Beyond Titles with Kendra Johnson

You on Beyond Titles.

Thank you so much for taking the time to be here and to share your journey with both me
and our listeners.

And you know, I think you have a ton of insight that you're going to share today.

Well, I know you do.

And before we get there, I'd love if you could just give us a little bit of uh a
background as to who you are, your journey, your career trajectory, and where you're at

now.

Terrific, thank you Kendra and it's a pleasure and an honor to be with you here today.

I love the title of Beyond Titles because I'm a firm believer that it's not about title,
it's about leadership and influence.

yeah, so my journey.

um

Started right uh out of University or college.

So started with Oxygenal Chemical, which is subsidiary of Oxygenal Petroleum.

So went through a year long sales training program.

It was kind of a leap of faith.

I'm from the Southeast, but uh it was over in Texas.

Some would say that was, know, Dallas is the Southeast, uh but anyhow, but just getting
out of my comfort zone is kind of always been something that looking back now I've tried

to do is really get out of my

comfort zone, but went over there for a year, sales training program, didn't know where
they were going to place me.

So again, kind of risk of where you're going to live in the country, but wanted a fast
start to the career and knew that, uh that it was a great opportunity to take risks and do

that.

So thankfully after a year, um then you had to interview for the sales, the sales
territory that you wanted.

So thankfully I get my first choice and moved back to the Southeast, to Atlanta.

um And I covered uh manufacturers and, and sold raw material.

chemicals and three and half states.

at 23 years old, was driving around three and a half states, you know, and doing that.

And then the transition to healthcare um really was around um some very good friends that
I respected um from school were at GE Healthcare and were in healthcare.

so, um

got connected there and went through an interview process.

And the two reasons why I really chose to join GE Healthcare, and of course they had to
choose me, of course.

first was GE uh was uh renowned for leadership development and it's always been a passion
since I was young around how to continue to develop as a leader.

It's a journey not a destination.

then the second was healthcare, of getting into an industry where you're constantly
working with uh providers and trying to make patients' lives better.

So those are the two things.

But I at GE Healthcare for 21 years.

Fantastic experience and often tell folks that I love the company, love the people, and
loved what we did.

so...

several different roles in GE Healthcare and the last one that uh I had there after the uh
last three and half years was leading the ultrasound business in the US and Canada, which

we grew to a billion and uh increased profitability and market share at the same time,
which is kind of hard to do.

And we did it during COVID, so that was hard.

That was hard, but then found the opportunity at Medshift, small privately held company,
and explored for a few months and took the leap and it's been a great three and a half

year journey on coming in, evolving the business around big client challenges that we see.

We're fast and agile.

Half the company's a software shop, so that's a lot of fun to solve problems with
software.

so that's what we'll go through the journey.

holy moly.

We'll let everybody just digest and catch up for a second because that was, that's quite
the experience, quite the journey.

And Joe, thank you for sharing all of that background.

And, you know, one thing that really stood out to me, and this might be a loaded question
right off the hop, it sounds like you very early on knew that you wanted to be in

leadership.

And I'm just wondering if that was, what sparked that?

Was that an influence that you had growing up?

that made you want to pursue leadership and seek out leadership development?

Or where did that really come from?

Yeah, terrific question.

And I actually went through a leadership course at GE kind of halfway through my 21 years
that had us reflect on our journey, the highs and lows of that.

And therefore, subconsciously, how did we show up every day, both for our families, but
also for the people that we worked with and potentially the people that we managed and

led.

And so that was a reflection.

of really kind of back to my childhood.

So a couple things, father passed when I was 12 and I had an older sister, a younger
sister and a mother that were kind of...

leaned on me naturally for, you know, balance, I would call it.

So this guy's not falling one day at a time, positive attitude, we can get through this
together and let's bond and band together to get through this.

The other was the executive of my father's will, was an extremely successful businessman
and had conventions around the country.

So I would go work at those conventions.

So for instance, I heard John Maxwell speak when I was 14, got his autograph and started
reading John Maxwell books.

at 14 years of age.

The first time I read How to Win Friends and Influence People, I think I was around that
same age, 14 or 15.

So it just became what I would call just the how do you continue to grow and get better
and often heard the...

phrase leaders are readers so I would try to know lean into that um and then uh then in in
college and always played sports and kind of loved that team and aspect of that and

leading influential or if you're a captain or whatever that may be but in college was you
know selected be you know my fraternity president so then you're trying to to lead 80

brothers if you will that don't have any responsibility to follow you so

uh leadership through that and then found my way into different positions on campus,
student government, etc.

So just kind of naturally wanted to test how do I continue to improve my influencing
skills.

So that kind of carried over into what I would call the job career and then a big desire
to join GE once I had that opportunity too.

think it's to have that exposure to such, em to principles that really shape who you are
and how you show up at such a young age, I think is so important.

biased opinion, I believe everybody should have access to leadership skills and soft
skills from, know, grade one moving up.

do we teach these things, obviously, at the level that we can interpret and digest them.

But I can see now just even from our initial conversation, how

especially leaders or readers has flown into the way in which you show up for your team.

So I know you had mentioned book club is something that your team, right?

That your team does often.

Weekly.

Okay, could you expand on that a little bit?

How does that, how is that received in your culture?

Yeah, Kendra, a little background.

When I joined Medshift, we were 18 folks m and I was coming from leading 650.

So a little bit different.

And I don't say that from a scale perspective.

It's just now just the chance to get really intimate with 18 folks, had one-on-ones, got
to know them, their backgrounds, where they came from, why did they choose, for instance,

computer science as a major, why did they choose Medshift?

And as a young career population.

And so what I always appreciate about GE is there was several different avenues for what I
would call leadership development.

They kind of set the table, if you will, and you got to jump in and figure out the
different things that you wanted to take advantage of because an individual's career is up

to them, not up to the company.

Of course, the company's got to give you opportunity, but the individual has to take
advantage of that.

But as I thought through, we've got to, Medshift, at the time we had a very young uh
career.

um

cohort and how to start to develop and weave in leadership principles.

So after conducting all the one-on-ones, the first month if you will, I went around during
Christmas and gave everyone a book, back to one of my favorites John Maxwell, 21 Laws of

Irrefutable Leadership.

And so I handed everybody the book and said starting in January we're gonna start a book
club.

And we're gonna do it over lunch, so we do it on Wednesdays.

And it was great, one of the ladies at the time said,

this looks terrific, I love books, can we do Harry Potter next?

And I said no, we can't do Harry Potter, we're gonna stick to what I would call leadership
and business principle, just so we can all learn together.

It was a way that I, you know, as we started to do this, how do you kind of the rising
tide lifts all boats and we have the same foundation.

So we started that January of 2022.

The very first session, we kind of dove into EQ versus IQ because what got them to
Medshift was extremely, extremely smart people.

Their IQ really got them here, but how do we develop the EQ?

And then we dove into the book.

So now we're on our eighth book.

And we do call it three a year.

And again, it's a chance for two things.

One, every Wednesday we get together and break bread, and the folks that are remote join
virtually.

And we have a great 20 minute conversation on a book and a topic, and maybe hit a couple
company highlights.

uh But we're all together once a week.

And so oh having that avenue has been a big part of our culture evolution.

love that.

And I think it keeps people to your point, Individuals are responsible for their own
career development, but sometimes we don't know what we don't know and it's hard to see

what's available to us or to know of the great books that are out there if we haven't been
exposed to them yet.

So I love that you do that and it's a time for connection.

And how have you seen that time, intentional time for connection and for learning together
show up in collaboration within your team?

Yes, terrific.

So in a little bit back to this leadership piece of we've really been and Beyond titles
we've really reinforced the message that everyone is a leader

um If you invite somebody to lunch and they go with you, just let.

So it's leadership is influence.

Nothing more, nothing less.

So having that forum every week to, no matter what the chapter is, just to kind of
reinforce it.

Great ideas come from everywhere.

Collaboration's very important to make us better.

by the way, debate is very important to get to the best problem.

Let's debate the problem, not the person.

um And so we get a chance to reinforce all of that every single week.

um

44 folks and the teams continue to evolve, but we hire kind of based off of a skill set of
hungry and humble and customer focus is our value system.

And so part of that hungry is, you have a desire to improve every day?

We call it ABI, always be improving.

And that's what we try to do to kind of bring it into the organization, but also...

When I'm not around or it's not during book club, but how are the teams working together
trying to get better is really what we've focused on.

fantastic.

I mean, obviously that has such an impact and influence on the culture of the organization
as well.

So people want to show up.

They want to take part in these initiatives.

And I guess one question that I have for you that might help listeners, because a lot of
people say like, how do you assess hunger or desire to learn when hiring?

Because a lot of people can say, yes, I love learning and then show up and they haven't
read the book.

you know, three weeks in a row.

what's kind of your gauge, your metric from the initial conversation to assess that hunger
to, know, once they kind of start and prove themselves.

Yeah, I think there's two aspects really.

It's through the interview process as we're looking to bring a new teammate oh onto the
team and um really diving into on that hunger piece, kind of the background of course.

But what do they like to do?

What do they get passionate about?

That could be sports.

could be, again, we have a lot of coders and coders that do projects on their free time
because they want to get better at coding.

That's a telltale sign if they're doing projects on their free time

they wanna push themselves and get better, then that shows kind of that hunger.

And then talking through questions like when you were in a difficult situation, we're not
gonna meet a deadline, what did you do?

You know, type of thing.

So the typical kind of what I would say behavioral based questioning there to try to tease
out some of those things.

But then when they join us, our HR leader that happened to work with her at GE as well,
and she's phenomenal.

So we've created a...

what we call a light but right onboarding process.

And I use the light but right a good bit because it was so much process at a large company
like GE and I'm sure other large companies, we've implemented a lot of process coming to a

small company, but it's light but right so that we don't over index.

But onboarding, we talk about this mentality, well, we talk about our organizational
clarity around hunger.

humble and customer focus and why we do what we do, how do we behave, what's most
important right now, et cetera.

We use the Patrick Lenzioni framework, five is functions of a team as the consulting
group, but the table group.

So we use that framework, but we really set the stage early during the interview as well,
because we like to share that so that the teammate knows what they're joining.

And then also kind of then in the onboarding, but then giving a chance to reinforce it.

every week during book club as an example, but then also I do uh every morning, Monday
morning, I just do a voice memo to the group on highlighting what happened the previous

week.

And we build that around kind of number one, people, and number two, customers, and then
number three, growth.

And we specifically or intentionally, we order in that way.

And I know there's been a lot of...

business school articles written on, you put customers first, do you put patients first if
you're in healthcare, or do you put your team first?

And I've just come to believe over time, I I'm not unique, but if you attract, retain, and
grow the best team, they're gonna take darn good care of customers.

And if you get those two things right, you're gonna grow.

um So we reinforce that, whether it's the voice memo, whether that's the weekly book club,
or now we've developed a team leader role.

So we've kind of elevated our top talent to where we have a, call it a middle layer, but
all of them are brand managers.

So, and with our senior HR leader, you know, we spend a lot of time with that group trying
to help them take their leadership to the next level and do just that.

Joe, you are speaking my language here.

I'm loving everything you're saying.

It's so important.

you know, I just love that you prioritize, whether it's the voice memo on Monday morning
so that there's that connection point, whether it's Wednesdays.

uh You're very intentional about all the work you're doing to develop those leaders so
that ideally, I'm guessing, you free up your time so that the bottleneck doesn't always

rest at the top.

So I guess with that, because I know that there are a number of leaders who come to us and
they say, we want to do all of these things.

We want to make time to connect.

We want to help our team grow, but they're so underwater and they're so inundated.

They can't find the time.

And I use those terms very intentionally.

They cannot find the time or make the time to do so.

So what are some tools that you've developed and figured out over the years that allow you
to focus on what you need to do, but

also still have that time for your team and developers.

Yeah, it's a hard, know, prioritization probably over now, I guess, my 25, 27 year career
is one of the hardest things that I would say I still haven't mastered.

It's always trying to figure out what the balance is of strategy versus tactics versus how
much time you spend with people versus how much time you spend, you know, external

stakeholders and trying to do that.

But it really started on day one.

Well,

maybe day 30 after my one-on-one interviews with every teammate of.

And in that very first book, which is the concept of one of the chapters is lead leaders
versus lead followers, because then you, as the leadership of each individual increases,

you start to, you get multiplication effect versus, like you said, the bottleneck, all
things coming to Joe and I'm giving 110%, but everybody else capability wise, not effort

wise, they may be trying hard, let's just say for the visual that everybody else is at
20%.

The more you can move the 20 to 40,

and the next person 20 is 70, and all of a sudden you just get this multiplication effect.

And that's really, I would say, 18 months in we really started to see that happen.

um And then also I would just say that the leadership team that we have at an executive
level, um

you know, hand selected, if you will, phenomenal leadership leaders in their own right.

We continue pushing hard on our leadership journey as the executive team.

We have leadership coaches for each of the individuals, as an example, external leadership
coaches.

uh And so that way, they're showing up for their team in the right way, too.

So that's what we work to do.

But at the end of the day, you do look back at a week.

Calendar and you say how much time did I spend on it on the things that I should have
spent time on?

There's always you know, the reflection of I could have done a little bit more there I
shouldn't as much this I should have delegated that and on delegation.

I don't mean it um

The item is beneath me.

It's more of kind of the principle if somebody can do it 80 % as good as you can, let them
do it.

But it's also a learning opportunity for them.

And a lot of times if you give them something that's something I would say important and
big, they feel very appreciative of you trusting in them and having uh confidence that

they can do a great job on it.

And we actually just had this conversation.

We ran an open cohort just last week at the end of last week, and we had five leaders from
different industries in the room.

And one of the things that came up, one of the topics that came up was delegation and
holding onto the reins a little bit too tight.

And I mean, I say it's a very relevant example, but any trading course, I could probably
give you an example of where someone, one leader has said, I don't delegate enough.

And it's not because I

It's not because I don't think I can, it's because I don't know how to, or I don't know
where to delegate or what to delegate.

And it's all the massive delegation really.

But it all starts with the leader.

And do you hold onto things?

Are you understanding the capabilities and capacities?

And when someone can graduate from 20 % to 70%, sometimes those goalposts move and we
forget to acknowledge them and move with them, right?

So, yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

interesting and as things shift and change and obviously the world is a very funny, funny
place right now.

We've been talking to lot of leaders about how you keep your team motivated, whether it's
when those goalpost shifts or when you introduce, as you mentioned, you're constantly

pushing each other and the team as senior leaders.

So knowing that arguably that comes with

healthy pressure for your team to also continue to evolve.

How do you keep your team motivated when you're, whether it's striving for something new,
when you're going through difficult periods, what's kind of your go-to for motivation

there?

Yeah, it's a hard one.

m You you look at, for instance, where we are right now with some of the macro economic
challenges going on across the globe.

You know, I kind of reckon back to, you know, going through the financial crisis of 2008
and 2009 and then going through COVID, not saying that it's going to be the same, but what

the reason why I lean on those examples are you kind of take a step back and what can you
control versus what you can't control and get worried about the things you can't control.

So on motivation, number one, just authenticity around here's what's going on and here's
how we fit into this and then here's how we don't fit into this.

And so let's control the controllables and what we can control and um plan and scenario
plan around that versus scenario plan around something that we have no clue.

If we like, for instance, are we going into recession or whatever that may be.

may mean for our different industries.

So that's the biggest thing is just leaning on that.

And then the balance piece that I was kind of referencing earlier, being able to balance
oh the external factors versus the internal factors versus innovation versus operations

and how do you balance those components to make sure that you keep moving forward, taking
care of the team and customers so that you can continue to grow.

that makes sense.

I think it's so important.

And oftentimes, when you assess the controllables and uncontrollables, we have more
control or at least influence over what we perceive to be uncontrollable than we think.

Yeah, absolutely.

The innovation opportunities that happen in crisis, I just go back to the financial
crisis, the innovation that came out of the financial crisis.

As mentioned, I was leading the ultrasound business when we had nine manufacturing plants
around the world where we trying to get ultrasounds from.

and supply chain delays and all sorts of stuff, we innovated to virtual demonstrations for
ultrasound, which ultrasound was very much a, take my ultrasound into the hospital or the

provider clinic and I demo for hours or a day to try to convince that clinician that they
love my product.

I mean, we've pivoted all that to where we were doing 150 virtual demos a week by the time
we were kind of a couple of months into.

in the COVID where our competition didn't pivot.

And so there's innovation opportunities in times of crisis for sure.

It's how you reframe it, what the perspective is, and then how you find those gaps.

Businesses wouldn't exist if we didn't have some kind of deficit or gap.

So we need that innovation.

Awesome.

This is just a random, fun question because you spend so much time, it's very obvious and
evident that you care about the growth of your team, you care about the work that you do,

and

I love to hear that.

On the other side, you also have a personal life.

You have hobbies and things that you like to do, I'm sure.

What are some of the hobbies that you like to do outside of work that perhaps keep you,
keep you balanced, keep you level and allow you to bring your full and best self to work?

Yeah, thank you for asking, because family is most important.

uh And also, I think as a very young leader at GE, I had a...

um a great HR mentor actually that said be the same person at work that you are at home.

Don't try to put on one face with the other because that gets hard.

um So just be an authentic with family and be authentic at work.

My wife, can truly tell sometimes by my mood if I'm in work mode, so she checks that if
it's at the wrong time.

But from a hobby perspective, with an early family, uh

16 years ago, my oldest was born, and I traveled a lot with my job at GE.

So on the weekends, it was very intentional around spending time with them.

So for instance, I didn't play golf.

And so now I'm really bad at golf because I never played golf.

I haven't played golf in basically in 16 years because I couldn't think of coming home
after being out on the road for three or four nights and then, oh, I'm going to be gone

for six hours.

So I would say now as the kids have gotten older,

spent a lot of time as a family with their sporting events, their big soccer players.

have a...

uh

hunting farm with some of college friends that we've had for over 20 years.

So there's nine families and those nine families, over 20 kids.

So we spent a lot of time there.

That's a blast.

There's fishing ponds and all sorts of stuff.

then we back to my college in Amherst.

So I went to Clemson University.

So all thing Clemson sports.

So we do a lot of Clemson sports, but as they've continued, now we're doing college visits
for my oldest.

So that's really as I think,

through back to balance and time of being able to spend time in an intentional way.

And then that's the one other piece of advice I got of don't just be there when you're
with the family, but be intentional.

Are you looking at your phone nonstop?

If I could share the best piece of advice I ever received, Kendra, was from actually that
HR leader that I was mentioning.

It was in my first official manager job um and

And he said, when you get home in the afternoon, do you walk in and are you still on the
phone?

And I said, yeah, all the time.

Because you're on the phone all the time, conference calls or whatever it may be.

He said, always make sure you're done with your call before you walk in because you only
get those five minutes to connect with the family for the day.

And so make sure that you get that connection time.

And then if you get back on the phone, get back on the phone.

But make sure you get that connection time because if you walk in, you're on the phone for
30 minutes, and then all of sudden you hang up, then you go try to connect.

The thrill's over.

You're already there.

This turned into me driving around the neighborhood until I was off the phone.

So my neighbor probably thought, why is he, does he think I left my trash cans out?

So I'm just the guy driving around.

And this culminated with one time my oldest, he was three, and we lived at the top of the,
or the bottom of a hill, and I had parked at the top of the hill, and all of a sudden he

starts running up the hill on the sidewalk to come see me, because he sees me up there on
the phone.

So, but anyhow, that was the best advice I ever got, and I still do it to this day.

I don't walk in the house if I'm on the phone.

that's fantastic.

I've heard, I've heard something similar.

And I mean, as somebody who's getting married later this year, I apply a similar principle
to my fiance.

And that's, you know, uh being an entrepreneur and a founder, it's very easy for me.

And he's also in a, in a very client facing job.

So it's easy for us to come home and to do the quick high and then carry on with our day.

we intentionally make dinner together.

We say hello if I'm in my office and he walks in through the door, I'll go say hi to him
and then come back to do what I'm doing just to show there's a degree of care it shows,

right?

That you are important to me right now above everything else.

uh

That's great.

Well, congratulations.

I kind of forget it's happening.

But you know, here we are just excited to spend every day with him and ask him what he
wants for dinner for the rest of his life.

And I think it one thing that really stood out to me too, is that you obviously are very
wise and learned how to prioritize in all aspects of your life early on.

Right?

That's an exercise in prioritization.

Guess I can't golf this weekend, because I'm going to be home instead.

And

I believe that that is truly where we learn all these skills is outside of just, I need to
learn how to prioritize my workload.

No, what else are you prioritizing that exists holistically on more of a macro scale?

Mm-hmm.

mean, yeah, the concept of work-like balance, think, is actually all.

little difficult.

I read a post on LinkedIn, I think last week, it talked about work-life harmonization,
because some part, you could be in a couple days stretch at work where there's going be

more time that you're going to spend, and how do you communicate with the family?

And then there could be, for instance, my kids are on spring break next week, and how do I
make sure that I'm spending time with them while they're on spring break?

But having the...

I guess the scorecard on how much time you spend at work and with family and on hobbies, I
just, I think that would be really hard to do.

It's more that that resonated with me kind of the harmonization and that ebbs and flows
depending on what what cycle of work and life you're in.

would be uh a metric for success that would just set everybody up for failure.

You can never achieve 50-50 balance.

It just doesn't work.

And I would say that that's kind of akin to how we set our teams up for success as well.

And we were talking about some of the high pressure situations or those times where they
need to kind of buckle down and move forward.

And I would say communicating times of

high stress or pressure and the transparency around how much time will need to be invested
in the work at this time before we have a little bit of a down period.

Do you find that in MedShift, there's a bit of an ebb and a flow and that transparency
helps?

Absolutely and and I think you know again, I'm maybe using too many cliches but the
marathon not the sprint But I would call it.

It's the marathon with some sprints included Just as long as folks know that there's not
always an urgent, you know here on fire deadline

Now there are sometimes urgent air and fire deadlines.

um And surely whether we're trying to finish code for a new release, um or we're trying to
get a customer live on our SaaS platform, or we're trying to get orders at the end of a

quarter.

So there are points in time where there are.

But then number one, celebrating the hard work and the wins.

And then number two, not making everything a fire drill is something that I know if you
kind of go back to individually, how did you like to be treated?

I know that.

like to be treated that way.

um But a little bit about this leadership journey we were talking about of how do you give
folks the scope of the work and let them plan their work.

So that yes, here's the scope, here's when you need get done, you plan how you're going to
get it finished with the resources that you need so they feel in ownership in that too.

yes.

And you can't do it for them.

That's teaching poor behaviors.

And then leaders wonder why they're so bogged down.

Again, why are they the bottleneck?

You've habitualized coming to you and choosing the path of least resistance.

Right, fantastic.

I normally ask one question at the end of our podcast interviews, which is typically, what
do you think is the number one soft skill that leaders should have?

I would like to add one more layer to yours just because I can.

uh And that is what would, oh, thank you.

Tell my fiance that.

uh What are the two books, and you referenced some really impactful books throughout our
conversation today.

So what is the one soft skill that you think all leadership possess paired with what are
two books that would support the development of that soft skill?

that you would recommend.

um So I think on the soft skill, many people would say listening.

um I completely agree with that, especially when I'm with the team and just had a report
out on something today.

I was taking notes, but I wasn't leaning in and asking a lot of questions or giving my
opinion because I wanted the others in the room to be able to voice that before kind of I.

I voice my opinion.

listening is key, but what I think is, I would always call listening table stakes when
you're uh in a leadership position um with title.

It's table stakes because I don't think you'll stay in a role long um or you won't have
followership if you don't.

um So I think really the one that sometimes I think others often overlook is respect.

So how do you treat everybody with the same amount of respect?

Whether they're a front-line teammate, they're the receptionist at a client when you go
visit a client, or they're the CFO, they're the CEO.

And when people, when others see just through actions, not words, that you treat everybody
with respect, and it's not about where their place is in the organization or in the world,

then.

and I think that comes across well.

Just quick example, my 13 year old son, he often comes to the office after school before
we go to soccer practice and does his homework and orders too much DoorDash.

um needless to say, he's like, dad, why are you taking the trash out?

Because I was like, well, it needed to be taken out.

And he's like, well, you're the CEO.

I like, well, I take the trash out so others will take the trash out.

It's like, I'm not too good or too big to take the trash out.

um

And anyhow, I think that respect component goes a long way, because then people know that
you're authentic and you care, and um that you treat others the way you want to be

treated.

Hahaha

On the book side, I don't know how this relates to the book, I would, when folks ask me
about book recommendations, uh I always go to that first one I was telling you about and

the 21 Laws of Irrefutable Leadership, because I think it's such a foundational.

uh

part of somebody's either, they could be pretty far in their leadership journey, but just
awareness around those 21 laws is a really good one.

And then the other one that we did is one of our books here at Medshift, oh which we
really enjoyed and had great conversations around was Grit um by Angela Duckworth, because

to me that's about, um

You don't have to be special to have to quote unquote have talent.

can take talents and make them great through a lot of hard work and a lot of perseverance
and a lot of resiliency, et cetera.

And to me, it creates a level playing field versus what school did you go to?

What's your IQ?

What was your SAT or ACT score?

How many degrees do you have?

That's all great and those are qualifications that help you be great at your role.

But if you don't persevere, you're not resilient, if you're not respectful to others, if
you're not a great team player, then they're not going to take you very far.

And grit talks a lot about that.

And so I really enjoyed that one and we enjoyed it as a Metschif team.

recommendations and really great advice.

Respect is a new one that um someone has listed.

So I wholeheartedly agree that it's the driving force behind collaboration, teamwork,
success overall.

So with that, Joe, I want to thank you so much for taking the time.

just for our listeners, where can they find you?

Where can they follow along?

Where can they continue to learn from you?

Thank you.

So on LinkedIn and it's just search Joe Gaskew.

It's a hard hard last name.

My wife loved it when she took it.

She had an easy Irish last name and then she got Gaskew.

So but it's G-A-S-E-E.

So LinkedIn is if I post it's there.

sure that's linked for everybody so they get easy access spelling or otherwise they're
going to to the right person.

So thank you again so much.

It's been a wonderful conversation.

Thank you.

YouTube.

Okay, I will stop recording and we'll just make sure that it's uploading here um because
that was brilliant.

How do you feel?