Advaita Health Podcast

From Hustle to Human: Rethinking Growth and Purpose

• Tripp Johnson • Season 5 • Episode 15

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What happens when your strategy, your soul, and your spreadsheet don’t align? 

In this episode of Open-Source Health, Tripp and Marcus unpack what it means to make conscious trade-offs—in business, in leadership, and in life. They reflect on a recent offsite, where the Advaita Health team wrestled with hard decisions about hiring, investment, and what to prioritize as the company matures. But this conversation isn’t just about money—it’s about meaning. 

They dive into the tensions between striving and contentment, personal growth and organizational demands, and why “doing what you’re inclined to do” may be the most sustainable strategy of all. Along the way, you’ll hear reflections on jiu-jitsu, nonduality, psychological safety, and how flourishing starts with the people delivering care—not just those receiving it. 

If you're a leader, clinician, or simply a human being wondering how to align your values with your work, this one's for you. 

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Tripp Johnson

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  • Website: https://www.trippj.com/

Mm-hmm. Well, here we go. We missed a week. We were like ahead and then we ran out of content. I know it's pretty remarkable given everything that's kind of going on. You know, you're back in the States now, you're back in the saddle, you're in your entrepreneurial malaise and figuring some stuff out, trade-offs, all that. can always just talk. Man, it was good. It was really good actually. um My family's a really easy... group to vacation with because there's not a lot of strong nostalgia or attachment or idea of how things are supposed to go. So it always just ends up being like a, we have a central location. We all kind of come and go as we please, do what we want. And for me, that meant a lot of long walks on the beach, listening to podcasts and walking the dogs and hanging out, reading. So it's great. Nice. Yeah, man. How about you? How was the first week back? Yeah, I missed you. First week back was, well, the first week back, I felt like it was great. We had a really good, we had a couple of like really good offsights got like, I think a lot of clarity we've been. I feel like we've always been juggling so many priorities. And then like, even just from a, you know, from my seat, it's like, we've tried to execute on so many good theoretical things. having a good culture, you know, having a real value proposition for people and making money is usually not been like talked about enough. And now as we're professionalizing and the type of people you want to bring in the organization who can solve the problems that we need to solve and et cetera. mean, so much does just come back to money. I mean, it's just the medium of exchange. It's just the way you kind of normalize things. So even if you don't want to talk about money, when you're talking about how we're going to invest or how, you know, how we're going to grow and mean, invest in terms of team members getting, you know, uh, more training or the experiences that they want, not just the, you know, how's the business investing for growth? Um, the only way to like kind of normalize decisions is, is through the lens of money. Uh, so I think we did a good job getting, you know, on the same page in terms of finance, the first day and then the second day, I feel like we, We've really kind of ironed out our roadmap and filled in some of the gaps that we have just from an organizational management perspective, or at least we've identified everything that needs to be filled in. So that was really good. And then uh this is week two, Thursday, week two, and I'm fucking over it. ah You know, just one of those weeks where you just deal with things you just don't want to have to deal with and... uh As opposed to being I'm not uh beating myself up. I'm not angry at other people. I'm just thinking like, this is not what I want to, you know, I don't want to be dealing with some of these problems. And um I have the ability to affect that. So what do I need to change so that I'm, not doing things I don't enjoy doing at work ultimately. Yeah, that's such an interesting tension to sort of abide in, Like I think I frequently swing between this, like I wanna grind, become a better leader, become a better cog in the machine of whatever, not even necessarily here, but just in society, like how do you earn more? How do you make more? How do you... And so I have probably deeply rooted in childhood sort of like financial insecurities that are never reasonable, They're never these like reasonable sort of things, but like every objective measure, I've got this phenomenal life, right? Like a little vacation for a week, you come back, you have a house, you have a dog, you have a wife, you have a kid, have all this like amazing, cool stuff, right? so... it becomes really interesting. Like, man, is this enough? And it's like, well, yeah, it is enough. But then that's held in tension with this sort of need to improve or get better or work at something. And I think that's just a tension I have to resolve, I have to hold within myself. I'm just not someone that's ever been able to go along indefinitely. I've always gotta be trying and get better at something. And I've always found that like the hobbies and things that I get interested in are the things that never really have any end, right? Like you're always playing on the margins. You're always getting a little bit better incrementally here, ah all that sort of stuff. But that's always held in tension with like, man, I have enough, but what am I striving for? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the reflection for me, you know, in the past few days, especially has just been like, know exactly what I like doing moment to moment. And, and I just want to do more of that stuff. You know, I'm not saying I'm not willing to make sacrifices. think just life is full of things you don't love doing. But I also think like, uh, we are fed a narrative that we have to do tons and tons of things we don't like. Um, And that we're always doing things for some sort of outcome in the future. And, and I think again, like there's, is one of those paradoxes where it's like going to the gym, right? You know, if you, if you don't have a workout routine, going to the gym sucks. Um, it takes a certain level of time to gain mastery and feel like it can be fun. And then all of a sudden, like, that's the thing that you actually want to do because you just want to do it. It's not just because you're going to feel better later. I'm so in this head space right now. I had this really profound experience that, know, profound for me, experience like this, you know, really cool moment of just things that like sublime moment. Last week I had a teammate and student of mine that I've been coaching in Jiu-Jitsu and he's a guy that's... worked really hard on himself. He got sober, he lost a lot of weight, he's got a family, he kind of had a falling out with jujitsu for a couple of different reasons and he slowly got back into it. He's been coming to a couple of my classes and he's been doing privates with me and he's gotten pretty good. And he went to a tournament and he actually broke a guy's foot in a submission attempt. He felt bad about it, but he was ecstatic because it was like his best performance he'd ever had. And there was this degree of mastery that I realized I've sort of hit with my ability to coach and teach and bring people along and some sort of, know, and this thing that's pretty arbitrary, It's just this whatever pursuit, it doesn't inherently mean anything other than what it means to the person. But there was this degree of... oh mastery that I was able to sort of exercise that felt like, holy shit, and everything else in my life, where I could feel like a failure or I'm lagging or I'm not doing well or I need to do more or whatever. There was this remarkable sense of respite that I had talking to him where it's like, wait, this is my domain right now. Whatever this thing is, this small thing is my domain where I don't actually have to think and I can operate and... people get better as a result and I feel better and it's just something I enjoy doing. But the path to getting there, it's just been like, you know, broken shoulders, ribs, ankle, all this sort of stuff, losing, winning, losing, winning, losing, all that sort of stuff. And then you get to this place where you're like, wait a second, I have some wisdom or something that I can offer and this thing feels much more like a flow state. And I... And so the irony in this, think is you're right, right? Like we're always told that we need to be grinding, everything should suck. Like you're just gonna have to overcome. And there's an element of that that I think is sort of true, but I think it's probably a good exercise for most people to take time to reflect on what is the, like where's the destination that you're actually trying to get to? What master does this like? failure or grinding serve, right? Cause we can fall into this reflex of I need to earn more, I need to work more, I need to do more. And then all of that is just, playing with these constructs and ideas and it's ultimately like, what do you like doing? Right? And if the suffering has a why or purpose behind it or the striving, it's pretty, know, then there's a joy that can happen in that, right? Like it can be contextualized in some sort of way that it's meaningful, right? Like it becomes a very worthwhile trade off. Yeah, I think, uh you know, before teeing up our main section of trade-offs, ah I would just say one of the things I always encourage people who are in the job market or thinking about switching jobs to think about is, I think most jobs are the two main components of it. Do you believe in the mission? Do you care about, you know, what the company is doing or that you see some purpose to what you're doing? And then do you like the day-to-day, the actual tasks associated with your job? I think most people, if it's one of the two, you're pretty happy, you know, like that's good enough. But when all of a sudden you don't believe in the mission, it's not serving your life and you don't like the tasks, it's just time to look for something else. So there's always that kind of balance. Yeah, agreed. You don't have the segue queued up, don't have the noise. Like in, yeah. I just... I'm out of practice. I'm out of practice. I'm sorry. I'm sorry Oh, so today we're going to talk about trade offs. And I think this topic came up, I posted something on on sub stack about trade offs and the idea that we need to make conscious trade offs. And the what I brought it back to was, I hate talking about money, whether that's with my wife and talking about like what we're supposed to be spending or saving at home, or whether it's at work. oh I want to grow a business, you know, in theory, there's an impact that we're hoping to achieve. And all of this money obviously matters, but it's just not a fun topic for me. And the way that I like to make this approachable is that trade-offs are just your strategy for getting what you want. And so ultimately, instead of talking about just money, it's like, you know, what decisions do we need to make? so that we're aligned with what we want to be doing and the um goals that we're hoping to achieve. Yes, I think that's a. wasn't, that was me trying to tee us up. I don't know. I didn't know where to start. We didn't really, you know, plan this too well. So that's my opening volley on how I think about trade-offs. No, a couple of things, right? So first thing is I'm loving this like a phase of reluctant reflective entrepreneur, right? Like uh I think you're Substack writing right now. I'm, I know I run the risk of sounding too much like a fan boy on it, but I genuinely enjoy it, right? Like I think it's, I think these are really interesting and useful reflections, right? Like, um, Well, hold on just real quick, because I would just want to ask, and I know I sent something that's not live yet earlier, but uh I've got a couple recent posts about this, you know, just feeling this tension about is, is this entrepreneurial grind really serving, you know, what I want to be doing in life ultimately, and I, know, it's an unresolved question to some extent. But I'm very curious how it affects you as like me being the CEO of the organization. you seeing me kind of publicly wrestle with the idea that like, I'm not uh solely focused on the mission of the company, right? Because I think like, I think like there is in our hustle culture, capitalism, like, you know, we're supposed like I'm a CEO, like I am supposed to be about the mission, our vision, our values, and like, you know, to hell with everything else. But that's just not authentic to like what I'm experiencing in life right Yeah. man, I'll feed you baby bird. uh I'll tell you exactly how it hits me. Like I actually find it to be a really humanizing thing, right? Like there's, uh I think you, you you have a capacity to grind and work in a way that, uh that can be intimidating, right? Like, and it's, it's a sort of thing. where I've talked about this before on the podcast, but I often look externally and I look at other people and what they're doing and I see this, it's so easy to just fall into that. I'll use the whole hustle porn stuff, right? Like you see these people that are just, they're grinding away and it's like, I just made bonus, I got this, I do this. Like you gotta hustle, you gotta hustle, you gotta hustle. And it's so easy to fall into this illusion that that there's just some innate value in hustling and grinding. And oftentimes for someone like me, man, I have a handful of interests and things that I really value. uh this last year for me has been a lot of coming to terms with what is it that I'm actually value most in life. And it really boils down to like four to five things. But when there's this constant hum of I should be doing more, should, like this is frivolous, I shouldn't be doing this, I should be trying to make more, I should go start a side hustle, I should do this, I should do this. For me, reading when you're saying that, to me it's authentic and in some sort of way it tones that hum down, right? There's one thing is to sort of ignore the hum that you see from social media and you can chalk it up like, this is all bullshit, right? But when you know someone, you're friends with someone, you work for someone and you're seeing that, there's a different sort of quality about it. There's this trickle down piece with it. so in some ways reading it for me feels uh freeing, right? Like, okay, this image that I have of Tripp or this construct that I have of Tripp, I don't have to find some sort of way of appeasing or appealing to that. Mm-hmm. to that or doing some sort of performative gesture to show that there's enough alignment that he doesn't fire me. I never have risk, but you know what I'm saying. There's this... yeah, let me, let me try and say it, from my perspective. Cause I think that's actually, mean, again, I really appreciate this. These are the conversations. Like these things are meaningful to me. Um, because like, I don't know the impact I'm having on others. And, and I do think, you know, I have played a character in, in my journey to date that was a little antagonistic. There was a way that I thought things should be done and people who aren't doing it my way are wrong. Um, and I think like, um, maybe it's just a maturity thing. think part of these reflections are just an age and life stage thing. Um, more than like uncovering deep, you know, wisdom or insight. Uh, I think some of this is just natural kind of growing up, like what really matters. But I think with, you know, what I'm hearing at least, and one of the things that I've always struggled with from the, you know, communicating with our company in general is, you know, there is there, I am an island of one in the sense of I am an entrepreneur. I've got a team, I've got other executives, I got, you know, I'll have partners now. But like, I am the entrepreneur kind of thing. And so what I'm going through doesn't necessarily apply, right? Like I might be taking big risks. But I have to, you know, balance that with the fact that like, I, I stand to, you know, capture really big rewards in a way that other people in the team don't, if that's the route I go. But I think what's like, what probably all of us can relate to is just this idea of like, we want to flourish. We want to do meaningful work. Like I think, you know, we all want to like, you know, see something like you talked about jujitsu. Like when you. feel like you have something to offer the world. It's very fulfilling to offer that thing. Yes. But most people aren't going to identify with being an entrepreneur. Most people don't care about like the theoretical stuff, even the organizational psychology stuff. They just care about how it impacts their day-to-day life. And so I think in maybe in being like authentic with like the challenges or the, the mental gymnastics that I'm going through to figure out how to make life uh and work meaningful and, and, you know, uh, integrated with one another. You know, like these are challenges that everyone faces. um Everyone wants, you know, financial security. Everyone wants to do meaningful things. um And I think if you're lucky, you know what those things are and you get to dedicate a lot of your time to those things. And I think like for us to be a company that prioritizes flourishing uh for our team and teaches our patients how to flourish. You know, we have to grapple with these things. And so I hope that in, you know, potentially grappling with them publicly, it, it starts to like, um, embed the, this kind of thought process throughout the organization and throughout like relationships with our managers, like our, you know, is work serving our, you know, values and purpose beyond like, Hey, we want to help people get better. Yeah, I think about these things in, you can call it culture, call them isomorphism, call them any of these sort of things, but the healthcare system has always been this fascinating thing in the sense that it always prioritizes patients, right? Like patients become this sort of the fixation point. Like how do get a patient better? And I don't think that's necessarily wrong, but I think it's incomplete. It's necessary, but it's incomplete. When you build a culture, you build an organization that's focused on holding that question of how do we help our team flourish, like have those places where they feel very useful and drive some sort of meaning from that use of being of use to others. And just generally experience this like idea of flourishing in some sort of capacity. And we as a company become that. And now what you have is on the one hand, you have this like happy providers, happy team members, people that feel like they're in some sort of alignment with their values, their purpose, their pursuits, all this sort of stuff. They feel supported in that. But then you have this trickle down effect where then I can't help but believe that that has to impact patient care, right? That's one of the things that always, um, you know, the example that I would give for where that's not the case. Oftentimes the therapist I've supervised, been a part of, or been on teams with when I'm still doing therapy stuff, or just even therapists, I know in my own personal life, just generally sort of lived a life that I found uninteresting, uninspiring, you know, they were train wrecks in their own sort of capacity. They could, they didn't have the ability to take their own advice or whatever it may be. And so it just generally wasn't very appealing or attractive to me. And I couldn't help but put myself in the position of being a patient. Like, well, man, why would you get me better? Right? Like if you're supposed to be this guide towards wellness or improved being, then it's really, this is a pretty big hurdle for me to overcome. Cause like, you look like a train wreck, you know? Well, tying this back to trade-offs, mean, how, um, because originally we were, we were talking about this idea of trade-offs and I'd be, um, you know, I'd certainly be curious if you have any, any questions either organizationally about trade-offs or, you know, some of the trade-offs like I'm, I'm wrestling with, and then I'll throw the same back to you. Yeah, I'd like to hear what you're thinking in terms of like trade offs in the company right now, right? What decisions, because we, I think the big pullout from that offsite was like, hey, we have to start thinking in terms of being strategic with our finances, right? Like we, and so if we decide to invest finances here or we decide to pursue this thing, then it's not, we're not going to be able to do this, these other things or these other initiatives. I think that was the big sort of orienting, let's return to the finances, allow that to be the thing that guides our decisions. But I'd be curious if there's any major trade-offs that that comes with that you're thinking about or like what's holding there. So I think the first step was like, haven't made, we really haven't made trade-offs in the past. We've rationalized every decision as part of the strategy. And I don't think all of that's bad. Quite frankly, I think if we had gone through a more deliberate process in the past, we would have made most, if not all of the same decisions. But what we are doing right now is we're, we took the time to document all of the existing initiatives, all of the projects that we have going on, all of the bets that we've made, whether that's on people or again, the projects like for example, you know, we're investing in a new patient engagement software that will help with, you know, online scheduling, but we'll also just greatly improve the patient experience, streamline a lot of things, both again, for the patient and for our administrative team who's doing the scheduling. Mm-hmm. And this is going to cost us about $5,000 a month. So $60,000 a year at least. And we're also investing in a new person to work in our intake department. And so the first step is just like, OK, how are we going to evaluate the effectiveness of these initiatives? So it's like we need to see a certain increase in new patient schedules. which then turns into money down the road. And I think like step one is just like wrangling all of the initiatives that we have out there and then making sure that we have a definition of what success is for us. And then I think like the next quarter, it will be like, okay, well, how did that stuff pan out? And then as we, you know, make the next list of, uh you know, trade-offs and priorities, and I guess backing up the other thing we, you know, started to establish is like, what are the financial metrics that matter to us? Because we don't have a bunch, like we're not sitting on a pile of money from investors, nor do we have this like, you know, really like, you know, we've lost money, uh, the last couple months, uh, while we're also choosing to pay down existing debt. So it's like, you know, on one hand, we're like trying to pay down debt, but we've made investments in growth and those two are not necessarily aligned with each other. um So it's like, are we trying to, you know, improve our cash on hand? And if that's the case, then like, maybe we shouldn't be investing in growth initiatives, or maybe we shouldn't be paying down as much debt. So I think like step one is just like figuring out what we value. I don't think we've actually wrestled with any major trade offs right now. However, I think we're starting to you know, we had someone apply for a psychiatrist position, but it's like, we don't need any more psychiatrists right now. you know, strategically, I've always said, I think us having as many psychiatrists and being a behavioral health organization, that's like a real strategic move, but only up into the point that it doesn't affect other things negatively. And so when you hire people without caseloads, as you know, from the growth seat, Like that puts pressure on us to get even more new patients while our existing team may not be as full of patients on like the medication management front as they need to be. So, you know, we have to make a decision. Like, are we going to hire this person and call it strategy? But like then it compromises, you know, the the progress we could make towards other initiatives. And so this time, when this application rolled in yesterday, ah We said, let's just take the guy out to dinner, see what's going on. um But it's not an interview. We'll be very explicit. We're not hiring right now, but we're honored that you'd want to practice here. And let's just keep the conversation going. Because I think like the, and again, in thinking in terms of trade-offs, I do think about the culture. The example that I used in the Substack piece, was a few years ago, we were in a small office and we needed more space. It would make people happier to have a nicer office, a better office. But, you know, that would potentially stress the finances of the organization. And if we did that, we were actually more likely to hurt the culture. And because like then we're all going to be more stressed. And that's going to have a more detrimental effect than us all knowing, hey, we chose not to make this investment right now. We know we need to do this, but we're gonna do it in a very grounded way. And I think that was a really good, em that was a really good decision. And it was also good because it got everyone on the same page with that. So I think, again, I don't think we've made a ton of trade-offs like in the last week, but I think now we're setting up the system so that in the future, before we decide to do something, we're gonna ask the hard question is like, what is this driving us towards? And... what do we not need to do in order to pursue this initiative? Well, Yeah. The thing that I love about that is thinking in terms of the, man, I hate this phrase, but it feels right. The psychological safety, right? know, cause my initial visceral reaction was if we'd added more more psychiatrists, it's like, for you know, from my perspective. I sit, I hold, I look at the numbers. I want to try to impact our numbers. How do we build caseloads at a very human, somewhat irrational level, right? Like I don't want to let down the team. I don't want to let down the company, the organization, all those sort of things. That carries a weight on me in the same way that you carry a weight, right? Like you don't want to let down other folks. And so this idea of Is the potential for adding another psychiatrist or another med provider or something else to the system worth the short-term harm, detriment to the psychological safety or the comfort or the like whatever of the company or the, and the ego system that we all sort of abide in right now. And I think that's a really valuable worthwhile question because again, culture, ah reflex tendencies grow, grow, grow, but you never, people oftentimes don't stop to ask the question of like, when is, what are we good? Right? Are we good for right now? And then are we, how do we get to the next stage of being, know, whatever the next level of good is versus this indiscriminate grow, grow, grow, grow, grind, grind, grind, hustle, hustle, hustle. Right. Um, and so I, just, I, I value that at a meta level. right? Hey, we are going to take into consideration, do we all want to be this much more stressed to fill this caseloader, to do this initiative? Is it worth it? I and I think that's a really, really valuable consideration. Yeah, I think in terms of like wrapping up this, uh, this segment, cause I gotta get moving, uh, is, know, like these, like what you just said is like, these things need to be made explicit, you know, what is it that we're orienting towards and how is it going to affect us so that we can make those trade-offs consciously? Um, and I think like for, especially for leaders and the broader, the scope of your leadership, I think you have to, you have to spend the time. really spelling out like why you made these trade offs because especially like again, once you're in a leadership or management position, you probably always feel like you're wearing two hats. You've got to maintain a lot of like the day to day tasks and do things. And then you also have to manage others. So it always feels like you should get someone else on your team. And I think like one of the things I'm really working on is making that very explicit to the, you know, leaders and managers in our organization. about when they're going to get the additional resources and like what it requires in order to make those investments in their team. Because otherwise it can feel like, hey, we're just, we're being told we're going to get help at some point, but we don't know when. So I'm really, pushing us to articulate that and have that be very explicit. Yeah, I love it. So what's your quote or idea of the week? What are you bringing to the table? You sent me something. Yeah, man, it's funny. I'm sending you an Alan Watts. It's a little, it's something I've been reflecting on quite a bit. And again, I think it plays to this idea of trade-offs, ecosystems, everything is connected, everything works together. This idea that we're separate entities is just observably false. So it comes from Alan Watts, the book, uh Man Aspires to Govern Nature. But the more one studies ecology, the more absurd it seems to speak of any one feature of an organism or of an organism environment field as governing or ruling others. Once upon a time, the mouth, the hands, the feet said to each other, we do all this work gathering food and chewing it up, but the lazy fellow, the stomach does nothing. This high time, we did some work so that we let's go in work too. So let's go in on a strike. And so I think there's this idea of just generally speaking, like all of these things are sort of connected and working together. General, you know, just generally speaking, these things don't, nothing operates independently of, of anything, right? Like our, hands, our feet often operate in conjunction. We're all part of the same sort of thing. Uh, and society functions that way. Companies function that way. Everything functions that way. So it was something that has been batting around in my head for a while. So. Yeah, I love it. The book, the taboo against knowing who you are. The thing that's rattling around for me and is showing up in some of my writing right now is just uh the paradox that, you know, we can see all of these problems um in the relative world that we all live in. And that I believe oh you can also have insight into the fact that everything's perfect exactly the way it should be. So the quote is from uh Jed McKenna's spiritual enlightenment, the damnedest thing. Once you get past the notion that duality by any name is bad and that unity by any name is good, you also get past the need to help or to save anyone. I do it simply because I'm so inclined. I have a built-in urge to express what I find interesting. And the only thing I find interesting is the great journey that culminates in abiding non-dual awareness. And so whether or not you're into the whole non-dual shtick that I'm on, you know, I do believe there's truth, like capital T truth in this. But I think there's also just a lesson for anyone. The goal is to be doing the things that you're just so inclined to do. And that is where you're going to find a lot of uh deep, you know, contented, eudaimonic happiness. uh I it. you know, know, getting if you're if you're a therapist, like, yes, we're getting a paycheck and everything else. But like, I'm also just inclined to sit with someone and, you know, use my skill set to help them navigate their life in a more uh purposeful way. So, you know, I think like, the more that we're doing the things that really fill our cup, the better. right on. All right, well. Ahhhh Oh. I don't think I should have used the drum roll there. Anyway, until next week, thanks for joining us on open source health. Thank