Ep.39 – Innovation: A Pandemic Success Story. Guest Dr. Sam Gutman.

@10:31 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Listeners, welcome to Leading with Curiosity. Today, this is a story about innovation and inspiration. It’s also a story about doing really hard things against big odds.

Sam Gutman who I’ve known for 15 years has been a doctor for 30 years. And leading into the pandemic had a private business that came to a complete halt.

That lockdown. We met for breakfast a couple of months ago and the story has completely changed since that data thing shut down.

Sam, welcome to Leading with Curiosity and tell us a little bit about the journey that you’ve been on that will inspire our listeners.

@11:21 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

Well, thank you and great to see you. Great to be on the program. I’ll quote Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead.

What a long, strange trip it’s been. Yeah, we were. So our company is a diverse company. We do a bunch of different stuff, but one of our original businesses providing medical services for large scale events and festivals, Ironman’s, marathons, that sort of thing.

So that started about 15 years ago. And as you point out, the lockdown happened and we were. We’re dead in the water because there was no events.

And so we looked at ourselves and went, well, I guess we’re done, we’re done until this thing is over.

And about maybe a week later, we got a call from a client who we’ve done a lot of work for over the years in events.

And they said, well, we’re an online distributor of apparel, and we want to keep going during the pandemic. We want to keep selling.

Our stores are closed, but our distribution centers are open. Can you help us keep those distribution centers safe? And so we said, well, our event business is sending health care people to events to provide care.

And we have a really strong infrastructure and systems of how we do it. And we were actually virtual before it was cool.

We used Zoom because I was too cheap to have my team drive in to see me. So we went way before the pandemic.

And all of our infrastructure, all of our five. everything we’re all in the cloud years ago, again, because we did all our work at events.

So we really had no specific presence anywhere other than where we were doing our work. So we took our event infrastructure and our teams and said, okay, instead of going to an event to be a first-order at a music festival or a game, you’re going to go to a distribution center and ask questions of people and make sure that they’re safe to go into work.

So we all remember the 12 questions or whatever it was at the beginning of the pandemic and get your temperature checked.

Well, that’s what we did. And it’s a whole other story of how we managed to get thermometers and PPE and masks.

@13:44 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

And it was crazy, scrambling around.

@13:48 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

And I’ll say that, you know, one of the, and I’m sure we’ll get into business coaching and whatever, one of the principles and one of the things I learned in coaching is the saying the overnight success that took 10 years.

Because we were just really well positioned with relationships and people and experience in systems that we were able to make that pivot.

And it was 10 years of trial and error and failure and learnings and building and waiting for the right opportunity.

And I hate to say the pandemic was great for us, but the pandemic was great for us. And we had to take things to the next level.

@14:31 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

You know, when we met the KCO forums breakfast and we sat down and I had this feeling like I was going to ask you, Sam, how are things going?

Have you got back? You know, events are back. Is that impacting you? And you just kind of smiled and said, we’re fine.

I mean, when you think just for our listeners, how would you like to describe like the scale of how things have changed and how you’ve been able to pivot and be successful.

@15:00 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

full through this. Yeah, the event business, my wife said to me about six or seven years into the event business, she said, make a decision, is this a hobby or is this a business?

@15:11 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Because you’re spending a lot of time on it, and it’s not a successful business.

@15:15 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

Like we did okay, but it was my passion. You know, I’ve always loved music, live music, I’ve always loved big events, and and medicine, you know, my three big passions and the opportunity to put those together and create, you know, the business of mass gathering medicine and the, you know, the discipline of that was pretty cool.

And I love doing it. I love going to events, love going to shows, and it was cool. But it was it was a challenge as a business, and we restricted our growth, because my kids were young, and you know, events occur where they occur, and you have to travel.

And I didn’t really want to travel. I wanted to be around, and as you know, I wanted to coach my kids in hockey, and as you also know, they were on the ice level.

bought. So I needed to be around. And so we didn’t really grow the business, the event business. But and so we were literally a mom and pop shop.

We had four and a half staff and a rented garage in East Vancouver was our we call it global headquarters as a joke.

But it was you know you had to enter through the alley off in East Van and you know we’d get the neighbors yelling at us in the morning for loading stuff back into the the garage.

But that was the scope and we were really leaders in what we did. But it was a really small scale operation in a matter of about 14 months from when the pivot occurred.

So from lockdown about 14 months we went from four and a half people to a peak of about 160 staff.

We went from one five labs, six offices. was across the country from literally coast to coast. And that was all in about 14 months.

It was a massive scaling. It was really crazy. And the other crazy part is to this day, I have never stepped foot in more than half of my locations.

This was all done from the basement via Zoom.

@17:23 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Wow. I mean, from 4 1 half people to at its peak 160, I’m working on the math right now, but I’m gonna have to do it after we’re done recording because of the percent scale on that.

@17:36 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

And that was just our staff, not our clinicians. So there was the whole network of clinicians who we would pull into actually be on the ground performing the services across the country.

But that 160 was really just our operational and administrative and logistics and everything else.

@18:00 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

I’m gonna go back to that. back to something that you said almost as a sidebar here that comes up in these conversations in leading with curiosity all the time, you restricted your growth because of family.

We talk about core values. You were leading with your core value of being there for your kids and for your family.

@18:19 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, very, very purposeful. My wife and I very purposefully spent some time when we first got together and we’re considering building a family.

We did some homework and we went and we purposefully looked at our friends and relatives who had great relationships with their adult children and we tried to understand what they did.

What did they do to have great relationships with their adult kids? Because we all know of lots of people who don’t have great relationships with either their kids or their parents.

We really wanted to be purposeful and and manage our lives and our children, or the development of our children, in a purposeful manner, so that ultimately they would be great people, but we would be a family that evolved through the stages together.

And probably the single biggest thing that we identified was that people were there with their kids. They were there.

They were driving them. They were there when they fell down. They were there when they won. They knew all their friends of their children.

The children’s friends knew them, and they knew them as people, not as parents and not as authoritarian figures, but as mentors, as guides.

And so our entire approach to parenting was that we’re not raising children. We’re raising adults. We’re just starting at zero.

And what do you want in an adult? You want a well-rounded person who is… has context on the challenges of life, you know, knows what, you know, people are going to get exposed to risk.

Like, you know, it’s normal, but how you, how you perceive that risk and how you manage that risk, that’s what everybody, every adult does every day.

And so the analogy that I used and I was once, I was once asked to give us a talk to, uh, to a safety council.

And so there was a range of people across the board from, uh, you know, from, uh, very structured and regulated type people all, all the way to, you know, laissez-faire types.

And, and the analogy I used was, uh, and this was, the context was risk mitigation in teenagers and, and specifically relating to substance abuse.

And so the analogy I used was, you know, I said, okay, how many of you are skiers, you know, on two thirds of the people put up their hands?

I said, okay, great. You got kids, right? Yeah, put up your hands. If you take your kids to the ski hill, the first day they ski.

You send him down the double black diamond run and the answer was of course not. You know, you start in the bunny hill and you work your way up.

I’m like, well, so why don’t we do that with our children? Why are they prohibited from from alcohol until they’re 19?

And then we turn them loose. Here you go. Free fraud to go down the double black diamond. So our approach was the opposite, which was to try to understand the real risks that are out there in the world, drugs and, you know, driving too fast and, you know, you want and was to try to give them context and to model behavior for them.

So, you know, I’d take my kids to a hockey game and I’d have a beer, but I wouldn’t get loaded and get in a fight.

You know, it’s like, you want to go to a hockey game, you want to go to a Canucks game and cheer.

Great. You want to have a beer or two and, you know, whatever, that’s fine, but you don’t get loaded and get in a scrap and end up in jail.

@21:50 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

So modeling behavior. So that was, that was our whole approach to, uh, to parenting. What you found when you saw out the family.

families with relationships with their adult children. Great relationships. Was that kids spell love T-I-M-E.

@22:10 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

And it’s not just time. It’s quality time. It’s being there. It’s not sitting there on your phone or taking calls, which I always felt guilty.

And in my work, I’d be on call. I’d get calls in the middle of stuff and have to go away.

But one of the great things in our relationship was built on the ice. One of the things I loved about coaching was that was the only safe time I had.

Pager was on the bench, the days of the pager. Phone was on the bench. Like, I’m not available. I’m fully engaged and present for this 90-minute session and I’m untouchable.

And so, on one hand, it was great to be out there coaching. But one of the great things was it was just safe space.

And I was fully engaged and immersed in what I was doing.

@23:00 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

And that was it. And so being present, not just time, but being present. Listeners, this is a 30-year ER doctor and entrepreneur, serial entrepreneur, really, who’s had side things on the go, investments in real estate, et cetera, telling us right now that the white space that you could create to have that quality time, whether it was metaphorically putting the pager on the boards and the rink, or physically, that not only is it possible, it’s one of the most important decisions and choices that you have made over the years as a doctor, an entrepreneur, a father, a husband, and a hockey coach.

@23:42 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

Am I hearing you right, Sam? Yeah. And it even goes back to why did I choose to be an ER doctor?

And part of that, there’s lots of reasons and lots of dysfunctional reasons. But the functional reason is that was that, you know, I would go in for a 12 hour shift and I used to say, you can do whatever you want to me for the next 12 hours.

You can beat on me, yell at me, throw body fluids at me. I don’t care what you do to me for 12 hours.

But 12 hours plus one or whatever time I’m out, I’m out. Don’t, don’t touch me. Like, now is my time and my time is going to be, you know, I’d get off a night shift at 4am and, you know, nap for an hour.

And we were on the ice at 6.

@24:32 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Wow.

@24:32 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

Yeah. But, you know, that was what it was. But, you know, the ER practice, as opposed to many other types of practice in healthcare, allowed me the ability to have protected time and to manage.

I used to joke that my kids would think I never worked because, you know, I would put them to bed.

I’d take a nap. I’d go to work at 11. I’d finish at 7. I’d get home, wake them up, give them breakfast, get them off to school.

I’d speak for the day they’d come home from school and there I was again. It’s like, yeah, my dad never works.

@25:05 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Wow. Wow. The other thing I really say earlier is you began with the end in mind. You looked about, you looked at what type of kids, what type of adults you want to raise.

And then worked backwards from there. There’s a leadership lesson in there for entrepreneurs who get and leaders in large organizations, big, big small, it doesn’t matter.

Of getting stuck on the wheel instead of keeping the end in mind. What, what from this experience over the last few years has been useful about that lesson?

@25:36 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

I guess, uh, well, there again, another old saying that, you know, I, I, it’s funny how many old sayings that I throw out that I either got from my dad who was a business guy and, or from what I’ve learned in, in my years with executive coaching, is, uh, you know, you, you, uh, you work.

on the business, not in the business. Right? And so you can get pulled down into the details. And it’s funny, we just had a problem a couple of days ago.

And I was on a call with somebody and said, geez, you’re remarkably calm for this kind of a mess, a storm of feces storm that’s ongoing in your world.

You’re remarkably calm. I’m like, it’s going to work its way out one way or the other. It’s either going to work or it’s not going to work.

And if it doesn’t work, well, we’ll pick ourselves up and move on, which we were talking a little bit earlier, that’s the essence of innovation.

Like innovation, creating new things, fail. You’re going to fail. It’s a game of failure. It’s like baseball. If you fail only a third of the time, you’re in the hall of fame.

You’re expecting to fail. You’re expected to fail two thirds of the time in baseball. In entrepreneurship, you’re expected to fail nine out of ten times.

So don’t get too upset when you fail. turn from it, take something away, you know, and get back on the horse and it may be a different horse but get back up and get going.

And so, you know, that’s part of it. And I guess part of it is just, you know, the training of being an ER doctor, it’s just, you know, information decision, information decision, you know, obviously the context is different.

You’re not always going to be right, but it’s about mitigating the downside, but accepting that, you know, nobody’s perfect, it’s about moving forward and continuing to try to find the right, the right answer.

You’re never finding the right answer, you’re finding a right or answer or a less bad answer.

@27:41 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

I love that visual. When you fall down, you might need to get on a different horse and that is what has happened to you when things ground, when live events ground to zero.

And you’re about to possibly get on a new horse.

@27:56 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

There’s some, there’s a new pivot potentially happen. Well, you know, the business, I originally started the business out of frustration working in the public system, to be honest, because the public system is, the public healthcare system is really good at delivering many aspects.

Like it’s really, really good. You know, you get hit by a bus in Canada or have a heart attack, you’re going to get really good care.

It’s the other levels where some of the processes are maybe not optimized for a whole variety of reasons. And people are well-meaning and well-intentioned, but you know, there’s some inertia, let’s call it in the system.

And I was working in the public system for many years, and I would see ways to do things differently.

And every time I tried to do that, I was roadblocked over and over and over and over. Roadblock, you can’t do that.

You can’t do it this way. Why do you think, no, this is the way we do it. So I got frustrated and I said, you know what?

I’m going to step just adjacent to the public system. And I was still in it, but I had, you know, I was sort of straddling the line.

And I said, you know, I’m going to create a platform with a bunch of smart, like minded, excited, innovative people who want to do something.

I’m going to aggregate those people and we’re going to do stuff. And our sandbox is going to be health care.

And that’s where we started. And again, we did a bunch of other stuff that a lot of it failed.

Like, you know, we started websites and mobile apps and a bunch of other stuff. Each time we didn’t hear a nail from Hockey Night in Canada used to say, experiences what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

So I think it’s just a fascinating. It’s so true, right? You wanted this. You didn’t get it, but you didn’t get nothing.

You got something. You learned something. You know, you got exposure to something. So, you know, we took that. And so I created the business to solve problems in health care.

Full stop nothing more it wasn’t you know there was no massive business plan and market size analysis and all this it was like There’s a lot of things that need fixing We’ve got the group that can do it and so that’s what we’ve done over and over and over if there was events We do municipal jails we do addiction management We do a whole bunch of different stuff and it’s all about trying to find a better process or better I won’t even say better a different way of doing things that helps patients Provides excellent health care that meets all the standards of health care and expectations and that give people Information and choice.

That’s what we’re trying to achieve and So the pivot is you know our business grew massively as a result of COVID And COVID’s mostly gone almost totally gone.

There’s a few Industries that are still doing a significant amount of testing That’s ending in the next six to eight weeks.

So what are we going to be after that? What are we going to be after we were a massive growth spurt for COVID?

And the answer is that we learned a lot during COVID. We learned a lot about what people actually want, what people and patients actually want, what they need, how they want it, not how they’re going to adapt to the infrastructure that exists in the public system, but what do they want and how can we give them that, yet still give it to them in a thoughtful, medically appropriate, well supported, compliant way.

That’s what we’re trying to achieve. And so we’ve created some new products. They’ve been massively well received by the people who have received them.

We’re trying to get really smart about how to market them and how to sell them and everything else, which is a whole new experience because I’m not a marketing guy.

I have no idea about click through rate. and all this other stuff, but our team has learned a tremendous amount over the pandemic about that sort of stuff.

And we’re continuing to go forward looking for ways to support the public system. My dream is that we can provide information that makes Canadian healthcare consumers smarter and makes them better consumers of the system, because the system is not bad.

It’s actually pretty good. But the way that people access it to me is broken, and that’s what we need to fix.

We need to help people to understand what they need. In other words, and to give you an example, nobody wants to go sit in the ER for eight hours, ever.

Especially when it’s a, you know, you can’t get access somewhere else, whatever you go to the ER. If you had information that could help you make that decision, is it worth my time to go spend eight hours sitting there waiting?

because you’ve had a test or because you’ve had an interaction or because you have knowledge that says, yeah, you know what?

The best place for me is there and actually best place for the system is me there. Contrast being, you know what?

There’s no point me going there. I’ve got the answer to my question. I still need help or service, but going and wasting time my eight hours in the ER, not to mention the time of the ER, that’s not the best use of anybody’s time and resources.

So what can we do to provide Canadians with that information and knowledge that’s truthful, that’s accurate, that’s supported, that’s safe.

How can we do that? And that would, and to me, that would answer a huge amount of the issues in Canadian healthcare.

@33:48 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Sam, for the listeners who are leaders and they’re thinking about their own organizations, their own businesses, we’ve talked about values.

I’ve heard you talk about vision. And I think you’ve also just declared how your mission is influencing your pivot.

So bear with me here. We talked about that core value of family. What you were and weren’t willing to do as an entrepreneur, as a doctor.

The vision beginning with the end in mind, we’re growing great adults. They just happen to be kids right now.

We are solving problems in healthcare. And that mission of solving problems in healthcare is your guiding light that while you pivot, it’s still under that umbrella of fulfilling that great desire to make a good system great and to be entrepreneurial while you do it.

So it’s not like your pivot has… And now this new pivot that you might need to make is swinging so far to the left or right of the mission that you are on.

It’s just your approach is changing because of the cards you’re being dealt.

@34:55 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

Am I hearing that right? Yeah. Well, I think you’re hearing it right. It doesn’t feel like that most days.

It feels like it. Oh, God, here we go. This whole thing that we were planning is now road-locked. That happens all the time.

The other thing that happens, and my team knows this really, really well, is over. We’ve been in business 15 or 16 years with our business.

And there’s been many times where it’s been like, shoot, I don’t know what’s next. Like, I don’t know. I’m not really totally sure how we’re going to be paying all you guys three months from now.

Don’t really know. But something will come. And it always does. It always does. There is always something next. And we’ve been very fortunate.

And one of the other things that we haven’t actually talked about. Yeah, it is just building a culture. And that’s huge because the culture of, hey, what if it’s not this thing, it’ll be another thing and don’t worry, something will come up and if you have to go get a job at a gas station for a couple of months before the next thing comes up, okay, that’s okay.

And just accepting that not every day is going to be perfect and you’re not going to win every day, but you know, you use hockey analogies all the time, you know, you work hard, you go up and down you’re weighing, you get pucks deep and the bounces will come to you eventually.

@36:38 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

And it’s true in business. When we think about culture, how it feels to be a part of rock, Doc, those disappointments and roadblocks can be received differently when you’ve been through this before and you’ve declared that we might have some ups and downs, you might have to go and do that thing and it might not be for everyone.

But if you’ve declared it in advance and you are living it yourself, then the people you get on your bus can weather those storms and enjoy those celebrations better, right?

@37:09 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

You’re so accurate. So when we were scaling for COVID, we had no idea how long this was going to last, right?

So nobody had any clue, it was completely unknown. So what I said to every single person and the way that we scaled this was, and we had no idea what our revenue was going to be, we had no projections, there was no, you couldn’t do a business plan, like it wasn’t possible.

And so what I said to every person I brought on was I said, listen, we’re trying to build a team here to provide what people need, what the world needs right now, we’re trying to build a team.

So I don’t know what job you’re going to have two weeks from now and whatever I tell you your job is today, two weeks from now is going to be completely different.

So you got to understand that coming on. If you’re looking for a nine to five p.m. Tooting job where you know exactly what you’re doing every day.

We’re not the right place for you Second thing I said was we have no idea if we’re gonna win or lose here But what I promised everybody I gave my word to every person.

I Said we will pay you a living wage and we we established three wage bans You either made five thousand dollars a month four thousand dollars a month or three thousand dollars a month That was it that was your base But the promise was if we win you win and So as we started to win Everybody won everybody won big like at least twice their salary and We paid it quarterly every quarter we reconciled and we’re at we won this quarter boom you win and And we also told everybody and and it was it was two full it was two ways because we we managed to scale

with a lot of people who had been displaced by the pandemic. Either their job wasn’t around or they were on leave or whatever.

And we said to everybody, this is going to go up fast and it’s going to go down fast. So we want a two week out so that we can get out if this thing drops off the cliff.

And if you have to go back to your regular world, we need a couple of week notice so that we can everybody knew what it was going to be.

It was going to be crazy. It was going to be, you know, like a startup. It was going to be, you know, whatever.

And everybody was invested. Everybody knew what it was. And what we were able to create together blew me out of the water.

Like at no time could I have ever dreamed of what we were able to achieve. It was absolutely unbelievable.

@39:55 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

In that environment, we’re going to take care of you at a basic level. And there’s massive upside. You know the hockey analogy the scores are gonna score the grinders are gonna grind the shot blockers are gonna block shots if you don’t know what you are you’re a grinder.

And everybody everybody’s gonna share in those exciting.

@40:18 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

But all still support each other in the downs. Yeah. But but also you know if you to continue that analogy you know in playoff hockey.

It’s often the grinders that get those those game winning goals over time goals right. And we saw a lot of that we saw guys you know people that we thought were were there for one set of attributes or skills or purpose.

Just going hey I got it’s great idea another thing we did which I think it’d be interesting for your listeners is.

And I you know no ideas are new I took it from somebody else but. Every Thursday morning from 10 to 11.

We created what we call and we still do it the innovation. patient forum where it’s an open hour, every single person across the country, every person, regardless of your job, whether you are a driver or whether you were the CFO, everybody’s allowed in wide open forum.

And we had a Slack channel where you could put ideas in and we would just open it up and beat up those ideas, no ideas about idea.

Let’s go. And we would just talk it through, hey, Sam, you know, I had this idea, you know, if we did this or this or this, it’d be like, holy crap, what a great idea.

And a number of those ideas are now operationalized and are in production or whatever. Really, really cool. And that was something that I think people really liked and they also, they still like it.

And I think one of the values, not only do we as a company get the benefit of, you know, the idea that, you know, the guy on the shop floor is the guy who actually

actually knows what’s broken with the process, not the strategic planter up in the office, right? So we wanted to get that, but what they got out of it was they would hear how I would think about things, how my senior team would think about it and contextualize and really understand at a level that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to communicate, what are we trying to achieve?

How do we view things? How are we thinking about things? And that created alignment, which I’d love to say was on purpose, but it wasn’t, but it created a lot of alignment where people really understood, oh, okay, that’s why he doesn’t do that or why he puts his attention on this thing that doesn’t make sense.

Oh, okay, I get it. I get it in a different level, different perspective. So that’s been a really, really valuable thing for us, really helpful.

@42:51 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Sam, you’ve shared so many personal experiences here that are so fresh through this unprecedented time that we’ve been doing.

been in that I think are going to be so useful for people. And you just said it, no ideas are new.

We’ve come together through Mckay CEO forums where peers learn from each other. There’s a well-deserved plug for that experience and what happens in that environment.

Can you share the impact that having that space to share ideas and share best practices with others in other industries and similar roles has had on you through this experience?

@43:33 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

Yeah, well, it’s so impactful. I mean, I came out of medical school and spent whatever, 10 years or whatever it is, fully focused on becoming a decent physician.

And as I say, light tends to kill.

@43:56 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

But, you know, my focus is on the future.

@44:00 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

was not on business. And what I realized when I started being a business person was that I was 10 years behind everybody else.

So they had been building relationships and, you know, learning and getting exposure to ideas. And I was way behind.

And that’s in addition to their schooling. So this is being out in the world. And there’s people learning different ways.

Lots of people learn different ways. And my way of learning has always been a self-directed way. And I won’t go into all the details behind that.

But so I said to myself, I need to get smart. I need to learn about business. And, you know, the easy, obvious answer is, okay, enroll in a executive MBA program via distance learning.

And they’ll feed you a bunch of stuff. And you’ll do it. You’ll do some projects. And maybe, you know, fly in and have a couple meetings.

this people and whatever. I was like, that’s not for me. And so instead, I went into McKay CEO forums.

And I call that my self directed MBA, because during that time, I was exposed to a vast array of people in different industries.

And what I learned was that it doesn’t matter what your that’s what I wanted to learn.

I wanted to learn what how they thought about them and put them in context in order to solve them.

And so my first, my first forum meeting, I was in a group with a one guy was a tugboat guy, his CEO of a tugboat company.

Another guy was a container guy, another guy ran a company that did servicing for industrial kitchens. I’m like, what are these guys going to teach me in healthcare?

They don’t know. anything about healthcare and And I was you know, it was sort of a bit pompous going in what I realized is it’s the same problems Nine out of ten CEOs are gonna tell you HR HR HR HR HR that’s their biggest biggest problem all day long and guess what?

It’s my biggest problem all day long now that I have a big operation when it was just four of us I only had to listen to well, which is another aspect There’s nobody to talk to when you’re the CEO like you know, my my wife was my partner and She was amazing and has done, you know We’re where we are in large measure because of some of the the amazing achievements that she was able to do as part of our team but We’re also partners in our family and and our own wealth and whatever and so You know, when I had a crazy idea she’d be like are you nuts?

That’s gonna take this much time It’s gonna cost us. There’s too much risk. I couldn’t talk through ideas and

So that was where the shared experience was huge. I could bring my problems to the team, to the forum group.

And nobody would tell me what to do, but they’d be like, well, I had a similar experience, and this is how I viewed it, and this is what I did, and this is what happened, so take what you want from that.

For me, that was massive, it was huge. And so over the years, and exposure to the speakers, and all the other stuff that is part of it, was such value to me.

I learned so much, and I give a lot of credit to the McKay model, and McKay forms in general, but the model specifically was great for me.

@47:42 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

I am so grateful that you brought me into that fold, and so excited to be a part of it, and I’m witnessing that firsthand.

And it’s a game changer. I think you’re going to be one of my game changers, Sam. And there is so much gold in this episode.

Episode by you be an honest sharing your story. I Relate so much to you coming as a professional athlete.

I miss 10 years as well, and I think we’ve all missed 10 years you pivot you change industries You feel like you’ve missed 10 years and we’re in the boat together in this self-directed idea That’s what this podcast is all about people on their walks or on their drive to or from somewhere can can pick up something and I’m gonna have to go back and comb through this one and put pick out all the gold There’s just there’s just a ton of it.

@48:33 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

Thank you Sam Thank you. It’s it’s great and I I’ve always had great respect for you and and your Approach to everything that you do and one of the things you told me on the ice one time was Yeah, I’ve been coaching for about 10 years and I have never yelled at a kid once and You know in contrast to you we had many other you know the brand name coaches the rock star skating and

and my kids didn’t want to be on the ice with them because they yelled at them. And you never yelled once at any of my players.

@49:08 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Some of them were quite disorderly.

@49:10 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

And they all learned and they all had a great time. And so your approach and the innovative way that you, you know, your videos and stuff were huge value to me as well as I tried to educate myself as a hockey coach.

You know, I was a very average house league player. But, you know, I think I like to think I was a decent coach.

And a lot of what I learned I took from you.

@49:37 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

So always a big thing. I’m honored. There’s a leadership lesson in there. The way we make people feel has a lot to do with whether they want to come to the rink or not.

@49:47 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

Yep.

@49:49 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Thank you. Thank you for your time.

@49:52 – Dr. Sam Gutman – Rockdoc (Rockdoc)

All right. Have a good one.