-house experts, ensuring user confidence and maximizing safety benefits.

“This hands-on workshop went better than expected and the feedback we got from our clients that attended was fantastic. Introducing our client's to the platform prior to the workshop really helped them understand the steps we walked them through as well,” Khalil said. “Putting together this hands-on approach to teaching our clients how to get started with implementing SafetyOne™ was truly a success.”

For more information about the SafetyOne platform, contact your Client Technology Specialist.

StudioOne at 500: Reflecting on Growth and Looking to Rancho Mesa’s Future

In honor of reaching our 500th episode, Rancho Mesa's Alyssa Burley and President Dave Garcia discuss the history of StudioOne™ and plans for the future growth of Rancho Mesa.

Alyssa Burley: You’re listening to Rancho Mesa’s StudioOne™ podcast, where each week we break down complex insurance and safety topics to help your business thrive. I’m your host, Alyssa Burley, and today I’m joined by a co-host, Rancho Mesa’s President Dave Garcia.

Dave, welcome to the show.

Dave Garcia: Alyssa, man, I am so excited to be in StudioOne today and talking to you about this huge milestone.

AB: Yeah, so we're excited to record our 500th episode today. And we're taking this opportunity to give our listeners an update on what's new with Rancho Mesa and what we see in our future. But first, I think Dave, you wanted to talk a little bit about the podcast in general, is that correct?

DG: Yeah, because as the listeners know, I'm the oldest person in the company. And so podcasting to me was something I saw on my phone, but didn't really understand how it worked. And so I thought it'd be kind of fun just to go back in time and talk about how did we even get this thing started? So Alyssa, do you, your memory's probably better than mine. How did we get started way back when?

AB: Yeah, so that's interesting that you say that. And I do want to point out that this is our 500th episode. That is a huge milestone. So I did a little bit of research before today's episode and I found some interesting statistics. So Riverside says that only 90% of podcasts reach episode three. Okay, so that's pretty easy, right? But even fewer actually reach episode 20. Okay, that seems pretty reasonable, right? You know, you do a couple of episodes and then it kind of trails off. But another company or organization, Podmatch, says that podcasters have about a 10% chance of reaching episode 50. We blew that out of the water, I think maybe our first year or just after we had been doing this for a year.

Now, what's even more impressive is that reaching episode 200 is only done by 2.52% of podcasters. I don't even know what the statistics would be for episode 500, but that is a very, very small percentage or likelihood that anybody is going to get to episode 500. So I'm really excited about that. And it's really just because of the people that we have here, our team here in this department, all of our sales team, everybody who participates, all of our guests, we could not have done it without them.

DG: Yeah, I'm really, really proud of that. And when you see those statistics, you realize that we're probably serving a great audience that we've lasted this long, that we're committed. We're just a company and agency that believes in hard work. And this has become less hard work because we've gotten really skilled at it. And it'll be fun to now talk about, well, how did this all get started and what got us to 500. How we started, we would not have gotten to 500. We made changes along the way. Yeah. So, Alyssa, remind my poor memory. This was pre-COVID?

AB: It was pre-COVID. Wow. So, we actually recorded the first eight episodes in the fall of 2019. So, we had gone to, I guess it's an expo or a conference called Landscapes, and it was in Louisville, Kentucky and Drew Garcia, your son, he actually interviewed a couple of carriers, clients and non-clients about the landscape industry. And our very first episode was with Cody Kamek from Landcare Management Services and I think that they're out of Texas. So in January 2020, we now had a few episodes that we had edited and we decided, okay, we're going to release an episode every month, and we had eight interviews, great.

That was going to give us eight months’ worth of content is what we thought, and that gave us eight months to come up with four more topics, and then we would have our first year completed. So I thought we were doing great.

But we decided very quickly that doing an episode every month was not enough so we started off with just the one and then we decided okay we needed to have more episodes so I started reading the articles that our team writes every week and you know it was okay they're not great I don't even know if some of them are still on the website at this point but by April 2020 we had started reading articles, and we decided they're going to sound a little bit better if I'm actually interviewing the author of those articles. So I think by May of 2020, we were doing an episode a week, I was interviewing the person who wrote the article, and then we quickly realized we probably should be doing two episodes per week, one with the author of the article, and then we were also going to do one that was client services related. So we could talk about the services that we were providing, our HR portal, the SafetyOne app. Well, we didn't have it at that time, but you know, so anything that our client services team was doing.

So now we are, we're recording two episodes every week. And, you know, it's just gotten better from there. And you know, what's funny is at one point we were thinking, Okay, how are we going to come up with enough topics to have two episodes a week? And now we actually have too many episodes already recorded, right, Megan? That we're booked out for over the next month. So there is no shortage of topics to talk about. And that's pretty exciting.

DG: Yeah. I'm really excited about that. And Alyssa's being a little modest. And she was really the catalyst behind this, her and Drew coming to me saying, "Hey, let's do a podcast."

And I was saying, I know what that is, but how in the world do you do it? And they were able to put it together really quickly, as she mentioned. And then I think because of our specialization and really demanding our producers really understand those marketplaces that they're in, asking them to become pros, pros within those industries and write articles that are specific to the industries that they're serving. This was just a natural flow from going from a written article, you know, I guess, segue, and again, I'll give Alyssa and Drew a lot of credit here.

We realize as time goes on, people absorb their information in a lot of different ways. In my generation, I'm in my 60s, and we still like to read. Another generation might prefer to listen and another generation might prefer to just watch the video. So we thought at the time it would be good to try to kind of touch on all of those. Podcasting was the first venture down that. So I'm totally excited. I think it's gone from the guest reading their article to Alyssa really having an interview with them so that they really understand the content. So I couldn't be happier. Can't way to see where it goes.

AB: Yeah, and you know, what's interesting is, you know, we had planned to do the podcast like right before COVID, and obviously we had no idea that it was coming. But I think once everybody kind of went home and they were not in the office, the podcast really gave us another way to reach people that, you know, maybe people are at home, they're working, but they're listening to podcasts. And so it just gave us another way to reach those people.

DG: Yeah, and it was, you know, just digression of it back into the COVID days. I remember reaching out to Rob Darby, who's the president of Berkshire Hathaway, home state companies, large work comp carrier here in California, good friend. And we just talked about COVID. He and I just got on the line together. He was, you know, remote, I was remote. And that is still one of our all-time biggest plays of any one podcast.

AB: It is, still.

DG: Yeah, and it occasionally gets a play even today.

AB: It does.

DG: So, you know, we adapted to the COVID time and it really kind of accelerated the whole process of us doing podcasts and providing information to people in different kinds of venues. But funny story now, you're probably wondering, well, where did podcast. So listen, give us a little, give us a little background on how we started doing our podcast.

AB: Yeah. So, so like mentioned earlier, our first eight episodes, we recorded those at landscapes, right? But we knew that if we were going to continue this, we were going to need an actual space to record them. So it just happened that early 2020, We were actually opening up a second office. So our main office was in Santee, which is just a suburb of San Diego. And so we were going to open up another office in La Mesa, which is like five, 10 minutes away. And so when that group that was going to move to the La Mesa office actually moved, it opened up some offices, some space in Santee. And so we were able to actually convert our Executive Vice President Daniel Frazee’s former office into a recording studio. So that was really a game-changer for us because it gave us a space to record on a regular basis. You know we could have everything set up all the time. We didn't have to you know try to set up everything just to record. So that made a huge difference for us.

We did have some challenges though in that space. So if you're familiar with the area Gillespie Field is an Airport and we weren't too far from it. And so we would literally have to stop the podcast while the plane flew over and then we would just resume as soon as it was gone and even we had construction going on in the space next to us. And so we were constantly dealing with, you know, big trucks and backup alarms and all of those fun things that you get on a construction site, we were dealing with, we had all the noises.

So when we did move to our current location in Mission Valley, we actually got the opportunity to build out the studio that we're recording in today. And it really makes us appreciate how nice the studio is because we dealt with a lot of other things in the old studio. It's just part of the Rancho Mesa fabric now. It's just part of our history.

DG: Yeah, we have a gorgeous studio here now. We've got cameras, we've got monitors, we've got soundboards on the walls, we've got a producer's desk. It's pretty exciting and we feel like over those five years, six years now. We've really come a long way in being able to produce the podcasts and videos.

AB: Yeah. All right. So, Dave, you mentioned earlier that one of our early podcasts, you did virtually during COVID. So, do you want to talk a little bit about who we'd like to bring in as guests? I mean, sometimes it's just Rancho Mesa people, right? But oftentimes, we do bring in third parties. So, do you want to talk a little bit about guests coming in or maybe doing the interviews virtually?

DG: Yeah, I think that what we wanted to do was tap into different expertise in different fields. So we've had attorneys come in to talk about contractual language. We've had different safety experts come in and talk about tips, financial experts when it's on our surety side. But two that I remember the most, one was Rob Darby, which I mentioned earlier on the COVID side. But then I got an interesting phone call one day from a carrier that we work with that's homebase is in Wisconsin. And it was ahead of their claims department who had been listening to our podcast and reached out and said, "Hey, can I be on your show?"

And I'm like, when he said that, I'm like, "Oh, I have a show?"

I didn't even really realize that. Oh yeah, yeah, of course you can be on my show. So he wanted to kind of tell the story a little bit about what he felt made his company unique and claims handling this worker’s compensation care. So we you know we went back and forth with questions and then maybe two weeks before we were going to tape it he said, “Hey can I bring a third person in? He's our head of our claims and he's in Pennsylvania.”

And I'm feeling like wow I'm syndicated now so I'm going to be in Mission Valley one guy's going to be in Wisconsin and the other guy's going to be in Pennsylvania. I say okay, but then I've got to go see my boss to listen and say, “Hey, is this something we can do? Like, can we really have people in from two different states at the same time and make this work?”

And she's like, “Of course, it's easy, it's nothing to it.”

I'm like, okay, cool, let's do it. So that was super fun and really enjoyed it. We had the cameras up and running and we were looking at each other. It's kind of like a Zoom call, but we're recording it. And it was just fascinating. And I know they now use edits from that podcast in their onboarding process with some of their new claims examiners. So that was really just another cool story.

AB: Yeah, that was probably one of the first or maybe the first episodes where we had multiple people all in different locations. And it sounded great.

DG: Yeah, you wouldn't know it. You for sure wouldn't know it. And we probably could have made that a podcast because we did have the video as well. So yeah, that was a check that box. We can do that for sure. And then we've had, and listen, do you want to talk on this or do you want me to talk on getting to know different people?

AB: So the Getting to Know series is where we get to talk to employees and get to know a little bit about them. So funny enough, these episodes get the most plays out of any other topic by far. And I do think that it's because people want to know about the people that they're working with. It could be our clients that are listening, it could be carriers, it could be strangers. But I do think that people really enjoy learning about other people and how they get it in the industry and what they like to do in their free time, it just makes us feel more real to people. So I think that it's one of our better episodes when we get to actually talk to somebody that works here.

DG: Yeah. I've been fortunate to be the interviewer for those different episodes. And it's all voluntary, so we don't force anybody to do it. But I've worked with some people here, we're in our 26th year and I've talked to some people that have been here 15, 20 years. I thought I knew pretty much everything about them. And then we get into this conversation and I find they were a black belt in Taekwondo when they were a kid. And I'm like, hang on, what? And so, I think one of our core values here is we believe that insurance and life should be a people business. And so just the better that we know our clients, our carrier partners, and most importantly our employees, the better we all are for that. So I thoroughly enjoy that. I try not to twist people's arms to come in and do it, but it's so fun to find out where they grew up and what are their likes outside of work and things like that. So that's been just an awesome series. And then because of its success, we've extended it outside to some of our clients and carrier partners and just gotten to know them on a different level. So we did not see that coming at the start, I would say that.

AB: Yeah, yeah. So along those same lines about getting to know us as individuals, do you want to talk about your latest venture, Dave's Dugout?

DG: Yeah, thanks, Alyssa. Thanks for plugging in. So Dave's Dugout as a separate podcast channel and just briefly I guess it's a tribute. I grew up in a baseball family and my father was very influential to me and I realized in growing up I was around him a lot in the summer times because he was out managing in the minor leagues and at the end in the major leagues and I would spend just months on end with him and I was in the dugout a lot in the clubhouse, in the bullpen, the outfield, infield. And he was a really terrific, common sense leader of men. And as I've gotten older, I realized that so much of who I am today was because of things I learned just observing how he handled situations.

So in an effort to kind of get some of those stories out, to maybe help people, their stories that, so that those podcasts are three, four minutes.  They're kind of somewhere around baseball story type thing, but there's a little life lesson in there. Maybe it's applicable in business, in your home life, or just how you treat other people. Maybe you'll find some, you know, happiness and use in it. So we're going to continue that. And the ultimate goal is bringing other people in to share their dugout stories with me. And so if you're listening to this and if you listen to a couple of Dave's dugouts and kind of get the feel for them, you feel like you've got something to share, absolutely call me, love to have you in the dugout.

AB: Yeah, I'm really excited about those and we've only heard good things about each of the episodes. So make sure that if you're listening today that you check out Dave's Dugout, you should be able to find it on all of the major channels.

DG: Yeah, and if you really want to have a good laugh, the cover jacket, the picture for it, is the only picture of my father and I in baseball uniform that exists. I was 16 years old. My dad was managing in El Paso, 1974. And you can give me a hard time about how long my hair was. But so if you, for no other reason, look it up just so you can tease me about that picture.

AB: Oh yeah, we're excited about that.

DG: Yeah, it really does look great. So now that we've talked a little bit about the podcast, how we got started, do you want to talk about what's going on with Rancho Mesa and all the exciting things that are happening?

DG: Oh my gosh, I actually kind of got chills just then when you said it that way. Yeah, I really do. We're super excited. You know, we We're just putting the final paint touches on our expansion here in Mission Valley. So we're going to have the entire floor. We just added what we're calling the East County Lounge, just kind of a communal area where people can go in, relax, play a board game, have a meeting, talk it over with their coworkers, different clients, friends, family, whatever, and then just added a ton of additional space. So I know you know, we're looking to hire 30 plus people. And that's pretty exciting, don't you agree?

AB: Oh yeah, absolutely. So we recently published an article that talks about the expansion. And the reasons why we're expanding, you know, a lot of companies right now, unfortunately they're getting purchased by larger insurance agencies. And that's not the case for us, we're growing, we're growing organically and we're looking for good people here in San Diego and we're making a really nice place for them to work. We have a great culture, great atmosphere and we're just really excited to move into the new space and to welcome some new people.

DG: Yeah, it's a wonderful place to come every day and if you're out there and you're looking for different opportunities. You know, look us up on the website, come by the office, doors always open, love to have you here. But it's really exciting because to me, it just feels like we're at this next cusp of the next stage of Rancho Mesa.

And we operate in 22 states right now, all from San Diego. We've got a producer and his client manager on an airplane right now heading to Seattle to visit one of our clients. It's just totally exciting stuff going on here. So the space somehow has just made it 3D. It makes it feel real. And so we're here to stay and we're here to remain independent. We are not going to sell our agency. We've got 12 partners now. I'm excited about that, watching young people kind of embrace their careers and grow within Rancho Mesa. It just makes Rancho Mesa bigger and stronger and allows us to provide more services and resources to our clients. So it's a win-win all the way out.

Along those lines, we just continue to build out a suite of services. Let's just touch briefly on some of the things that you've got planned for the year.

AB: Yeah, so as many people know, we do have our SafetyOne platform and it includes a website and a mobile app, and it's based around safety, trying to make sure that our clients are training their employees and everybody has all the information that they need, but we're always adding new enhancements. So we're listening to our clients, we're listening to what they need, and we're adding some really cool features, so we're excited about that.

In addition to, we for workshops and webinars every single month, live and recorded, just to try to make sure that our clients are educated, they know what's happening in the industry and they can provide safety trainings to their employees. So we're excited about all of the different services that we offer to our clients and know that we're going to continue to constantly improve. We're not static over here.

DG: Yeah, definitely not static and definitely not static inside either. We really want to encourage our employees to kind of reach for the stars in their professional careers and their personal lives to try to give them a platform of knowledge and education and encouragement to go out and be the best version of themselves. So quarterly we do try to bring somebody in to conduct some kind of a workshop for us from time management skills all the way to nutrition. So we're always looking for those topics that our employees find engaging but beneficial. And that's just, for me, that's one of the most exciting things. It's just to watch somebody come in and then just their eyes get open and they're like, "Wow, okay, I can really go places here." And they can because as we grow, it just creates more and more opportunities within the company. So that's probably one of the things I'm most proud of is that opportunity. If you want to come in here and really see where you can go, I think we're the runway for you to do it.

AB: Yeah, and I think it's important for people to understand that, you know, we're hiring people with experience, but we're also looking for people who want to change their career and really want to get into insurance or, you know, maybe you're in accounting or, you know, media communications. We have positions available. It's just, we're not just looking for experienced insurance people. We've grown so many people that had no experience, but, you know, we've taught them the Rancho Mesa way and some people have been here for, you know, their entire careers, that's pretty cool.

DG: Yeah, and we do an engagement survey each year to just try to put our finger on the pole so we don't want to just drink our own Kool-Aid. We really want to know what are the employees thinking, what do they need, what do they want. And this last time we just did it in November, I think this past year. And listen, what were some of those numbers like?

AB: We were in the 90th percentile in most of the things. Most of them, I think we’re like 97-point-something percent satisfaction in a lot of different areas and you know we've been posting on LinkedIn those stats so check out our page on LinkedIn if you want to know all of the results. But I was really I can't say I was surprised but I was pleasantly surprised to see how high those numbers were and keep in mind this is a third party that administered this survey We had nothing to do with the questions or, you know, the answers, so that really makes me feel good that what we're doing, it's what people want, you know? They're happy to be here, and I think our people see that we're trying to make a culture that makes people feel comfortable, and they want to be here. And I think that's evident everywhere that you look at Rancho Mesa.

DG: Yeah, a lot of attention to detail, try to make everything really nice for them. And you know, one number that really jumped off at me too, Alyssa, during that was, I think it was 85% of our employees have all been here longer than five years.

AB: Yeah.

DG: And I'm super proud, I don't know if there's another business of any sort that can say, wow, you just don't lose people. And we don't, we lose them when they retire. That's pretty much when they leave us. So, but we know we're the type of people that we know there's another level, you know, we believe in the one of one that you can't not reach, but that's what we're striving for. So we don't know what the next, if we were at 97.2, we want to know how do we get to 98?

So, you know, we're looking to do that on an ongoing basis and you know, just to have a, obviously I've been here the longest, I couldn't do this alone. It's the group of people that's here and it's a shared mentality of really good people who want to work hard and give something back and just kind of make it a better place and keep it a people business. So I'm sorry, I can go on and on about all that. So thank you so much. 500 episodes, that's incredible.

AB: Yeah, I think your comments was a great way to end this 500th episode. So thank you so much. We'll see you at the next 500. Well, I'm sure that we'll hit our thousandth. That's what you say. 1000th episode.

DG: Yes. Yeah. So stay tuned. Follow us. Talk to you soon. Bye.

AB: Thanks for tuning in to our latest episode produced by StudioOne. If you enjoyed what you heard, please share this episode and subscribe. For more insights like this, visit us at ranchomesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Grow With Us: Rancho Mesa Expansion Brings New Opportunities to Mission Valley

Author, Megan Lockhart, Marketing & Media Communications Specialist, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.

Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc. is excited to announce the expansion of its Mission Valley office. In response to our continued and steady growth since moving into this new space 2 years ago, Rancho Mesa’s latest office expansion is expected to provide additional career opportunities to both current and future employees in the San Diego insurance community.

Rancho Mesa continues to grow organically as we build up our book of business one client at a time. To meet our growing needs, we recently acquired additional office space, expanding to occupy the entire second floor of our building in the Mission City Corporate Center. The new space underwent a three-month renovation to emulate Rancho Mesa’s rustic modern office style  including a second kitchen, lounge, additional offices and cubicles.

“The expansion to the office is going to look beautiful,” Senior Client Manager Christina Haake said.

The expanded office is vital for the growth goals of Rancho Mesa. As we continue to bring on  new clients, we are adding more team members to support them. Rancho Mesa hires top-tier professionals for roles as client managers, assistant client managers, client coordinators, producers, accounting assistants, client services, and media communications professionals in order to support our growth. The new space accounts for these positions and will allow for over 30 new employees, which we anticipate to fill within the next few years.

 “When I joined Rancho Mesa and its 18 staff members in 2010, our beautiful office in Santee seemed like it would fit us forever,” Sam Brown, Vice President of the Human Services Group, said. “I feel so fortunate that Rancho Mesa's high standards of how a workplace should look and feel have not wavered as we have grown the last 15 years. The new space is just as warm, welcoming, and beautiful as the day I first joined the company.”

As Rancho Mesa looks towards the future, we are excited and proud to not only further the careers of our current employees, but also to establish a greater commitment to the San Diego job market, creating more opportunities in the community.

“I’m so excited as we near the completion of the expansion of our office. It looks amazing and the timing is perfect to meet the needs of our continued organic growth. This expansion gives us the footprint we need to add new team members and create more career opportunities for all our employees,” Rancho Mesa President and CEO Dave Garcia said.

Rancho Mesa is looking for people who love what they do and want to join a winning team. Visit our www.RanchoMesa.com/careers page to learn more about joining our team.

Employee Spotlight: Brenda Khalil Promoted to Client Technology Specialist

Author, Megan Lockhart, Marketing & Media Communications Specialist, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.

Rancho Mesa is excited to congratulate Brenda Khalil on her promotion to Client Technology Specialist.

Brenda initially joined Rancho Mesa in November 2023 as a Client Coordinator supporting our landscape and tree care group. In July 2024, she transitioned to the Media Communications & Client Services department as a Client Technology Coordinator. In this role, Brenda quickly mastered the SafetyOne™ platform and RM365 HRAdvantage™ portal, and built-up her knowledge of workplace safety. She diligently met with clients, sharing the resources Rancho Mesa offers.

Through her expertise, job ownership, and teamwork, Brenda is ready to further support clients as a Client Technology Specialist where she will be more active in the development and presentation of various training content as well as analyze platform usage.

"I'm super excited for the opportunity to contribute more to our Client Services Team, as well as step up into a more involved role with our clients and the implementation of our SafetyOne™ Platform," Khalil said.

Rancho Mesa commends Brenda for her initiative and passion for her role. We look forward to her continued growth within the company.