In this episode…

What happens when a seasoned electrical utility professional with 35 years of experience decides to leverage his expertise in the courtroom? Christopher Larson, president of Larson Elite and a certified fire and explosion investigator, shares his fascinating journey into expert witnessing in this candid conversation.

The conversation delves into practical matters essential for anyone considering expert witnessing: establishing non-refundable retainers, determining appropriate billing practices, and avoiding potential conflicts of interest.

For professionals with specialized expertise considering the expert witness path, or attorneys seeking to work effectively with technical experts, this episode provides invaluable insights into building a successful practice founded on knowledge, integrity, and clear communication. Subscribe now to hear more conversations with leading experts across diverse fields.

Episode Transcript:

Note:   Transcript has been lightly edited for clarity

Host: Noah Bolmer, Round Table Group

Guest: Christopher Larson, Owner of Larson Elite

Noah Bolmer: Welcome to Engaging Experts. I’m your host, Noah Bolmer, and I’m excited to welcome Christopher Larson to the show. Mr. Larson is the President of Larson Elite, a consulting firm for the electrical utility industry. He’s a certified fire and explosion investigator and an expert in technical standards, operational protocols, and best practices for the electrical utility industry. Mr. Larson, thank you for joining me today on Engaging Experts.

Christopher Larson: I’m glad to be here. Thank you for asking me.

Noah Bolmer: You’ve spent over 35 years in the electric utility construction industry. How did you first become involved in expert witnessing?

Christopher Larson: Interestingly, in the late 1980s to early 1990s. I was working at—we were working down in the LA Bellflower area, and the foreman I was working for when I was still an apprentice had worked for another company. He told me about an electrical engineer at that company [who] earned more money as an expert witness than he did running his own business. I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I don’t know that much about it, but every so often they bring these boxes full of paperwork, and then he studies all that stuff.” It’s been plaguing me ever since then. It’s been thirty-plus years that I’ve been thinking about this. Then, on December 15^th, 2023, I’d been with that company—I’ve been so fortunate in my career to have worked for the nation’s largest companies, and for the last 13 years, I was Director of Sapient Training for one of the largest electrical contractors in the country. [Many] corporate changes took place. The company was split up. I became Director of Safety and Training before getting laid off. I had already hired my replacements before that. The timing was perfect for me. I sat back and realized the last time I took any vacation was 25 years ago, when I got married and took a week off for my honeymoon. I had always been in positions where it was hard to leave. I wasn’t sure, did I want to retire? Did I want to start a consulting business? What did I want to do? I decided to start my own business rather than work for someone else. It is fantastic. I love it. I learned about expert witnessing. With my background, the forensic part makes the work exciting. Two months ago, my first case [turned]10 years old. It’s been going on for a long time. They have never found an expert witness with my background, so they were all excited to get me. It’s been phenomenal because I’m digging through these old accident and incidents reports, what happened, and the rules that were in play back then. It’s been—I’m loving it.

Noah Bolmer: So, you were actively seeking engagements. It didn’t fall into your lap from out of nowhere like [it often] happens. As someone with your background and expertise, how did you go about finding and establishing yourself as an expert witness? How did you make that transition to expert witness?

Christopher Larson: The first thing you have to do is research what expert witnesses do. That’s where I started, and there was—and one of the things that—and I hope people take advantage of the great, free information out there. Round Table Group has a ton. There’s so much free information out there. It’s so exciting. I even watched My Cousin Vinny a few times because if you’re familiar with the movie, and I’m sure you are. I learned a lot about the industry. I was reading everything I could get and was enthralled and excited [by] it. I started looking for more. I took a course on how to be a successful expert witness. I went through the course and every day I’m looking and reading something new. There are a ton of books out there.

One of the most interesting things has been a surprise because my dealings with attorneys have always been—I got involved with a lot of legal things when I was a Director of Safety and Training. My dealings with attorneys were always a bit different, but what I’ve found out here is, at least for what I do, there is a need out there, and the average layperson doesn’t have any idea what a power alignment does. How does the power get from where they make it to the light switch in your bedroom? What I’ve loved about this is that they treat me with an amazing amount of respect, and I’ve found that to be refreshing. I’ve met some great attorneys over the course of time. It’s different when they need you and are not out to get you. That’s been refreshing.

Noah Bolmer: Let’s talk about those initial phone calls. An attorney reaches out and says, “We’ve a case with this general fact pattern. We think you might be able to help us.” What are the questions that they ask you, and what are the questions you ask them to make sure that it’s a good fit? It’s a two-way vetting process. Both sides are feeling each other out at the start of a new engagement.

Christopher Larson: I remember the first few calls. I got so excited. I was—I didn’t even—one of the most important things you have to ask is how did you find out about me because marketing is a huge part of what we do. There’s a lot to that and I’m forever learning more and more about that. There are a lot of questions that you have to ask, and I’ve slowed the—I’ve compiled a list of the questions that I need to know like plaintiff or defense? That was a big one right from the get go. My first ones, I wasn’t sure what side was I on. For me and for anybody out there that’s doing this sort of business, it doesn’t matter plaintiff or defense. You’re not out there—this isn’t your case to try. You are out there for your expertise. To share your expertise and educate the Trier of Fact, the jury, and the attorneys on what should or shouldn’t have been done. That’s always been interesting. I consciously step aside from that and realize [this] isn’t my case. I’m not trying it. I’m there to [give] just the facts.

I’ve come up with a sizable list of questions that I’d like to ask. One, as I mentioned earlier is plaintiff or defense. Where are we in the case? One thing, personal injury is a major part of my line of work, so I make sure that I find out, and I want to find out, what shape is the person in? It could be a fatality, and I’ve dealt with those as well. I want to find out what the status of the victim is. What happened there? A big part of feeling that out is making the most of the attorneys. Except for a couple, most of the attorneys I’ve spoken with are genuine. They don’t try, and they’ve never tried to lead me down some— “Here’s what we’re looking for.” Or, basically saying, “We’re looking for somebody to say X, Y, and Z.” I’ve not had that happen. In fact, for the most part, they’ll tell me, “I’m just looking for your opinion. I’m not trying to sway you one way or another.” I appreciate that because that’s what we’re here to do. Be honest and put our opinion out there whether it fits their narrative or not. You have a responsibility to put out the truth. That’s one of the things I like to find out, where are they going with that.

I had a case where they were looking for my opinion and it surprised me. It was a personal injury case and the company that contacted me was trying to find out—it was a contractor and one of their employees got hurt badly. They were trying to find out—what they wanted to know is did their employees do the right thing? After going through a bunch of research, my response was “No, they did not do the right thing. As a matter of fact, they were contributors to the incident taking place.” I explained everything and brought up here’s my reasons and opinions on this, and they even had a wood expert there to talk about the decayed pole that fell over. The bottom was absolute mush. They even had an expert there to testify that the wood was fine. You could see it laying on the ground and the inside was completely mush. You can see it two or three feet up into the hollow pole.

One thing we do as linemen before we climb a pole is we do what’s called a hammer test. You take your hammer and pound the bottom of the pole up as far as you can reach. It’s like hitting a drum. You know whether something’s hollow or mushy. That’s the first test. If it’s questionable, the test proceeds from there. This wood expert testified, “The wood was fine. They would have never known that it was hollow.” But again, you could clearly see the top of the pole was hollow. The bottom of the pole was hollow where it fell. It was an insurance company I was talking to and they said, “The expert said it sounds good.” I said, “Look back at your expert’s background. In 1976, when he was in college, he spent two weeks in Minnesota testing poles. But I’ve tested thousands of them and had to trust my life to them. There’s no way he would know.” To make long story short, what I wound up telling them was not what they wanted to hear, and the response I got was, “Okay, thank you. We’ll keep looking.” That part is—and I understand they have a—they’re trying to get something published as well. I was worried about am I ever going to get paid. But they were one of the best payers I’ve had. They paid right on time and quickly so that was interesting.

I’ll tell you another little story. In my last role as a Director of Safety and Training for the largest, utility contractor in the country, I dealt [with many] corporate attorneys, corporate counsel over the years. When I decided to do this, I gave one a call to let him know what I’m doing. The first question he asked me was, “What side are you on, defense or plaintiff?” I said, “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll go on either.” He got real quiet and I went, “What’s the matter?” He goes, “I can hire somebody to tell me that you have red curly hair.” I know the listeners can’t see this but I basically have no hair. I said, “Hey, Mr. Counsel, how long have you known me?” He said, “At Columbia.” I said, “Have you ever known me to not be anything but truthful.” He went, “No.” I said, “Then my answer is it doesn’t matter to me.” I thought that was interesting. I haven’t run into those type— I shouldn’t say that. I have had a couple of cases that I turned down because there was no merit to the case and you can tell they were trying to go for something that didn’t have merit. I wasn’t going to take it.

I’ve had cases that I’ve turned down where they’re asking me to do something that was not in my wheelhouse. One of them, and I’ll share this story. I was contacted by the plaintiff himself saying that he was trying to sue somebody. He said his attorney asked him to seek out expert witnesses to support his case. He asked me if I’d sign a non-disclosure agreement and all that stuff. The case had nothing—it wasn’t in my wheelhouse. It had to do with electricity and I could have taken that case and explained everything away but it’s wasn’t quite in my wheelhouse. I turned that one down because one, why would the attorney have their client calling around looking for people unless they’re trying to fish to find somebody that would say what they wanted [them] to say. The thing is we all have to—I’m still new in this business. There are a few things that you could do that would completely destroy your career and it’s not worth it. You’ll miss out on many future paydays for one payday that could end at all. Integrity is extremely important in this industry.

Noah Bolmer: You talked bit about getting paid and how the one of the engagements that you declined or that you ended up not going forward with was a quick payer. Do you have any particular items that you like to put into your engagement contracts? Do you like to, for instance, take a non-refundable retainer? Do you do project rates? Do you have different rates depending on what you’re doing? Tell me about your billing structure.

Christopher Larson: I do have a retention agreement and it’s a non-refundable retention agreement which I bill against obviously. They’re not paying money for nothing. Early on, I started and I sweated out, a couple of cases without having that retainer agreement in hand. It’s interesting if you do that and it gets down to where the attorney is needing something and you say, “I can’t move forward until I get this squared away.” It’s amazing how it goes from never happening to all of a sudden you have a special courier standing outside your door handing you a check. So, I do have a retainer agreement, a non-refundable retainer, and I highly recommend that people do not start work. It’s one thing to have the initial discussion to make sure that you’re a good fit for the case and that counsel thinks you’re a fit for it. That’s obviously going to start things, but before you present anything or do any work, I believe in having a retainer agreement and not starting until you get that.

As far as different rates for everything, I look at it as—and I also do—there are two things I do. I do an accident investigation, and I do expert witness services. When I first started, I was doing other things like you mentioned being consulting and stuff. Initially, I was doing expert witness training and what I learned from expert witness training is that sometimes the attorneys don’t like that. That’s all you do. They like you to still be engaged in other activities within your realm, or industry, so it doesn’t look like you’re some hired gun out there. All I wanted to do was expert witnessing, so I started bringing in safety, consulting, and training consulting. Then through a long series of events, the crane trainer that used to work for me, best crane trainer in the entire country, wound up getting laid off as well. Like I mentioned, the company I was working for made a bunch of changes. He called me up because I had planned on doing crane training certification in my business, so I thought he was laid off. I found out he lives in Vegas so I jumped on the motorcycle and rode up there. The next day we sat down and hashed everything out and you get a complete corner of the market on crane training.

Then, what dawned on me at that point in time was let’s say- I live in Southern California. The biggest utility in Southern California is Southern California Edison. For example, let’s say you’re providing crane training for Southern California Edison and an expert witness opportunity comes up. There’s going to be a conflict of interest there. The opposing attorney is going to go, “Mr. Larson, you’re here as a witness for the SCE.” Or against them either way. “Do you not also have business with them?” I realized everything else I do is going to be a conflict of interest. I stopped all that stuff, rebranded myself, and started my business over. Now, all I do is accident Investigation and expert witness services. Those two go hand in hand. For example, I was involved with a major utility fire in a mall and I was brought in to investigate. Eventually, there are going to be lawsuits that come out of that, because it was a major mall, they were shut down, and huge costs incurred. Where are they going to turn when they need an expert witness? You’d go to the person that did the investigation for you. So those two went hand in.

One of the things that I was getting at to answer your question as far as different rates towards things is I look at is my time. I charge the same for whatever I do. It doesn’t matter if it’s in court or I’m looking through paperwork. I have a flat rate and I stick with that flat rate. I do have an overnight rate if I have to fly somewhere and travel. One of the things that I’m not sure what everybody else does as far as flights and stuff. You’re supposed to be there two hours early and you might have layovers and all that stuff, and what I do as far as air travel is concerned is I charge a half hour to get to the airport and not the two hours ahead of time. I’ll charge the half hour to get to the airport and then I bill for the exact stipulated flight time. I’m not charging for the two hours I have get there early. If there’s a layover or something like that, I don’t charge for that. I just charge the half hour to get to the airport, the stipulated flight time, and the half hour to get from the airport to the hotel. Even if it’s a two-hour drive, I charge for a half hour so it’s flat. You don’t want to nickel and dime your clients to death with all that stuff. I get it, it’s your time and layovers happen, but that’s not the clients fault. I try to keep things fair with that.

Noah Bolmer: Let’s talk a bit about a couple of general topics. How do you get off on the right foot? You’ve decided to accept an engagement. You mentioned earlier that one of the nice things about working with attorneys so far as an expert witness is that they’ve conferred a lot of respect to you and your career. What are the other aspects of a good initial engagement?

Christopher Larson: One thing that I used to do is teach a lot of leadership classes across the country and one of the analogies that have always used is what happens [often] with leadership. They assume that people know what they want. They never sit you down. In my entire career, I never had one foreman sit me down and tell me exactly what he expected. I remember that today. When I was a foreman out in the field, the leader, I did that. I sat them down and told them exactly what I expected. The analogy that I use is your people can’t hit a bull’s eye if you don’t show them where the target is. I explained that little tidbit to the people and said, “I want to know what is it. What do you expect from me? What’s a bullseye for me to be a successful expert witness for you? What do you expect from me?” That opens the door and lets them clearly tell you. There’s some responsibility on their part that goes along with that, because if they tell me, “I don’t want emails, I want you to call me.” Or if they don’t tell me that and they’re getting emails, well, I didn’t know. It shows. You can feel it. It shows your client that, “I’m here. We’re working on this together. I’m going to do the best I can but I want to know what you expect from me?” That could, and it’s not happened yet, but that could open up the door to someone to say, “I expect you to say this.” To me, that was a great question because it opened up and showed a huge red flag there. That’s what’s important.

People need to—I handle this business as the high-level business that it is. What I love is when I show up on these Zoom meetings, and it’s the first meeting with any of them. I’m in a sport jacket. I have a nice shirt on. I don’t wear a tie but most of the time the attorneys are in their T-shirts and stuff, which is fine, but I look at it as we get paid well for what we do. It’s high-level stuff. Some of these cases I’ve worked on are multimillions of dollars, so we all need to act accordingly. I’ve seen people, even attorneys, get on these Zoom calls and they’re driving down the road. They’ve got their cell phones and you get a shot straight up their nose. It’s like, that’s so—to do this business, at least in my view, learn everything you can about it, be a professional, and treat it as the high-level business that it is because it’s important that we carry ourselves that way. Beginning, as I mentioned earlier with integrity.

Noah Bolmer: You bring up Zoom and a lot of actions are happening, even depositions and full trials in some cases are happening on Zoom. Do you find it better, worse, or neutral when you are appearing on camera versus showing up to court or to a deposition?

Christopher Larson: I don’t find it is any different. Usually the dealings that I’ve had with the court side of things have been—I shouldn’t say that. I was dealing with the LA. court the other day and it was a bit of a hokey set up but I don’t know. It’s hugely helpful obviously to see each other and that’s important. It’s important that they’re able to hear you, even if you’re using your laptop or something as your camera. They make small cameras that you could add to make it better visually and microphones. I set up my office as a professional studio and I hear about that. It makes you stand out when you’re the only one that—you’re set up and I’m looking at what have you. It’s just you ooze professionalism. It’s like you know what you’re doing. That’s something we should be doing as well. Again, we need to handle this business at the high-level that it truly is.

Noah Bolmer: Earlier you had mentioned that you avoid conflicts of interest by not working as much in the fields that you’re consulting on or might be an expert witness in. How do you stay current? Are there particular certifications? Do you give talks? Do you watch videos? How do you stay current in your field without being involved necessarily in areas where you used to be?

Christopher Larson: Great question. I still teach occasionally. I attend—I’m a member of the IBEW, the Union. That’s where the linemen are, so I stay engaged with that. I go to the Union meetings. I have a lot of friends that are in this industry. There’s a lot of stuff online. It’s not hard to find something. Some lineman were injured, a helicopter crash, or burn. That information is out there and you need to stay on top of your business. It’s changed a lot since I first started.

When I first started, we had a crew that consisted of four people. We had a Digger Derrick truck, which is like a little crane truck that dug holes and set poles. We had a flat bed, a crummy as we would call it. That’s all we had for equipment. We had ten crews working in the yard and we had one bucket truck that we would have to share. Today’s business is totally different. They all have—everybody’s in a bucket truck. Sometimes there are two on a crew. Think about the tools. I use this analogy a lot when I’m having conversations like teaching a class, and I’ll bring apprentices, I’ll say, “Every generation, you guys don’t work nearly as hard as my generation.” They get mad. You can see that. I do it intentionally. They get twisted up a little bit. Their panties get in a wad, and they look at you like, “What?” I say, “Let’s think about it. If you want to drill a hole in a pole and you’re fifty feet up in the air, you guys just grab one of these new battery powered things, slam that battery in, and put a hole in there. In my day, we would have to bring out a big, heavy generator, and run a cord up the pole between the energized conductors, which is scary enough as it is right there. We’d have to do it. I go think about that. That’s how we did it. What you do now is so much easier. If you want to cut the pole you’ve got a battery-operated thing to cut a pole, right? Where we’d have to get the chain saw and so on and so forth. Think about that. Think about the generation before me. The generation before me had to use what’s called a brace and bit. They had to drill each hole by cranking like a big eggbeater to drill that hole through the pole. They had to cut the pole stone with a buck saw.” So the industry changes quickly.

Obviously, there are a lot of advancements in my industry, particularly due to fires and things like that. The wildfires and you with your background, knowing of California—that’s been—in 2018 one of the nation’s largest utilities filed for bankruptcy due to wildfires and that’s been a big change. Another thing that I did to stay abreast of the industry is I went through the training and became a Certified Fire and Explosion Investigator, which led me to being retained in the LA fires, which is an interesting thing in itself. The worst thing that we can do is sit back and not stay involved because I don’t care what industry in particular. The majority of people are probably medical experts out there and man, talk about a fast-changing industry that you have to stay in tune with.

Noah Bolmer: You mentioned earlier, one of the things that you like to ask during an initial phone call is where are we in this case, because as you were saying, some of these actions go out years, decades. Do you feel that you are typically brought in with sufficient time to get everything sorted before you need to return a report or do you find yourself a little under the gun sometimes?

Christopher Larson: No, I’ve been fortunate and part of it is because particularly some cases I’ve had in California that were scheduled for trial, they keep pushing them out. The courts here in this area are still behind and are still trying to get caught up on all the COVID lawsuits they had to deal with. They keep kicking the can down the road, so that’s helped out a lot. I was recently retained for an incident that—they’re not even—the lawsuits haven’t even started yet, but they’re thinking far enough ahead that they want to be able to, if they’re going to be accused of this, they want to be able to nip it in the bud, right from the beginning. I would say I’ve not had to rush. There have been a couple of times, I’ll get a frantic call, “Something changed and we need this.” It hasn’t been anything too daunting and those are my clients. If I have to pull an all-nighter and stay twenty-four out of twenty-four hours to get something, then I’m going to do that. But it hasn’t been that way. I’ve gotten a little wiser and one thing that I feel bad about is some information comes in and you get reams of paper, long files and stuff when they spend all the time learning about it and then it’s months down the road before you have to—and I have to go back through and review the stuff that I already did. I have a case right now, a major one, and my reports are not due until November. I got the case three months ago and I’m just starting that one now. So, to answer your question I’ve had adequate time to prepare for everything at this point.

Noah Bolmer: As a newer expert witness with a lot of experience but a newer expert witness, what sort of actions have you been a party to and which actions do you look forward to?

Christopher Larson: My impression is it’s a bit different because I’m not completely green in the legal aspect of things because I had to deal with it so much in my prior roles. One thing that we have to be careful of is learning a few different things. For example, “I’m 100% sure that’s what happened.” Well, what you’re doing is you’re saying, “No, without a shadow of doubt.” Even though you weren’t there. You came to this conclusion through a series of hypotheses and testing those hypotheses. You use certain terms like, “More likely than not.” You use certain terms like that. That’s been interesting being careful not to paint yourself into a corner, because if you put out something like “100%” an opposing attorneys going to start throwing a bunch of math equations at you. There’s a good example of that. They were cross-examining an expert witness. and he was talking about, how he came up with some calculations. The attorney said, “Walk me through how you did that.” It was very simple stuff if you have a basic understanding of math. but he couldn’t do it. He said, “I use my computer to do that.” The attorney was like, “It’s fairly simple math, can’t you tell us?” You have to be careful about what you say because if there’s a way to use it against you, they’ll do it during class examination.

Another thing that’s been interesting for me is I like to write. I’ve written [many] policies over the course of time. You name it, I like to do that. But now in this role I don’t. Many times, I recommend writing papers and things like that, but one thing you have to keep in mind is whatever you put down is there forever. If you’re making an opinion on something and an attorney digs it up ten years later—I’m sure you yourself have had opinions that have changed over the course of decades of being alive, so you have to be careful with that stuff.

Noah Bolmer: Absolutely. If you are impeached on something that you once said, maybe it’s taken out of context or maybe you have changed your mind. Is that something that you’ve had to contend with at all yet?

Christopher Larson: No, I haven’t. I learned that early on because I contended with it years earlier when making a statement at a deposition when I was a representative for the company and having it come back and bite me in the ****. Fortunately, I wasn’t BSing anybody. I was able to prove my point. If you aren’t prepared for that then you lose credibility. If you can’t substantiate the statement that you’re making or support the hypothesis, your opinion, you’ve lost all credibility with the jury. I haven’t had to deal with that. You asked about one of the things I’m looking forward to. I’ve not had to go to court yet and I want to. That scares a lot of people, but I’m excited for that. The reason is it’s exciting for me is because I’ve been training—I started training apprentices line apprentice stuff. Training thousands of them over my career apprentice and journeyman lineman stuff. Electricity is a complex subject. It’s invisible, but it can kill you. How does all this stuff work? It’s confusing because you can’t physically see anything. So I found ways over the course of time, training apprentices, and people, to help them see complex subjects in a simplified manner. I’m looking—I’ve got all kinds of demonstrable things that I want to apply, and I haven’t had the opportunity yet.

Noah Bolmer: What are some of the techniques that you use when you’re teaching or explaining to an attorney some of these complex subjects to be able to get it across to a layperson in a way that’s useful?

Christopher Larson: One of the things I’m excited to do is that I have what’s called a Tesla coil. Essentially, it’s a coil that’s energized. If you bring a ground close enough to it, it’ll make an arc. I’m in a case where basically someone was supposed to—they were doing work they shouldn’t have been doing. They were injured. Now, I have the ability to take the exact piece of equipment that they were using, attach it to the ground, and move it close enough to that Tesla coil to show that the arc took place. Now, granted, it’s a little buzz of an arc that I’m bringing versus the huge explosion that took place with the high voltage stuff. Another thing too is there are certain things in my trade that you can do with rubber gloves on and there are certain things that you cannot do with rubber gloves on. In this case, they were they were using the wrong method. For example, I’m able to bring in the actual tool and describe that this is what was supposed to be used and this is what they did. Without having my background, there’s no way you’d know that. That’s what I’m—and unfortunately, I haven’t been able to apply that yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

Noah Bolmer: Fascinating stuff. Before we wrap up, do you have any last advice that you care to share with other expert witnesses or attorneys who are working with experts?

Christopher Larson: The advice that I would share is open communication. We need to find out how people prefer to communicate because some people like a text message. Some people like e-mail. Some people just want phone calls. I’m old school. I like to use phone calls because you get more out of it that way. Ask a lot of questions. Ask what they expect of you. That’s one of the biggest things. My advice is one, be professional and ask them to show you the target. What’s the bullseye look like? Communicate with people and that includes everything, even billing. I’ve found that some people like detailed billing. Some people want almost nothing, so you need to find out what they expect of you if you want to be successful. Learn everything you can. There’s a tremendous—if you’re not learning that’s on you. There’s so much stuff out there and it’s free. My biggest thing is find out what the target is. What do they expect from you? What’s the target? What’s the bullseye look like? Then, go from there and do the best you can, and maintain your integrity through it all.

Noah Bolmer: Setting expectations. Sage advice. Mr. Larson, thank you for joining me today.

Christopher Larson: It was my pleasure. I appreciate it. I had fun.

Noah Bolmer: Absolutely and thank you as always to our listeners for joining us for another edition of Engaging Experts. Cheers.

Christopher Larson, President, Larson Elite

Christopher Larson, is the President of Larson Elite, a consulting firm for the electrical utility industry. Mr. Larson is a certified fire and explosion investigator and an expert in technical standards, operational protocols, and best practices for the electrical utility industry.