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Heights of Victory with Walt Cathey · Heights of Victory

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can expect to hear stories of success with benefits of diversity and resilience, which would pick with hardware in a little West Texas grid culminating in the heights of victory.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Heights of Victory.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Jeff Horn, CEO and co-founder of Master Rider Capital.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: And today it's my pleasure to introduce you to our guest and my friend Walt Cathy.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Walt is the Covenant Health System Market CEO for Texas and New Mexico.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh welcome to the Heights of Victory, Walt.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much for having me.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a pleasure to visit with you and talk to y'all and uh be looking forward to this.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: For those that may not be familiar with the role that healthcare plays here in West Texas, Lubbock is considered the healthcare hub of West Texas and serves a population of more than a million people across a 600-mile radius.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: The area is the largest healthcare region between I-35 and Denver.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's pretty daunting, isn't it?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It is, but it uh it provides some unique challenges and some fun challenges to deal with.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: So Walt oversees Texas into Mexico, helps out with some uh uh hospitals on the West Coast as well, but he directly uh manages 6,000 caregivers uh on a daily basis.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll we'll get into more of that later, but we really appreciate.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: We know you have a really busy schedule, and we're honored that you've allotted time to join us.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna get started.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds great.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, as with all of our guests, we like to talk about where it all started, your background, how you were raised, understand more of kind of what got you to uh where you are today.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: So why don't you take us back to when you're little Walt running around and what that was like?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I was uh born and raised in a little city called Dennis, Texas, uh, to two parents, uh Johnny and Kay, both were teachers, and my dad was also a basketball coach.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So uh that provided some unique uh experiences for me.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but uh being a kid underneath two teachers means there was a lot of discipline in the house and a lot of expectations.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And some of those expectations were hard to live up to.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think they built a ground great foundation for me, uh, trying to learn how to be the best part of myself and how to be a really good uh leader and a person of faith and uh really a father to my kids.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Having two educators as parents, I doubt you turned in many subpar homework assignments.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, definitely did not.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, fortunate to have two parents to really kind of teach you how to go through the education system, how to study, uh, really figuring out what study types you needed to take on uh to for your best learning capabilities and as as a student learner and even as an adult learner.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but no, parents very strict about grades.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you got to be in my household, there was a lot of extra work that you had to start doing.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that was not acceptable.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so luckily that built a lot of really good habits for me to make it easier in life.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you mentioned your dad was a basketball coach as well.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that from visiting with you, you got an affinity for sports and all of that.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you take us back when you sports, your parents coach you at all?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, what all did you play growing up?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I pretty much played everything growing up.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'd say the only sport that I really didn't play much in junior high or high school was baseball.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then with my dad, you know, being a basketball coach, you know, he helped me a lot during summer programs and those type of things, but he let coaches be coaches.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And when he was my direct coach was when we were at the house.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it was mostly around honestly the mental aspect of the game.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like how do you approach certain things?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: What does your competitive spirit have to be?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what's your will to win and what's your will to do things outside of what you're asked to do just within the practice zone?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's where he spent a lot of time with me.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: But he really um is a really good coach and lets people coach me in their own style.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't get involved in it very much, but uh yeah, being a son of a coach is an interesting and a very small town because everybody automatically expects you to be good at sports, and you may not be.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there were sports that I definitely struggled in, but uh there came a lot of expectation, and I think it made it difficult choices for me.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I actually did stop playing basketball um my freshman year of high school, and I think a lot of that was due to some expectations and some position changes and those type of things with coaches and stuff.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I switched my focus over to football and soccer.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you played all throughout your high school career uh playing both sports and even toyed with the idea of walking on at Texas Tech, I believe.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, I considered walking on at Tex uh Texas Tech, uh mostly to play wide receiver and to be a kicker, and had a lot of contacts here at the time, which is partially why I actually chose to come to Tech.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had a lot of contacts underneath Spike Dyke's football program uh with Coach Hofer and Coach Goodner and those people, and talked to them a lot and they encouraged me to come out and just do it.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I was really struggling with the concept of it and what that actually might do.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, realistically, I knew I needed to be able to bring some income in to make sure I could pay for college at the time as well.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I was having that difficulty and had a really good conversation with Spike Dykes.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he was very open and honest, uh, as most good coaches are, about what the expectations are and really where he thought my capabilities might lead me to.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, he really did actually honestly encourage me in a very correct path of looking back into another passion, which was healthcare.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, as an athlete, you know, had many injuries, had to go through therapy, all those type of things.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I kind of talked about that with him, and he said, you know, if that's really where your passion lies, that's probably what you need to start doing now.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and that guided a lot for me through college.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Spike was a my stepdad coached for Spike as a graduate assistant coach, and then he was also a high school coach.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I I I understand exactly where you're coming from playing for coaches and all of that, but uh Spike was just a good old West Texan, and I mean he had a really good way with people of shooting them straight and and doing it in a real genuine fashion.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was um honestly one of the most loving and compassionate people when you had your one-on-ones with him.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: But he was very true in what he was going to tell you, and and he didn't steer people wrong.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: He was very good at having hard and difficult conversations, which I really did respect.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um but, you know, he he left it out there on the table and really wanted you to be the best for yourself.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, I remember later in life I actually saw him for one of his book signings and got a football sign behind him, and he wrote a specific thing, even remember me, you know, just for a couple hour conversation that we had one day.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that's awesome.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Both of your parents want you to come to tech?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Were they?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my family wanted me to come to tech.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I my grandfather actually came to tech in the late 30s, early 40s.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then of course he got drafted, you know, going to World War II and really kind of went through that whole phase.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: But my family is all from West Texas.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, my my dad was born in a little beast city called Wingate, Texas.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: My mom is from post-Texas.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So uh very much West Texas, born and bred.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when I'd come back out to West Texas, uh, you know, especially kind of to the post area and those type of things, Abilene, that's got that's always felt like home.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love the open scenery.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, even kind of growing up in Ennis, you're really close to the piney woods, and that seems a little claustrophobic for me, even going back now.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so being out in the open space is it's a beautiful thing.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, you you don't have sunsets like any anywhere else like this.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you you get here around the mid-90s, is that right?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Got here in 1996, um, started working in healthcare in 1997 and never left.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Never left.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're gonna talk about that here in a few minutes, but you know, you go into Texas Tech, believe, believe, occupational therapist.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And um one of the things that struck me, you know, for those of the people that don't know, Walt, Walt, Walt has worked, literally worked his way to where he's at and has earned everything he has achieved.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us about some of these jobs you were doing, you know, when you were going to school.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so like I said, uh, you know, I explained to uh Coach Dykes that I really need to be able to work, I really need to be able to pay for school.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and Spike actually helped me out.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: He called the office and uh gave me a memorial scholarship to help pay for my first year of school here while I could actually build a little bit of a nest egg for myself.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: So indebted to him in multiple different ways.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but yes, going to school, um, uh like I said, I started working at what was then St.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Mary's Hospital in 1997 as a rehab aide.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I did that between classes.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I got myself a job at what was called the University Center or the Student Union Building now.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I opened up the student union building pretty much most days and a lot at and closed it down a lot at nights.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then to actually earn some extra cast, I was kind of a bar back and a bartender at several different restaurants and bars in town.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh most of my time in college was getting up between, you know, around five o'clock, getting to work by 6:37.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then most nights, I probably didn't get in until after one and sometimes as late as 4 a.m.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I've learned from a very young age that sleep is not a necessity.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you have to balance that, and that has been a definite struggle of mine.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: But showing up, being present, really grinding through work, um, and being the best version of yourself is something that was instilled in me early on.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it's it's just a habit I've always carried forward.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like I want to be the best person I possibly can for everybody that I work with.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Was that both of your parents?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's very unique in a 19-year-old to just all of a sudden start putting in 20-hour days.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm curious where you really feel like that came from.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I do think it came from both my mom and dad.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you look at uh, especially a high school basketball coach, and even when you talk about like a somebody like a coach McCaslin, basketball coaches that that job doesn't stop.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it carries over a lot of different time zones and different holidays and those type of things.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a lot out.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And most basketball coaches at the high school level usually have to coach coach multiple sports.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I remember he helped out and was the defensive line coach at certain schools, and you know, he would help out with baseball and those type of things, so that way he could bring in extra money.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: I that is, and then when you talk about my mom, yes, she was a teacher, but being a mom has got to be one of the hardest jobs that's out there, you know, because you're never off the clock.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is a 24-7 job, 365 days a year.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And watching how she went about that and really being the best person she could for us, providing for us for me and my sister.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um they taught me that hard work is something that you can never be shy on.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: How did you go about finding, you know, I'm sure today you have a ton of work life challenges, you know, we'll talk about your family here in a minute.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: But early on, you know, you've got work school challenge.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: How did you how did you find time to balance that?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Or what did what did you do?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: I know you didn't have enough time probably, but how did you find time to to balance that?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm blessed with an amazing wife, uh, and I've known her pretty much all of my college career, and we definitely uh got married right after college.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, got two little girls, and for me, that was something I I really honestly did struggle with.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's something I I feel like I'm constantly getting a little bit better at.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you ask probably my two girls or my wife, it's something that they task me to improve, and they actually put down rules sometimes.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we have a rule that if I go on family vacations, I'm not allowed to have my cell phone or my iPad with me except for two hours a day.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so that way I can dedicate time to them.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they had to help build that for me because I didn't know where my own boundaries were, quite honestly.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like there was always that other side that is that requirement and that obligation I had to my um my peers, my co-workers at the time, and even the people who worked for me at the time.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to be always present for them.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be that type of leader, and it is a struggle.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it really honestly still is probably one of my biggest struggles.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Finding hobbies helps.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and not work hobbies, but actual hobbies helps.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: But having you having an honest conversation at the house was one of the real things that kind of turned me around on that.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember specifically sitting down with my wife and my oldest daughter, which she was very young back then, and her just not even recognizing me being in the room because I wasn't there enough at that time.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that was an eye-opening thing for me to make sure I was more present in my girls' lives.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's well, by the time we had our second one, being around them, being around their activities, their dance, those type of things that they love to do is is always a priority for me.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Your two girls now, and your oldest is at the University of Kentucky, and then youngest is in high school at Friendship.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, sophomore in friendship and a sophomore at Kentucky, so it makes it easy for me to keep track.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: So in theory, they should graduate the same year, which means that'll be a really busy uh spring for that year.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: But uh both doing great, uh, really enjoy their different passions and uh really kind of thriving.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's just neat to see kids kind of come into their own.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's really neat.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you gotta know, you know, you're going to school, you're working 32 jobs in college.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: How did you have time to meet Bethany?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh, I was also in a fraternity at the time and uh actually met her at a pledge mixer, and we officially probably started dating week six of college.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and she's just she's my rock.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she's never left me.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she's always backed me.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, with her degree, she actually graduated before me as a speech language pathologist and really kind of helped, you know, steward our family, you know, from an income standpoint while I was still trying to figure out, you know, how to get through my master's program as an occupational therapist.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so she plays so many pivotal roles in my household.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's been the biggest blessing that God's presented before me.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's terrific.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: How did you, you know, let's fast forward maybe towards the end of school, but as things progress towards the end, you know, where what what was your mindset?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Where were you, what were you thinking you wanted to do for your career, things along those lines?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you know, when you're in the Allied Health professions, especially at Texas Tech, you kind of have a multiple different pathways you can go, but most of your undergrad classes are very similar.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I was also blessed that Bethany was able to kind of take most of my undergrad classes, and she did take really good notes for me.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that way if I did miss class secondary to work, that uh I actually had somebody that could take good notes, make sure that I had the right information and I can go back and actually do really well.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I was not a bad student, I was just not always present all the time.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think the biggest key for me was I was trying to figure out what I really wanted to be.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew I wanted to be in the therapy world.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I was really debating at that time between physical therapy and occupational therapy.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was looking at each one of the platforms, they both work with patients in a very direct way, which I absolutely loved.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: I got to see a lot of that, especially uh early on.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what I wanted to find out was what are the different scopes of each one of those fields?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And physical therapy is very much built around biomechanical models of a person, like how are we doing regarding flexibility, strength, stabilization, those type of things.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And occupational therapy really understood as a platform, what you're required to do is improve somebody's function.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: So most people have a certain set of functions that they actually operate on on a daily basis, right?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: How you move, how you live, what you do.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: And secondary to an illness or injury, some of that gets deviated or lowered.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in doing so, it left this wide open array of everything I could possibly do and everything I could possibly think of in regards to that field of study.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh being a person that does not like being told what to do very often, uh, but likes to want to live in a framework, I think it left a lot of opportunities out there for me.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: So when I looked at both of those fields, um, I really kind of started leaning pretty heavily towards OT as being a rehab aide.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: I got to see all of it.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I like the opportunities that presented itself in occupational therapy because I thought there were so many different things I could possibly do.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I tested the boundaries on several of them.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: You were when we visited before this, you know, you talked a lot that kind of what drove you to maybe doing PT I think is the sports rehab and you know, specifically hands and and uh, you know, the love for you know getting people back to the field or whatnot and all of that type of thing.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, you might talk a little bit about that as well.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so specifically one of the things I first came out and I had a real passion for as an occupational therapist was being a hand therapist.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I did work with two really uh great hand therapists, uh Mac Evans and Johnny Wagner.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they both were actually my clinical instructors while I was still in school.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then was luckily enough to be able to work side by beside them uh once I got hired on officially as an occupational therapist.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: That aspect of returning people back to their work or returning people back to sports or whatever it might be from a hand perspective was really neat.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then it took me on to a different journey where uh Covenant asked me to start helping out with Workman's Comp.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went on a journey with Covenant on how to rebuild workmen's comp programs for an organization of its size.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, Covenant to rebuild it for Covenant.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: For Covenant specifically.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and at that time, Covenant was losing about$9 million a year just in workmen's comp, you know, fees and how much it was costing to get their employees back.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I did a lot of research at the time and rebuilt a program to kind of start with what happens with an employee before they actually get hired.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do we determine what somebody can actually do?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then how do I build a rehabilitation program to get them back to those levels that they need to be at to be able to work fully and functionally within their job and limit injuries?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I spent a lot of time doing that.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and that was kind of my first opening into like, I think, really kind of what I would call my entrepreneurship phase of healthcare.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that was really neat because I got to see all the different aspects of it.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I got to learn about the insurance and how you deal with insurance companies.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: I got to learn with how to deal with different companies and what do they want to then have out of their employees?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it allowed me to actually build out for several companies within Coven, within Lubbock specifically, is I can help you actually determine every employee that you have, what they need to have as minimum physical standards and how to make sure that they stay safe within it.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then if they do actually have an injury, how do I can I get them back as quickly as possible and make sure that once they return, we don't have a similar type of injury.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: So retraining people physically, mentally, those type of things, and making sure they're as safe as possible within their wallet.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like a baseline testing for your employees, similar to uh people that follow football, concussion testing and baseline testing for whenever they come back or whatnot.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: So and I'm I'm curious, that was just for Covenant employees, but did that transcend across to companies that Covenant was taking, you know, people that you were taking care of that were on workers' comp plans that Covenant would have to take care of as well.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you know, I started it with Covenant to kind of help them rebuild.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And by the end of about year two, we had a little bit more than a$7 million improvement.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I finally got Covenant's total fee to be a little less than a million within three years.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so showed some success.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: But in doing that, I also ended up getting tagged as the person who actually dealt with work cases that came into Covenant for anything.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you kind of develop a little bit of reputation if you're taking care of, you know, this large of a community's workforce for just injuries in general.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And would end up actually working with companies on how to redo, set standards uh for, you know, certain types of jobs, you know, especially like distribution centers.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like I would go in and determine like what does an average person need to be able to lift, squat, you know, pick up, you know, move around, push, carry.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And there was actually a device that we actually had uh at Covenant, it was called Archon.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I could actually test anybody on that thing.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if I wanted you to come in, I could actually test you on how much you could actually lift off the floor, how much you could push, how much you could pull from a force standpoint, and make sure you were safe.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I could do those pre assessments testing before you actually got hired to make sure you were gonna be safe doing this job.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that way it limited liability for the company itself.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um what it ended up exp you know transpiring because of that was uh got a call from City Bus.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And City Bus was having a very similar situation.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Occur.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: They were having a lot of pay, a lot of people who were trying to ride City Bus or and were requesting demand response.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: So people come pick you up at the house instead of you having to walk down to, you know, the bus stop.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And developed a testing protocol and got finally got that copyrighted to test out how people would eventually or could they make it to the bus stop or not.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And end up actually, like I said, copywriting that.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And what actually started doing that, and Covenant let me do this on the weekends.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: They allowed me to go to four-day work weeks and work 10 hours a day.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's more than that, but that's what I got paid for was 10 hours a day.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then on Fridays, I'd start traveling to go to different cities to do testing for transit systems.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so created my own consulting firm back then to do that.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that really was very early on in my career.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's probably what created a lot of like my work-life balance issues as well.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: But stoking your entrepreneurial.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was, it was fun, you know, as well.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there were several things we talked about.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love for our viewers to hear how you were known as the hatchet man at one point in time.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: So one of my biggest mentors at Covenant, her name was Sharon Ivory.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I worked for her.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: She was my vice president for many years.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And during that time, it was right after the formation of Covenant.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And Covenant was formed by St.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Mary's and Methodist.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so you had two very large competing adult hospitals that now are supposed to work together.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the struggles that came out of that was there were people that still had sides.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like you still called yourself a St.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Mary's person or you called yourself a Methodist person.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: And almost for a decade after that merger happened.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: You had to deal with that culture.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, it was a very tough environment at the time.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Covenant quite honestly regressed as a healthcare organization.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do that and you're not growing, you're you don't really know who you are as an organization, you end up having to make very tough choices to right-size the organization and rebuild it and reset where the ground is going to be.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And within that, um Sharon was kind of tasked with actually looking at multiple different, what we call business units.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I was unfortunate or fortunate in many different ways to be tasked with doing a lot of that for her.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I loved about working with Sharon is she never really gave you a direct answer.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you came into her office and you sat in front of her and said, hey, I'm dealing with this, and you know, what would your be your suggestion?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: She'd ask you another question until you actually answered the question for yourself.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she did that over and over again.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: But in doing so, um, I was the person who was constantly sent around to analyze different business units for Covenant.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so things like our home health operation.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, home health at that time was roughly losing about$13.6 million a year.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I had to go in and make the determination that we probably, as Covenant Health, didn't need to be in the home health business.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't running it right, we weren't treating our patients right.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the quality in relationship to that was was not as high as I wanted it to be.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'd go in front of the board and tell them this is be my suggestion.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: I had to do a very simple similar thing to what was then our skilled nursing facility.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so once you do, I think I went through six of those, uh, you very quickly develop a reputation.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember specifically going into Sharon's office and asking for a break from it because um, one, it's a tough job to do, it's a tough job to do mentally.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: But then two, when you're at a an organization and you're there for eight to 12 hours a day, I mean, that's like your second home.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I specifically remember feeling that I was walking in over a couple week period and like I'd walk into areas and it would be like you would see my scatter.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, because they were they didn't know what I was there for.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I could have been there just to socialize or just catch up with people.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: But once you have that reputation, it's very hard to overcome.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I I told her that and I and I asked for a break, and and she granted it to me for uh almost a month, month and a half.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we had another area that she wanted me to go analyze, and that was probably my first biggest break was that next opportunity.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: LTAC.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And before we get there, I mean I I I haven't had to do it on the scale that you've had to do, but in a business I operated and I sold to private equity, and then we went through COVID, and overnight 33% of the business was gone.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you got to look people in the eye, and you gotta have really difficult conversations.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: And when I know you from you know the visits that we've had, and you know, you're a very transparent wear your emotions on your sleeve.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna talk about you held holding town halls and anybody's welcome.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like you, no, no subject is off topic for you.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I know that that weighed on you, but probably also really helped guide and and train your communication style, how to handle people, how to become a better leader as well during all of that.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and to me, it is about being transparent, um, being emotionally present for them, listening to them as a person, because there's not a single person that wants to walk in any office and any meeting and being told that their job is eliminated.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times it has nothing to do with them.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that they were doing a bad job.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's that we were probably as an organization not making the right decisions and asking them to do things that um didn't meet our overall objective.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not on them, that's on us.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, I had to learn that very early on is how to compartmentalize like the business aspect from it versus the person who's literally sitting in front of me.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and those are difficult times.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it took me unfortunately a lot of different rounds to get, you know, decent at it.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: I won't say good, but being able to have those type of conversations and a lot of practice.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm still unfortunately tagged as the person that, you know, even within, you know, different divisions that I work in, that okay, go talk to Walt and he'll tell you exactly what you need to be saying.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he'll show you the scripting.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's okay.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be able to teach people and honor the people that, you know, that are that are leaving our mission and our organizations as a whole.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it it definitely also wanted me to change styles as a leader to make sure that my caregivers can come and ask me anything.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care what it is.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so you get your big break.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they uh I don't know if it was Sharon that asked you to take a it was Sharon on the LTAC.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us about this turnaround opportunity that presented itself for you.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so my first big break uh that Sharon gave me was specifically uh we had a long-term acute care hospital that we were running.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um it had been running now for about four years.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: It had never made a dime.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was actually a joint venture with a lot of first physician partners, which are uh tough customers and tough partners to have sometimes uh because they know how healthcare should be running and they questioned a lot of things.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And she specifically asked me, she goes, go over there and do your analysis.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, I thought I promise this will be the last one I have you do.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I spent about a week and a half over there and analyzed the business and presented a plan and a presentation, and she asked me to give it to the board.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I went and I did the presentation to the board for her, and I left the meeting.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: I said, So what am I going to do next?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because you tell me this is my last one.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, give me a little bit of time.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I left and I went home and I got a phone call from her, and it was about 7:30 that night.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes, Well, I have your new job.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're now in charge of the LTAC.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Move over tomorrow morning.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: You start running it Monday morning.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Okay, I've never run a hospital and definitely haven't run one that's a joint venture that has completely different governance models.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, So how am I going to know what to do?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes, You put it on the paper.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Can you actually perform it now?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, we're about to go find out.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: So went over there and she kind of did help guide me through the different governance things because she had so much more experience and how to deal with the physician aspects of that aspect of it and make sure that they're happy.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we got to where we probably turned that operation around uh within six months.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: I made a little bit over uh$800,000 year one.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we finally climbed it by year three that we're making a little bit more than$7.1 million.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, wow.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um it was unique.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I remember my first ever board meeting with the investors, which were the doctors, and you know, I took a lot of very direct criticism over what had been happening for the past years, and they wanted to know how somebody at my age was going to turn this thing around.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I shared them the same plan that I shared to the board.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it took me a little while to build trust with them, but you have to be constant in your communication and steadfast, and and you have to be a humble enough leader to say when you make a mistake, you better be able to own up to it.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I made some in that job.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I told them, I was like, look, that was a mistake.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: We'll go back to how we were doing it.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't I don't have any qualms with that.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then I remember when we started making so much money, we had a called investor meeting, and I was really curious why.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I asked our in-house attorney to come with me.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we went from getting yelled at for not making enough money to where we were getting yelled at in that meeting because we were making too much money and it was causing a tax issue for them.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it was quite unique uh opportunity to learn how to balance all those things.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: But uh yeah, it was it was my biggest opportunity, it was my first ever uh hospital to run by myself and really kind of be the leader in the face of it.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that transpired over to being asked once we turned that one around to move over to what was then or what we call now Covenant Medical Center.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: It actually was not called that then.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um, how do I rebuild Covenant Medical Center from the ground up and try to make it a profitable business unit as well?
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because it had not been profitable for over a decade at that time.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so got over there, was became the COO, um, was the COO for about two and a half, three years, and then was asked to be the CEO.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then was asked to be the Lubbock Market chief executive.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then during the middle of COVID, uh my predecessor decided it was time for him to retire in the middle of COVID and was asked to step in and be over all the Texas and Mexico.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: So Rich Richard, you know, had been in healthcare for many, many, many decades, and uh decided it was time for him to retire and go to Tennessee and live the good life.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I know I I think you point to that long-term long-term acute care opportunity of really setting changing the mindset of a lot of the um, you know, decision makers at the time within the hospital group to really view you uh more as a chief executive type of person, going through that opportunity, seeing how you dealt with physician partners, which I, you know, can be great, can be, and can be also uh also not great, you know, and and all those types of things.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that that is really the turning point in your career.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was from both a vision perspective for myself, um, as well as how I was seeing in the overall organization.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and it was for me, I I never really had a desire to do that, you know.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: I I really thought if I actually ran like a rehab clinic one day that, you know, that's probably be the the limits of what I probably wanted to do.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the LTEC really did kind of launch my career path into a completely different uh trajectory that I never honestly thought um thought about.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it wasn't on a vision for me to be a CEO.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's just not where my mindset's ever been built to.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, it wasn't an aspirational type of desire.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: You started as a lab tech in 97, right?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Rehab aid.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Rehab aid, yeah, in 97.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: And here you are right after COVID, the CEO of the whole system.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean a young age, too, and you know, not up there.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah we're about the same age, and you know, leading people and partnering with people that a lot of which are older, some are younger.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that's a it's a you've done a lot of learning in school, but a lot of learning through through the process of all of these different opportunities you've gotten to do that.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, I learned a lot on the job, and it's been a very large blessing for me.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's still there's still two people who work within Covenant that were previously my bosses.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's funny having a different relationship with them uh because they they don't they do not care.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, there's there's a couple of them, and they will still walk in my office today, especially after town hall meetings and those type of things, and tell me, like, hey, you you missed on this.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to be an adult learner and be a good leader that's going to accept criticism because it's going to come.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, how you respond to that, uh, I think really is a determining factor of how good a leader you can possibly be.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but yeah, no, Covenant's been one of the biggest blessings of my life.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: I I I can't imagine where I would be without Covenant help.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and honestly, the family I've had up there.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the the people who have poured into me to make sure that I am where I am, to saw something in myself that I really didn't ever see in me.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's those type of relationships that really kind of inspire me to be the a better person every day when I go in.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: And Covenant is a is a is part of Providence.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: And Covenant is a is a beacon of light for Providence, I know, from visiting with you, being on the foundation, you know, and then you get the opportunity to go make other, you know, ministries within Providence uh beacons of light as well.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that, you know, that's a, you know, you hate to be away from from the you know the people that are here, but you also you get to go influence and and work with others and and bring them along as well.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, healthcare is a really hard environment right now.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, healthcare is very unaffordable for a lot of people.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'd say my most difficult balancing act on a daily basis is how do I control affordability of healthcare to make sure it's accessible for everybody, but also pay my caregivers a fair wage.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: And they're directly proportional to each other, right?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: If I I could solve all my caregivers' problems by giving them five and$10 raises per hour, right?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then everybody would live really well, you know, within our work environment.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: But if once I make that decision, I'm going to have to charge every patient who comes into healthcare more, you know, on a daily basis.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so those are hard things to kind of balance out.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing that I always try to teach even my caregivers when they ask me questions, is like understand the repercussions of every decision we have to make.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a difficult thing from a leadership, which is why I like to have a lot of communication with my caregivers and honestly, my leaders, is to be understanding every decision you make actually has a consequence to something else.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: And what does that mean?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's very few things, there are some that are true win-wins out there, but most things actually have a negative component that we have to kind of balance out, especially in that way.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: You have friction that cannot be eliminated.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, no matter which way you go.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's dig a little deeper.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: You really I can tell you really enjoy working in healthcare and and you know, you'll be in it for the rest of your career.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: But what, you know, to that point of these barriers that are just ramming up against one another, what what does healthcare need to do to evolve?
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh a couple key things.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um healthcare, in my opinion, needs to become a little bit more preventative.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: There are easy things that we see on a daily basis that on how we live that are directly proportionate to how much healthcare we're going to consume.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, uh specifically, you know, how much food we consume, calories we consume, our weight actually has a direct impact in relationship to cardiac health, overall health, uh, especially some of our neurological things that are going on within our bodies right now.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a lot of preventive we can do on that.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of services that our communities don't take advantage of in the outpatient or ambulatory arenas.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so a great example that I use a lot in education, even our younger caregivers, is understand this.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can go see your primary care physician every month for one year, and you'll never caught touch one cost of you doing an admission into my one of my hospitals.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of health care you could consume in an outpatient arena to make sure you're completely healthy and not even touch what it would cost you on one admin coming into our main hospitals.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's crazy to think about.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do we take advantage of that?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, because we one, there's this fear factor.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's an anxiety that's in nature, that's innate in us that uh puts healthcare at an arm's length relationship with anybody because we don't want to know what's possibly wrong with us.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many fear factors out there regarding healthcare.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is the sooner you know about them, the less severe they're possibly going to be, the less impactful they're going to be on your family and how you're living.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that preventative nature is what we have to change from an overall psychological and mindset perspective on how we actually access healthcare.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think young people growing up and their how much they use technology, you think technology can help in this space to be able to help do more prevent it, prevention and proactive monitoring?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's actually a pretty big opportunity in our younger population.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our younger population loves to be on that mobile device, right?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and a lot of them really actually prefer that than having face-to-face conversations.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a telehealth component that I think where we can actually engage our younger population on how to actually access healthcare appropriately through that mobile device because you can do it via text.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it via televisit, right?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we can solve a mass majority of your issues with that mobile device, and you would never have to come back into healthcare again.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there is a new opportunity out there that we haven't completely tapped into that is just now being kind of you know tested out.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: But uh there's there's a new nuance out there that we're we're about to really unravel with.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm curious a little bit about your leadership style here.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: What drives your leadership philosophy and your communication style today?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think when you grow up in an organization, you see uh good examples and you see bad examples of leadership.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, being one of the probably rare people that has grown up in the same organization now for 29 years, uh I've got to see a lot.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I've gotten to see my organization change and evolve.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I always promised myself when actually when I first took over the LTAC, and I've tried to keep that promise to date, is as a base caregiver, I want to understand more of why we are making decisions.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to be able to have an open communication line with leadership to test theories and understand questions that I might just have.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, it is creating a very transparent operational style.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing for me is I do operate still today on fear of failure.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, fear of failure, failing my organization, fear of failing my leadership team, fear of failing the caregivers who have to come and work with me every day.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so that drives a lot of the decisions that I make and how I approach certain things, how I lead my immediate teams and how I lead our overall organization.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like you brought it up, I do whole town halls every quarter with my entire caregiver pool.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: So all almost 6,000 caregivers have a link, and I will sit online with them in front of a camera.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'll go over about 10 to 15 minutes of a presentation just to update them on different things that are changing, whether they're, you know, HR things that might be changing out there, or are we changing benefits, or where, you know, we bought some new piece of equipment for this ministry or this ministry that's out there.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, those types of things just kind of get everybody kind of up to pace.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next two hours, sometimes up to three hours, I answer questions.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we allow every caregiver to ask anonymous questions.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I did that, and my executive assistant, she literally told me I was nuts the first time we did it.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she said, You're you'll never be able to control what's coming in.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't want to.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: I said, if I can't sit here in front of them and answer questions, then I don't need to be sitting in this seat.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, and I won't be able to answer them all.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to be honest enough about the fact that I don't know everything and why everything is changing.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: But if I get asked the questions, you can guarantee that in our communications for the next week or the next month, those questions are going to be back in there and those answers will be in there by our team.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's really built a different relationship, even with me.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the caregivers I get to walk around and talk to.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because now nobody's really fearful.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so I've gone from being the hatchet person to where now I'm the person people actually come up and talk to in the middle of the hallway and go, hey, hey, I wanted to ask this.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, ask it.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's fun.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing that it reminds me of is what's on your caregivers' minds, I guarantee you is not what you're thinking about on a daily basis.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: And some of that is scary, uh, but some of it's really enlightening.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so it's I I really enjoy doing town halls now.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: I I used to I used to be fearful of them because I was scared about what was coming on.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: But they're actually one of my favorite days.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Communication and organizations, you know, we've scaled seven, brew, here at Mass Rider Capital.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: We've got 80 stores.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: Kendra manages, you know, 5,000 employees on a on a daily basis.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: The hardest thing that companies face is communication.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you're right, what's on your mind, what's on Kendra's mind, what's on Grant McCassin's mind is not the same thing that that you know is on you know employees' minds, you know, on a day-to-day basis.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's the way to bridge that gap and and and and keep you at all levels of the organization.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the things too I wanted to tell you is like we've had, you know, we've had a lot of people on the heights of victory now.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: It is amazing how many leaders are more motivated by the fear of losing than they are about winning.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, and I've been I've been encouraged by how many people are willing to share that, that they're more afraid of of failing than they are just the joy that comes from winning.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and I know that people like to win, like Coach McCassless sat there and gave a 10-minute answer on this very subject, but it's what drives him on a day-to-day basis of and the winning is just kind of expected.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you I you brought it up, you know, feel fear of failure drives you each and every day.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, whether it's sports related, in my opinion, or whether it's life related, do you remember the beats that happened in your life way more than you remember the wins?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is we are geared to learn from those things.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: And learning improves you as a person.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why when you do have a loss or you do have a bad decision, those stick with you.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Those stick with you for a very long time.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's hard sometimes to remember, like, okay, well, I there's times where I get asked, like, well, what created this success on this one?
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I I really can't tell you sometimes what created success, but I can tell you every bad decision I've made within the last couple of weeks and what happened with it and why we're not going to do it again.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's just how we're geared, I think, as a human being.
• 46:55
  unknown: Yeah.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: Do you ever find yourself as the CEO coaching 6,000 employees now, going, I just did something my dad used to do as a coach.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very funny.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so I actually talked to my dad a lot about that.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: And my belief is there's not a lot of differentiation in being a leader versus being a coach.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the mindset on what you're trying to drive forward is very, very similar.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to bring the best out of the people you work with.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what coaches do.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what really leadership should be, in my opinion.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do I get the best out of every person who comes in and works for me?
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I remember actually talking to Coach McGuire about this last year.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we talked about at Covenant, like, I wanted to see 1% better out of all my leaders.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are you coming in every day to do for 1% better?
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he laughed and he goes, Man, we goes, we just had the same conversation.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, it's the reality, right?
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so even today, what I've taken from some of my mentors, like a Sharon Ivory, and how she never really answered a question because she wanted you to be that learner.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: You have to learn to actually answer your own questions and dive deeper into yourself about why things happen or what should be done.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I still try to do that even with my direct leaders, whether that's a Dr.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thompson or a Bruce White or a Diana or Kristen.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I sit there in my room with them and our executive counsel, and I get peppered with questions a lot.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I do a lot of like, well, why do you think that's going to occur?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so you learn from it, not just me telling you what the answer should be.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and coaches are the same way.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: They want you to learn, they want you to be better every day.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: They want you to understand why you have to do certain things.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of what I talk to my dad about is the still the mental aspect of for him being a coach, for me being a leader.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do I have to work on?
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: How do I have to take different approaches based off of what's going on in this person's lives or what their challenges may be to make sure they understand what our next big vision has to be, our next big strategy has to be, uh, our operational hurdle that we have to overcome.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: You've talked a little bit, uh, not a little, a lot about Sharon and what she's meant and how much she challenged you, Sharon Ivory.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: Any other mentors that you want to mention or talk about that have had an influential uh mark on you?
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's been several.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, from a good perspective as well, uh, there's a lady named Debbie Wagner.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: She was the manager for physical therapy, and um she was a big mentor of mine on learning how to be like a very young leader, uh, because I was tasked with that, you know, very young in my career uh and how to overcome some of that aspect.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I also remember having uh her specifically talk to me about like, you got to stop living on the fact of what your age is and what your versus what your capabilities are.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so she pushed me even when she became my peer, and then when she actually worked on me, like you're not living up to what your potential is.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so she was one that was constantly pushing me to be a better person, to be a better leader.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think being a very young leader, I was worried about perception a lot.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: And she she pushed me on that and she goes, You gotta stop thinking about what other people are thinking of you, be yourself, answer the questions the way you would, then adjust on the reactions.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you can't go in timid and you can't go in, you know, cautious and those type of things, or else they won't believe you.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're gonna have to overcome that.
• 50:17
  unknown: Right.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so she was a great one from that perspective.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Richard was a really good mentor for me in a lot of different things because he was at such an elevated level, you know, being in my my current role.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: And what you have to diagnose and think about at this role is unlike anything else I've been through.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this was one role that I really thought coming into it, I actually understood a lot about healthcare.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: And once I got into this role, I understood I really did not.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's that's been a good challenge, but one that he did a great job in, helping prepare me for to understand all the different dynamics, the political aspects of what you have to deal with on this this role versus anything else, uh, your community aspect of doing this.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then how deal with a very large corporation, yeah, which is good and bad sometimes.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: And probably making decisions that you don't see immediate impact, you know, that it takes a long time for those decisions to bake themselves in and and show themselves.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and some of it is um how are you setting your vision?
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: How are you setting your reach for an organization?
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and one of the things I think, you know, my immediate leadership team thought I was nuts of and I made an announcement, I said, we're gonna be opening a thousand beds across West Texas before the end of 28.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we will.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, they all only think about their individual ministries, and so they were trying to calculate in their heads, but not understanding the full landscape of everything that we're we're about to overtake.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there's a couple of them like, why would you say something like that?
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, because it can be done.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, y'all should be asking is, should we do it?
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so we've we've talked through all those things, and so now they're on board and we're growing uh a lot more beds.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we just opened Hope Tower a year and a half, almost two years ago, and it's completely full.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's beautiful.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and Covenant Medical Center probably still needs another 60 to 90 beds today because we're unfortunately on diversion.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we're having to turn away patients right now because we don't have enough beds.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: Children's hospital just expanded the Naiku unit, going from I believe close to 40 to now 50.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: Almost 50 beds, yeah.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh they stay full, they are very full.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh our children's hospital is probably on diversion three out of every seven days right now.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and three years ago, we probably had half of those beds full.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's been a remarkable turnaround, just operational mindset of like really understanding what we need to be and what we need to be for our different communities, and going out there and starting to tell our story.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when we started telling our story, a lot more patients started coming back into Covenant Hill System.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: You ready to go around the horn?
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: We've we've history dug deeper, but now we'll get to some things you haven't seen yet and uh uh catch you, maybe catch you off guard here.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, these are quicker answers, more off the cuff.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: But uh number one, and I didn't even write this down, but I'm curious after talking to you, give us your re your recruiting pitch for a physician to come to Lubbock, Texas.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's easy.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um I did change this one about 10 years ago.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lubbock is a very hard place to attract people to.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: It has a certain stigma about it, right?
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's in the middle of West Texas, there's not a lot around it.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: But what if I told you that 70% of all my physician team has been here for 15 plus years.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then I have over half of them that have been here for over 20.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I said in a room with them, I said, stop trying to sell people on Lubbock, right?
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're competing with markets like Dallas and Houston and Austin, and right now we're even competing with people from LA and Denver and those type of things.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: Your sales pitch should be why have you stayed here for this long?
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: What keeps you in Lubbock, Texas?
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what's fascinating is when you started asking that question, all of them talked about Lubbock is one of the best places to raise a family.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a very affordable city to live in.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're an hour plane flight from Dallas, hour and 10 minutes from Houston.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I can do anything I want to in Lubbock, Texas, and never have to stress over time, traffic.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: My kids have a great upbringing here, and the people are so amazing, you're never gonna want to leave.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the reality.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's some doctors I would like to leave sometimes.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is they love being here.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: They love being a part of this community because it still has this really small town feel with almost 300,000 population.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's the best of both worlds, and we just do not understand that because of the actual external stigma that's out there.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Tenure is awesome.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: I love the statistics like that.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: What's the destination on your bucket list?
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, for me, um the next one is Scotland.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um I have I have a plan coming up probably within the next year and a half, two years where I'll be going to Scotland for at least uh 10 days to 14 days to go do some golf.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: Me and Dusty have played them all.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I can show you the golf levels.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think I have the itinerary.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: So uh yeah, I'm looking at that.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh I'll be turning 50 here in the next year or two, two years, actually.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so that's my kind of bucket list is to go out there and do that.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: So some of the staff here uh at Mass Rider wanted to know if you're afraid of needles.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: I am not afraid of needles.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's it's one of those things.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't actually like looking at it going in.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of I don't do that, so I do turn away.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the stick is not the problem.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, I'm not I'm not really afraid of needles from that perspective.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: I actually get poked quite a bit.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: What's the last book you read?
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the last book I read was uh Tipping Point.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I read that one specifically for the the marketing aspect of it.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I wanted to change the tagline and the perspective of how Covenant is seen from a marketing perspective.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that one's really good about talking about, you know, you have your influences, you know, you have your true uh mavericks that are out there that kind of drive things and really kind of how you create kind of what's your own little tipping point for your organization.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it was really good.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: What's one change in healthcare you want to see?
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, um first one is I want to see the flip of surgical versus medical from a payment model standpoint.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the reason why we have the deficit we have in behavioral health is because nobody gets paid to deal with it, because it's a medical diagnosis.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the federal government pays on certain standards, whether you're a surgical or medical case coming into every institution.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want that to be a balanced approach.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: And right now there's a massive deficit.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we make on average 40% more on every surgical case versus medical across the board.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: What's your favorite tech memory?
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's uh good and bad.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my favorite football tech moment is definitely the uh Crabtree Harold.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I was there for that one.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um Harold's an Enus boy.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: Harold was an Enest boy.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: Harold was actually my ball boy growing up, so I actually played for his dad, Sam Harrell.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, talking about a guy who was a little bit ahead of his time on how to kind of run an RPO type system.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, wonderful person.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: Good, but crushing was the finals loss to Virginia, and I was there for that.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, we were too.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: I took my dad.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was his first time to ever go to a Final Four.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: But that was it was a good memory and then a very crushing memory in you know, five to ten seconds.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that didn't Kyle Guy making that three.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, geez, we thought we had it one.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: Will people live longer?
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what we do from an overall health standpoint is actually uh improving life expectancy.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, interestingly enough, a lot of the supplements, the medications that we're doing are actually doing that.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so yes, people are going to naturally live longer because of that.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: But that also means that we're gonna spend more on healthcare too.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: And if I asked you in 20 years, what has AI's impact on healthcare been, what would you say?
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: Transformative.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what we're already using AI for, and what we're starting to see as the uh beginning phases of AI for what it's gonna do for diagnostics, uh, for helping understand overall business concepts is unbelievable.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's going to change a lot of stuff, um, both for personal health as well as overall healthcare.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: And last one, what is one goal that you have personally right now and one goal professionally?
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um personal.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um I want to be there for both of my girls' graduations, um, you know, both from high school and and from college.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to see them uh make that that achievement for themselves and be there to celebrate through that.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'd say professional.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want to leave Covenant in a much better place than I than I found it.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I want people to be able to look back on my time at Covenant um and have a smile because it's it's not been an easy situation.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um most people don't know this, but you know, Covenant was born in 1998, so it's not had a long life.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm the ninth CEO of Covenant.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so it tells you the turnover that's happened, especially when you consider that Richard Parks was here for 11.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so um it had a rough beginning and I wanted to have a good long life.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: Walt, thank you again for joining us today.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you're a joy to talk to, by the way.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_01: And your story is so inspiring.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you you put yourself through school, you come from two educators, which there's nothing better than coming from a family of teachers, and then you put yourself through school and you work and you're putting in 20 hour days as a 19, 20-year-old.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: Then you go from um, you know, a startup position, you know, in the hospital all the way uh to the CEO and you're you're leading West Texas healthcare.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I, for one, and I know our viewers also are feel really good sleeping at night knowing that you're you're in charge and leading the way.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for being here today.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you all very much.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're grateful for your time and and uh wish you the best of luck for the rest of 2026.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: That wraps it for this episode.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we really appreciate you joining us, and as always, if you've got a comment, you can leave it, leave it below, or you can email us at heightsitvictory at maskrider.com.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for tuning into today.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: And until the next episode of Heights of Victory, thank you, and we'll see you soon.