DGTL Voices 100th Episode

Wow, this is Bonus Drop because we've hit our 100th episode. So Megan, this right now, what we're recording, is our 100th episode. Can you believe it?

No, so exciting.

You've been with me for the last quarter, and I hope you stay for many more quarters. And I've just had a blast doing it, meeting all these super interesting people. And I really appreciate all the work that you do behind the scenes to make Digital Voices what it is today.

Thanks, Ed. I mean, I feel like I've been with you for maybe 25 episodes. So all of the work that went into this before I joined the team, like, kudos to everybody. It's a great podcast. Before you came to Divergent, I knew what Digital Voices was. And to be honest, when I found out I got to work with you on this podcast, I really fangirled a little bit.

Oh, good.

It's still a shock to me that I get It's great to work with you on the show.

No, no, it's great having you. You're great at what you do. And I love the commentary that you've made on every episode. And, you know, we're just reflecting back now on this bonus drop of some of the themes we had. I don't want to pick on guests specifically, but just kind of thematic. But I did a quick count. Over half of our guests are female, for those who count. Over half are clinicians. So we've had mostly physicians, but a fair number of nurses, pharmacists, and we did start Our first episode was sort of an introductory episode, but our very first with a guest was a patient advocate, a patient. So we've tried to sprinkle in patients throughout. So that's sort of the count, like if you were to count and look back, but we basically drop one every week, right, Megan? It's like on Wednesdays, sort of our drop date.

Every Wednesday.

Yeah. So I thought I would share a little bit about the format and then we'll jump into some of these themes that we saw that may be of interest to our listeners. So the format came up, you know, there was a couple of us brainstorming, but what we really want to know in our podcast is really know who are we speaking with. So there's a lot of great podcasts out there and I love them. I listen to them myself. So it's no knock on them, but we wanted to be a little bit different. And so a lot of them are sort of the Mr. and Mrs. Universe type questions, pageant questions, and those are good and interesting, but we want to really get to know people. So kind of like what's on your playlist is something most people can relate to musically. I think we just had one guest who preferred not to answer. This was in advance, so no listeners would know. So I think with him, we ended up with a book. I think his latest book that he had read or something.

I do remember he didn't answer the question, but you do learn a lot from people in the music choices, in their music choices. I find some of them are very surprising. I wouldn't have guessed that.

Yeah, it's very— it influenced my— so I imagine some listeners do too. They'll hear a new band that someone mentions and they'll go out and download that song. So I probably have Downloaded 20, 30 songs, no joke, that came from listeners. So I love that because I'm always learning new things about what they're listening to. And then asking them about their life purpose and mantra. Again, it's just like you really get to know the human side of someone and then letting them describe their journey because everyone has unique journeys. And we certainly heard some super, super interesting ones. And again, in that, you sort of get more of a feel for the person. So when they answer, the more stereotypical questions that are, again, nothing wrong with them. They're good. But it gives you a little bit more insight into sort of how they frame that question because of their background. So I was trying to think of themes. Are there any themes that have stood out to you, Meagan, in terms of answers that people have given?

I think I would say never stop learning. That's a big one.

I think that's a common theme. So most of these individuals, the 100, are leaders. Almost all of them talk about continuous learning. So it doesn't matter if they're the CEO. We've had CEO of health systems. It doesn't matter. They always talk about learning. So I think that's definitely a main takeaway. One I had, and I keep writing this down almost every time we talk with someone, is humility. Oftentimes with leadership, there can be some bravado and some arrogance. But when you really break through any of that that might exist and you get to hear the heart and soul of our guests, It's humility. And I was really struck by that because I always knew that was important, but I didn't realize that almost all the guests would either talk about it directly or indirectly.

I think that's some of the characteristics that really make a great leader. And you have some fantastic leaders on the show. So that's, that's no surprise that that's a common theme, just being able to be humble and transparent and really vulnerable.

Yeah. The other commonality was action orientation. So, yeah, you could actually write a book on all of the guests and the things you learn. But action orientation. So we saw that in almost all the guests as well, where they were people— they didn't rise to their roles if they were leaders because of their education necessarily. It was because they always took action. So they would volunteer for things. We hear that a lot. Volunteer or say yes to everything.

Yeah, I was about to say that.

Yeah, very action-oriented. And that's what really led Again, even in cases where it wasn't like a CEO, whatever they transpired to be and where they were was a result of taking action. So I thought that was pretty cool. In terms of, I didn't want to call out specific because we've had 100 and we don't want to pick on 1 or 2 guests and then forget the others because they're all so good. But the most popular one, I think, I don't know if you've looked at the statistics recently, but One of them was because we put on a provocative title, which probably helped a lot, but we talked about becoming a millionaire by age 25 or something like that.

Oh, I'd listen to that. If I wasn't working on this show and I didn't know anything about Digital Voices, if I saw that title, I'm going to listen.

Yeah, that was a good one. That was really about how, in finance and investment, individuals are using digital capabilities to achieve things that would have taken a lot longer to achieve in life or it would have required a lot more manual effort. So that was definitely one of the big ones. Death and Empathy was another one. There was a few that had me crying while we were recording. And hopefully, I don't think anyone ever hears it in my voice, but I know you see it or the guests see it. But Death and Empathy was really profound to me. I really, I love to hear the heart and soul passion of clinicians and how they deal with patients and their very, very most vulnerable state. And that in particular really hit me. Not to put you on the spot, was there anyone that you can think of that maybe had sort of a profound hit on you?

It's one that hasn't been released yet, but we did, we've recorded one little teaser for what's to come, but we've recorded one on, and we talked about the CHIME Opioid Task Force.

Oh yeah, that was a tough one. Yeah, I can't wait to release that. That was really Really profound and deep and good. So I have to make a plug because I am a proud— so I guess maybe the opposite of humility right now, but I'm a really proud dad. And we had a guest on that at the time was a fledgling producer of music. This was in our first 25 episodes, and a year and a half later has 5 platinum albums. So we're going to have to have him back. In fact, that'll be our teaser, Megan. We're going to have my youngest son back. And right now he's— it changes every week according to Billboard, but as the time of this recording, I think he's number 1 country music producer in the world and number either 9 or 2 across all genres. And he's going to come back with the world's most popular country artist at this time. So we're going to record them in a couple of weeks. So the hard thing for you and I, Meaghan, is we're not going to know until he calls me and lets me know they're ready to talk. So we'll be on the fly. But anyways, that's a good one to think about.

That's exciting.

Yeah, that's going to be a good one. And it's going to be on creativity because that's what I always ask my son and his artists. I'm always curious, how do you come up with these new ideas? Because it goes back to digital voices. It's really about innovation. It's about transformation. That's why we have— that's the other thing. We've intentionally brought in guests from outside of healthcare. When I was doing sort of a count, how many came from the provider side, how many came from payer, how many came from pharma, there was a fair amount that came from outside of industry. We've done that purposefully and that is because we want to learn. What are they doing in finance? What are they doing in the recording industry? What are they doing in these other industries? Fashion. We even had one on fashion one time. It's really important. Yeah, we talked about patients. Of course, my favorite patient— we had 2. And so Stacy, who was our first, like I said, episode number 2. But the other patient that we had on was, was a Holocaust survivor, and that was a pretty cool episode as well. But anyways, we're just here celebrating the 100th. This is our 100th drop. Puts us, I think, in the top 10% of an Apple Healthcare podcast. It's been an amazing run. If our listeners were always interested in unique individuals to be on Digital Voices. And so if our listeners have anyone in mind, they can reach out either to Meaghan Ellsworth or Ed Marx. You can find us on LinkedIn or maybe through the Digital Voices podcast site and reach out to us. And certainly we'd be interested to hear from you in terms of who would make good guests. But that's pretty much a wrap. Meaghan, I'm going to do to you what I do to all of our guests. Hey, we covered a lot of areas here. I'm going to leave the last word to you.

And I would just say congratulations. It's an honor, and I look forward to the next 100 episodes.

Yeah, and thanks, Megan. It can't happen without you, so I appreciate you. And there's a couple other people we should thank really quick in the background. Michaela, who does a lot of the scheduling. I have to give a lot of thanks to the individuals who helped start Digital Voices and, and got it going until episode 75. And So Chris Perry, he's sort of the marcom exec, marketing communications exec over at Tech Mahindra Health and Life Sciences. Big shout out to my friend from Wales. He was awesome in helping me. And our last producer, Sydney Ross. So she helped me probably— I didn't go back and actually count them, but I'm going to guess 40. Yeah, probably 40, 30, 40 of the episodes. And so, yeah, all these people, couldn't happen without them.

Takes a village.

Yeah, it takes a village. All right. So thanks for listening. Thanks for being our audience.