Robert Gardner

Guiding conversations with community leaders.

In this podcast, we'll explore the human journey of leaders, their stories of humility, triumph, roadblocks and lessons learned. Come join us as we journey together and uncover the questions you've always wanted to know. This podcast is brought to you by the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce, perhaps providing resources, connections and belonging for business professionals.

And Rocket Space, an event and meeting venue in the heart of the East Valley with a full service four person podcast studio. All right, another episode of Guiding Grow Sarah. Here we go.

Hey.

I'm excited about today's show. We've got a great guest with us. I really don't know a lot about him other than I've read, so I can't wait to learn and understand and meet the real guy himself.

I can't wait to see the bromance that comes from this.

I don't. You keep saying that. I just don't.

It's happening.

It's already vibing. I can feel it myself.

It's true. It's happening.

All right, so today we have with us Robert Gardner. Ironically, Robert, I grew up in Gardner, Kansas. When I saw your last name, I was like, is he like the mayor of my town?

There we go.

It's happening.

I mean, even our.

Our priest at our hometown church was Father Gardner.

It was just like, you can call me Father Gardner for the rest of the series.

It's fine. Robert is the father of five, husband to one, CEO of two hospitals, and calls himself a barbecue extraordinaire. We're gonna dig into that today because I got some thoughts.

But before we do, rapid fire round.

Rapid fire.

Okay, rapid fire time. Here we go.

You ready? I'm ready.

Okay, first question. Morning beverage of choice.

It is gonna be whole milk, red top for me only cold, all the colors.

Ice cold.

With ice cubes.

No, no, no, no. Diluted. Disgusting.

How long does it take for you to get ready in the morning?

Well, my hair takes quite some time since we're going there. There is jelly. Yes, very jelly. Oh, probably all of 30 seconds.

Star wars or Star Trek, man?

Star Wars. Don't even.

Yep, good.

Name one thing you can't live without.

Sentimental. My wife and my bow.

Favorite color.

It's gonna be forest green.

What did your mom call you as a kid?

Bugs.

That's adorbs.

I bugged a lot of people, so I'll take it that way, but I'm pretty sure it came because I was annoying.

Favorite superhero?

Oh, that's going to be Hulk. I look a lot like him.

It's fine.

Green? No, just Ashley. Handsome and smart.

Okay, what song do you sing on karaoke night?

Probably ticks by Brad Paisley.

What about in the shower?

In the shower? Oh, that's gonna be like when he's washing his hair. Yeah, when I'm washing my hair, it's gonna be John Denver.

Gonna be a short song.

No, no, no. I will lather, rinse, repeat multiple times just to finish the song.

All right, when are you most productive? Morning, noon, or night?

Morning.

Favorite sports team?

Probably Arizona State.

I was gonna say don't say the Chiefs.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's Gantis over there. Here we go.

Town of Gilbert or. Or city of Gilbert.

It's town. Guys, come on.

Spender or Saver?

Both. Both.

You can't really.

Okay, yes you can.

We'll go there. Favorite holiday?

Christmas all the way.

Christmas sweaters. Do you prefer to work remotely or in person?

In person.

Jump into the end here. Glass half full or half empty?

Always full. Not even half.

Not even half.

I love that.

Overflowing.

Okay, thank you to Phoenix Mesa Gateway Airport for their support.

With non stop service to 60 plus cities, Gateway Airport makes traveling just plain easy.

Visit GatewayAirport.com for more information. So, dental school.

Yes, Dental school dropout.

Dental school dropout. Talk to me about that. How did you get into that? And then of course, the rest is the history here. Now I guess you're making history with it. But talk to me about that. How'd you get into that?

Yeah, dental school for me was always one of those things where I'm like, hey, look, it's a professional career. They get money, good work, life balance. They're thought of highly in the community. I thought that, yeah, let's go ahead and do this. The challenge of getting into dental school was also pretty exciting for me. The classes are hard, the test is hard, the interviewing skills are difficult. And eventually getting in was a little bit of a checkbox to say, look what I accomplished. But I quickly realized after that first year that, oh great, now I'm going to have to actually do this for the next 40 years of my life.

And.

And so a lot of people would ask me like, oh, was it the teeth? Was it the grossness of it? Was it the clinical aspect? Nothing to do with that. It was more the fulfillment for me. My brother in law is a dentist, my wife is a hygienist, my sisters are hygienists. I was around dentistry. Ironically, lawyers and dentists are kind of what I grew up with. And so I just assumed that it's either one of those two, and figured we were tapped out on the lawyer side, so let's go do the dentist route.

Do you actually like teeth?

I like brushing them, yeah. My own, though.

Like when your kids lose teeth. Are you the tooth fairy?

No, my wife is, yeah. But the real tooth fairy is the tooth fairy, of course. Yeah. She's the liaison at home for that. Yeah. Yeah. So dental school for me was more about the challenge of getting in than really any excitement about being a dentist. Being a business owner was kind of exciting for me, I guess you could say. And I was doing a joint program. It was the doctorate in dental surgery degree, and then it was also master's in healthcare administration. And in that first year, I quickly realized, yeah, I wasn't liking the clinical stuff, but I was loving healthcare. I think it's a meaningful industry, and I was liking the business side of it. And so naturally, I gravitated towards enjoying the MHA master's in healthcare administration again. And we made the difficult decision to drop out of dental school, and we were going to the University of Colorado. Native of Arizona, my wife from Arizona. So that was a big move for us in and of itself. And, you know, I remember telling folks we wanted to drop out. And the two that are memorable, three that are memorable for me, were, number one. The dean of the dental school looked at me like I was a crazy man. Like, what's your deal? Are you not doing well in class? Are your grades not where they need to be? He even went so far to ask was I getting bullied or harassed. Like, something's got to be driving you out, because no one of their own free mind would ever make this decision. And I think that really took him for a loop. And then my dad, he said, you know, is Lindsay on board, my wife? And I said, yep. He said, cool. Proud of you. Do what you got to do. And then this one has kind of stuck with me. His twin brother. Love the man. He sent me an email basically saying, think about your wife and children and the mistake that you're potentially going to be making here. You know, there's really only two ways to make a career in life, and it's being an attorney or a dentist. Yeah, I guess you throw in a doctor, too, there, so you can have three. And I'll be honest, it rubbed me the wrong way, but it also lit a massive fire under me to say, bring it on. I will prove you wrong. And I know he meant zero ill will towards it. I think he was just here's some advice from your uncle who loves you and cares about you.

Little did he know, ignited the fire.

Yeah. Unquenchable fire kind of a thing. So, yeah, we made the decision to come back home and, yeah, very hard.

And you say we because you married your high school sweetheart.

I did. I did, yeah. Lindsay is my high school sweetheart. We met in Mesa, went to Mount View High School, met our junior year, dated our senior year. I left for two years to serve a mission for the church and was in Poland during that time. And, you know, we did the write letters back and forth kind of gig and got home, and less than six weeks later, we were married. And, yeah, we were in that decision together. That was definitely not one where I just woke up one day and said, I'm done. We had a lot of conversations about it, and she was incredibly supportive and obviously has been ever since. So without that, there's. I probably would have stayed in dental school and been miserable and not loving life.

You wonder how many people actually do because they're afraid to take the risk.

Big time.

Change course big time.

You know, it's funny you bring that up. I have since obviously connected with a couple of my classmates from. From dental school, and one of my good, good friends who I did a lot of my classes with, moved in just down the street from us. And I was asking him, you know, just the superficial questions about, okay, how much debt are you in? And all that kind of stuff. And he's just. You can tell he's not a happy camper. And then when I asked him, okay, well, now that you're done and you're officially a dentist, like, at least you can have that element of, this is exciting, and I don't want to turn this onto, like, a bashing dentist podcast. I love him, but, yeah, you could definitely tell he was not happy. And there was even an element of jealousy, like, oh, man, I wish he didn't say it, but you could sense that there was a. I wish that I had made a similar decision. You know, his dad's a pilot. I really want to be a pilot. I don't know why I didn't. And so whether it's healthcare administration or a pilot or who knows what, I think if you're not passionate about what you want to do and you just stick with it because you feel like you have invested a decent amount to get there, there is no amount of investment that can make me say, if I'm miserable, I might as well keep doing it.

Yeah, I'm keeping a scorecard. Up here, by the way of, like, similarities that we, Robert and I have. So my wife's name is Lindsay. Check, check. Okay. I don't know how I'm a score. The gardener thing, there's got to be a similarity there. But for sure. So we're on two so far. Okay.

I married my high school sweetheart.

Okay. There's a lot of checks.

Okay. One for you.

We'll give you that.

I think you're a really good example of someone who has chased happiness and converted that into your professional life and your personal life. And it's such a great example. And your success, I think, is attributed in many ways to the fact that you just chased what you knew would bring you joy regardless of outside influences.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. That was not an easy decision. But when you strip it away and kind of look at it from that framework, it actually, ironically, now, hindsight's 2020 was a very easy decision. And it was what's going to make me fulfilled, what's going to make me happy, what's going to bring joy to me, therefore, to my relationship with my spouse, my kids, my community. And yeah, if cool I was making some good money or felt like I was an entrepreneur, had a couple of different business practices or whatnot, that would all be superficial compared to the feelings of joy and passion and excitement. Yeah, no doub.

Almost an old soul. Which I can say because you're actually really young.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny you bring that up too, because I sometimes feel like I was born in a different generation because I relate very much to my dad and mom in the 50s and kind of just their values and morals and work ethic and just simplicity and outlook on life and kind of an ever optimist kind of a mindset. And it's funny you bring it up because one of my biggest pet peeves is getting lumped in with this stereotypical millennial generation you that we love to bash on so frequently and especially at work. You know, I'll be sitting around a group with my peers, and obviously I'm quite younger. And there inevitably will be a comment about this new workforce and generation and oh my gosh, hello. Thank you very much. And there's one calling in particular that no matter how many of those subtle hints or even just overtly saying, yeah, I'm right here, she's still, and again, love the lady, but she's still very much a millennial basher. And so it' funny, I used to get quite offended and now it's just Rolls off the.

Yep, there you go.

Right off that slick head. Off the slick head.

There you go. Hey, so I'm glad you brought family because one of the questions we asked you in our survey was when did you know you were destined to do great things? And you brought up a little bit about your father.

Yes.

Yeah, we were just talking about how.

Much of an influencer. Tell me.

Talk a little bit about how he influenced you in this journey and now even.

Yeah, and I'm going to try not to get emotional on this one. I love my dad. Absolute hero. And I know that's a bit of a stereotype for most of the unique factor of my dad is I'll just kind of just jump right into it. He's blind and he has been since he was 8 years old. And he's got two brothers who are also blind. He comes from a family of nine kids. He and his twin are seven and eight. And then, and those are all eight boys and then one little sister. Grew up in rural Arizona, southeast Arizona, pretty poor and father didn't have really any sort of education. Hard working man, owned some local businesses in the community, but for all intents and purposes were not well off. And by the time that my dad kind of came around and realized that, okay, we have another blind boy in the family, a lot of the early resources that were dedicated to figuring out what happened were already spent on the first two. And so it was pretty much chalked up as, yeah, you got another one, basically lock him up. He's not really going to be able to contribute to society. So the best we can offer you is just love him but just basically hope he doesn't procreate. And I didn't realize a lot of this until I was in my early kind of profession. And so I just grew up with a dad who was normal. I played ball with my dad, I did Frisbee with my dad. You know, I remember getting my driver's license and my dad jokingly saying something to the effect of congratulations, you've done the one thing that I haven't been able to do and only legally, but I guarantee you he can drive better than me. He's got a sense of direction like nobody. And so to give some history of my dad though, and what he's done and the reason why it's been so impactful for me is, yeah, he, he grew up in an era where there was no ada, there was no protections, there was a lot of blatant discrimination and struggled with self esteem and self worth as you can imagine as a poor blind kid who thought he was going to be this fumbling, bumbling Mr. Magoo who kind of sold pencils on the corner and begged or something, that's kind of what he thought he was going to be destined for. And it wasn't until his mother kind of came in and said, you know, that's not what we're going to do. We're going to disregard all that advice. And his dad, obviously was right on board with it all. But really, his mother was the driving influence for him to say, you can be great and you are great. And he had this picture hanging up in our house that I always thought was funny. And I thought it was actually strange, a little weird. And it was an art project that he had submitted to the Greeley County Fair. My dad's from Duncan, Arizona, so Greeley County Fair, when he was, I believe, in sixth grade. And it's a canvas piece of cloth and just regular crayons. And he had drawn, freehanded, a horse and kind of the bust of a horse. And it's actually pretty impressive. And in the frame is the blue ribbon of winning first prize at the Greeley County Fair. It didn't dawn on me until much later in my life, and I'm like, he did that blind. And I couldn't do that even tracing it that good. And I don't know if the judges got together and said, hey, there's this blind kid. Let's give him a boost of confidence. Let's give him the blue ribbon, or if he legitimately won, I mean, as Greeley, and it's a population of five. So maybe he really did. I don't know. But regardless, what it did for him was give him a little bit of that motivation for I can be something in life and I can win, and this is evidence that I can win. And it was always just in our basement at home in Mesa. I remember when I first got in with Banner Health, realizing that, you know what, that picture is pretty meaningful. And so since fast forward today, it's in my office and it's right there as soon as people walk in and I get more comments about what is that than anything else. And I tell him the story that, you know, that was the subconscious reminder to my dad that he can be great. And it is now serving that same reminder for me.

That's cool.

So anyway, he struggled in high school, did well, though, and went to college, graduated from college, graduated from law school and became a successful attorney for Arizona Public Service APS and was their in house counsel where 33, 35 years, retired early, got acreage in Mesa and, you know, raises animals and did that all throughout. And just, again, you never get that sense. And so the reason I bring this up is I never once grew up with a dad who had a chip on his shoulder that said and looked me in the eyes like, the world's gonna push you down, son, but you're gonna prove him wrong, just like I did. He just lived life incredibly humbly and grateful for all of the blessings that obviously he had been given. But you could tell that it wasn't just handed to him. The guy worked hard and overcame a lot. And so that from a very early age was kind of just received to me through osmosis, if you will, that I'm cut from the same cloth. And while I may not have those blatant discriminations that he had to overcome. Yeah, there's going to be an element of. In anything people looking to say, I don't want you to be successful. And whether it's an email from my uncle or whatever it is, it's. I'm going to prove you wrong. Because I know that my DNA, my blood overcomes. And that's been the journey of life for me. And so, yeah, from a very early age, even if I didn't really realize until much earlier on, I knew that this is. That there's good things that I can do in life.

I love that you have that painting in your office. That's so cool. So two more checkboxes. Are you ready?

Yes.

Dad lost his right eye.

Oh, my gosh.

When he was 14 from a gun accident. He's one of 10 children, so.

Look at this.

My dad is legally blind. I'm not sure if this is.

Oh, my gosh. Okay. This is a competition. I like these. Yes.

Four, two. Sorry, you're out.

That's fine.

That's really cool, though. So I love the motivation in that and the story you had there for. For how your father's influenced you in that regard and that you're drawing it in today even too.

Right?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I'm curious how you translate that then, into the workplace. Because you are a humble leader. It's evident in everything you do. And also, even with your own kids, how do you make sure that your teens and your home team as well feel that level of. You know, you said that your. Your dad sort of gave it to you through osmosis. How do you do that? How do you translate to them?

Yeah, I'm probably A little more overt about it than, than my dad was. And I'm not sure if that's just because I really want to make sure I'm not messing up for my kids. But I'm also very careful to draw that balance in line between not being that dad who's going to step in and say like, yeah, here's the silver spoon. You've got everything going for you in life. I've got connections here, here and here. We're going to make sure you get into these schools and you're going to have these jobs lined up. But I do talk a lot about potential and realizing potential. And I usually frame it in my own kind of first person sense that it's not like I've reached my max potential. And I don't even know if you know, as an individual there is a max potential. The sky's the limit, if you will. It's the cliche of I'd rather have you as kids aim high and miss than, you know, aim low and hit right on. And that's kind of the mentality that I try to father with. And ironically it's the same thing that I try to lead with at work, that as an organization, as a team, we are destined for greatness. And there are a lot of metaphorical obstacles and discriminations, if you will, that are gonna get in our way. They're gonna try to keep us in the status quo. But as long as we focus on that North Star, you know, that, that mission critical initiative, the rest of the stuff is gonna come together. And so I really like to focus on, you know, to use that Simon Sinek language, the why. And as a dad, I try to focus on why and work as a leader. I try to focus on the why, knowing that the how and the what, it's gonna come together. But ironically, I think many individuals, too many leaders, spend 95% of their time telling people what to do and maybe how to do it. And no one is connected to anything more meaningful. And we lose focus on the why.

It's just not something you hear in a highly regulated field like healthcare.

Yeah. And I think to that point that's why healthcare is so broken. If I'm being frank and honest, I think it's because we scientists and type A kind of personalities, evidence based practices, all believe that the way to keep people safe and have a good experience is stand here, do it here, cut here, sew here, this long, this long. Everything is incredibly scripted. And you see the evidence, the proof is in the pudding. It's not. It's one of the most unsafe environments. We have constant issues and challenges in health care. And again, I don't want to be specific to any one particular location, but it's well known as an industry. You know, there's all sorts of statistics that kind of correlate and compare that. If the safety ratings in healthcare were applied to the airline industry, for example, we'd have like, five crashes at Sky Harbor a day. You know, like, it's just. It's crazy. And so I do think it is a little strange or ironic that it is so scripted and it is so regulated, and there is a very difficult time to break that cyclone mold, but yet it's the very definition of insanity that we all quote all the time. And I just kind of pause and laugh. And I think a lot of my success is because I'm actually not just falling victim to the same kind of rat race over and over and over again. And, you know, so people will look and say, wow, wow, like, what are you doing differently? I'm just doing differently. It's not that the one thing I'm doing differently is the thing. It's just I'm asking those questions. I am challenging the status quo. I am focusing on the why. And I'm trying to inspire and cast a vision as opposed to, again, try to tell people that the turnaround time in this particular room needs to be under 30 minutes, because studies have proven that patients have a better experience at the turnaround times under 27 minutes.

Well, and it's also money driven too, right?

Absolutely.

Not just the experience, it's the cost.

Yeah.

So you don't fit the mold. No, but clearly somebody before you didn't fit the mold because they brought you into the picture.

Yeah, And I'm glad you brought that up, because from a gratitude and humility perspective, speaking about Banner Health in particular, this was an organization that absolutely took a chance on me, you know, so I talked about dropping out of dental school, and, you know, where did I go from there? All I knew about healthcare was teeth. So I went to work for a big corporate dentist, pun intended. I cut my teeth in basic business, you know, learning how to do profit and loss, learning expense management, learning understanding insurances and regulations and how doctors work and all the challenges of a front office and a back office. And it was great experience. The real great experience, though, for me was it was backed by a big equity firm. And if you're unfamiliar with those firms, it's sink or swim. It's EBITDA's the Holy Grail. It's putting dots on a map. We're going to grow as quickly as possible and there's not a lot of time for the, I don't know, the bureaucracy of decision making. And so ironically, I was given a lot of really cool experiences that I wouldn't have had if I went directly to a very large integrated delivery system like a Banner Health, like a dignity like any of the others around the area. And so I was, I was given a lot of opportunities to wear some pretty cool hats. Yeah, and I did that for a number of years. And private equity is pretty, pretty standard in the fact that they, they, they sell you pretty quick. So they sold. I went to work for another company that was in health care that was also backed by a private equity firm, did that for a little bit and did it one more time. And Banner in 2017 was going through a bit of a reinvention. They thought, you know what, we are very hospital centric and we need to be more consumer focused. So they came up with some new values, a new mission statement, new purpose statement, and they realized that we can't just put words on a piece of paper. We need to go get leaders who can actually help us live this mission. And they went and looked for individuals like me who knew healthcare, could speak the language, maybe weren't fluent in hospitals, but knew enough to kind of be dangerous, but more importantly had a different skill set that didn't fit that mold. To your point, Sarah. And they brought me in as the chief operating officer for Banner Gateway here in Gilbert. And then on that campus is also the MD Anderson Cancer center, which is one of the largest cancer centers in the Southwest. And they absolutely took a chance. I had zero experience and I know this sounds so conceited and I'm probably going to regret saying it so edited out of the drum roll.

Here we go. Here we go.

But I kind of bring it up to the point of Michael Jordan was a rookie once upon time. Once upon a time he had zero NBA experience. And somebody took a chance and said, I recognize the potential. And you see that obviously well past Michael Jordan. And the sports analogy is just an easy and clean one for me because anytime that there's an NFL, NBA, mlb, whatever, a number one draft pick, potential people spend big money and a lot of behind the scenes brokering deals to get that draft pick, even though technically speaking they've got zero experience in the professional industry. And I wish that more organizations would do that. And as a leader, I have absolutely tried to pay it Forward. And when you look at the direct reports that I have on my team or that I've worked with over the time at Banner in particular, I've been very intentional about finding those individuals who can help us meet the mission, knowing that they may not have the experience we're looking for, but they will absolutely fit the mold of leadership that we're looking for.

Yeah, you got to do us a favor now. When you get back your office, next time you're signing something, just kind of look at the camera and stick your.

Tongue out a little.

Give us that Michael Jordan look. You know, when you're doing your signing.

I got the hairstyle.

I don't think it's conceded. I think it's a difference in self belief. And I think sometimes that's what holds people back. They have the ability, they just don't have the belief in themselves.

I like that. It's a great way of putting it.

So five kids.

Five kids.

What's the ages?

Nine, seven, five, three, one and done.

Oh, and done.

That's what they all say.

No, this is official. This looks official.

Okay.

Yes.

All right, Good, good. Did you guys always want to have a family?

We did.

Okay, so this is planned.

Yeah, absolutely. And we. I mean, I came from a family of six kids. I'm number five. My wife Lindsey came from five kids. She's number four. So we always knew that we wanted to have a bigger family, but certainly knew that there was going to be a cap on that. And so as you can tell, all two years apart, very planned, very intentional. Like, my life, it wasn't like, oh, let's just see what happens. You know, it's. Yeah, no, we want to have kids. We want to have them relatively close together so that they can have those close relationships and be friends, give it a little bit of space so we can have some sanity and then be done and go raise the kids and kind of instill in that next generation the things that were instilled in us and then get on with our life and say, hey, get out of the house. Let us go now. Enjoy, you know, time where it's just us. So, yeah, it was kind of one of those, you know, get in, get out, and get on with life.

How do your kids see you? I mean, you don't really know, but if you were to guess their lens, what do you think they see?

You know, quite literally, especially with COVID they don't see me nearly enough. And that's. That's unfortunate. It is getting better when they are with me and I want to be clear and frank and even clarify. The intentionality of being present when I'm home is very important to me. And going back to my dad, one of the big lessons that I learned very quickly from him was when my dad was home. As a very busy attorney for a large organization in Arizona, never once did I ever feel like my dad wasn't home. He worked, and he worked hard, but he would go to the office early. He would come home at the regular time, but when he was home, it was disconnected. And when he was on vacation with us, and he went on vacation with us, it was, dad is with us. He's not off on the bench, on the phone, on the computer. And so I again received that message, and that's exactly how I try to be. So the skinny version of that answer is, I think they see me as a dad who's involved in their life, who loves them, who is present for him. You know, a little bit of guilt is these dank smartphones and everything else makes it a lot harder than I think, my dad and growing up, who didn't have all that in his pocket all the time. So that takes some conscious effort to do. But nonetheless, it is absolutely a strategy of mine that when I'm home, is home. And so they see me as the guy that's gonna be on the ground rolling around with them, who's taking him out camping, getting dirty, and who's gonna show up to, you know, their performances and be cheering for them and let them express themselves how they want to express themselves. And if that's different than the way that I grew up or different than my interest, then so be it. Like, game on, kid. Let's go have fun.

Let's do it. Let's have fun. I'm assuming that Lindsay's gonna have a similar kind of place in your spot here as far as where you spend your time.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, ironically, though, she's out of town in Hawaii without me, so it's a little rough at the garden house right now being Mr. Mom.

And yet you're with us.

Congratulations.

That's amazing.

Thanks for skipping your Hawaiian vacation for us.

No, no, I wasn't invited. I be clear to that one. I was not invited to that.

I was talking about his five kids at home, and he's not.

Yes, yes. Yeah, I did. I did coordinate the babysitting for that. Absolutely. Yeah. Lindsay, it's. It's cliche to say, but, you know, best friend, you know, better half all the above. Love her to death. And the time that we spend together is a lot of fun, whether it's just chilling at home, doing projects, you know, Netflix and Oreos for me, and probably sipping on water for her, you know, and she's making fun of me, or it's going on big, grand adventures. She's a big hiker, Grew up in that environment. Her mom's, you know, 60 times hike the Grand Canyon in Kilimanjaro. So that's kind of in her blood. So she's definitely let me go grab, you know, a backpack and hike. It's pretty funny, actually. I like the outdoors. I like hunting and just got back from an elk trip, and I have now a camper trailer, you know, a fifth wheel trailer. And Lindsay makes fun of me all the time. She is a purist. You know, she prefers a tent on some hard rock somewhere. Making fun of me for sleeping in a trailer. So we were gonna ask you that question.

Our rapid fire was camping or glamping.

So, yeah, it's. So here's the deal. When I'm back to spending and buying, it's both. I love the conveniences of it, especially if it's gonna be a longer trip, but I'll rough it with anybody. Like, game on. Yeah. I'll go out there if you want to have a challenge for sleeping in the woods and some wilderness survival kit. Yes. Let's go do it. Let's do it.

Yeah, you lost me.

Yeah, I could see you fading out over there.

So you wrote in your information here, all humans long for a mission.

Yes.

Talk to me about that.

Yeah, I don't remember if I read that somewhere or it's just kind of innately stuck with me. But I am a firm believer that as individuals, human beings, we're all attracted to meaningful missions. And I brought this up in a leadership conference the other day at work. And maybe it's a couple weeks now at this point, but. But I said, if that's inherently true and don't just agree with me, but do you agree with me? And everybody's like, yeah, absolutely. Like, think about the Pat Tillman foundation or any kind of cause that you have that you're like, I subscribe to, that I pay money to, that I participate in. And it's all based off of the mission. Something behind that is meaningful. We're attracted to that. You have the why again. And ironically, healthcare has that innately built into who they are. And the unfortunate thing is, we've commoditized the business element of healthcare so much so that we forget that mission. And so I don't know if I brought it up in the, in the response, but I can bring it up now. Newton's third law basically is, you know, for every action there's an opposite and equal reaction.

Right.

So if as humans we're naturally attracted to something meaningful, the opposite is we're unattracted to meaningless things. And I fundamentally believe that as a leader, the number one thing that you can do to kind of get a performance from your team, whether that's financial, whether that's morale, HR metrics, whether that's customer satisfaction, whatever, give them the meaning behind what they do, give them a meaningful mission, let them know what that is, cast that vision, explain that why, and then give them a very specific role to play and help them to connect that dot into why that's so important.

Ownership.

Ownership, yeah. Let them know that you're actively contributing to that. Because when you don't, what ends up happening is they feel like, I'm just a corporate peon. I'm FTE number 10,302. You know, I'm not Sarah Watts anymore, I'm not Ben, I'm not Robert. And so they become disengaged. Absolutely. Yep. And so that's the meaning behind it. It's when you have a mission and it's a meaningful one. Because don't get me wrong, there's a lot of missions out there that are not meaningful. Take a lot of financial driven, you know, chase the dollar in the moment kind of things. And yeah, that could be what your mission is. And we're going to go do it and you can get some short term gains, but long term, like you're going to have some turnover. There's going to be some people that say, yeah, it was fun, we did it, but where's the substance behind that? And so when I say a mission, make sure it's meaningful. Because if you don't and you're not describing that on a regular basis, you're inherently just feeding into Newton's third law and you're giving somebody a reason to be unattracted to the you, to the company, and eventually they're gonna go bounce, they're gonna go find a place that can fulfill that mission for them.

What's your serious and important mission? What's your.

In life?

Yeah, yeah.

To help others reach their potential. I know it sounds kind of weird or simple, but it is absolutely realizing that there is so much potential and good that can happen from a collective body of individuals. And unfortunately, I think Sarah, to Your point? We're either scared to just unleash our true potential because we think someone's not gonna like it, or we may not realize that we have it ourselves. And you need someone to kind of light that emotional energy in you. And as a leader, one, you give their permission to be your authentic self and unleash the beast. Right? That's the Hulk analogy for me. That's why I love Hulk so much. And then two, to allow them to be in an environment that fosters that creativity, that fosters the. Let's push off the norms. Let's challenge the status quo. And as a leader, if you can help to light that emotional energy in someone else to see in them something that they don't see in themselves, my gosh, the potential from that is unlimited. And so by one, giving the permission to. If you already know you have the potential, just live it, go for it. Take the handcuffs off, if you will. Or then two, help them to find it themselves. That, to me, is the number one reason why every leader should come to work every single day, or every parent should wake up and say, what am I going to do for my kids today?

What do you think is your highest and best version of yourself?

Oh, man, I think I'm living it again, how much influence I can have over, whether it's in the work life with x amount of FTEs and this promotion or that promotion and a broader sphere of influence that's actively happening. I'm currently doing that and living that. And we'll continue to metaphorically climb that ladder, not for the sake of the title and the money and the prestige, but again, back to a broader group of influence. So if my sphere right now is 3,000 employees that I can kind of feel like I can wrap my arms around and say, this is what I'm all about. And together we can accomplish this. But if I could do that on a scale of 10,000 employees and 50,000 employees, my gosh, that's what gets me jazzed to say, okay, yeah, I'm gonna go climb the ladder in air quotes here.

That's your fire now?

That's my fire now. Absolutely. Yeah. That's the one that's lit, and I am going for it. And I think that's where sometimes people can get a little scared of Robert because they look at it and say, well, he seems pretty gung ho about just climbing the ladder. And back to the stereotypical millennial, right? It's, ooh, am I putting two and two together now that he's doing that for One self serving kind of need. And I've now just forgotten all that and said people will think what they want to think. Who I am is absolutely the kind of person that gets that level so that I can explain that vision, get the meaning behind it and just get people excited.

While we conclude here, I now see the parallels between your passion and barbecue. Yes. Because obviously it has potential. Yes, it does. And it takes nurturing low and slow. It takes a lot of love and time right.

To get that right.

So I get it now.

I get why it's your hobby.

It happened.

Yes.

Bromance.

Yep. It might have love at first sight.

Well, hey, we're so thankful you came in and talked to us today. It's been great to get to know you. I loved all these stories you shared with the passion you shared and from your family to the work and how you manage all that together. Definitely intriguing.

My pleasure, Robert.

I have no doubt you really will do this. You will change the way we think of healthcare. If anyone can do it, it is you.

You guys are kind. Thank you.

Guiding Growth Conversations with.

Ben Let me ask you a question. How do you see other community members being involved in this podcast?

This is going to be a great opportunity for so many people in the community to have a chance to be heard if they want to tell their story or if they just want to be part of this journey with us and help sponsor in a way that helps bring more people to the table with us. So I think there's many opportunities at hand. Whether you want to again be on the show, reach out to us, let us know what your story is and how you think you could be part of it. We'd love to hear from you. Reach out, let us know and we'll see if we can make that connection.