From They to We (ft. Robert Musslewhite)

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices podcast, where we chat digital transformation, challenges, and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now, your host, Ed Marx.

Ed here. Welcome to another episode of Digital Voices. Super excited as always because I, I get to talk to the most incredible people, which is What makes this role so fun. And, but first, I want to thank all of you who are listening for listening. I know that you have a lot of choices. There's a lot of great podcasts out there and other materials from which to inspire and be educated. And you've chosen time to listen to Digital Voices. And I just want to let you know that I appreciate it. We are sponsor-free, ad-free, commercial-free. We just do this because we love our industry. We We want to see us transform healthcare and the people, the guests, and the listeners, we are the ones to do that. So may you find encouragement from what you're about to hear today. So I am with Robert Musselwhite. Robert, welcome to Digital Voices.

Thanks, Ed. I'm really excited to be here.

Robert's been a longtime CEO and what I call an influencer in healthcare and helping organizations transform even Back early in my career, I was the recipient of many of the things that some of the companies that Robert has led has developed over time and helped shape who I am and the organizations that I served. So I'm just a huge, huge fan of all things Robert Musselwhite, as well as the organizations which he has led. So Robert, I think you and I first met around 2015, 2016. I was very fortunate to become part of the advisory board company I was given the assignment of CIO of New York City Health and Hospitals, came through your organization. And then I just, it was like a dream come true, just getting to meet you and the other leaders there and being part of advisory board company. And it's just something I always look back on my career, you know, it makes me smile. So if people could visualize me right now, I'm actually smiling just thinking about it. That great company. And Robert, but the first thing, as much as I want to jump into advisory board and leadership, the first thing everyone always wants to know of all of our guests is what songs are on your playlist?

Well, first of all, you're way too kind on that intro, Ed. So, um, it was a pleasure working with you, but of course I knew you long before that because your reputation in the industry precedes you, and we were really lucky to have you as part of the team. for a while. So, um, anyway, I, I, I've really enjoyed following your career and it's nice to reconnect here. Um, podcast playlist, huh? Um, let's see. Uh, I am a Zac Brown fan. We got to see him at Fenway here this summer up in Boston. So been listening to Homegrown, Chicken Fried, Jump Right In. You can, you know, all the names there.

Yeah.

Um, we saw Beck live here too, and so it's kind of been, uh, been doing some Beck songs— Dreams, Wow, Devil's Haircut, some of the old stuff. Um, and then I'm a big Vance Joy fan. It kind of always, always on there. So, um, really any of his songs. So anyway, that's, that's probably the latest, most recent.

Yeah, no, that's, that's cool. I like that music. What about Your life message or mantra or words to live by? You know, what sort of things sort of guide who you are and the way that you lead?

Well, that's a very broad question, but I have a couple of things that I always think about. So, I'll tell a quick story. You know, I started my career at McKinsey and it was my first project. I was in a room, you know, team room, and it was before our first big progress review meeting with the client. Felt like, you know, everyone was running around and we were busy and the thing wasn't ready yet. It felt pretty stressful to me. And our project manager, our engagement manager, was just sitting there very mellow, just like letting the partners were coming in saying, where's this? Where's that? And he just was so steady as she goes, just rolled with it. And finally I was like, you know, this is stressful. How are you not stressed out? He's like, I've served in Grenada and I've been shot at. That's stressful. This is not stressful. So that's a good lesson sometimes to remember at work. Just, you know, there are things more important, and obviously work's super important, but, um, and in our industry it's really important, but it's also important to remember, like, you know, what's, what's really stressful and what's not. Um, the other thing that I always, uh, think about is it, it's, uh, you may have heard this, a lot of people have said it— Oprah, Thomas Jefferson, several others. Um, it's that I'm a big believer in luck. And I find that the harder I work, the more luck I have. And I think that's been a mantra for me over time as well. Like, I've been really fortunate with some of the things that have come my way in my career and in my life. Um, but I also recognize that, you know, I put in a lot of hard work to get into the position for those things to happen. And I feel like that's a lesson that I give my kids. I give, you know, if I've ever spoken, um, I, I like to talk about that because I feel like it's played out in so many different ways. And, um, that's just a— it's a helpful, helpful lesson to live by.

Yeah, I love that and, and can appreciate those words. Tell us a little bit— you already alluded to a little where, yeah, you have kids and you also, uh, were at McKinsey. Tell us a little bit about yourself personally and professionally before we jump into, uh, all things leadership. Sure.

Like, quick background is, um, I came out of school in college. I was a swimmer my whole career, so swimmer all through college. Um, once I finished college, I'm like, I need a break. I've just been swimming and working all the time. So I, I, um, took a year and went to Colorado, lived in a ski area. And I always say if I'd stayed one more year, I'd probably still be there. Um, it was, it was great, but I also felt like it was time to then get back to business. So I went to law school. Um, Was in law school for 3 years, clerked for a judge after law school. And my dad was a lawyer. I came from a family of lawyers on his side. I probably would've been really happy being a lawyer, but I had worked for McKinsey for part of one summer during law school and just felt that was going to be a little bit better background for what I wanted to do and maybe kind of be my business education since I hadn't gotten an MBA. Ended up going to McKinsey. I stayed 6 years. I worked in Dallas, Amsterdam, and then most recently Washington, DC. And When I was in Washington, I was lucky to, um, kind of find the advisory board. They were looking for somebody to come in and lead strategy and new product development, and I was at the point where I kind of wanted to explore, um, not just thinking about strategy for other companies, but thinking about strategy for a company that I was part of where I had to then go execute it and make it real. So those things sort of fit, and I really was lucky to stumble into healthcare, and this is one of the luck things that I talked about. I didn't know much about healthcare. I hadn't worked in healthcare, and I really didn't know what the advisory board did and kind of learned about it through the process, but came on board and found that I really love working in healthcare. It's a big, complicated industry. It's got a lot of issues that, you know, now I've spent a large part of my career trying to fix, and I guess I'd give myself a pretty low grade in having fixed a lot of it. But what I loved also is that the people who wanted to work in healthcare cared a lot about what they were doing. I mean, people came to the advisory board because it was a cool, interesting company, but also because we always felt we were making a difference in healthcare and that mattered to people. And so, it's always been, I feel like, a great industry into which to recruit people to be sure that, you know, you get people who care a lot about the work they do and are talented on their own. And that's been great. Anyway, I was at advisory board for a long time, um, ended up being lucky enough to become CEO— again, the luck— um, and ran it until 2017 when we, uh, sold the company. And the healthcare business went to Optum, and the education business, which we built up at the time, our higher ed business, went to a private equity firm called Vista. And so then I spent 4 years at, at, at Optum. I ended up running Optum Insight, which I really enjoyed, and I feel like You know, lots of good things to say about the overall organization. I think for me, always kind of wanted to get back to a little bit smaller, more nimble organizations.

No, it's a fascinating career, but I've got to go back a little bit because I didn't know this Colorado connection. So what city or what ski resort did you spend the most time?

Crested Butte.

Oh yeah.

And it was, you know, Crested Butte, if you, for you skiers out there, It's an amazing place when the snow is good and it's a pretty small resort when the snow is not great. And, um, that year it was like record snowfall. I just got lucky. I mean, we would have every day, it seemed like a foot of new powder. And I was in a job where I had to work 4 days a week and the other 3 I would be out on the slopes.

So it was great.

It was a great year.

Yeah. Crescent Butte is like a little secret there in Colorado, you know, 'cause it's not, um, you don't have to deal with, and I love a lot of the ski towns. I spent a lot of time up there myself. um, like Vail and Aspen, but you know, they can get a little bit pretentious. And, uh, so Crested Butte's a great place, like, for, like, if you're serious about this.

Definitely not pretentious and very old school even now.

Yeah, no, that's cool. And, and now I want to jump into leadership because what really was the catalyst is I, I'm on LinkedIn a fair amount and I would see, you know, just like everyone else, I get these notices like Susie or Joe has been promoted, a new job as a CEO. And I'm telling you, Robert, I didn't do a scientific analysis, but off the top of my head, it seemed like maybe 10%, which is a pretty high percentage if you think about it, 10% of the time that I click into that and I'm like, oh, I remember I worked with Susie at advisory board. I worked with Joe at advisory board. And it seems like a lot of the talent That advisory board that was there under your tutelage, uh, has grown up and they're taking over big time. Maybe not all of them are CEO, but big time C-level positions in many great organizations. And so I'm here to like try to dig in a little bit with you and figure out what the sort of magic sauce was in all of that. So, uh, as we— that's sort of a setup as to we get there. But first, you also do a lot of board work, and obviously given your background as a very successful CEO, you get a lot of these opportunities. How do you decide which one, Robert, you're going to be a part of?

Sure. I always have really 2 criteria. One, can I bring something of value to the board? Like, can I be helpful? I mean, obviously, that's their job to decide too, but I think it creates a lot of satisfaction and engagement on my part when I know I can be helpful to the company, to the other board members, or most of all, to the CEO and the executive team. So, that's number one. And number two is, can I take something away from that work that I can apply in my own role as CEO to make me a better leader? And so, those are the two criteria. I've ended up, you know, where I've ended up serving on boards, they've been business models that have some relation to work that I've done that makes sense. I'm on one other public company board, which is CoStar Group. It's in real estate, but it's a subscription-based technology model. data and technology. And I have to say that I think just Andy Florence is such a great leader. I hope to bring value to those guys, but he's just— watching him work, I learn a ton about my own leadership that I can apply. And then I'm on 2 private company boards, Ascend Learning and Iodine Software. Both have some content and business model relation to either the advisory board or Definitive Healthcare and what I've been doing. And again, Both, uh, both places where I've learned a ton from watching their leaders. Interestingly, to the conversation at hand, um, Iodine Software is run by an ex-Advisory Board person, um, and has a lot of ex-Advisory Board people there. So I feel in some ways like I'm coming home when I get to go down there for a board meeting. Um, William Chan was one of the founders of Crimson, which the Advisory Board bought in 2008 and became a huge part of our business. Eventually, he and the other co-founder of Crimson departed and they put their heads together and ended up founding Iodine, which is technology in the clinical documentation space. Really, really nifty company and product, and they're doing great.

Yeah, I highly recommend it as well for those reasons. I've been fortunate recently, last couple years, to be on some health system boards and yeah, truly eye-opening. I hope I give back a fraction of what I'm learning from watching the other leaders, as you're talking about. Hey, I want to jump to the Advisory Board and really get into this topic of leadership. Now, there was exponential growth at Advisory Board under your time there as the CEO. What was the magic or the mojo?

Well, first of all, you got to go back and just credit people who came before. I mean, I was lucky enough to find the Advisory Board. At a great time in its evolution. But I got to give a ton of credit to David Bradley, who founded the company and really instilled it with the values that still permeate that organization to this day. It's— we talked all the time about things like spirit of generosity, servant's heart, power of language. I mean, these were values that really did permeate how we worked and how we treated each other and how we thought about working with clients. And I think that created a fantastic culture of people who were smart, cared about clients, cared about, you know, continuing to evolve what we did for clients, and always wanting to, to do more in terms of that service. And then Frank Williams, who was CEO when I came on board, credit to him for letting me join the team in that role and ultimately passing the torch to me when, when he decided to to move on from the CEO role. So I was lucky enough to get that role in 2008. And I think what was great about the Advisory Board during the time that, that I was joined all the way through till we ended up selling the business to Optum was it was a big transition in healthcare. Advisory Board always had great best practice research programs, you know, all the books on CEOs' shelves in hospitals. That's still a fantastic business. That's the best practice subscription research business. But, you know, if you go back to 2003 when I joined, it was hospitals were just starting to get wired. The Ed Marxes of the world were just starting to, you know, their jobs were getting a lot more complex, as you know. And as they started to invest in more systems across hospitals, a lot more data started to become available that could be used to really help not just understand where where you might want to apply the best practice knowledge, but what you should do about it. So like the insight for us was, hey, we have these best practices. They give really good advice to hospitals. People like them. But what if we could make it more specific and be able to tell you for your specific institution, where do you stand on these best practices? Where, you know, which doctors might fall in which performance zone and make that an easy-to-use tool for you that you can then incorporate into your daily operations? And that was the insight that really drove us to launch a whole series of SaaS analytic products in the early days of analytics, subscription-based, really good sort of business intelligence products. But that really fueled a whole next wave of growth for the Advisory Board and really got us from being what we still are as a best practice research company, but one that could really help move the needle on specific performance by providing a lot more insight and guidance around key performance areas throughout the hospital. So that was just a lot of fun. You went from an organization, and I credit all the researchers because for them, they were really the insight behind where we should launch a new product and where might data be more helpful. And then we had to build up a whole team that was capable of pulling the data and building it into products and delivering the products. serving clients. So essentially built a whole software business alongside our research business. And that did drive a lot of external growth. It drove a lot more impact for our clients. It drove just a lot of excitement within the company.

Yeah, no, it was a brilliant shift. And again, I was a recipient of all that. In all the hospital systems where I served, I was always a big fan, like advisory board. I used that research. And then the analytics, and then love the consultants that came in to help us, you know, actualize a lot of these capabilities. What are— I know it's going to be hard to narrow it down to one thing or maybe two things, Robert, but what are one or two things that you're most proud of during your time at Advisory Board?

Wow. A ton. I mean, I'm super proud of the organization. If I had to isolate it to a couple, I guess one would be, um, you know, I didn't drop the ball on a great company. I was able to pick up where Frank left off and keep us moving forward. Um, I have just a ton of respect for what the organization was when I was lucky enough to join and wanted to be sure that we kept doing our job with our clients. Um, it was a fun period. I think the next is, and we're going to get to this, um, and I wasn't— I didn't realize it as much as I realized it today, but We just had a great group of people. And I think we did a really good job of helping people have a ton of growth in their careers in ways that were good for them and good for the company and built a team that was just a really fun team to be part of. And it wasn't— I'd be lying if I said when I took the job that I was like, okay, I have to do that. I think that in some ways I got a little bit lucky that that's how things turned out. But when I look back on the time, we definitely did a lot of good things to keep people excited and to evolve them in their careers. And as a team, had a lot of fun doing it.

Well, when I think back on Advisory Board, I also think about how you were able— and again, the credit to the team, but you were the CEO— you were able to balance this sense of mission Of the company and mission in society. Meaning, you know, you won— we won a lot of recognition for best places to work, best places to work for women. You know, for everyone got an opportunity, had an opportunity, uh, to be their best, to do their best. So a lot of recognition for things like that. At the same time, being a successful company, because, you know, sometimes companies go shift a little bit one way or the other and And don't— can't do both effectively, but Advisory Board did. Uh, and maybe it's sort of the same question as the one before, Robert, but how, how, how were you able to balance those 2 priorities of, of being a good citizen, a big— a good corporate citizen, and generating a profit, you know, and making a— generating revenue so people would have a career?

I guess I see those 2 as, as really linked and going hand in hand. Um, and that's not to say we did the broader mission stuff because it led to higher revenues, but I do think that creating and maintaining a place where we could have such talented people want to come work for us and want to stay required us to be at the forefront of all the things— doing all the things that we should as a— as an employer in the city and in our industry. So, you know, again, credit to the past, built a program that was sort of a community service organization. We had several years where all of our employees volunteered. That was always a big focus of our efforts during the year. But we found that that would do a lot of good in our community and in our industry, but it also got employees excited.

Yeah.

I think we were one of the first employers to give people time off to volunteer, and if they accrued a certain number of hours, they could get days off that they could take on their own. We tended to sponsor a bunch of events that made it easy for employees to volunteer. And, you know, in those days, those were early cutting-edge things, but they seemed— I have a lot of employees who'd come to me and say, you know, I found The Advisor World when I was coming out of college because you guys gave people time off to do community service.

Yeah.

And I thought that was a great thing. And I was like, wow, that's, you know, I didn't realize it had such an impact, but it does. And in terms of being the best place to work and fostering, you know, we did women in leadership and we did a lot of things that were just at the time felt like the right thing to do to keep our employees excited about working at the Advisory Board. And so, to me, those have always gone hand in hand. And I think, you know, today I'd say management and CEOs are more evolved. That's just kind of— it's part of the job now. I mean, you kind of— it's kind of a must-have. Back then, it was a nice to have, but we always felt like it was super important.

Yeah, I definitely think you're one of the leaders that made that become just a basic requirement of being a good steward and a good leader. So, continuing on the leadership topic, you then sold— you were CEO when you sold to Optum, at least the healthcare portion advisory board. And what was a little bit of motivation? And then, Kind of a double question. How were you able to maintain the heart and soul of Advisory Board inside Optum?

Well, on the first, um, I mentioned earlier we built up a pretty large higher education business. And so as a public company, we found that, um, while they— we found the 2 businesses had a lot of synergy in terms of how they operated, um, the 2 different end markets, um, became increasingly confusing for investors. We found ourselves As a primarily healthcare company with healthcare investors, people didn't understand the higher ed part. And when things would happen in the higher ed business, it would detract from focus on the healthcare business and vice versa. So, you kind of got, as a public company, into this— we always called it lowest common denominator situation where unless both businesses were performing top of game, everyone focused on the one that wasn't. And so, you sort of lost the focus on the one that was and the excitement about the one that was. So, we weren't getting maximum value as a public company. That eventually led us to decide to split the businesses at the push of our shareholders and ended up through a process with, like I said, the higher education business going to Vista and the healthcare business landing at Optum, which you might have said was a funny place for that business. But having done all the conversations with people who were interested in buying the business, coming out of the first conversation with them, I'm like, there's something that's really potentially amazing here if it goes well. And the reason I say that is because you take the advisory board and our web of client relationships in the provider market, you know, mostly hospitals and health systems, and you put that together with the capabilities that Optum can bring as part of UnitedHealth Group, and the capabilities are amazing. So like, we really saw ourselves as the front door to providers where we could take the capabilities of Optum, shape them put them into products and services that were good for providers, and just really grow what we were able to do with providers. So, you know, kind of going back to before, we're always looking for ways we can do more for health systems and hospitals. It seemed like a great opportunity to do that. So when they ended up being the highest bidder, it was an exciting moment. Obviously, you know, your second question about how do you maintain it, I think going through a transaction is always a risk for an organization. And you're never going to know enough about where you land until you're in it. And so there were always risks of that. We did the best we could in terms of preparing for those, but we went through the transition. I think the first thing that happened, there were some synergies. When you join a big organization, a lot of your central functions and G&A functions don't survive that transition, and that did happen as part of our transition. So a lot of really talented, great people are now in other places just as a result of not making the transition over. But then the ones who stayed, I always say this, the people who stayed are doing great. I think they're talented people and Optum's a huge organization, so you get to apply your talents on a much bigger stage with a lot of upside opportunity. And so I've seen a lot of people really succeed. I was fortunate enough to get the job running Optum Insight, which was the entity that acquired us, and that was great. I mean, for me, running a $14 billion organization was a new experience. And, and, um, you know, in terms of the heart and soul of advisory board, I hope that we brought a lot of that to Optum Insight. Um, I certainly tried to apply a lot of the stuff that we did and apply it within our world within Optum Insight. Um, I'd say it's, it's somewhat— it's a bigger stage, and so you can influence a lot more people and a lot more clients. On the other hand, it's a big organization, so there's always some internal push on whatever you want to do that maybe is not as easy when you're a smaller organization. So, I would say that the Advisory Board company— it's not a company anymore, but the Advisory Board as an organization is still alive and well within Optum and doing great research, even though it's now within part of a bigger company.

Yeah.

So, I don't know if I fully answered your question. I think the heart and soul was always going to change a little bit in a transition like that, but I've been really proud of what the value has been that we brought to the overall organization. People that are still there doing it are doing great.

Yeah, I think that's a great assessment. Yeah, it's always tough when you have a merger, acquisitions of 2 different organizations and merging the culture and taking the best of both is what the ideal is. Hey, on leadership, as we wrap up, what age— was there an age? Did something ever happen that you were like, oh, I think I'm a leader? Maybe on the swim team or on the ski slopes, or maybe it happened later. But was there like this time when you were like, oh, wow?

I don't remember one, to be honest. I mean, even in school, I always sought out leadership opportunities. I was president of student council and just, you know, that was kind of my angle. I guess maybe I always felt like I could be a good leader, but when you recognize that others recognize it, that's probably the revelation. Like to get elected into a position like that was an honor. And then I kind of found that that's what happened. I was lucky enough to be elected captain of the swim team, co-captain with one of my colleagues. And that just sort of happened along the way. And I think then, you know, when you go to a place like McKinsey, you get a lot of feedback, both, you know, positive feedback and developmental feedback, as we called it. And, you know, I say my profile there was that I probably spiked more on leadership than some of the other qualities. people leadership. And so that was, again, we didn't talk a ton about it, but when I left McKinsey, I really liked being part of McKinsey, but I felt like, you know, a path for me that led to leadership and a broader people leadership role of a team that I could keep together over the years seemed like a path that I'd really enjoy and be good at. So that's, that's one of the reasons that I ended up finding the advisory board and coming there.

What are One or 2 leadership principles you like to instill in emerging leaders? Because, uh, as I was mentioning this whole time we're talking, I think Advisory Board really became this factory for launching lots of CEOs. So there must have been one or 2 different principles that, that you were always, and the team, you know, instilling in people. Do you have a sense about what those might be?

Well, there's one that I always do for, um, early career leaders or people who are not leaders but will be leaders someday when you kind of look at their profile. And it's, um, I call it the shift from they to we. So, um, there's a time where you're sitting around in a company and top leadership is they, you know, they shouldn't have done this, how could they do that, you know, what are they going to do with my pay this year or whatever. You're just, you're talking about they. Um, and there comes a point in everyone's career who ends up being a leader where all of a sudden you realize it's we, not they. Like, oh, you know, that's actually something I should be doing something about. Like, I can actually influence that. And, you know, if I'm not happy where the company's going, that's on me. It's not on them. And when you make that shift, it changes everything. It creates accountability. It creates ownership. And I do think that's a really— if you start describing it that way, I'd say almost everyone remembers that point in their life where they kind of flip the switch on that. And once you do, then it actually is a dramatic impact on your performance and your ability to become a leader. So, that's the one I always talk about. I think the other one is just I'm a big believer in feedback. I like getting feedback. I mean, no one likes getting the developmental part of the feedback. But if you don't solicit feedback and give feedback, you're not sharing perspectives that are important to someone else's growth as a leader, and you're not getting other people's perspectives on how you can be a better leader. And if your goal is to lead people effectively, why wouldn't you want to hear from them about what's working and what's not working? And I find that there are a lot of people who just don't like feedback. They don't like giving it. They don't like receiving it. They're happy to never have that difficult conversation if it's, you know, sometimes they're difficult. But I'm kind of in the total opposite camp. And maybe that started because I had the opportunity to work at McKinsey. where that was just built into our culture, but I'm a big believer in that too.

Yeah, I think you're right. You're absolutely right on both of those. That whole they to we, I'd never heard it explained like that. Makes total, total sense. And I was just thinking the sooner in someone's tenure you can get them to be thinking we, the better. And that, yeah, the feedback, right? The higher, what I found in my career, the higher I went, the less feedback I received. The opposite of what you'd need and want, right?

Totally. You really have to work on it because people won't— if you don't welcome it, you're not going to get it once you're CEO or CIO from your department, right? Like, you're— they're not going to come tell you naturally. You have to be open to it.

Yes.

Um, and then, Ed, you know, one thing you said just about, um, advisory board having so many people out there, I'll tell you one story about that, which is when I was running the company, We never wanted people to leave. Like, I'd try like hell to keep good talent. You know, can we put you in a different role? Can we sculpt things? Can we— you need a little bit of time off and come back? Like, I think we always celebrated boomerangs. We had people who would leave and then come back to the company, and we celebrated that, had a bunch of them. So I was very much like, don't leave. But of course, as you get to be a big organization, we grew to like 4,000 people at some point. You know, you're— there's some natural attrition, even if you're doing a good job retaining people, of people leaving and going out into the industry. And I remember this moment, you know, I used to not like it when people left and feel like, okay, you know, they're kind of betraying us or, you know, why would they leave? I was out at JPMorgan and I was at a reception from what's now called Town Hall, but it was an Oxions reception. And I looked around and there were probably half advisory board people there, all at other companies. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to stop being upset about it. I'm going to start being proud. Like, look at all these people and look at what they're doing.

Yeah.

And from that moment forward, like, it's not like I still wanted people to leave or still didn't try to fight them if they left. I would always try to make a run at them. But I kind of, I guess, turned the corner on, I am really proud of having all these people out there. Like, that's a great thing. It's not a bad thing. And the value that that group of people is now providing throughout the industry is amazing. And the only thing I don't like about it now is I can't hire anybody from the advisory board because they're all doing great things. Like, you know, I'd love to get the gang back together, but I go through kind of everyone who was there, they're all on really great, really great paths and doing some amazing things. So I take a lot of pride in that, um, and satisfaction, and I'm glad I was able to turn the corner because for a while I didn't appreciate that. And in fact, it caused me, you know, angst to be like, oh, our people are now doing other stuff instead of working here. So that was a good evolution.

Yeah. And again, what I really appreciate, Robert, yeah, at first I was struck by the leadership thing. Again, you know, going through LinkedIn, all these people that one of the things that catapulted them into their new senior position was advisory board experience. But but the other thing I love about it is they are taking with them that spirit of generosity, that servant heart, that power of language, that whole culture with them. Most of them presuming are with them and and making change because again the It's almost like there's 2 different— they're complementary missions that these leaders are doing that you helped birth. And that is, yeah, doing great things for the company, which is hopefully transforming healthcare and saving people's lives, improving quality, improving revenues, decreasing costs, all the things that we all desire to do and help one another, but also the societal mission of helping other people get to new places that they ordinarily didn't have opportunities to get to serve in their communities, all that stuff. I don't discount that. That's why I wanted to bring it up. And again, a lot of it comes down to you and your team. So thank you for that impact that you've had in healthcare and society.

Well, thanks, Ed. I appreciate it. It's very kind.

Robert, this has been a fascinating conversation. We talked everything from Zac Brown Band. We talked about Colorado, my favorite state, probably swimming. I somehow knew you were swim captain before you revealed that, or co-captain. But then we talked a lot about advisory board, just the mojo there, the culture that was developed in a birthed all these amazing leaders. And some of the key things there were that spirit of generosity. I loved how it was articulated there, basically servant leadership, and then the power of language and how it enabled so much growth, not just for people personally, but for the communities in which you served and helping people on a personal level in their careers and who might not otherwise have received the opportunities that they did. And then we talked a lot more about leadership and all sorts of ideas, how to how to improve myself, including, uh, they to we and getting feedback. So even if you're not getting feedback from whoever you serve, make sure you ask for it and be sure to give it. Um, so anyways, a lot of different things. Um, I'll leave you with the last word. What did we miss or anything you want to double down on?

It's pretty comprehensive, Ed. So I, I think it's been a great discussion. Um, obviously it's really nice to catch up with you, and, um, it's been fun to to see what you've been up to lately. And I love the podcast. I'm gonna get them on my phone so I can start listening to them while I'm walking.

Yeah, no, thanks for being our guest. Yeah, and I also want to promote, uh, Radio Advisory. That's the podcast out of Advisory Board. Uh, Rachel Woods, one of the best out there. And, uh, so that's one of my go-tos as well.

So another example of someone who's doing great, um, even despite the transition. So I agree with you, that's a good one.

All right, well, that wraps up Digital Voices.

Thank you for listening to Digital Voices podcast with Ed Marx. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review. And most importantly, thanks again for listening.