Rx_Bill Goodwin: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Rx_Bill Goodwin: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

John Shufeldt:
Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of Entrepreneur Rx, where we help healthcare professionals own their future.

John Shufeldt:
Hi Everybody, welcome back. Welcome to another edition of Entrepreneurs Rx. Today, I'm really thrilled to have a close friend of mine and the CEO of MeMD, a gentleman named Bill Goodwin, who I had the great fortune of meeting in about five years ago and was, made one of my rare smart moves and hired him to be the CEO of MeMD, thereby replacing myself. Bill, with that introduction, Bill, welcome.

Bill Goodwin:
Well, you know what? Thanks, John. Yeah. Five years ago, it's flown by, but it's a pleasure to be here. And, and yeah, it's been it's been a fun ride over the last few years and more to come. But great to be here.

John Shufeldt:
Thank you. Okay. You've had a really kind of a storied entrepreneurial background. Can you, I mean, give people a little taste of your background? You're not a physician, so you're a little bit rare for this, little of this podcast. However, you have so much to offer. So I thought you'd be perfect for it.

Bill Goodwin:
Yeah. So my, some would call my background a little bit eclectic. But there is a, there is a recurring theme throughout. And one of those is that I have typically, for probably a little over 20 years, gone into businesses that were somewhere between 10 to 500 employees and scaled them. And a lot of times these are businesses that were started by a founder and either are just not growing at the rate that they want to do or declining, and there's really some, I don't want to say common sense, but there are certain things that you can do to really transform your business. So think of somebody like me is as the person you bring in when you're ready to take the business to, to the next level. I've certainly made my share of mistakes and continue to make them, and not all of them have been successful. But there are some key things that I've learned throughout that, that really help your business improve at a much higher rate than, than what you could do probably on your own.

John Shufeldt:
All right. Well, that's perfect segue way, but let's back up a little bit. Give us a little bit about that background for you. So people have context about how you ended up where you did.

Bill Goodwin:
Yeah. So basically the last several years I've been, as you mentioned, running MeMD as the CEO. Prior to that, I was the CEO of a healthcare analytic company. So we basically sold software and data to health systems that help them look at physician leakage and overall market analysis. And prior to that, I've been brought into e-commerce companies, into transportation, into industrial, and even into just straight out technology resell companies. In all of those, the businesses, I would say, have been in a different point in their life cycle, so you had to bring kind of a different set of tools to what you need to do. But through that, I gained a fair degree of experience and just different cultures, different places where, where companies are, different types of people, and so I think it's really kind of helped later in my career as we looked at most recently with MeMD and even the healthcare analytic company on how to drive their growth.

John Shufeldt:
Have you seen that a certain company culture inhibits growth or a certain company culture on the positive side really promotes growth. And if so, what have you done to try to change a culture? Because my background is mostly starting companies, so I get to build a culture from the base. I can't imagine how hard it is to come in to a company where the culture is already formed and you either say, great, good, good building blocks or holy cow, we've got a lot of work to do.

Bill Goodwin:
Yeah, it's good. And really the right culture has to match what, what you're trying to do, not, you know, there isn't just one universal culture that works for every type of organization. So you and I both share a passion for culture, we know that. And what I've noticed coming into companies is typically there are a few things off with the culture, it isn't usually a people problem. In fact, often it's not even the people at all, it's how the people operate together, it's the norms that have been established, it's the values, if there are values that are shared by the group, are there there? And there's just common practices that can be put into place. So typically I think there's, you can have a toxic culture and that usually is driven by one, two or three people that poison the whole culture. And you can have an exceptional culture that is all positive and everybody is great, but no work is getting done. So when I think of culture, I think of something what is the best thing that brings together the people, the process and the product to make sure that you're able to execute going forward. So, now that we're knowing that, when you think of then trying to change a culture, you have to think, well, what are the common denominators that are most critical to change? If it's people, you have to do that relatively quickly. Usually it isn't, but then you really have to set the norms and behaviors that you expect from that culture and then reinforce it. And that's typically the best way to address a culture. And I'll say, John, it is usually the number one problem that any organization faces and they don't even know it that that's the thing that's constraining their growth.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah. I've been, over the years become incredibly sensitive to the cultural norms that we start with and hope to build off of. If you had to go into an Uber-esque, Travis Kalanick sort of culture to try to repair it, and if you did, how would you do it? Because, like that culture, when you read about it seemed like it was toxic from the top down.

Bill Goodwin:
Yeah, I don't know if I've ever had one quite that bad, but I have had ones where they were, they were very toxic from the standpoint of, I don't know, go back to these norms, the norm of certain behaviors are okay, the backstabbing, the climbing the corporate ladder, the let's do everything at all costs to please my boss, run over people, that's kind of that type of culture and that that requires a very significant change in how you get people to then get those people out and address the culture. And you have to do a relatively quickly. I wrote an article a long time ago called Culture Vultures and Culture Vultures, what I define as high performers who don't live your values and a company like Uber and a lot of high performers, I don't think Uber even had the values necessarily. But if you have the values and they're not being lived, they have high performers, they still have to go.

John Shufeldt:
I do that, as I call that, the top left quadrant. So high performing people don't fit the culture, you're right. Give them one chance and they've got to go. Compared to the people of phenomenal, they fit the culture perfectly, but they're not performing and then you coach them up, love the hell out of them, and put your arm around them metaphorically and support them. And if they can get there, great. And if they can't get there, maybe on the wrong side of the bus or they're just not, it's not the right, not the right bus, but yeah.

Bill Goodwin:
What you're leading into is something that I think everyone should read about. It's called self determination theory. If you don't know what that is, is a lot of times people, there's a book written a few years back called The Passion Paradox, and they talked about the importance of self determination theory. And I didn't really realize this, but it kind of makes sense, right? If you want people to be able to sustain passion for their, for their job, you have to have three elements working well for that person. They have to feel competent enough to do the job. So as, to your example to that person, are we helping raise their competency to do their job. If they feel like they're not in the right spot, well, how do we help them get the training that they need? The second has to have the autonomy to do it. Now, one thing we make a mistake of, especially as entrepreneurs, is not giving or maybe giving too much, but in this case, not giving enough autonomy to people because we want our way, it's our vision, we want it our way, we don't give them the autonomy. That also can negatively impact your culture and their people's ability to do their job. And the last one, the biggest one, is relatedness. And relatedness comes in two forms. Do I relate to the vision of the organization? Do I buy in? Is it something that really is important to me? But it's also your relatedness to the people that you work with. Do you feel like you're part of, part of a team or something special? And those things are critical in any culture to make sure that people perform at the best and in turn actually accelerate the growth of your organization.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, that's a perfect synopsis of, of how all the pieces have, how all the pieces interplay together, dead on. So from my background, I've always been very founder-esque, good startup, but as far as the ongoing long term day to day management, that's not my strong suit. And I learned that years ago. How did you morph into that person who comes in and has this operational excellence and the discipline to do that?

Bill Goodwin:
Yeah, well, I mean, I think there's two things, right? I mean, I think when an entrepreneur starts a business, they have a vision, typically they have a vision. They see an opportunity in the market, they might have a broad vision of where they see something could go or something could become. And from that vision, you have to work backwards to some of what you need to do operationally. And so when I've gone into organizations, I haven't lost that even though I have to do a fair amount of the operational piece is you have to get the organization aligned behind a vision, a long term one, and then you can think back to three years, one year, current quarter, what you have to do operationally. The challenge I think a lot of entrepreneurs have is they are either good at one or the other. They're either really good at a vision, they just expect people to do it and they got it or they are so in the details, right? They're losing sight of where they're trying to go. So for, for any entrepreneur, I think they need to identify what are they? I mean, where where is their strength? And then make sure they have the right people around them, if they can't fit both those buckets well enough to make sure they have the right people around them to fill that gap if they want to do well. So to your question operationally, I think operationally is something everybody can learn. But nonetheless, you must have both the operational discipline and the vision to grow your business.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, I was reading the book. You know, Venture Capital, and they talked about that only about 20 to 30% of founders make it basically past, make it to the exit when VC is involved. Because even though they may not realize it, others realize that they're not going to be, they're not the ones who can take the company to the next level and I would say, you know, sometimes the horse I was riding, was not the horse you ride out on. And, you know, I think I've got pretty good identifying when the time to get, to get me off the horses but it's hard. I mean if, you know, you, you tie, you're so entwined with the company that it's hard to know like okay this is growing beyond my capabilities, when, when do I bring the Bill Goodwins of the world and, and have them take it to the next level? I think it's a hard thing for a lot of people to get their head around. So what's your advice? How do they?

Bill Goodwin:
You know, first of all, I've been in a situation where founder has brought me in and they weren't really ready to, to turn over the reins. And I get it, it's their baby, it's something they've been working on. And I've also been in a situation where, in life, with you, where you basically said, here you go, I have confidence and you've let me do what I need to do. I think for a founder, I think one of the things they have to think about is hard to do because most founders are working on this. If it's a side thing and they're doing their regular practice or their job and then they're spending another 60 hours a week on this or their dedicate their life to this, at some point they have to assess, do I really have the skill set? If they if they can't come to that conclusion themselves because a lot of them can't, then who you ask, you've got to ask people in the organization, you've got to ask some of your stakeholders, you've got to be honest about it because really, if you want to, if the most important thing is to get the business to a different point or have it live on for the next generation, you have to start asking those questions at some point, that's one. And number two is, when does it stop becoming interesting or fun to you? That's a great time, maybe don't wait till it gets to be really uninteresting or not fun, but one where you still like it but you know that you being in the day-to-day isn't going to help the business to grow.

John Shufeldt:
I mean, you kind of have this background as a fixer, I mean, because I obviously know your background and you come in and you whether you want to call it this or not, you fix companies that have hit their inflection point. What advice, you must have, you kind of have seen it all then. So what advice do you have for entrepreneurs and the things, the mistakes you've seen entrepreneurs make as they're getting to the point where they need a fixer to come in?

Bill Goodwin:
Oh, well, so it's not just entrepreneurs who've made those mistakes, I've made those mistakes, too.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah.

Bill Goodwin:
Right? One, I think it's especially tricky when they're starting or when they're growing, is a lot of hiring decisions, they may have been based on the wrong criteria. Sometimes they might based off of cost and you don't get the right people. Sometimes you don't bring in the right people based off of you, don't align them with your values because maybe you haven't defined your values. So I think some of the biggest mistakes are hiring. Do I have the right people in here to do that? And that's one thing that I typically have to fix. Two is, really do they consciously develop their culture, right? Do they consciously develop the culture the way they want it? A lot of times they don't do that. Third thing is, and just a couple more is, I think a lot of times entrepreneurs when they, when they start a business is they don't really look at what the market is for their for their business. What I mean is what, what competitive threats there are. There's always competition. Do they look at that? Right? Do they also look at what marketing they need to do? Or do they look at product first and look at that instead of looking at people first? So there's a numerous number of mistakes, John, but ultimately the biggest one that I've noticed is it's over and over again, most companies I've gone into, I have tried very hard not to do the wholesale people change. You know, I've been in organizations where a new leader comes in and they immediately bring in their team, I don't think that's the right approach. I think typically you have good people there mostly, and you had to align them behind a vision. And then, most of us, even they had some poor hires, you can save a lot of them, but ultimately the people that you have in your organization are the number one thing you have to fix if you're going to grow it.

John Shufeldt:
Totally true. So would you say out of all the challenges you've seen, that most of them are people related challenges? I mean, not product market fit, not they picked the wrong technology, but they're generally challenges related to the team?

Bill Goodwin:
Absolutely.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah.

Bill Goodwin:
I mean, you don't have a business, right? Without the people. The people are your business, regardless of what your product you have or service you have, the people are the most critical link. They determine how good your product is, they determine the value prop, they determine how its message in the market, they determine how you operate and control costs. So if you don't, if you don't have the right people in the equation, you could have the greatest idea and the greatest service, and it's not going to go anywhere, it's not going to scale. And as an entrepreneur, especially if you hit, if you hit on something and you're adding people, you're adding quickly and all that, it is really easy to overlook the people component and that, that can ... you later on. And therefore, one of the best things you can do is be real mindful of the people you bring in. Do they align with your values? I sound repetitive, do they align with your values? Are they high performers and do you treat them well? Right back to self-determination theory.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, you're right. In many respects, it's very straightforward and very easy. I've seen people over the years, and I'm sure I've done this, is hire people that are like you because you like them and they think the same way. And I've learned, so that that's not who you want, because as Henry Ford said if two people are thinking the same way, you don't need one of them. And, and so I've tried to hire people of a much different set of glasses than I do, so they can look at a problem and come up with a more creative solution or a different solution than I did. But it's hard to get your head around that. What advice do you have on where to find, I mean, really where to find talented staff, talented teammates? How would you do it? I mean, you and I found each other, I think, through LinkedIn.

Bill Goodwin:
Right. I'm not sure that's necessarily the, the, the best way to do it.

John Shufeldt:
Right.

Bill Goodwin:
But here's another thing that I think that entrepreneurs in general and all of us don't do well is we don't continue to meet with people, right? So some of the ways you find the best people or when you set up coffees with people who are interesting things, when you, when you go to events, we get so obsessed with our business, we lose sight of just going out and meeting with people. And a lot of times some of the best people I have found are through connections that I have from people that I've met. It isn't through LinkedIn, right? It it isn't through a one ad, it isn't through a recruiter. It's through your network, and how do you build a great network? You engage in all the time and not always about business.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, I think in fact, I think that's how we met. I think you contacted me purely out of just networking, healthcare ecosystem and, and obviously hit it off.

Bill Goodwin:
Yep.

John Shufeldt:
So, okay, biggest mistake you made, the mistake you made on MeMD, how about that one? That'll be a good one.

Bill Goodwin:
Well, so let's take both of those, right?

John Shufeldt:
Oh, no.

Bill Goodwin:
So I'll give you one big mistake. I was brought in to, I had a, I had a training company that was acquired by a big computer reseller on the East Coast and moved my wife to New Jersey, I was wearing these different sales centers. And for this, at the time, Fortune 1000 tech company. And they were, they were underperforming, they were underperforming significantly, they were a public company. Their competitors, which I had worked with one of their competitors previously, were growing at a much higher rate. And so we had to change it fast. And the biggest mistake I made was coming in with I've got some of the answers, I know what to do, let's institute significant change quickly, build the new foundation right away. Well, I learned pretty hard that organizations, organization don't respond that quickly to radical rapid change. And so I learned coming in in the future, you've got to be a little bit more calculated with the change that you're going to do, you can't, even though there may be pressure, whether it's the pressure from the street or whether it's pressure just in general to do change. If you do it too aggressively, you will lose good people. You will, you will cause bigger dip than you need to. So you had to be real smart about change, not too much, organizations can't handle too much too fast.

John Shufeldt:
I think that would be my, you know, as you know, I'm an EM physician and I can't kill you or cure you in 6 minutes, I'm bored and think I would have a hard time not having this burning platform mentality, particularly in, like you said, the organization that you're referring to is kind of a burning platform. I mean, you they didn't bring you in to slow walk this. So that's a tough balancing act.

Bill Goodwin:
And no one usually brings you in if things are going really, really well, they bring you in because they want something different, you know? And at MeMD, I think certainly there have been quite a few mistakes, like you make with in any role that you take. I think part of my biggest mistake I had to think about was from a scaling of the team standpoint, not pushing that faster, sooner, right? Because we had as you know, we had, we had a good base of what we needed to do and we had some good people. Everybody was stretched. And so while you come in and try and optimize and get the team to play at even a better level and launch new service lines, there, there's just a capacity constraint on the organization. And I wish I had increased the capacity sooner, it would have accelerated our growth even sooner.

John Shufeldt:
Well, I mean, we were, we were definitely under-resourced. Certainly under-resourced moneywise for lack of raising and under-resourced team wise because they didn't really have the money to do it. But yeah, you inherited some challenges in that level because we had a great, we had a really pretty good product, but people were stretched.

Bill Goodwin:
Yeah.

John Shufeldt:
Certainly. And you didn't come in, to your credit and make a ton of changes out of the gate. You came in and pushed appropriately through and you know, took a few years to get everybody in the right seat of the bus. But it definitely worked. I mean, as you know, we did very well.

Bill Goodwin:
Yeah. I mean, there were a few things and I know you and I read a lot of the same business books and I hate to keep quoting them, but one of the things that we did and I've been in that situation before, it's always been, it's been rare where I've been brought in to an organization that just had a ton of funding to go, it just doesn't exist, right? Every organization is limited, typically on their funding. So what do you have to do? You really have to push the organization to operate at a faster speed. We're in such a competitive market now, and no matter what you're starting, if you're not moving quick, you're in trouble, right? So we really pushed to move our operational speed up. We also push to launch more services more quickly. And I remember a quote from Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, If you're not embarrassed by the first iteration of your product, you're too late, which is 30 years after Tom Peters came out with the Ready, Fire, Aim approach, which is basically the same thing, right? Get it out there, see what happens. So we really pushed to get products out there, get feedback, and then pivot as needed. And then the third thing was, is what type of culture do we need? With a decent culture, but how do we, how do we take it to an even new level to really help optimize not only what we do as a company, but optimize how this team plays together and make it a better place?

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, I know, I couldn't have said it better. And you know, you came in firing on all cylinders and obviously it shows and it was a lot of fun being able to take a step back and kind of just have a board position and watch how you drove the ship, you know, is one I learned a lot. So thank you for that, but also is really fun to watch your, watch your baby grow up and, and mature past where I could have taken so it was pretty cool so thank you for that.

Bill Goodwin:
Well, you are, and we're in, maybe sometime in the future, kind of the dream entrepreneur to work for. You really, you really did turn over the keys, which is helpful. Back to that autonomy thing that we talked about. I think that's critical. Obviously, you stay close to the business and make sure it's going the right direction. It's a lot of fun, it's been great working for you and being able to run that business to the next level.

John Shufeldt:
Thanks. So what's what's your future look like? I know Walmart's going to want you for, for, you know, a long time, but what's your future look like, do you think?

Bill Goodwin:
Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. I'm having, I'm having fun right now. So when you think about, now, we're taking what we did on, did at MeMD and now, now we get to do it on a scale that we never imagined we could do. So the opportunity to take telehealth to a whole new level with Walmart and its ecosystem is pretty exciting. So I'm focused on that. Long term? Who knows. But I really do like going into businesses and bumping them up and it's fun. I enjoy it.

John Shufeldt:
You know, it's funny, I like, we joked about this before, like in a million years I could not have imagined being acquired by Walmart. And I tell everybody this, I said, first off, they were nothing but professional and direct and bright and hardcore during our whole process. And I think the last ten months for us, I haven't been let down at all. They are hard charging, but they want to. I mean, I'm impressed by them because they want to change the world and they want to change the world the way I want to change it. They want to do right by people and where they, you know, how they find healthcare for them, for their customers and their team members. So it's, it's been very impressive to watch more from the outside. But I can't imagine from your vantage point how you went from Little MeMD to now working for and really leading parts of this, the largest company in the world. It's got to be mind numbing.

Bill Goodwin:
Yeah, well, it is. I mean, like you, if I had to go back three years ago, I didn't think I'd be working for a large public company or in fact, the largest public company in the US. You know, three short years later and to your point there, you never know when you go through a due diligence process and acquisition process what is on the other side, especially when, like you and me, we haven't been in a public, big public company in quite some time and spot on. It has been, the culture has been better than what I expected. I had crafted in my mind a little bit like big company culture, you know, and I don't even know what that means other than it's not entrepreneurial, small, driven, let's go type of culture. The people are great, they've embraced us. And you're right, they really stand behind, I should say we stand behind this direction of we really want to change healthcare. Walmart doesn't like to do anything on a small scale. I mean, they're really out there to make an impact. And we have a unique platform now, a stage to really bring telehealth to a much wider audience than we ever could have done, just as MeMD. And that's really exciting.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, it's funny. You know, I had the interview with the CEO and then had the interview with Sheryl and I walked away, both of them, from both of them going, one, they're rock stars.

Bill Goodwin:
Right.

John Shufeldt:
They're going to change the world. And it was impress upon me very directly, we don't do anything small. And so you better be ready to scale. I'm like, all right, game on.

Bill Goodwin:
That's right.

John Shufeldt:
Little did we know what scale meant in that world.

Bill Goodwin:
Yeah. So I think I think in general, we'll, we'll see great things to come from Walmart in the healthcare space. And with telehealth being a real critical component of how we get care to rural communities, to underserved populations, to people in high deductible plans, where they're getting killed with healthcare costs. So a lot of exciting things to come in the Walmart.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, venture. It's, it's been really fun to have my small role, but to watch you guys change the world it's pretty cool. Well, Bill where can people find out more about you, how can they connect?

Bill Goodwin:
The best ways they can, they can connect on LinkedIn. That's probably the easiest way to do it, which is just Bill Goodwin. It shouldn't be too hard to find on LinkedIn and certainly they can always send me an email they want at BGoodwin@MeMD.Me M E M D.me and I'll be sure to give you some of the contact information.

John Shufeldt:
Thanks. Of course, I've got it all, we'll put it in the show notes, but thanks. Thanks so much. It was really fun to reconnect with you and you're doing a great job and it's, I could not be prouder of what you and the team have accomplished. So thank you.

Bill Goodwin:
Pleasure, John. Thank you for having me on and and look forward to the future, and whatever it may bring.

John Shufeldt:
Thanks for listening to another great edition of Entrepreneur Rx. To find out how to start a business and help secure your future, go to JohnShufeldtMD.com. Thanks for listening.

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