Partner Corner with Jake Summers Part 3: Taking on the Investors

In BoHF's third installment of Partner Corner, Tripp and Jake recount their recent adventures and travels, pitching proposals across the country and discovering more about their newest healthcare venture while facing the challenges of an extremely hectic covid-era weekend of airline travel. Tripp and Jake debrief on what went right under understandably frustrating circumstances, and celebrate how maintaining kindness and integrity in stressful moments can help steer events toward success for everyone involved.

Later on, the partners detail their latest healthcare and wellness ventures, Advaita Integrated Medicine (AIM) and EduCare, start-ups focused on providing solutions and promoting sustained healthcare support while remaining flexible as organizational Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) ebb and flow.

Learn more at:
www.advaitaventures.com
www.advaitaintegratedmedicine.com

Find us on the web:

• Advaita Integrated Medicine
• Green Hill Recovery

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

All right. Well, Hey, welcome back to the pod here. Jake is the business of human flourish.

Speaker 2 (00:06):

It's been nice listening to myself on the pod as

Speaker 1 (00:09):

Well. I have not enjoyed listening to myself.

Speaker 2 (00:13):

Yeah. Like the partners, corners ones we've recorded so far and I've been getting a lot of good feedback. Thanks to all my friends and family out there for listening to that and sending a text about how great it was. I've gotten the opposite feedback. Uh, uncle

Speaker 1 (00:26):

Martin, who, you know, has told me I'm too verbose. He asked me, what advice would I give myself? I said, I'm just going to say talk last year.

Speaker 2 (00:36):

Well, that's why he brought me on here. I'll talk the listener's ears off. All right. Well,

Speaker 1 (00:42):

It's been fun. Last time we talked about kind of going to market. We're trying to raise some money. We've got Bogart over here. Who's noses in the background in

Speaker 2 (00:50):

The bath time fan of the pod. Yeah. So

Speaker 1 (00:55):

It's been fun, but I mean, we recorded the last podcast a month ago and I would say none of our assumptions held up past the first week.

Speaker 2 (01:04):

Yeah, we can just go ahead and delete that last one.

Speaker 3 (01:08):

I think that's the

Speaker 1 (01:08):

Fun part of this is getting to see how it's evolved over time. So last time we were headed out to Phoenix.

Speaker 3 (01:16):

What happened? Which story do you want? Do you want the business story or the personal,

Speaker 1 (01:21):

Oh, well, we'll tell the business story first and then, and talk about, I think the title of this episode will be, find something on you're comfortable spending the night in an airport with

Speaker 2 (01:32):

Yes, we flew out to Phoenix. Uh, I think we spent more time in the air one way than we did in our meeting, but it was well worth the time. So that kind of kicked off our pitching roadshow. And we met with the CEO and CFO of a big, uh, behavioral health care company that owns a bunch of different, uh, brands across the nation. Um, so he's, he's a guy that we've always viewed as a mentor and would be a very good strategic partner. Um, so it was fun to pitch him and we got a lot of good feedback and we had some interest in the deal and it, uh, it definitely shaped how we approached the rest of the roadshow. Um, but that was one of the things that I'd said to you long ago. It was like once we go to market, you know, the market is going to give us feedback and that's going to start, you know, us making this idea better. Um, so it was a good, uh, I think it was a good pitch for both of us and we got a lot of good feedback and some interest. And then, uh, then the, the second half of the trip, yeah, we, we were

Speaker 1 (02:34):

Stuck in Phoenix and then in Dallas flying these days is not fun, but I think this more than probably any of our business successes cemented the idea of partnership to me and why it's so important to have, you know, someone you're willing to have flights canceled on and we just adapted and kept their spirits up and went to two different, Goodwill's got some new

Speaker 3 (03:00):

Hats. It was fun.

Speaker 2 (03:02):

It was fun. Um, yeah, I, I think, I think something that you and I are good at is we look outside of work for these moments that cement our partnership. And I think that's, uh, that's what I always coach younger guys that I mentor is like, when you're talking about business partnerships and we've talked about this on other podcasts, but look at how they treat their romantic partners and look at how they keep their house. And you know, is their, is their car clean and organizers, is it filled with last week's gym clothes? Cause like those last week's gym clothes turned into a big financial problem in a company, but it's really the same behavior that gets you there. Um, so yeah, you and I, we had a flight canceled and then we were trapped in the airport and then we finally made it to Dallas and we were trapped in the airport again and had another flight cancellation. So we basically spent, um, 24 hours together just trying to get home and just trapped in different settings and things. Weren't going our way. And, and I kept texting my fiance, Anna, and saying, I'm happy. It's not you here. I'm happy it's trivia. Um, and, and that wasn't a slight towards Anna, but, but trip is just the guy that like nothing, like we were smiling and laughing the entire time when we were in reality, getting repeatedly punched in the face by American airlines and nothing was going our

Speaker 1 (04:22):

Way, shout out American airlines, you suck. Um,

Speaker 2 (04:27):

So yeah, it was just one of those cool moments, like in w especially as we're entering this new venture, it was cool, kind of an anchor story point where nothing went our way and you and I just smiled and laughed our way through it. And we never pointed fingers at one another. We stayed solutions oriented and that's really what this, you know, new venture in Educare is going to be. It's like you and I are taking off on a difficult road that isn't paved and things aren't going to go our way. And, um, as we've talked about these partnerships or road, when the finger pointing starts, and it was like, we had 24 hours of a very negative emotional situation and we just, we just laughed. And we, we took out the, uh, the wheelchairs and we played around in those and we made friends and, and I think the, the coolest moment for me, um, to give you a little shout out is we were in that super awesome part.

Speaker 2 (05:19):

You are in when flights get canceled, where everyone runs to the line and waits to wait in line, to meet with the American airlines, people to yell at them in an attempt to get a new flight. And everyone before us is screaming and pointing fingers and yelling at these poor people and trip gets up to the counter. And the first thing out of his mouth is, do you need anything? Do you need it? Do you need a snack? Do you need water? Cause I understand that you're going through hell right now. It's not just us and just nobody else in the line thought to do that, whatever do that. Or, you know, nobody before or after of us pulled that move. But, but that's just the type of guy you are. Like, you enter these situations in a way where you look at the whole picture and I think that's how you view business. Yeah. I'll uh,

Speaker 1 (06:07):

I had David Meeker on, I think that podcast went live today, but he talked about rent forgiveness for his tenants during COVID-19 and how sometimes we look at it as either we're taking a financial hit or we're doing the right thing, but often these are, you know, depending on your time horizon, they're the same thing me going up there and taking care, trying to take care of, you know, the flight attendant or the people who are rebooking from American that was very selfishly motivated. Like I want them to spend extra time rerouting our flight, but it was also the right thing to do. So I think that's like one of the interesting things about this podcast that we're going to explore over time is how, you know, there tends to be this false dichotomy between doing the right thing and making money. But if you do it the right way, these can be aligned. So I think that was a good example of that. Then we went to, so after that, let's just pause. So we're trying to raise money. We went out to raise for educator and we got some feedback that maybe the way we structured this deal didn't make sense. At this point, we were trying to raise a $5 million and that's really like a year of operating expenses and we came back and quickly iterated on that idea of, of raising one big check size.

Speaker 2 (07:31):

Um, yeah. And, and I think one of the reasons we did that and, and this is some of the feedback that we got on in from that pitch is that we don't need to raise that much money. And here's why so, so the, the reason that we went to Margaret with that deal is because when we go to UNC to attempt to negotiate a partnership, we need to show them that we have the money to support said partnership. Um, and really what we learned there is we don't need to raise that much. We just need somebody to say that they're willing to give us that much if we get the UNC deal. So we had this big chicken and egg problem, uh, that we seemingly couldn't solve before. It's like we couldn't go to, to get financial backing without the UNC contract. And we couldn't get the UNC contract without financial backing.

Speaker 2 (08:14):

So it was just one little piece of information that shifted our thinking. And we, we scaled down the size of the deal and we've been, been pitching it more as a commitment letter deal in the future. So like, Hey, we need X upfront. We don't need it. All right. Now we just need to go to them and say that we have the financial backing. So would you be willing to offer, in addition to, uh, participating in the seed round, would you be offering, you know, a commitment letter for more money in the future, contingent on us getting these memorandums of understandings with universities? So those are those types of things that like you and I can have all the best ideas in the world and we can miss something as simple as that, but then we go to market, somebody says it light bulb, and we take it with us on future pitches and it lands really well. So we've gotten a lot of good feedback on that pitching strategy and, you know, meetings that happened after that. And it's been good for us. And

Speaker 1 (09:07):

The other piece of feedback, I think we got, it was separate for Educare. It's this dual prong problem. We like Jake said the chicken or the egg. One is these memorandums of understanding with universities to say that we will be your partner in mental health. And then the other is actually having the financial backing to go out and hire the staff, sign, the leases, that kind of thing. And so in addition to changing the actual financial deal, we went back and we were given the advice, Hey, it's great to go after UNC. Like that's obviously the crown Juul of the North Carolina school system, but they're going to be slow. And it's a very bureaucratic process to get approval for anything. Maybe it would be a good idea to start smaller. So in addition to pursuing relationships with, at UNC, we're also looking at some of the smaller private colleges and universities like Meredith college here in Raleigh, like William piece here in Raleigh, as well as the HBC use Shaw, NC central. And, um, you know, North Carolina has 17 independent colleges and universities. It has, uh, or no 31 independent colleges and universities 17 in the UNC school system. And then it also has a very robust community college system. So there were really a lot of options for that first kind of partnership. And we received the advice going after UNC may be the hardest entry. It doesn't mean you don't try, but let's, let's get a proof of concept somewhere else. So now we're kind of going down that road as well.

Speaker 2 (10:40):

Yeah, that was, that was really good feedback. And the venture world, they, they give you venture money to put you closer to getting revenue. So I think like we've kind of viewed it more through that lens. Like the fastest way to revenue is with these smaller private universities. And it just gives us more of a resume piece and proof of concept. And, and as you said that the smaller private universities are just much, there might be one decision maker instead of 30. Yeah. Um, but the beauty of this all is that we can just continue to run parallel paths.

Speaker 1 (11:11):

Yeah. And I think, uh, I think we've made a lot of good progress on this one. It is, it is a grind though. I mean, and I think we've spent more time than usual. Like it's weird to continue to refine, not really the idea because now the idea is pretty crystallized, but how we get there and how we start executing has changed pretty much every day for the last month and a half.

Speaker 2 (11:38):

And I think that I, I said that to you in a text about something totally unrelated this week, but I think one of your super powers is your ability to actually update your mental models based on new information in real time. And I think like what you've been doing really well, where a lot of, a lot of failed entrepreneurs out there and inventors and idea men, like what they can't ever do is bend from their original idea. Like there's this kind of popular archetype of the, the very stubborn inventor who wants to do it his way. And he has the best idea, and he's not willing to listen to feedback where you're the total opposite of that. And it's been really cool to see that on this road show is we keep, every time we get new information, you immediately start chasing it down. It's like somebody will make one comment of what have you thought about this? And 24 hours later trip has an entirely new proposal based on, on one little new data point.

Speaker 1 (12:32):

Well, and I've got to give you a shout out for, you know, just bearing with me because I think you've learned, I think you've learned what this process looks like, and it's really, really painful probably to be in your seat sometimes where it's like, nah, it's good enough it's and it often is, but you know, you allow me the space to like, I need to understand the narrative. Like to me, it's all about the narrative and we've got to take that new information. And sometimes that means rewriting the narrative on how it's going to be done and why this makes sense. I mean, not deviating from kind of our values and our vision, but adapting. And, and until I feel comfortable with that, there are a lot of phone calls. There were a lot of text messages there, a lot of emails sent back and forth, and then we land that, you know, a good place. So thanks for bearing with me.

Speaker 2 (13:24):

It's easy to bear with you just staying in that, above the line and below the line framework. I mean, that's, that's what it is for me. It's like, if I'm being open-minded and curious and I don't have to be right, and I'm living in that, like above the line mindset, then, you know, every time you come back to this from a slightly different place, so it doesn't feel like Groundhog day, it feels like we're, we're just continually getting better. Um, so I think that that has really helped me

Speaker 1 (13:50):

Well. So we've been talking about Educare, which is what we're really raising money for, but how do you feel about getting into our new integrated medicine practice? I would love to. Okay. So basically I think we've outlined before, you know, we started green hill a few years ago and that's grown nicely. We quickly realized though that there are limitations sometimes within the system. And so Greenhill as a system of care, didn't have all of the components that we deemed necessary. And as much as we liked some of the providers we were working with outside of Greenhill, it's really not ideal to have, you know, your therapists in one location and your psychiatrist and another working in a different company. And most people, I, in fact, I don't really know any programs like ours, who would go out and think, oh, we need to hire a full-time psychiatrist, but that's exactly what we decided to do. And so now we are building, while we build Greenhill kind of two doors down, we are also building Advaita integrated medicine, better wise, known as aim. It's got great initials, good initials.

Speaker 2 (15:02):

Um, yeah. And, and I think this is really, you know, our approach to business in general is we are trying to build sustainable, scalable solutions that have real enterprise value. And this is one of the things that it's interesting has shocked me around this field because right. I'm in recovery myself, I've been to treatment programs. And I always operated on the assumption that every program had an in-house psychiatrist. Cause that's how they look on a website. Right, right. Then, and then the more that I've gotten into this world as a business owner, I, you start to see everybody just contracts. They buy four hours a week or two hours a week of a psychiatrist time. And, and they just kind of check the box that they have psychiatry, but, and it's all kind of smoke and mirrors. It's like, they all have the psychiatrist on their website.

Speaker 2 (15:51):

Um, but you kind of came to me and said, look, we're not doing that. Like we need a Scot, a psychiatrist that can scale with us that that wants to be, you know, more of an, an in an entrepreneurial mindset and be a part of building something. And, and there's enough demand out there that we'll be able to, to fill their time regardless. And this is a better way to serve our clients where they can, can actually be a part of the organization and the team and live under our values and build those patient relationships that lasts for a long time. Um, so that was kind of how we agreed to set up aim. Like we, you know, Y Y contract with a psychiatrist, let's just start a psychiatry, started a psychiatry practice. Yeah. And

Speaker 1 (16:30):

I think this, this goes into kind of our broader goals is like kind of reframing healthcare. You know, I think, I think so many people only utilize their healthcare when things go wrong. And what we really see is like our goal is to build organizations that increase human flourishing, obviously when people are entering treatment or seeking medical help, they're at a place where they're suffering and, uh, you know, seeking some sort of symptom reduction. But we wanted to, we want therapists, we want providers, doctors, APS, et cetera, on our team that all kind of are frustrated with the status quo. And I don't mean that we are true trailblazers in the medical community, but I think the piece that we bring is, is the business side of how can we actually build a disruptive model it's not unique in and of itself. But what we're trying to do is really build a practice that's, you know, in network with commercial insurances, but treats everybody at a more concierge level. And that's, it's not something most people set out to do.

Speaker 2 (17:40):

Yeah. It's that integrated true integrated care. And it's, again, something that a lot of people just do in a smoke and mirrors fashion. They're like, oh, we, you know, we do integrated care, but, but it's something that we want to do in earnest. And it's, you know, that, that real intersection between medical and behavioral care and it's, it's what makes this sticky for people. I always like the term you use, we want to be people's medical home. Yeah. And it's like, you, we want to go, you know, whatever their needs are. And obviously we're not starting off on day one with really primary health care where you can come in for a physical, but it's like, we want to lower the barriers of entry and make this very easy by letting people just come to our ecosystem and get everything they need. And it just, it, it increases our ability to track outcomes, data, and, and build these meaningful relationships and, and just be a bigger presence in the community and, and provide more solutions.

Speaker 1 (18:32):

I think like when we talk about it from the recovery side of things, there's this concept of recovery oriented systems of care and it, it involves everything. So your community supports your things like your 12 step meetings, your, um, your treatment programs, your, you know, prevention and outreach initiatives, all of that goes into this broader kind of category of a recovery oriented system of care. And the goal of that is really that anyone who's seeking recovery can enter at the appropriate point. And so one of the things we've seen from Greenhill is like, we love the work we're doing, but people enter our existing ecosystem when things have typically kind of gone off the rails already. And our hope is a to prevent some of that. And then B to just meet people where they are. And people don't necessarily, one of the things we found is, you know, they don't necessarily, you know, want to go to treatment, but they want to have a therapist. They want a psychiatrist, something like that. And so that's another piece of this Aveda integrated medicine is the idea that we have treatment, but also people just need, maybe they've already gone through treatment and they want to work with providers who understand their, you know, mental health background, uh, in addition to their physical health background.

Speaker 3 (19:52):

So this is

Speaker 1 (19:53):

You you've used the term modular building, but basically we, we built a substance use treatment program. And now we're looking at how we kind of go further down that continuum and have, um, you know, therapists, psychiatrist, primary care doctors, nurse practitioners, in order to support people for the rest of their lives. Because the last thing we want is someone having a successful stint in treatment only for kind of the wheels to fall off and not have the supports afterwards.

Speaker 2 (20:22):

And I like how you make that distinction. You know, what is treatment treatment is something that is, you know, has a finite duration. Like when, when people go away to treatment, there there's, uh, an end, a natural end to that. Like they graduate from a program and they move on to something else. So, so Greenhill was never designed to be the, the infinite scaffolding that you can just live in with life, like, like AA is, for example, you, you continue to participate in 12 step programs, regardless of how much time you have in sobriety. And it's just something you do that, you know, is more what we view as maintenance. Um, so yeah, I think this is just something that, that we need to bring to the market. And it's really important for us to just have that because we can serve people forever. It doesn't need to be this, you know, short time horizon. And it's cool. Cause people can transition from a treatment setting to more of this integrated care long-term lower level.

Speaker 1 (21:16):

And then obviously for us too, this is really the proof of concept for educator and a lot of ways, because what we're talking about partnering with universities for is not to build them treatment centers that are university adjacent, but to build them supports for college students who, you know, things may be starting to kind of unravel go off the rails a little bit, but then if we can catch it early, if we can meet them where they are and engage with them, then maybe they don't need to go to treatment. And ultimately that saves, you know, the patients and the insurance companies a ton of money.

Speaker 2 (21:51):

Yeah. So Greenhill was essentially our proof of concept and being able to serve the college age population with an academic focus, um, on, you know, in substance use treatment. And now aim gives us this proof of concept for building, you know, a clinic that serves not just substance use, but mental health. And I think that's an important distinction that I've had to update in my mind is when I first viewed Educare, I was always viewing it through my experience, which was that I had substance use disorder problems in college. Um, but the truth is that the majority of students that are struggling with mental health it's it's anxiety or depression, or, you know, slightly up the spectrum in diagnoses. But, um, but those are the biggest needs. It's not substance use disorder treatment. It's, it's people just need every day mental health treatment and that's treatment more specifically, but counseling, psych psychiatry support,

Speaker 1 (22:49):

And just, and that's where, you know, we always, I like the title of this podcast, but the only thing I can really wrap my head around is the concept of human flourishing. Everything else is just a step along that path. But if we're really aligned behind the idea that everyone's trying to live their best life, and they're going to need different things at different points in that journey, then we want to be able to provide that. So it's interesting. I mean, you know, starting, uh, it's, it's weird. We're like we're balls deep in the startup again. I mean, it was, it was just yesterday and actually three and a half years ago, I think, or three years ago that we got out of the initial startup and here we are back to making sure that building has internet, that we get the trash taken out. Jake. I was

Speaker 2 (23:37):

Just going to bring that up. We always talk about like, you know, founders are the ones who have to, they have to raise the money, but they also have to take out the trash and literally dripping out or taking out the trash from the psychiatry practice right before we hopped on here. And

Speaker 1 (23:49):

So it's, uh, it's interesting, you know, and thinking about it, it's fascinating just as part of kind of our growth as leaders and entrepreneurs, and also having more resources. I mean, Greenhill was on a shoestring budget in the beginning and aim. It's not like we have a ton of money, but at least this time we're able to pay attention to things like the aesthetics of the office. We're in how a patient who comes in is kind of going to experience the space and then really crafting it to be a healing environment. Uh, so that's been fun. I mean, I love that stuff, you know,

Speaker 2 (24:28):

And just to tie AME back. So we talked about going after these, um, smaller college relationships before UNC, and just, just to prove your point, that the infrastructure that we're building here at aim will serve those clients. So if we, if we get an MOU from a, you know, a smaller university or college that has say a thousand students, like that's the exact size of people that we could serve at aim. Um, so when we talk about this modular building, that's exactly. So we're going to use aim as our, as our first iteration of Educare. And then when we signed a bigger contract with a much bigger school than we will essentially rebuild aim at 10 times the size, you know, specifically for that university. Yeah. Um, so, and that's the most fun part about what we do is we've we build in this way where everything is, is, you know, a test pilot program for something else or it's, you know, a component of something else that can, can be placed in another world. Um, so it's awesome.

Speaker 1 (25:30):

One of the things that's a kind of percolating for me is what are we worried about? What's stressing us out. What's frustrating right now, because I don't want to make it all sound like this is a linear trajectory because it definitely isn't. I mean, I think I know, like personally right now, like I'm having worst quality sleep and it's all fine, you know, like everything's fine. And I'm excited too. That's part of the quality sleep is like, I wake up at 4:00 AM, like ready to go. Uh, but what's on your mind as far as that goes, or you want me to hop in, you're gonna have been, well, I'm just, you know, I want to do it right. Like I want everything to work out, not just well for the business, but I want to make sure we're doing this as best we can. And there's not a model that I've seen out there that I want to copy.

Speaker 1 (26:20):

And so when we talked about updating kind of mental frameworks and mental models earlier, that's one of the things that's difficult to me right now is, you know, we're trying to update the financing, the deal size, that kind of thing on one hand. And at the same time, we're also building out a system of care and we can't anyone because we don't see anyone out there who's providing what we want to provide in a way in the way that we want to. And so, I mean, we're setting up a new electronic health record system, which is a pain in the, but that ultimately is, you know, the technology we use is going to support, you know, our team as well as our patients. And no one has a system that has, you know, out of the package ready to go. So we have to think about what does a patient journey look like?

Speaker 1 (27:14):

How do we, you know, how do we do primary care notes? How do we do psychiatry notes? And of course our medical providers are the ones driving this conversation. But the other thing you find is like, most people are used to being, you know, hired to they're a square peg and they're going in a square hole. And so we're having to, you know, cut these kinds of new hole shapes and figure out what it should be, not just copying someone's existing business model. And when you go about it like that, like there's no, it's a continuous improvement and you have to get comfortable and you've done a good job pushing me. I'm just like, do as best you can get it out there and then make it better. You cannot create something. Uh, you know, w what's the, you know, the best plans don't survive, the first contact or something like that. It was, and they said in the army, you know, as soon as someone, as soon as bullets start flying, the plan goes out the window, but I'm, I mean, I'm struggling with, you know, how good do we need to be to start? And, uh, yeah. And there are endless things to improve the website, the EHR, everything.

Speaker 2 (28:27):

Um, I can't help you with any of those fears, dressers, good luck, man. Um, for me, I think the biggest, uh, stressor for me is the, is really how we prioritize things. I'm trying to think of a way to say this. So like in, in Greenhill itself, what we essentially used for a lens of prioritizing is, is your, does this, it's more of a financial one. Like I prioritize my time to try to revenue generation, you know, and improve the bottom line first. And that's kind of where my priorities fall at Greenhill. So, so my time is spent on the most clear revenue generating or increasing activities, um, or, you know, big enterprise value plays like. So we have that very clear lens of prioritization, where when you're in a startup, it's really the Gantt chart that controls you. And I think that's what you and I are feeling that frustration with is we have to prioritize low level things that feel like in our mind, but it's because they're holding up other initiatives that are necessary for starting this.

Speaker 2 (29:37):

Um, and there's a lot of things that, you know, it's, the timeline is out of our hands. Um, like a good example is that trip scheduled a DHHS inspection, which is now made paving the driveway, my top priority. Um, and, and that just kind of got shifted because now that fell ahead of something that is necessarily, we will be guaranteed to fail our DHHS inspection if they show up and they have a, and we have a gravel driveway, but to my point, like that's not a revenue generating activity. When I look at that driveway, it's like, okay, I, I should work on something that is more connected to the direct operations or billing. Um, so yeah, I think that's where it feels like a landmine is we have to prioritize through the Gantt chart and it's just not intuitive because it's not how we prioritize things necessarily over, you know, in our other worlds.

Speaker 1 (30:28):

I think, well, two things, one let's jump into okay, ours, because I think that's gonna, that's gonna be the key for us moving forward. But before that, I think the other interesting thing that's challenging for me is now that we have, you know, more than 30 full-time team members, I'm no longer, it's actually no longer useful, and I'm no longer able to actually do the work that's necessary to complete projects. I have to rely on other people

Speaker 3 (31:00):

And I have to

Speaker 1 (31:02):

Provide better direction. I have to really focus on communicating the priorities, the vision, and all of that, so that other people can execute. And then I have to trust that they're executing. So like for aim, we brought on a consultant just to help us over the next few months, get this up and running. He has background in primary care and behavioral health, uh, kind of on the business operation side of things. But this is, for me, it feels like taking a big step back because like, I kind of know what I need done, but I don't have the time to do it. That's tough.

Speaker 2 (31:41):

It is. But I think it, it solves that need, that. I just said, like we have, when we have a quarterback whose whole job is to make sure that we're prioritizing the right things and to use us as tools, then, um, it's just going to work out better for us. Yeah. And I think what's interesting is, is a lot of people wouldn't do that. Right. Cause it's, it's sort of this, the founder ego trap, like they want to have their hands in everything where you literally said, let's just put someone else in charge of being the F like he's a temporary founder. And, and, and we told him very explicitly like, treat us like employees. Yeah. Like schedule us for things, tell us what we haven't done, chase us down. Like, um, so I think it's, it's a good, like humility thing. Like we know that, you know, we don't have to, the more that we try to micromanage in the beginning and do everything our way and not like, kind of give somebody else this position to hold us accountable. Um, it's just going to slow us down in the end. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:38):

It's also, I mean, this one's a scarier proposition in some ways just based on salaries, you know, a psychiatrist wants to make a lot more money. They've got bills to pay, especially med school debt. And, uh, you know, we're used to salaries being up to maybe a hundred thousand dollars and now it's like, oh, we've got people coming in over 200 and that's, uh, you know, we, we have less margin for error and we can't have an office sitting empty for three months. And so, I mean, fortunately we know there's like a lot of demand for psychiatry, but we got to make sure that people find us and know about us. And this is all brand new. We're going to figure it out. So, okay, ours, we only got five minutes left, but objectives and key results per usual. I went, I read a book and this one really resonated and objectives and key results.

Speaker 1 (33:34):

The book measure what matters by John Doerr. To me, this was great. I mean, he is a phenomenal kind of startup, uh, mentor. He often mentors the founders. He did this at Google and I don't know where else, but a lot of successful companies and it really NES nicely within our framework called the entrepreneurial operating system. We set these quarterly priorities called rocks. And that's what we focus on outside of our day-to-day responsibilities. It's all about our rocks. Those are the priorities. And what we ended up doing is finding this system for objectives and key results. It kind of takes that a level further. And so what we spent time on this week with our executive director or COO was looking at kind of what are the parent company, okay. Ours, and then what JKO are the green halo, KRS, and then what are the Aveda integrated medicine? Okay. Ours, and then making sure that those all nested together. So I think that's going to help us a lot, but, uh, it's kind of our first quarter doing that. So that'll be interesting.

Speaker 2 (34:39):

Yes and no. I think that the cool, so when we talked about OKR is with the leadership team on, in our leadership meeting on Tuesday, what we essentially said is like, you know, the objectives part we're already doing with the rocks, which is part of the EOS system and the key results, just give us a little bit more detail to accompany those rocks or objectives. And it just was universally viewed as just a better way of doing it's like, it gives you a little bit of that checklist, quantitative measurement stuff. It basically makes rocks smart.

Speaker 3 (35:11):

Yeah. Um,

Speaker 2 (35:14):

So, um, I'm all about it and I'm very excited.

Speaker 1 (35:19):

So just sum up this episode of partner corner, first of all, make sure you find a business partner that you're willing to have flights canceled and spend the night in a hotel airport hotel with. And then if things get more complex, look for tools maybe, okay. That help help you priorities and also communicate them effectively to everyone in the organization. And what do you have? Those are my two takeaways. Just always be willing

Speaker 2 (35:47):

To update your mental models, use new information wisely. Like don't just, don't put it on the shelf.

Speaker 1 (35:56):

And, uh, so we'll wrap this one up, but if any listeners out there have any questions that they're interested in asking us specifically around, you know, business partnerships, social entrepreneurship, et cetera, feel free to drop us a line. You can find us@advaitaventures.com and we'll catch you next time. Thanks for having me. All right. Let's go meet with the nurse practitioner.