Latest / I Am Wiser Podcast with Dr. Laura Purdy / Don't Die Stupid

Transcript

Don't Die Stupid · I Am Wiser Podcast with Dr. Laura Purdy

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: My personal motto is don't die stupid.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: Exclamation point, no comma.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, my greatest fear in life is that I won't learn lessons from all the opportunities I have to learn, and a lot of people look at those and they call them failures, but I look at them as growth seasons, and when I've made horrible mistakes, the key to it is to not repeat the horrible mistake the next time you're around.
• 0:26
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Welcome to the I Am Wiser Podcast, where the biggest questions in healthcare and wellness meet the collective wisdom of industry leaders and innovators.
• 0:35
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I'm Dr.
• 0:36
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Laura Purdy, and here we explore the intersections of AI, care delivery, telehealth policy, and more.
• 0:44
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Through the lens of those who are reshaping healthcare.
• 0:47
  Dr. Laura Purdy: This is not just about theory, it's about lived experience and real industry insights.
• 0:53
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Let's dive in and get wiser together.
• 0:56
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Welcome to today's episode of the I Am Wiser Podcast with Dr.
• 1:01
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Lara Purdy, where we explore the human stories behind the ideas, businesses, and innovations shaping the way we live and relate to one another.
• 1:11
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Before we get into today's conversation, I wanted to share something exciting.
• 1:16
  Dr. Laura Purdy: We've recently revamped our website.
• 1:19
  Dr. Laura Purdy: It's where you'll find every episode along with additional resources behind our conversations.
• 1:25
  Dr. Laura Purdy: If you've only been catching us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I'd invite you to take a look.
• 1:30
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Head to IamWiserPodcast.health, or just tap the link in the description.
• 1:36
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Now, let's get into today's episode.
• 1:41
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Today I am delighted.
• 1:44
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I'm so excited to welcome Kevin McCullough, a nationally syndicated radio host, television commentator, and the creator of That Kevin Show, broadcast all across the country.
• 1:57
  Dr. Laura Purdy: It's really impressive.
• 1:58
  Dr. Laura Purdy: With decades of experience behind the microphone, Kevin has built a powerful media presence known for blending news, culture, faith, and commentary with a bold and unmistakable voice.
• 2:13
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Through his work, Kevin reaches millions of listeners and viewers each month, bringing sharp insight, candid conversation, and a willingness to tackle complex and maybe controversial topics shaping today's cultural landscape.
• 2:29
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Today we will discuss what it means to communicate with clarity in a noisy media environment, how conviction and perspective influence public dialogue, and the evolving role of media in shaping how people understand the world around them.
• 2:44
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Please enjoy this conversation with Kevin.
• 2:47
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Hi, Kevin.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, Dr.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Purdy.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: How are you?
• 2:50
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Well, I'm doing great.
• 2:51
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Honestly, it's an honor to have you here today.
• 2:54
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I think we've been doing stuff together for what, maybe half a decade now?
• 2:57
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And so I'm so happy to have you here.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's fun to be here.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I am normally in your chair asking all the serious questions.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: And you're reading my intro there, and I'm like, who's she talking about?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you for having me.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: I am very humbled and honored and grateful to be here.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, let's have some fun.
• 3:17
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I love it.
• 3:18
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Let's do it, Kevin.
• 3:19
  Dr. Laura Purdy: So, first of all, let's set the stage, just in case some of the audience, which is a tends to be a lot of healthcare people, if they don't know you who you are, where you're from, what you do, give us give us your elevator pitch on yourself, on your show, what you're passionate about, and then we'll take it from there.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's changed over the years.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: And when I was a kid trying to break into the business and do all the stuff and, you know, all the elbow grease and pull you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and all the rest of that.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't even think I knew then what I wanted to do.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: But what I do now is what I've always dreamed of doing.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that is to get to have a daily conversation with uh the people of our country about what I consider to be the most impactful areas of life, uh, whether it be a spiritual, whether it be physical health, whether it be what's going on in the news and the top stories of the day, how to think, how to think clearly, how to take action to uh preserve and to protect uh freedoms and liberties that we have, and how to how to how to create a better dialogue amongst human beings that that you know want to see good things happen in this world and in this life.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: And ultimately, I really do believe this is my probably my my biggest priority is I want to point people to uh the God who made us all and who I really believe loves us all and calls us to a purpose and a plan for our life.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's multi-layered, it's multifaceted.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: We're on multimedia, we're on TV and radio and streaming and podcast and all the jazz.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it is the ride of my life, and I walk away from working all day, sometimes many, many hours a day.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, the day we're taping this is really my worst day of the week.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: This is my edit cave day where I'm usually in the TV room just cutting up tape all day long.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and but I'm taking an hour and a half out to be with you because I feel like conversations like this are unavoidably important.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: So thanks for having me, and there we go.
• 5:13
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Unavoidably important.
• 5:14
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And it sounds like that phrase right there is in alignment with your mission, which I think is why you and I have always had so much synergy in our businesses, even though we come from wildly different industries.
• 5:26
  Dr. Laura Purdy: But there are things that we have in common, trying to do good things for good people, reaching people, and communicating in a way that they can really understand to connect with them on a human level, even to the extent of, tell me if you agree, but helping to clear up confusion, maybe a little bit of myth busting, and leveling the playing field so that the people that we interact with, whether it's listeners, audience, patients, business owners, founders, you name the demographic, but the point is to help them, educate them, inform them, and empower them.
• 6:01
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And we're both doing that in our own way.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think that's what every person that's on the planet is here to do.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that we we cut life short when we miss out on the joy of getting to do that mission.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think that God gives us skill sets and gifts and abilities and then purposefully wants you to go hide them in a cave somewhere.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think that we are we are given the opportunity to develop as human beings so that not only we flourish, but that we help everybody around us flourish.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that you find your best part of life when you are the one helping someone else achieve their best part of life.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it's one of those things where um I just really believe that the more you you pay that forward, the more satisfaction you get in your own heart.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: But I want to say two things about what you said in that setup.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: One, I think without question, people are the most important resource of our life.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: They're the if you think about your life, anything you want to to have or to hold or to achieve comes through relationships with other people.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to know, love, and get married, you have to learn how to operate in a relationship dynamic that helps someone else and they help you.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: There's a there's a uh mirroring of that uh intent.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to have a successful business, you need customers, you need investors, you need people.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: People are attached to everything.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: So if we don't value people for what they really are, then we miss out on probably succeeding at the highest levels of everything that we can do.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: But the temptation then is to is to use people for that, and that's not what I'm saying either.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: Genuine respect and love and help for people is where it all has to grow out of.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: So that's where we start.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then the other thing um you mentioned was that not only are we are we um dealing with people, but that we have um this the these these gifts and insights and so forth.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I think those are God given.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think that they are put inside of us and intended not to be, you know, hoarded by us, but actually to be utilized to help other people uh flourish.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we're talking about getting the best out of our lives and doing the best that we can, it's all attached to people and how we treat them is ultimately gonna judge our success one way or the other.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: And we're not gonna know the best part of life if we don't do it.
• 8:27
  Dr. Laura Purdy: We're not gonna know the best part of life if we don't do it.
• 8:30
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I think that's beautiful.
• 8:31
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And let's touch on those two points a little bit more because the first one you said is people.
• 8:36
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I work in the startup industry, the digital health tech startup industry.
• 8:41
  Dr. Laura Purdy: You work in media, and I'm sure that we have both seen competitors, bosses, businesses, colleagues, peers, customers, clients, consumers that absolutely forget that point.
• 8:54
  Dr. Laura Purdy: They forget that the people that work, me too.
• 8:58
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I've I've worked for with, I'm actually, I guess what I should say is I've stopped working for a lot of them because it's a very uncomfortable and dangerous place to be.
• 9:09
  Dr. Laura Purdy: If you're someone that's on the inside of that and being a business owner, being a leader who is responsible for the workplace well-being of all of the people that work with me and for me, it's a huge responsibility.
• 9:21
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And if we don't take it as a huge responsibility, we can do a lot of damage to a lot of people's hearts, minds, families, communities, and futures.
• 9:32
  Dr. Laura Purdy: It's about so much more than what's your top line revenue and how much is your business growing and what's your valuation.
• 9:37
  Dr. Laura Purdy: It matters at the individual human level.
• 9:40
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And if we lose sight of that, we really cheapen what it is we're trying to do.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, two things about that.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: One, loving on people is an excuse to be a bad business.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: So you can you can be really good with people and probably and probably better than you need to be.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: And what I and what I mean by that is you're probably confusing things about being good with people that really aren't about being good with people.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: You're probably being too soft on some things and too um too wishy-washy on others.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: And that's and you're thinking, well, I'm being kind to people.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's not necessarily true.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes kindness and love come in correction, but correcting people properly and helping them find the right path on which they need to be on in order for your objective to be met, whether it's your team or your business or whatever, that's the key.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: Not letting them just flounder in whatever and say, Well, I'm being loving and so they're they're gonna, you know, we're gonna succeed because I I'm good with people.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: No, you're just you're just a pillow that's getting walked on.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you can't be, you know, you can't be a a a wallflower.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: But the other side of that is I've seen a lot of bosses, as you were just describing, that forget that most jobs are sales in some way.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: We're selling an idea, we're selling a thought, we're selling a service, we're selling a product, we're selling a philosophy, a worldview, a belief, but we're all selling something all the time.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: And and sales aren't bad.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: I want people to understand this.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: Sales are part of life.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's how my my job as a parent is to sell my kids on what we believe as a family and how we live every single day.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: And but the sales are reinforced by not just what I say or the pitch that I make, but also how I live.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: So if I really believe something and I tell them something else, they're gonna spot it in a second.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: They're just say, Dad's a bad salesman, not just a bad uh a bad dad, but he's he's not he's not even consistent in what he presents.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: But if you help your people get to the point where they can make the corrections necessary and you value them at the same time, then you're really, really on the path to success.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I've had general managers in the media business that sell advertising and programming and stuff, and I've seen them with their sales teams, and I've seen them drive them like you know, uh a bunch of slaves, like literally, like you're gonna go do this and we're gonna make it.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: And you just and it's all like you just have to do it because I'm gonna be in trouble if you don't do it, and it's all it's all pressure.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: Instead of going, okay, what do you need to to succeed and helping them evaluate where their um weaknesses are, where their strengths are, what can be reinforced, what can be improved, maybe getting some training in some areas where you're a little bit weaken.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: But I usually what happens is when I see bosses that take that amount of time and extra just to say, okay, I'm not really this person's enemy.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: I really am their boss, but as a boss, I'm gonna succeed more if they succeed.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: So how do I help them get better at what they're doing so that they have satisfaction and accomplishment in their area that will then reciprocate and eventually bubble up to me as well?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's not as it's not a selfish thing to want your team to win.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's a people thing to want your team to win.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: And we want to be about people.
• 12:59
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Absolutely.
• 13:00
  Dr. Laura Purdy: We all want to win the get together, right?
• 13:02
  Dr. Laura Purdy: The business wins, the leader wins when each individual person, specifically, I'm talking about a business, but you could apply it to a family, a friend group, a church, a any sort of organization where everyone has to work together, but specifically I'm talking about business.
• 13:17
  Dr. Laura Purdy: But if what I what I've learned recently is that if we can help the individual person connect to their own internal motivation, what am I doing this for?
• 13:26
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Am I doing this for my family, my kids, my future, my career, my success, my future, my stability, if we can help them connect to their individual motivations and then shape how we manage their, I'm gonna use the term performance, their output, their productivity, their effectiveness, their KPIs, their efficiency, their results.
• 13:48
  Dr. Laura Purdy: There you go.
• 13:48
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Help them connect to their individual purpose and then put a framework that supports their productivity or performance around it, then everyone's winning because the business's objectives also get met.
• 14:02
  Dr. Laura Purdy: It's beautiful.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's true.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: And the and and the thing about um watching them succeed is that this is for a bigger purpose than just the success of the company or anything else.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: Again, if we really care about people, we want them to know peace and to have confidence in what they're doing in life.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: And the more you take the time to demonstrate that you're committed to their success, especially as a supervisor, as a boss or someone that's above them, um, the more they're gonna feel that.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, for instance, I had another boss in the business who, when he was hired by a company, came in and realized that the way the corporation had been structuring the sales uh incentives for the for the sellers was kind of backwards.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that he that he actually had things in the deal as the manager where he would get paid bonuses if they broke even, uh, even if they didn't do as well as the year before.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so he could cut a position or two at the end of the year, say that he saved some money, still get a bonus.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: But what happened in the process?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: People were getting chewed up and spit out.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: He came in and he said, take all those bonuses out of my package.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: I want to use that money to incentivize my sellers to hit goals and thresholds and contests and performance and everything else that I can use to incentivize them.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: And within two years, he took that cluster from being really a lagger in the in the economy of the company to uh clearly out in front of first place of everybody else that was in the business.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a simple thing of just understanding that they had corporately put into a structure something that was working against the idea that people were valuable.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: And he used his own personal, what could have been bonuses for him.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: He took that cash, he threw it back in.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And guess what?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: He made more money at the end of the year because he did get paid on actual sales performance and actual income accomplishment, and he went way above what anybody had ever made before in that position.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: So it was again, it and it ended up working out great for him, but he had to recognize that the val valuing of people was more important than um than making the you know his his personal budget narrative work, which is fairly myopic.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, companies that that look at it from that perspective, they're not thinking big picture anyway.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: So um it helped kind of to start a new culture within that company as a whole, as a whole, because he was he was thinking and looking that way.
• 16:30
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I love that.
• 16:31
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And I wish, honestly, I wish more business owners and founders would think about people in that way because it's a really solid example of how I wish I could remember there was a special forces, like a special operations phrase about um people are more valuable than equipment or something like that.
• 16:48
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I'll look that up and pull it out at some point.
• 16:49
  Dr. Laura Purdy: But one of the special operations forces truth is that people above equipment, above strategy, above anything else, you need your people.
• 16:59
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And I wish a lot of business owners and founders thought about it that way, but unfortunately, so many people can't see past the green in their eyes.
• 17:06
  Dr. Laura Purdy: At least that's my perspective of it.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, those business owners aren't in um they're not in bunkers with people that are willing to lay their life on the line for the person sitting next to them.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what special forces have to live with every day.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: So the the I and I think if you want more success, you live like the stakes are higher.
• 17:24
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Mm-hmm.
• 17:25
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Absolutely.
• 17:27
  Dr. Laura Purdy: So let's pivot just a little bit because I I want to make sure we talk about.
• 17:30
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I asked you before we started the show, what's the one piece of wisdom you want to talk about?
• 17:35
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And obviously, we're talking about all kinds of wisdom, but the first thing out of your mouth was don't die stupid.
• 17:40
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Don't die stupid.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I wasn't calling you stupid, and I wasn't calling anybody that heard me stupid, which is just me, hey, don't die stupid.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: You depending on where the comma is, you could be misinterpreted.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my personal, my personal motto is don't die stupid.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Exclamation point, no comma.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh my greatest fear in life is that I won't learn lessons from all the opportunities I have to learn.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of people look at those and they call them failures, but I look at them as growth seasons.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: And when I've made horrible mistakes, the key to it is to not repeat the horrible mistake the next time you're around.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: And if you if you put that kind of mentality into practice, you actually begin to live a pretty exciting, pretty fulfilling, pretty educational, pretty growing in every direction kind of life because you're committed to not dying stupid.
• 18:36
  Dr. Laura Purdy: So you're saying, so if I understand you correctly, what you're saying is over the course of your life, as you are like Pac-Man bumping into walls, making mistakes, learning the hard way.
• 18:48
  Dr. Laura Purdy: What was that?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Eating pellets.
• 18:50
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Eating pellets, chasing, chasing the bad guys or getting chased by the bad guys.
• 18:55
  Dr. Laura Purdy: When you bump into those walls, don't bump into the same wall over and over and over and over again, Pac-Man.
• 19:01
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Turn around, take it the other direction until you bump into the next wall, and then don't bump into that wall again either.
• 19:07
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Is that a nice 80s video game analogy for what you're what you're saying?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: I can tell you and I were both uh Gen Xers from the moment we met.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's that's exactly what I'm saying.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: And it it's it's a shame that we attach so much shame and disappointment in people to failures because failures are just success that hasn't been perfected yet.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes you have to scrape your knee, bump into a wall, um, do pick your proverbial illustration to understand that that's the wrong way to go.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then when you get that clarity that we've already mentioned, uh, you know, more realistically put in front of us more clearly, then we can make the right decision the next go around.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: But if you look at the most successful people in all branches of life, sports, acting, whatever, um, you're gonna find people that that achieved the most and went to the highest and did the best.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: They were people that, you know, had a lot of scraped knees and bumped elbows and, you know, ran into walls.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's just one of those things where, you know, Michael Jordan missed thousands and thousands and thousands of game-winning shots, but he made some very significant ones at the right time in his career, and he's the greatest that ever played.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's not even close.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: Don't even bring the LeBron trash my way.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and he he lived it, but but it's because he used every one of those missed opportunities to go back and to refocus and reframe and say, what can I do better and become a better player over time?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: We we can do that in every industry, in every job, in every corner of our life if we choose to.
• 20:44
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Wow.
• 20:45
  Dr. Laura Purdy: One of the one of the corners I would like to touch on briefly is the parenting corner, because you're a parent, I'm a parent, and we have probably 5,000 children between the two of us.
• 20:54
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I've never counted, but it's a lot of them.
• 20:57
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And kids are tiny little versions of big humans, and that's what they do, is they make a lot of mistakes.
• 21:04
  Dr. Laura Purdy: In fact, that's like all they make is mistakes from the very beginning until they figure out how to do anything, and then they make less mistakes.
• 21:11
  Dr. Laura Purdy: So, from a practical perspective, Kevin, how do you how do you teach that to your kids?
• 21:16
  Dr. Laura Purdy: The because I feel like when I was growing up, probably when you were growing up, failure was kind of terrifying.
• 21:23
  Dr. Laura Purdy: It was the you can be anything you want to be mentality.
• 21:26
  Dr. Laura Purdy: You can be a sports star, you can go to space camp, you can save the planet.
• 21:30
  Dr. Laura Purdy: This is the 90s talking.
• 21:32
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And there wasn't really any education that I ever got on what how what to do with failure, how to respond to not achieving those goals that anybody can achieve because we can all do anything we set our mind to do.
• 21:44
  Dr. Laura Purdy: So fast forward 30s.
• 21:46
  Dr. Laura Purdy: The mentality isn't wrong.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: We can achieve anything we want, but I think that we have to learn what we don't know.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so I would say that for my own kids.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: For one, they see me model it.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: They see me make mistakes.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: They see me, they see me apologize.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: They see me uh, you know, start over and try again, and this time hopefully a little bit more focus and and ambition and and whatever it requires to make it happen.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: But I know that there's certain things, so we never none of us have ever gotten to our point in life, even the most self-made man that you can think of has never gotten to uh the the pinnacle of their life and looked back and said, I truly did it myself.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: No one else helped.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's all it's all me.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: That person, that that person, you know what they did to that person?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: They they killed that person on a cross.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: They did.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody else in human history has needed help to do and to get to where they were, to what they could do, to what they were most successful at.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: And in the learning of all of that, um, sometimes we listen and sometimes we don't, and sometimes we don't pay attention to people that have made mistakes before us.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so what do we do?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: We end up a lot of times repeating those mistakes.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: I hope that with my kids, that when they ask me a question about something that's difficult, whether it's relationships or work or philosophy or math or anything else, I hope that what I say means something to them since I hope that it's yeah, I try very hard to base everything on truth.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: I want them to be able to say, and I've said to them, look, I I want you to know why I believe this to be true, because I don't want you to make the same mistake I've made in this arena in the past, et cetera.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I think the more kind of transparent and realistic I am with them about the mistakes I've made, I think that actually helps them.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: It gives them a little bit of a leg up because they go, Oh, well, dad's already made that mistake for me.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: So now I can go on to the next, you know, I can skip over A and go straight to B.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's that's a value for parents to be able to have that knowledge in their own head.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now, sometimes they're still not gonna listen to you, and sometimes they're still gonna do it on their own anyway, and then they're gonna come back and they oh, you know what, dad, you were right.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: I shouldn't know that.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's okay.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: You're fulfilled now, you're on to the next thing.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, I think the most important part of all of it is the unrelenting effort to just keep going because if you show up and show up and show up and show up, you're gonna overcome the vast majority of all of the stumbling blocks that many other that will take many others out.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: It takes diligence, it takes persistence, it takes a willingness to say, I'm gonna do it again, I'm gonna go again.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: But the more you show up in life, the more you show up in a marriage, the more you show up in a home, the more you show up in uh parenting, the more you show up in, you know, corporate stuff for the goals of the company, the more you, the more committed you are and the more all in you are on the things that are at hand.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not advocating an improper work life balance.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: I also think this is where a lot of people get stuff wrong.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think we waste a great deal of time in our workday where we kind of like just, you know, the most successful managers are five-minute managers.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: Every five minutes of the hour, they do something and they've got it accounted for.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: We blow off a lot.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: If we're showing up, if we show up, then we're gonna take advantage of all that time and make sure that we do it well.
• 25:26
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Wow.
• 25:27
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Okay, what was that phrase?
• 25:29
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Because I needed to hear that and I want to repeat that.
• 25:30
  Dr. Laura Purdy: You said a un, what did you say?
• 25:32
  Dr. Laura Purdy: A relentless ability to keep showing up.
• 25:36
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Is that what you said?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: A relentless ability to show up.
• 25:39
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Relentless ability to keep showing up.
• 25:43
  Dr. Laura Purdy: No matter what.
• 25:46
  Dr. Laura Purdy: That's your day.
• 25:47
  Dr. Laura Purdy: That's your time, that's your life, that's your challenge, your obstacle, your thing, your your wall that you just bumped into if you're Pac-Man.
• 25:55
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And that's your wall.
• 25:58
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Yeah.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like we so I think a lot of people get entitled when they get to a certain stage.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm I'm so good now, people should be looking out for me.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: You you write a book, publish a song, paint a painting, make a meal, treat a patient, do a show, whatever it is, no one cares about it as much as you will.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want it to be successful, you've got to pour all of that excellence into it from your perspective.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's your job to kind of make other people care about it eventually, but nobody can do the work for you, and you're not entitled to expect other people to do the work for you.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's you, it's your thing.
• 26:36
  Dr. Laura Purdy: You know what that reminds me of as my first day of residency, one of the best teachers in the military medicine industry that I ever had.
• 26:44
  Dr. Laura Purdy: He was Colonel Higdon.
• 26:46
  Dr. Laura Purdy: He said to us on the first day of residency, nobody cares that you're a doctor except you and your mom.
• 26:52
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And we all remembered that.
• 26:54
  Dr. Laura Purdy: But you know what?
• 26:55
  Dr. Laura Purdy: But that's what he was getting at, right?
• 26:56
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Yeah, you're a doctor, sure, you're an MD.
• 26:58
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Yeah, you can write prescriptions.
• 27:00
  Dr. Laura Purdy: You're the big shot on the hospital now.
• 27:02
  Dr. Laura Purdy: You work in the labor and delivery, you're treating the patients, you're running the codes, you're doing all the things.
• 27:06
  Dr. Laura Purdy: But at the end of the day, that is not what defines you, and that is not um something to be entitled about.
• 27:13
  Dr. Laura Purdy: It's something to respect and hold with reverence.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: How many long diagnoses does it take to lose that credibility?
• 27:19
  Dr. Laura Purdy: One.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I tell people this in my in my business all the time because I'll start reading an advertisement for an advertiser that'll come on the show, and I'll say, you know, I'll I'll start reading your commercial next week on Monday.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: But I went to work for you 35 years ago.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because I tell people the truth, and if I ever don't tell people the truth, then they're not gonna trust what I say anymore, and that's gonna hurt your advertising when you're with me, you know, for the next 10 years.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's how we have to live it.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: We have to understand that, and it's not that you have to be perfect, but humility and loving people go a long way towards overcoming some of the failures that sometimes have bigger ramifications.
• 28:02
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Humility and loving people goes a long way.
• 28:08
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And I think that's true, actually.
• 28:09
  Dr. Laura Purdy: There's a lot of forgiveness that can be given for your mistakes, for your walls that you bump into, for if you're taking steps towards dying stupid instead of learning from your mistakes.
• 28:18
  Dr. Laura Purdy: That's right.
• 28:19
  Dr. Laura Purdy: That's right.
• 28:20
  Dr. Laura Purdy: But if you're a jerk, it all flies out the window, right?
• 28:27
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Fantastic.
• 28:28
  Dr. Laura Purdy: All right, so what do we have?
• 28:29
  Dr. Laura Purdy: We have what did you say?
• 28:31
  Dr. Laura Purdy: We gotta treat people like one of our most valuable resources.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: People are our most valuable resources.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like our most valuable.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: Everything you love in this life comes from other people.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I need to treat them like they are the source of everything that I love in this life.
• 28:43
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Because they are.
• 28:45
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Right?
• 28:46
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And they're also the source of all the things we want to do in the future.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: If I want a hug from my baby girl when she gets home from school, I need as her dad to not just get her out the door in the morning and put a smile on her face and maybe make her breakfast, but I need to do it every day, day after day after day, so that when she gets home and she's had a pretty crappy day as a teenager, and you know, all the other people are being beasts to her, uh, that she comes in and she goes, Hey, there's my dad.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_02: I know that he loves me.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: That uh that hug is earned over a long period of time of pouring into that that person, that resource.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that is what I mean.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: There is nothing more valuable in our life than how we handle people.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: And if we want to, if we want to succeed on the most important planes of accomplishment, spiritual, emotional, relational, familial, we have to do the hard work of uh, you know, loving them, meeting their needs, thinking about them in ways be, you know, in preference to ourselves.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because what happens at the end of the day is if, and I hate this whole, oh, you gotta, you gotta love yourself to be uh that kind of runs against my faith stripe for one thing, because God didn't feel that way about us.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: He so loved us that he gave us his son.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I kind of think, well, what have I given up to make my wife feel special today?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: What have I given up to make my kids know that their dad is fully invested in them?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that means I play a lot fewer rounds of golf.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: That means I do a lot of other things differently than a lot of the dads around me do.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm okay with that because that hug at the end of the day, that's 1,000% worth it.
• 30:30
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Yeah, the reward and the output, the output of the effort and the sacrifice that you're putting in on the front end is far more rewarding than when you say being on the job.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: She invests in her kids and you know, it's a forward-leaning process.
• 30:46
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Multi-layers of and actually that applies outside of the family too, right?
• 30:51
  Dr. Laura Purdy: In business, probably in media, in healthcare.
• 30:54
  Dr. Laura Purdy: If we set a really high standard of interaction, sacrifice, love, compassion, empathy, giving, serving.
• 31:04
  Dr. Laura Purdy: That's a huge buzzword right now, servant leadership, right?
• 31:07
  Dr. Laura Purdy: If we do those things, what comes out of it is exponentially far beyond what we could ever imagine up front.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 31:16
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Right?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: I've had so many producers that have worked for me.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them have left uh and gone to much greater heights than being my producer.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I always look back and I always kind of like, huh, who would have ever thought when they were answering my phones and doing my schedule and stuff that this is where they would be?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: And the the next thought that comes along is, man, I'm glad that I treated them well.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: Man, I'm glad that I gave them confidence.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: Man, I'm glad that, you know, even in the hard things, we had direct conversations about things because I firmly believe that that helped them launch into those other areas.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I've done it over and over and over again.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've had dozens of producers over the years, and I wouldn't take any of it back.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's I want them to, I want them to know the success that they were designed and built and born with, but you know, we helped them get there.
• 32:03
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Wow.
• 32:04
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Kevin, I cannot believe we're at the end of our segment.
• 32:07
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I know.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: That went really fast.
• 32:10
  Dr. Laura Purdy: 45 minutes goes by like that, but it was full of wisdom.
• 32:14
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I try to point out the pieces of wisdom when we find them.
• 32:17
  Dr. Laura Purdy: It was.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: It was just a lot of me talking most of the time.
• 32:20
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Well, it was like you dropping knowledge and wisdom and and uh lots of fun 80s and 90s analogies.
• 32:27
  Dr. Laura Purdy: But if we could all, if we could wrap up the whole thing into a couple of bullet points, I think the most important pieces of wisdom have to do with people, what we put into people, what we put into the world.
• 32:38
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Not about us being our own little island or planet and the universe revolves around us, but us existing and living for the people, for the endeavors, for the projects, for the humans, for the downstream effects, and even the generations that come after us.
• 32:54
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Everything that we do really, really matters.
• 32:58
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And that's very impactful wisdom.
• 33:01
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Thank you, Kevin.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: You're welcome.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: And Don't Die Stupid.
• 33:04
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Don't die stupid.
• 33:05
  Dr. Laura Purdy: That's the big the biggest, that's the name of this episode.
• 33:08
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Winston, that's my producer, Winston.
• 33:10
  Dr. Laura Purdy: You don't have to cut this out.
• 33:11
  Dr. Laura Purdy: You can leave it in.
• 33:12
  Dr. Laura Purdy: But that that's the episode title, Don't Die Stupid with Kevin McCullough.
• 33:17
  Dr. Laura Purdy: So, Kevin, I like to give people just an opportunity to brag on yourself real quick at the end.
• 33:22
  Dr. Laura Purdy: If people are listening to you and they're like, I want to listen to his show.
• 33:25
  Dr. Laura Purdy: That's pretty great.
• 33:26
  Dr. Laura Purdy: He's got awesome things to say.
• 33:27
  Dr. Laura Purdy: So give us your 30-second brag.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: Or the interwebs anywhere, and you just say uh That Kevin Show, uh they'll find me, uh thatKevinshow.com, and um you'll find the TV show, the radio, the podcasts, it's all there.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um I do write about political things and controversial things, but I I try to do it from a winsome perspective because I believe people are important.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I would love for anybody that's watching this to come and join us.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we're we're on seven days a week, so you can't miss us, and it's a lot of fun.
• 33:57
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I love it.
• 33:57
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Thank you, Kevin, with that Kevin Show.
• 33:59
  Dr. Laura Purdy: It's such an honor after working with you for all these years to have you on the show.
• 34:03
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Have a great day, Kevin.
• 34:04
  Dr. Laura Purdy: I'm so happy that you came.
• 34:06
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Take care.
• 34:06
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Bye.
• 34:07
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Thank you for tuning in to the I Am Wiser Podcast, where each episode brings us closer to a wiser, more human approach to healthcare.
• 34:16
  Dr. Laura Purdy: If today's conversation inspired you or sparked new ideas, share it with someone who's ready to rethink healthcare.
• 34:23
  Dr. Laura Purdy: And if you have a story or innovation that could light the way for others, reach out.
• 34:29
  Dr. Laura Purdy: We'd love to hear from you.
• 34:30
  Dr. Laura Purdy: This space is yours too.
• 34:32
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Don't forget to follow, rate, and review us on your favorite platform.
• 34:36
  Dr. Laura Purdy: Until next time, stay curious, stay courageous, and stay wiser.