Christopher Turner – Gratitude for a Cheese Pizza (448)

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Episode transcript below:

0:00:00 – Mike Malatesta

Hi everyone. Mike Malatesta here and welcome back to the how it Happened podcast. On this podcast, I dig in deep with every guest to explore the roots of their success, to discover not just how it happened but why it matters. My mission is to find and share stories that inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you. 

0:00:19 – Mike Malatesta

On today’s episode we are talking to an amazing entrepreneur, thinker and leader who’s dominating a niche industry you’ve probably never heard about but will definitely open your eyes. Christopher Turner and I talk about growth, cultural challenges, complexity, dark clouds, clear expectations, the Simpsons and gratitude for cheese pizza In our organization. 

0:00:45 – Christopher Turner

If you ask anybody what their number one issue is, they’ll say oh, it’s communication, because that’s what people say. I think and there is some truth to that because as you grow, the difficulty in communication becomes geometrically- grown as well, I think, a few of the ways that you address that is A, to acknowledge it and let people know. 

It gets harder when people don’t. It gets harder. Try to keep others informed but don’t try to work through middleman on every conversation. You know sometimes you need to work directly with the other person and it’s the responsibility of leaders and managers things like that to really make sure they’re passing communication up and down the chain. 

0:01:21 – Mike Malatesta

This episode is sponsored by the Dream Exit. The Dream Exit is a private bespoke program for successful entrepreneurs with annual revenue between $5 million and $100 million who realize that they have one chance to get their Dream Exit right and that the odds of realizing that dream by themselves, all alone or at the last minute are stacked against them. In less than 90 days, we teach you how to design, build and execute a customized Dream Exit playbook that gets your business ready for sale at its maximum value and gets you ready to maximize your meaning and purpose in your post exit life, even if today you are not ready to sell. You see, dream Exits just don’t happen. They are the result of early, professional and proven planning. So if you’re an entrepreneur with annual sales between $5 million and $100 million and you want to learn how to 10X to 100X your chances of achieving the Dream Exit you deserve, go to dreamexitplaybookcom today. And now here’s Christopher Turner. Christopher, welcome to the how to Happen podcast. 

0:02:35 – Christopher Turner

Thank you, Mike. 

0:02:36 – Mike Malatesta

So I’m really excited to have you on here today. This is great. I love getting into podcasts just like this. I don’t know a ton about you outside of work, and the intro that we had to one another was kind of made tangentially to work, so it’s kind of like, well, that’s the cool part. We’re going to dig into that, but we’re also going to dig into who Christopher Turner really is and why that matters to everybody. That’s listening and that’s the part that excites me a lot. So you heard a little bit about Christopher and our conversation in the intro and I wanted to tell you a little bit more about him. 

So Christopher Turner is the founder and CEO of Emergeicon LLC. He brings more than 25 years of healthcare financial management experience and a deep commitment to reducing the burden of life-saving care to the company he founded in 2006. Christopher is a Vistage and Strategic Coach member, so we have some commonalities there. I just left Vistage after oh boy, 17 years. I think I was in that. I just needed a little break Just a month or so ago. So I want to get into your Vistage experience and Strategic Coach. For those of you listening, of course, you know that I was in Strategic Coach for seven years but have not been in a while, so I always I stay engaged, but I always love connecting with Strategic Coach people, because Strategic Coach people think differently than most other people, so you’re going to get some of that today as well. 

Christopher has grown Emergeicon from a two-person startup to the leader in pre-hospital emergency care management over the last 15 years Through people-centric, proven processes. Emergeicon drives revenue for first responders as the largest EMS-milling company in Texas. And before you get all like, what is EMS? What is all that mean? It’s important and it’s some. You know I love things that are right in front of your face but fly under the radar of most people’s awareness, right? So this is going to be an eye-opener as to how ambulances and all the other stuff work. So you can learn more about Christopher on LinkedIn. His LinkedIn is Christo C-H-R-I-S-T-O Turner, so connect with him there, and you can learn more about Emergeicon at emergeicon-e-m-e-r-g-i-c-o-ncom. So, christopher, I like to get started with a simple question, and that is how did it happen for you? 

0:05:08 – Christopher Turner

It’s a good question. So how it happened for me is background in originally, as a kid, thinking I would become a doctor, quickly learned out my first year of college that wasn’t going to happen. Science and I weren’t going to mix well together, but I had some familiarity with the business side of healthcare, just a little bit of a working knowledge. There’s a, or was, I suppose now a physician who ran Parkland, which is the big county hospital in Dallas here, and Dr Ron Anderson, and he was the CEO, but he was also a physician. So I had some understanding that there was a business side of how healthcare was administered and that’s probably somewhat obvious. But I didn’t really understand how to get at that. You know, what did that look like? Not being a physician and not having pursued that myself, what is the alternative? So I did some research, started to figure out how to pursue a degree that would help me get into the business side of healthcare, and the reason it was important to me is that healthcare touches everybody and every walk of life. You have some experience with a doctor, emergency room, any number of things there. 

So I started out, worked for various, I’ll say, providers, hospital, big ER physician group, worked for commercial insurance for a while, worked as, was hired as the CFO for a big not-for-profit area and ground ambulance provider and from there in all my career I had seen the failing, I’ll say, in our healthcare system in the States, which is there’s no lack of need. There’s every provider’s busy all the time. There’s probably a lack of providers, but there is a real hodgepodge of how reimbursement works. So everybody, everybody knows if you’ve had any interaction let’s say a surgery or an emergency room visit or maybe even as a family having a baby you have this variety of medical bills that show up. They’re confusing, very difficult to understand. You may pay one thing and then you get another bill for something else, get a refund for 30 cents. So I knew that, had seen it in my career. 

So in 2006, when I decided to start out on my own, I had seen it maybe not worse, but definitely mismanaged and needed for first responders, fire and EMS, and how much they rely on the funds that they can receive for what they do and how often that’s just that service has done very, very poorly and there’s a real lack of understanding of what they can and can affect. There’s a real lack of understanding about how that process should work. So that was my goal was to go and start to help first responders really understand the way they can be reimbursed, how they maximize that, how legally can they pursue different claims for reimbursement? Where can’t they? First responders are pretty well accustomed to knowing that 30% of the responses they make have absolutely no reimbursement whatsoever for a variety of reasons. So my goal was to try to make that easier, try to make that understanding more clear and try to help them get as much reimbursement as they can to offset the extraordinary costs they face in delivering service to all of us in times of need. 

0:08:41 – Mike Malatesta

So, before we dig more into the business of it, I want to go back to this medical school thing. So what? I won’t. Obviously, you were committed to a path. You had the intellect and whatever else to get into medical school, which isn’t easy. What about the experience? Turned you off and or shifted your mind so quickly? 

0:09:07 – Christopher Turner

It was so. 

it was pre-med so it was just, yeah, not medical school, pre-med just coming out and I just I think the real hurdle for me was going to be the science. It just I couldn’t see myself getting through that, and that was pretty clear early on. And that’s a, that’s a great, it’s funny. It’s one of those things that then at the time you know you’re trying to figure it out and you’re kicking yourself and all that, and then looking back you realize what a blessing that was. And there’s so many things in life that occur that way. And it’s not until you have some little age and a wisdom that you realize those things happen for a reason and now they really were meant to happen and work out that way. 

0:09:48 – Mike Malatesta

And we were talking before, before we started recording, about your Colby score 6392, with two being the implementer, which is your, I guess, your natural ability to work with your hand. So maybe that had something to do with two and implementer doctors kind of well. At least some doctors hadn’t have to work with their hands pretty competently. But just an observation, I don’t know. 

0:10:09 – Christopher Turner

It’s funny. It’s funny that you say that, because my wife has said the same thing. Seeing how I’m not a good project person, I’m not a good tools person, I sure only would like to be. But she said aren’t you go ahead? You didn’t try to pursue being a surgeon or something like that. I mean, you never would have been able to do it. And it’s very, very true. I would have not excelled in that area and I’m really glad that it worked out this way. 

0:10:31 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, you would have to be a psychiatrist or something. So what about growing up? Where did you have a parent that was a doctor, or where did your interest come from, or what were you interested in as a kid? Was it always medicine, or what happened? 

0:10:50 – Christopher Turner

I think I latched on to the childhood dream of becoming a doctor, as we all do. It’s police and fire and astronaut things like that. I didn’t have a parent that was a doctor. It’s funny. I don’t know that I’ve ever really thought about where exactly I latched on to that. I think part of it was, and has been, the fact that it does deal with people and it deals with people in ideally a helpful way, and I think that’s always appealed to me. And, not being a great extrovert people person, I’m much more of an introvert. I like the idea of being helpful in my own somewhat more introverted way and I think as a physician certainly there’s opportunity to do that. Now there’s lots of opportunities in other areas to do that as well, but maybe that’s part of what appealed to me about it is kind of the one-on-one working with someone. 

0:11:52 – Mike Malatesta

Okay, got it and I think, before I want to go there, I guess I want to this entrepreneurial thing. Christopher, you felt like reading through of your history that I could find. It felt like something clicked in you when you were the CEO of CareFlight organization that made you want to. Cfo. Yeah, yeah, what did I say, ceo? Yeah. 

CFO, my apology when you saw something that was a problem that you thought you could solve, but I may be reading into it way wrong, so why don’t you help us understand? What was it that made you think, oh, I’m going to mortgage my house, I’m going to cash in all my retirement savings and I’m going to go for it as we do? 

0:12:42 – Christopher Turner

It’s probably a combination of a couple of things. One was the kind of the technical need that I saw and again, going back through professional experience, the complete lack of ability in many circumstances to get proper reimbursement for healthcare services. So we know, in this country you have all the stories all the time People post online they had a baby or they were in the hospital for something they could have built for $100,000. And it’s posted as the shock value. But it’s kind of indicative of kind of a messed up system we operated in, operated in because in reality the hospital or whomever is not getting the $100,000. It’s kind of the sticker price shock. 

So there’s that piece that adds to confusion. But what I had seen over and over again was just a complete breakdown in some of those processes in many, many ways, and I think that really tied into my own. You mentioned my Colby 6392, the nine is the quick start where it’s kind of moved first and figure things out later, which is good and bad, but I never, never a fan of bureaucracy. I’m okay with taking risk, as you mentioned there and you know, mortgaging my house and cashing in my 401k, because I know that there’s an opportunity to do something good and the risk is not terribly risky. 

I’ve said previously I haven’t thought about this recently, but I’ve said previously it’s not like they can kill you, it’s not like money is just money and money is a tool. And if you’re well-intentioned and you see an opportunity and you’re willing to move on something and not analyze it to death, that’s the opportunity. And I think it also tied into some kind of deeper understanding that one day I would really rather work for myself in some capacity. I think that’s a very efficient way to go about doing things, because you can focus on the things that you think matter and maybe push off the things that normally would be built in some way, that you have to provide something to somebody else that maybe you don’t see a value, and I didn’t say that very clearly, but kind of the office space movie of the TPS reports and the covers and the different reports. 

So I mean, it’s just bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake and I never, never, identified that as a real added value. I think results matter and the ability to work directly with people and influence things. 

0:15:35 – Mike Malatesta

So I know it’s been a while since you were on started this and I’m wondering if you could take us back then, because it’s always interesting to me how not only you know what prompted someone to become an entrepreneur, to try something like this, but what was it actually like when you were just getting started? I mean, how did you get your first client? How did you establish legitimacy? How did you attract people to work with you? You know all of those things that you sort of you know. When you get to the point where you are now, people sort of forget about and maybe you do sometimes you forget about what it was like when you actually started. So what was it like? 

0:16:18 – Christopher Turner

It’s. You know it’s a really good exercise to go back and think about and revisit some of those things. You know our current circumstances, there’s our reality. You know where we are today is, you know, obviously it’s our current reality. We don’t know what 10 years looks like in the future and sometimes we forget to look at 10 years in the past. 

But I think it’s a helpful exercise and, you know, starting out I had probably one thing going for me that was in terms of credibility, which was, as I was the CFO for CureFlight, as you mentioned, we really turned around their billing overall to take what was not for profit it was losing money to showing some positive cash flow, and we recovered about $6 million on all accounts and you know, increased cash collections, et cetera, and so that didn’t go without notice and, interestingly enough, and not something anticipated that was, that was some credibility that I can, I could leverage, as I went out there to, you know, just small fire departments and say, you know, cureflight’s a big organization and it’s it’s not for profit and its board is made up of most of the large hospital systems in the area. The assets are owned by them, and so, to turn that in my own small role there was pretty important and recognizable, I think, in a lot of ways. And I realized that you know the smaller fire departments. They likely had very similar issues and so I was able to have a little bit of credibility there. And then technically I was able, based on all my experience, to look at you know financial reporting things that they had at hand, to point out big gaps. You know just kind of typical financial analysis. And wait a second, this doesn’t make sense and this looks like somewhere where you know you’re just bleeding money at the city and cities are funded by taxpayers so therefore the taxpayers are subsidizing a broken process. So those two things. 

And then I remember very early on realizing I got to figure out how to sell. I had the foggiest idea, never sold anything in my life and very quickly realized I got to figure it out. And so you know you, you hear about entrepreneurs and I guess others talk about grinding it out, and that’s what it was. I had a lady with me, linda Ford, who was really technically clear on the process to you know, help, file claims and seek reimbursement. She’s since retired from Marjicon and I realized I had to do all the other pieces. 

So I did the finance role, I did the sales role, you know, start to get an idea of where we were going to go as a direction at the company and keep us focused. You know we at that time you’re so hungry for anything and you’re, you know, worried and stressed and that you’re willing to consider all kinds of opportunities. And it’s really hard to turn things away when you think you know I could turn a little, a little profit here, a little profit there. But I was pretty good about doing that and not trying to spread us across every possible opportunity that came up. We made it probably a few of those mistakes about too too many. 

But, yeah, it was. It was. It was very rough going for the first few years, very tough, a lot of stress and anxiety. But I also knew it was really important to kind of fake it till you make it and kind of put on your game phase and you know project success and in its, those things do help. 

You know you have to believe in yourself and believe in what you’re doing so that others believe in you as well. And that comes, I guess, somewhat natural to me and I think that’s also really important. You know you have to have a good offering, but you’ve also got to go in there and not let them understand all the turmoil under underneath. You’ve just got to show them you know anybody that you’re, that you see as a prospect of how you can, how you think you can, help them. So for the first few years that’s what you’re doing, obviously. 

0:20:42 – Mike Malatesta

And when was it along that journey that you became, if you feel like you have became good at sales? And the reason I want to explore this a little bit is because a lot of people I think when they get, when they put their shingle out, they think, particularly if they come from you know, pedigree, like you were the CFO, a care flight, you put your, your shingle out and you think that there will be a sort of instant adoption right, instant interest in you because of who you were and, and a lot of times people think that’s going to come and when it doesn’t come or it doesn’t come quickly, they get discouraged and they but they still won’t, it’s like beneath them to go out and ask for business. They think sometimes and so on, yeah, what about you? I? 

0:21:34 – Christopher Turner

think you know I tried kind of everything that came to my mind. So obviously, you know you pay somebody to build your website and you do some of the typical things, but I did, I did anything I could think of. I would send personal letters, I would stop by various departments anytime I was traveling. I would see who, locally, I could stop in and I don’t. Those probably aren’t great tactics because I very often was not necessarily turned away at the door but people weren’t available. So I would, you know, kind of drop things off to all that. 

So over time I think that I got better at connecting the dots in terms of getting to the right person with some understanding of, maybe, what their situation was or how we could help in a more, more clear way. So maybe less scattered and more focused, so that you are or at least I was at the time moving more strategically and in trying to approach somebody that I knew there was a need and then helping them to understand how we could solve that need, versus, you know, just randomly, like maybe I’ll hit somebody. So I got to a point back in let’s see, it’s probably 2015 or so where I vacated sales seed all together, and at that time I had hired somebody and kind of trained him on my understanding and and learnings and all this stuff I’d seen in the marketplace, and then he was an actual salesperson who was able to go in, you know, take my technical trainings and then launch into sales, and we’ve, of course, grown from there. 

but it was definitely refining on my own way of the process of finding really you know real prospects, real people who would need us and how we could leverage them. And then, of course, from there you would get some really solid referrals when you, when you’ve had some real good success. 

0:23:40 – Mike Malatesta

Right. So that’s eight or nine years of you not only recognizing that this is a really important part of making a successful business, but committing yourself to becoming good at it. Right, that’s right. Yeah, right. 

0:23:54 – Christopher Turner

So I think it’s. I’ll say just one other thing. I think my experience is that’s the last thing that entrepreneurs leave. I think generally exiting the sales seed in general, not all the time. I think that’s the last thing. Entrepreneurs tend to leave because they get so good at it. 

You know, once you get to a certain point, you’ve really got it down and you’re the. You know the voice and the real authenticity of the organization and that’s a hard, that’s a hard seat to leave and and hand over and have it done very well. I mean for a lot of reasons obviously. 

0:24:29 – Mike Malatesta

Well, it’s pretty validating too, I mean you’re the you know you can. You can really get drink the Kool-Aid of being the rainmaker and you know all the kind of cool stuff that comes along with that too. So there’s something to that. The name, uh, emergeacod. Like. I’m always interested in where names came from. So where did that come from? How many names did you consider before you landed on that, if you can remember? 

0:24:56 – Christopher Turner

I can. 

0:24:57 – Mike Malatesta

Okay. 

0:24:59 – Christopher Turner

It’s a funny story for me. It’s probably not funny for anybody else, but I’ll tell you so. When I was first trying to figure out names and my wife has been involved in the organization, certainly as one of the most trusted advisors I’ve ever had, and really in a lot of ways. But to answer the question, as I was struggling to figure out names and running through things I didn’t like, I was asking for her input and help and she, you know, obviously I was just like none of this sounds good. None of this sounds like anything that makes that means anything other than a, you know, host of something. You’d be down to an acronym. And there is an episode of the Simpsons where the joke is they have a bimonthly science fiction convention in their town. So I mean it’s a little bit ludicrous to think twice a month that they’ve got this side by side going on. 

And is the news reporter is saying you know, it’s time for their buy my site by con. They’ve shortened it down because it’s so frequent. My wife threw out there at one time as I’m working on all these emerging this and that emerging con and making reference to that, and it just stuck right there. So it was, it was you know, just a throw away from an episode that we remembered and our sons remembered, but it stuck immediately and, of course, it’s lasted ever since. 

0:26:26 – Mike Malatesta

That’s a really cool story. I’m glad I asked. 

0:26:31 – Christopher Turner

Show you how much of a nerd I am. 

0:26:35 – Mike Malatesta

So nuts and bolts of what you do. You mentioned and and I’m glad you did something that all of us who are listening to you Are familiar with. Right, we have some kind of care provided to us. We get a bill, or sometimes we get bills from particularly if you’ve had surgery or something. They come from all kinds of people you never even talked to or knew were involved. It’s always seems like a struggle to figure out what do I really owe and why? And then, of course, you’ve got, if you have, healthcare or health insurance. You got them in the mix of all this, but I don’t think so. 

Everybody relates to that, but I don’t know that many people relate to the fact that some of the providers, like in the in in, in your case the ambulance service companies and and the fire departments, are kind of in the same, a similar. I don’t know. I want to call it a battle, I don’t know if that’s the right word. I don’t think most people have that awareness. They always think that whoever the provider is is the bad, the bad guy in this. So what? 

Yeah, help us understand what, what they actually, what the fight really is, because when you look at all of these providers they’re now. The fire departments might be a little different, but these ambulance services are private. Most of them are privately owned businesses, just like the business that a lot of people listening might have. So they can relate to like a receivable that they can’t collect or a billing that they they at least if I understand what you’re doing correctly they they basically don’t know that they can build bill for it or something that how to bill for it, so they leave money on the table. 

0:28:33 – Christopher Turner

It’s so it’s. It’s kind of the I won’t say it’s the most niche of all the healthcare delivery in my experience and I’ve worked in a number of different areas, so it’s very interesting. First of all, people, when I explain to them what we do, really don’t realize that’s a thing which is interesting. But the way that first responders, fire and EMS work, of course is, they’re there, you know, you dial 911 and magically you know you have people dispatch paramedics, firefighters in the air. There’s usually nurses and paramedics and all these things and it’s that hidden. We know they exist if we need them, but don’t necessarily understand the workings. 

And it’s really somewhat fascinating from the delivery of care. It’s fascinating for a lot of reasons. I mean they’re they’re rolling a mobile ICU to you and doing things in the field that can only be done typically in the ER by a physician. So that in itself is interesting. And what they deal with are things most of us can’t imagine. And yet they choose to get up and do it day after day. And and every fire department in the country, as far as I’m aware, that has the EMS attached to it, the majority, the vast majority of what they respond to, or EMS calls, not fire, fires the tiniest fraction, of course. And so it becomes very interesting because there’s lots of complexity in the not just the delivery of that care, because they have to deal with things. I mean you don’t know what you’re going to get. I mean car wreck, bus wreck, you know. I mean you could have a fire, gas plan explosion. I mean they don’t know what’s going to, what they’re going to get. 

And then, as patients are involved, then you’re putting together the pieces of who is the patient, who’s responsible for any sort of claim associated with it. So you can imagine if you’re on the job, is it your health insurance, is it workers com? Is it Medicare? Is it Medicaid? There’s all kinds of different scenarios and that takes a lot of research and sorting out and adjudicating that claim appropriately. But in the mix there you have a provider let’s say it’s a city fire department that also runs their ambulance service. That isn’t really recognized by the big payers. So they’re credentialed and set up, you know, with Medicare and Medicaid and other payers commercial insurance as well but they’re not a physician group and they’re not a hospital and they’re not generally understood to be in part of the healthcare system. They’re a city. 

So you get the claim to the right place and then you have to work through the understanding this is a city, it’s not a hospital or physician or something like that, and they need to be reimbursed for the claim. And there’s there are some federal fee schedules and state fee schedules for that. But commercial insurance kind of does whatever they want and you have the patient on the backside of that that is going to have likely some associated claim with that transport. But they also got to a hospital, which means are likely going to have a hospital claim associated with that transport and lots of parts and pieces. 

You also have got let’s say it’s a city again in a fire department with the MS you’ve got somebody who’s the finance director generally that city, who deals with municipal bonds and water bills, maybe associated sales tax and all those things, and then they also have to deal with this medical revenue stream that they have no idea how to deal with. 

They don’t have any training or formal education and dealing with that it’s a super, super niche area of healthcare reimbursement and so they really need somebody that they can work with to help them understand all that. 

There’s probably a good three or four really difficult hurdles to work through in the delivery of what we all rely on in terms of emergency care. It’s really fascinating and you mentioned, mike, that there’s private and there are. There are private providers, there are public, not-for-profit, there are municipal, there are county wide. I mean there’s just there’s every possible scenario you can imagine and all of those services coordinate really well together for the delivery of care, but then in terms of paying their own bills and providing the service, it’s all over the place because they all kind of have to make it work in their own way and, at least in the occasion of municipal-based services, there’s taxpayers at the end and taxpayers don’t need to be abused, you know. I mean they want to provide for the readiness of care, but they also want to be reimbursed where they can. Otherwise it’s just additional tax bills. 

0:33:41 – Mike Malatesta

So a couple of things there. The I had years ago. I had a fire at one of my facilities and it was a bad fire, basically burned out. And I was really surprised when I got a bill from the fire department. I never see. I kind of thought, oh well, that’s what you pay taxes for. Is for all of that? You pay that for them to be ready, I think, but not necessarily for them to perform. So that was a really strange awakening for I understood it, but it was a really strange awakening. I never, I guess I just never put that together before. 

0:34:20 – Christopher Turner

Right, it’s, that’s true. Our sister company, merge of Fire, processes those types of claims and you’re right, they are there for readiness and sometimes there’s claims associated, sometimes not, and it depends on a few things. First of all, legally, can you pursue the type of claim? Secondarily, you need to have it. So fire departments generally are not always standalone, can handle anything. Sometimes they also have to contract let’s say it’s has matter, things like that. They also contract out so there can be associated need to be reimbursed for that fire department for expenses they made One of the there’s. 

There’s some states where it’s not. Fire departments are not allowed to seek any kind of reimbursement. All and One of the failings I see from state governments and maybe local governments is they always try to attack the end user of services receiving a bill. So for EMS it’s usually are they going to receive a balance for what? Was it covered for fire? Or they can be allowed to submit that claim at all. And the problem with that is is that you are, if you make that decision, you’re essentially just telling the taxpayers hey, you’re gonna have to up the tax Contribution to cover these types of services. 

The person who’s the user on the end it’s not gonna be held liable for certain things, and the problem is not everybody’s a user. You know some of us need fire, ems at certain times, like Mike you said. You know there’s associate claim. That’s not everybody, and so you may be spreading the cost further across more people, but it doesn’t necessarily, in my opinion, facilitate the greater system. So in Texas we have a tremendous number of people entering the company of the country illegally and a lot of those people need fire and EMS, certainly EMS services. So it so it saturates the system and overwhelms the system. There’s no real ability to seek reimbursement other than at the federal level for those, and so it just winds up. You just want to taxing the system more and more, the more avenues that you trim off to say you can’t go here and you can’t go there. Yet you have to provide these services. There’s an obligation to provide the services and it’s an expectation. 

0:36:44 – Mike Malatesta

Okay, and you, you told us about how you got started and all. Where are you now? I mean, how Started in 2006? Just you, maybe another person when is? Where is merge account now and where? Where is it going to be Five years from now or whatever time frame you put on it? 

0:37:06 – Christopher Turner

So we are oh, probably today, depending on the day 104 people and Still focused in Texas, and it’s it’s interesting, our Focus hasn’t changed. It’s kind of the sales question you asked me. It’s just continued to refine. So by that I mean we, we want to work with agencies where we can be the most helpful, and that’s not everybody. You know, if you’re, if you’re really smart in any business, you have an idea who you serve best and those are the people you want to. 

You know you want to work with and we’re no different than that. We have. We have our own area where we really feel that we can do the best and demonstrate our value and, at the same time, as a company, we’ve really evolved over the last few years From a cultural standpoint and that’s been really fascinating to me because it’s it’s something I I Wanted to tackle. We had some real cultural challenges there for a while, didn’t really understand where they stemmed from or how to resolve them and as we, as we Promoted and moved our new CEO in place that’s really been her strength is really kind of bringing that culture up to a level. That really is where I wanted to be but didn’t know how to get there, and the reason I mentioned it is it’s it’s you know, it’s cultures thrown around. 

All the time you know about your organization has a culture one way or another. You may or may not really understand what it is, and the the higher you get up, probably the harder you you have really understanding what your real culture is, and it can be great or Okay or terrible or all those things, but as an organization really will. We’re focused now and now that we have a very supportive and thriving culture is Working with those agencies where we can really be the best and been also working as Individuals on ourselves, and so you mentioned I’m a member strategic coach, that’s for me and then we leverage their teams program for all our leadership and management. And it always. 

It always surprises them, as they’re, you know, maybe a newer manager with us, or certainly we rolled it out that it’s not just about you professionally, it’s about you as a person as well, and that’s surprising because most of the people have never had an organization that really had an interest in them growing as an individual, and it’s been amazing to see so many of these people really transform to grow as an individual and. 

In in that kind of growth as an individual is Rewarding to them, and then it’s rewarding to work where they work, because we continue to support that type of growth and and it’s just continued to evolve in something that’s really exciting. 

So for me, Keep going with what works. You know I mean it’s it’s been the last two years to probably be the best years of my career and I love working with people I work with and I’m very fortunate that, and so we continue just to grow and work together and learn more about each other and really support each other in terms of what is it they want to accomplish. So for me, what that looks like a lot of times is really trying to understand the leadership and management and Support them and where they want to grow over the next several years. You know, professionally, their personal goals people have, and so you know we spend some time talking about those things and I try to Support them. And what I’ve learned, you know whether it’s something at red or you know something I’m pursuing for personal health. There are any number of things. So for the next five years, I see us continuing along that path and Continuing to evolve this organization that’s really high performing and very supportive and so thanks for sharing that. 

0:41:16 – Mike Malatesta

I want to. I Want to dig in a little bit, if I can, because one of the things that I Think most entrepreneurs, business owners, struggle with if not all the time, certainly on a cyclical basis is communication and culture, and Maybe they’re the same things, maybe they’re different. I’d like to get your opinion. But what you, anytime you do feedback, for example You’re always almost always going to get that the communication isn’t as good as it can be. Hardly anyone can put their finger on why. Yeah, because everyone hears things and processes information differently, so it’s very hard to get like a consensus on what to do, which is frustrating. And then, on the cultural side, you know, a lot of times at least, I’m just putting my own, my own experience hat on and saying a lot of times I just wish that the culture was what I wanted it to be. 

Yeah, and I was willing to sort of Ignore some things that I didn’t want to deal with. I mean, eventually you have to deal with it. Right, all progress starts with the truth. If you want to make progress, you have to deal with it, but it’s kind of easy. Sometimes you’d be like I have a great culture. I know I do, and just kind of ignore some of the chirping that you’re hearing about culture. So how did you handle? You mentioned that. You know that you just Acknowledge these cultural challenges. What if you can share what some of them were and how you I think it was Tiffany that you Referencing, as you know Yep, yeah, how did you Acknowledge it and then Do something To change it? 

0:43:06 – Christopher Turner

So, the short answer is that it Tiffany Pearson. When she moved up to the COO slot. It was definitely her strength to Start addressing these issues and so I hate to say the shortest answer is to find somebody who’s really good at it If you’re not. But that’s the truth. The longer answer is we had, we had built a culture of kind of fear and and Performance. So you know we would expect you to high, to perform at a high level. But you know, watch out if you don’t type a thing. And In my ignorance what I really thought was you know the more that you know we want the best for people and you know they they may be like Working for their organization, because they have some allegiance to me. 

That will then overcome any other cultural issues, and that’s just not the case now. 

Most of the employees have less of a relationship with me that they ever did in the past, but they have a stronger relationship with everybody else they work with in support of that culture. So I completely agree, probably even today, and always has been and always was an organization. If you ask anybody what their number one issue is, they’ll say oh, it’s communication, because that’s what people say. I think and there is some truth to that, because as you grow, the difficulty in communication becomes geometrically- grown as well. 

So if it’s you and I talking, we’re pretty much in line. But you got a third person up for it, the fifth, and you have this fighter web. So communication is tough, but I think a few of the ways that you address that is A, to acknowledge it and let people know it gets harder, more people, it gets harder. The way to circumvent some of that is to, of course, go directly to the person that you wanna talk to on certain things. 

Try to keep others informed, but don’t try to work through middleman on every conversation. Sometimes you need to work directly with the other person. It’s also helps to put communication out there as much as you can on whether it’s your team’s channel or Slack or something like that to keep people in touch. And then it’s the responsibility of leaders and managers things like that to really make sure they’re passing communication up and down the chain and it’s no different than in a family. 

I mean, if you’ve got one spouse going one way and another another way and you’re busy and all that communication is the thing you have to rely on who’s where, when and all that, and that’s the same way in organization. So I think we continue to grow, hopefully, in communication and put consistent messages and all that out there. That certainly helps, but I don’t think it’s the key to the cultural piece and the cultural piece the real transformation is, and what Tiffany’s put in place and I’ve been really just kind of a participant, not necessarily even a leader in this is clear expectations and speaking straight about things. And one of the things that she says is she doesn’t do unspoken expectations. That’s a really good quality to have and she’s also a great reinforcer of celebration and that’s not something necessarily that always comes natural to me. I’m always kind of like here’s the next thing, here’s where how we can improve more. 

That can really be hard for people. They’ll have just accomplished something, and when you go directly past that and say, okay, now here’s the next iteration we need to see, on this kind of shoots the air out of it, and so she’s really great about introducing celebration and encouraging that. 

So it’s been a host of changes in that way, but also removing negativity and not focusing on negativity. I’m big on gratitude. We have a gratitude wall at the office where we can write things, and that certainly helps. But if you’re going to allow for, I’ll give you an example. This is probably the clearest example Our core values. We operate on the entrepreneurial operating system, which I almost can never say, and we’ve got core values and we’ve got right person, right seat and all those things that help reinforce culture. But one of our core values was no dark clouds. 

And what that meant was that nobody likes to come to work and the person you sit beside or work with every day is the bad day. Every day the traffic’s bad, every day it’s raining. Every day it’s bad, it’s. Nobody likes that. I thought it was a great core value. I thought it made a lot of sense, but it did have a negative connotation and it was the single most constantly picked on and used like a club core value in our organization. All the time it was used. 

So if somebody brought up an issue, a legitimate issue, they were always concerned it would be being considered they were a dark cloud, dark cloud and all that and that to me, was puzzling. Tiffany recognized that and it’s negative connotation versus our other core values, which are not negative in any way, and as the leadership team about a year ago, maybe two now, we changed it and we changed that single core value to be a light and that is to show up as your best self, bring that celebration and enthusiasm and positivity and gratitude that you can bring with you, because it’s certainly easy to be negative or go negative. I mean Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy wrote the book the Gap and the Gain, and the gap is falling into all the oh my. 

God, naysay, and all that versus how far have you come, and that’s a really good way to look at things. And when you asked me, mike, about looking back at the past, that’s a really good way to look at things. And look at not where you’re headed, necessarily, but how far have you come. So the change in that core value was big. Dark clouds is no longer there. 

It’s not even brought up, it’s no longer used as a wedge or anything like that. So it’s been a number of changes that have allowed us to really kind of write our show. And, it’s funny, our profits are better than they’ve ever been. We have next to no turnover. I can’t remember the last time somebody left us voluntarily, or even involuntarily, actually, whereas we used to have those problems. We used to have people leave and I wouldn’t understand why, and they were good people and all that and it really just came down to that. People have a choice where they want to go to work. Nobody wants to go to work somewhere that the culture is not embracing. 

0:50:19 – Mike Malatesta

Well, that was a lot. Thank you for sharing all that and going into some detail as well. The dark cloud no dark cloud things made me think. Some people consider themselves to be realists and sometimes they feel like they’re surrounded by delusional optimists and it’s their obligation to bring realism to the thing. And that can you know if you’re a delusional optimist. That can be seen sometimes, as you know, bringing a dark cloud to the table, but that’s not what they’re doing. They’re bringing what they feel is sense to whatever the situation might be. I’m also glad that you mentioned the celebration things. I’m terrible at that, christopher, just, and maybe it’s the quick start, I don’t know, but I’m always looking for the next thing and I think it pisses people off that I don’t stop. And, you know, have that celebration. Take a moment or more to realize that most people operate in a different way than I do, and it’s probably the right way that they operate. They need that little breath and they need that little like hey, we did a good job here. Yeah, this is big. 

0:51:41 – Christopher Turner

And if you don’t have that, naturally, you either have to I hate to say, schedule it, but you need to schedule it and remind yourself to stop and do that on whatever frequency, or you need a really strong support to help you remember to do it. It is. I think you’re right, Mike. 

When you have that quick start, you’re always kind of moving and going and the slowing down and appreciation can be tough, or even if you feel like you do it pretty well yourself, kind of recognizing success, not sharing it. And the single most important thing that I heard is as I was trying to address some cultural things in my own kind of failed way as I talked to individual employees, was them wanting to be recognized and appreciated. That was it more so than money, more so than anything else. You know all the things that we tried, the appreciation for the job they did, being clear on what expectations and being clear on what we counted on them for and the results they could produce. That is huge for people. It really is. People want to be successful and so, yeah, you have to find a way to solve that, I think and I don’t mean just you, mike, I mean in general, of course, for people, if that’s your natural like. 

Next thing, I mentioned my wife, who’s a tremendous advisor to me, and I’ll give you a good example about this not necessarily celebration, but just my kind of natural critical look at things, which doesn’t really help. So we had some flooding in our office last winter. I think it was been a frozen pipe and had some flooding and it was on the weekend that was recognized, and so everybody that I can pull in from management who’s available is out there sweeping, mobbing, sucking up water. I mean everything, just a full something. Normally you would want a company in to take over and we just didn’t have the luxury of the time and it was an ice storm, that’s right, so people were driving in on the ice. It was terrible. 

I forgot about that, anyway, and so, as we’re all working up there, one of the employees asked who would we like food? 

you know, I mean, everybody’s up there most of the day nobody’s eating. And we said, yeah, whatever you get. So she brings a bunch of pizzas. Well, she brings all cheese pizzas. I think cheese pizza, I mean, I’m not five years old, give me something, you know, with some vegetables or something on it. And my wife pointed out to me very quickly don’t be ungrateful, this is somebody who came up here in the ice and brought enough food for everybody that’s up there. 

Don’t go to criticism go to gratitude and thinking that person who easily could have said I can’t get up there or not volunteer, and that’s really helpful, you know, to not have people that advise you, that are just, you know, yes, people and everything’s wonderful to stop you and remember you haven’t thanked this person you haven’t shown them any appreciation for what they’ve done for you. 

So not even a celebration, but just you know, for those of us, I think, that do move quickly and quickly recognize that’s not right, this isn’t right. That really, that really just knocks the legs out from under people. So you need that opportunity to show the appreciation and then if you want to bring something up and say, hey, next time, you know, whatever, that’s okay, you know. But maybe you don’t even need to. Maybe just show the appreciation, keep your mouth shut and if and when it happens again, maybe, maybe it’ll be the same, maybe that person will do something different. Who knows, it’s not being thing. 

they didn’t do anything wrong, you know and there’s nothing, nothing there for you to point out. That was incorrect. 

0:55:26 – Mike Malatesta

That was great advice, great advice that your wife gave you, so I’m glad your ears were open to that. As we finish up here, christopher, is there anything that you want to leave with the audience or anything I haven’t asked you that you I should have? 

0:55:42 – Christopher Turner

Not anything you haven’t asked me. I think it’s important. You mentioned Vistage. I’m actually not in Vistage anymore, but but I’ll tell you what I learned was in Vistage and the reason I left was Vistage was very much about managing and running an organization and I learned a ton. There is very valuable experience. It also took me on to my next thing, so it took me on to implementing the entrepreneurial operating system. It took me on to joining strategic coach and so some of the stuff that I got out of Vistage I no longer need it. So they graduated, moved me on, whether they you know that’s their intention or not. But I think the point is is for anybody, entrepreneurial executive leadership, whatever you have to look for training and education and growth everywhere you can find it and you’ve got to make sure that it’s valuable in what it is that you’re needing. 

So, like our conversation Mike and some of your podcasts have listened to is picking up those little pieces and learning to grow as a person and a leader and in whatever your business is and trying to do the best for other people. It all comes down to us as individuals, and so you’ve got to. You’ve got to lean into that type of coaching. 

You know I mean you may be an NBA player, but you still need coaching and we all still need coaching, it doesn’t matter what it is. You got to look at those sources and find out where you can, you know, get mentors and advisors and all those things to help you grow as a person, because it’s just going to benefit you your whole life. 

I completely think that it’s going to benefit your whole life, and I think it’s maybe particularly when you’re in the grind of getting stuff done and building your business. You don’t have the luxury of focusing on that, but you’ve got to figure it out because otherwise you’ll only be stuck in the grind. 

0:57:37 – Mike Malatesta

I completely agree and, as someone who was stuck in the grind for a long time before I had the realization that I needed to continue to grow if I was going to continue to be the leader of my organization, that was a hard one. That was a hard one to admit. So, once admitted and action taken, so eye opening for me. So I think that was that’s a great message to leave us with today. Christopher, thank you so much for being on. All things, christopher Turner and Emerge-a-cons will be in the show notes and please, as I ask at the end of every episode, maximize the greatness that’s inside of you today and until next time, see ya. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening to this show and before you go, I just have three requests for you. One if you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer. If you’re really into it, leave me a review, write something nice about me, give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate. 

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