Ep 87- Trailblazing Healthcare Success with James Dieter

Transcript

Transcripts are generated by machine learning, so typos may be present.

BTB (00:00):

Welcome to the Building Texas Business Podcast, interviews with thought leaders and organizational visionaries from across industry. Join us as we talk about the latest trends, challenges, and growth opportunities to take your business to the next level. The Building Texas Business Podcast is brought to you by BoyarMiller, providing counsel beyond expectations. Find out how we can make a meaningful difference to your business at boyarmiller.com and by your podcast team where having your own podcast is as easy as being a guest on ours. Discover more at yourpodcast.team. Now here’s your host, Chris Hanslik.

Chris (00:44):

In this episode, you will meet James Dieter, chairman and CEO of Principal Health Systems. James Likens a company’s mission, vision, and values, which make up the company’s culture to a North Star so that all decisions are made in the context of moving the company closer to that North Star. James, welcome to Building Texas Business. Thanks for taking the time to come on the show.

James (01:15):

Glad to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Chris (01:17):

Yeah. So let’s start at the beginning. Just tell us a little bit about your company and what it does and what it’s known for.

James (01:23):

Yeah, so Principal Health Systems has evolved over the years. When we started out, we really had multiple directions. We were going in just as a healthcare services company. So a little background on me. I started out in orthopedics and interventional pain was in just really just dedicated to practice inpatient, outpatient, and surgery. So

(01:42):

Going through that for my first decade of work, saw a lot of inefficiencies in the healthcare services sector, specifically in the southeast region of Houston where I worked. So wanted to build a better system. Our lab results took too long to get back. Our pharmaceuticals weren’t in stock at the pharmacies. We’d send our patients to MRI. Results took too long and started to through my entrepreneurship journey, go out and started to build little sectors of where I could have influence really over my own practice to have a better outcome. And through that over time, started over 20 businesses in the first 10 years, just had numerous pharmacies, laboratories, diagnostic facilities, did three surgery centers. I was involved in one large hospital system, and then got to a point where I said, Hey, let’s wrap this thing together. Let’s put it together. I want to have really just one source solution where we could come in and work with physicians and provide a host of different services.

(02:43):

That went fairly well. The service level was outstanding. The most difficult aspect for us was really the payers actually having reimbursements without being contracted with certain different individuals. From there, we really about six, seven years, found a niche, and that was called long-term care. So we define long-term care as skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities and home health facilities, and we provide laboratory and diagnostic services to those guys. So in-house, you call it your house if you live at a skilled nursing facility and assisted living facility or at home. But we provide mobile diagnostic services. So we go out and we offer labs, x-rays, ultrasounds, echocardiograms, and EKGs in the home. So you bring it to the patient, bring it to the patient. That’s right. That’s right. And last year, 2024, we performed over 3.2 million lab tests mobile. So with a large amount of those being for stat tests. Right. So tens of thousands of stat tests per month where somebody needs something in four to six hours, and we get it turned around for ’em.

Chris (03:47):

Okay. So it sounds like the inspiration for you was maybe frustration, born out of frustration.

James (03:53):

Frustration for sure.

Chris (03:54):

And a gap in our healthcare delivery service. So you shed any more light on that? I mean, you’ve mentioned this entrepreneurial journey. I mean, most physicians and doctors don’t have that. So what was it for you that you kind of took frustration and turned it into action?

James (04:11):

Yeah, I mean, just a matter of I’d have a patient that was really suffering, specifically on the interventional pain side, this is not uncommon. You have a patient who’s in a very bad position and you’re already jumping through hoops with insurance companies. So it might take three to four weeks to get something approved and then you set ’em up for surgery. Well, the assumption is, okay, we’re going to have the lab work back, we’re going to have the MRI back in time, and then it just wasn’t happening. So you’re pushing off surgery, you’re pushing off procedures, and just over time, it’s just a great deal of frustration. At the end of the day, the mission was always to help the patient. And if it’s all about the patient, we’ve got to do something different here. And that was the biggest frustration for us, was just the delays in turnaround times on the imaging and laboratory specifically, but then also getting medications, sending patients out, and having sometimes three, four, five phone calls come back, oh, the pharmacy didn’t have my medication, the pharmacy didn’t have my medication. So that’s when we started opening up our own pharmacies back then as well.

Chris (05:11):

So just there, right. You said we, who did you partner with? How did you go about finding a business partner, if that’s the case, going about setting up a business because you don’t just turn on a switch. There’s planning, there’s financing. Entrepreneurs in any industry in all industries go through that when they’re starting to business. Let’s talk a little bit about that journey in the

Speaker 4 (05:34):

Beginning

Chris (05:35):

Of how you got it going and some of the lessons learned in that process.

James (05:42):

Lots of lessons learned in that process. Speaking of that, we call it chewing glass. We’re just Okay, I hadn’t

Chris (05:48):

Heard that one.

James (05:51):

So much of it’s just a grind and just figuring it out. But as far as partnering goes, I’ve had numerous partners in different individual business units over the years. When I formed Principal Health Systems in March of 2016, I had to get really specific on who am I going to allow on the bus? Who do I really want to partner with on the bus? So I pulled away from certain partners, left, let go of certain businesses, and then brought some together. So in total, I believe we started out with, there were three of us on day one that we brought in, but I had different skill sets, right? I mean, I was always tried to be very honest with myself about where my weaknesses, I would say I’m highly visionary. I like to think big. I like to have that 50,000 foot view of where we’re going, set goals, set mission, set, vision, big culture guy. I love to talk about culture and instill culture throughout the organization. We’ll

Chris (06:43):

Get to that in a minute.

James (06:44):

Cool. But just frankly, I would say weaknesses are on details. So I’ve just always been someone who likes to move forward and not analyze every aspect of it. So partnering with some people that were strong in the analytics and detail side of the business was really important for me, and I still have some just phenomenal business partners today in that regard.

Chris (07:05):

That’s great. You touched on two things that I think are very common, some of which when we’re advising clients, the first is choosing your partners and being clear about expectations, documenting what the deal is on the front end, and making sure you know that where everyone’s going and what the roles are that The second is understanding, especially when you’re the lead, your weaknesses in hiring around that you can’t do it all and you’re not going to be good at everything. And so I think everyone that I’ve met that’s been successful has that self-awareness.

Speaker 4 (07:39):

Right.

Chris (07:39):

How did you go about getting comfortable letting go of some of those job responsibilities and whether it was a good hire or a partner that you chose?

James (07:50):

That’s a tough one. I mean, some of it was truly difficult to let go of, and then other pieces, you tend to be good at what I would say you tend to enjoy what you’re good at.

Chris (07:59):

Sure.

James (08:00):

Yeah. And that’s one of the, so to really convince yourself, let’s go spend more time at what we’re good at, more time at what we enjoy. I would say I didn’t focus so much on letting go. I wasn’t spending so much time focused on what I’m not good at as what I was good at. So it was just a matter of, by virtue of spending more time on what I enjoy doing less and less of what I don’t enjoy, and that was easier for me to let go was almost to let it slip. That’s a good

Chris (08:27):

Perspective,

James (08:27):

To let it slip away rather than to give it away

Chris (08:30):

And know that because you weren’t giving an attention someone needed to.

James (08:34):

Right, right. And then obviously just helping to build folks up. I mean, we have right now an unbelievable director of human resources who was in project management at one point, and just understanding the value of different people in the organization that you already have built trust and rapport and you believe in them. And then to find, Hey, I really think they’d be good at this, and then move ’em into these roles to fill gaps was so important. And just finding, really analyzing the people that are around you to understand what are they great at and what might else they do from where they are today that could be in a greater opportunity and bring a greater value to the company and organization.

Chris (09:10):

So you touched on culture. Let’s go ahead and go there. Anybody you talk to at A CEO entrepreneur, business owner leader will say culture’s king. We believe it a hundred percent. We talk about that constantly around here. It’s just part of our DNA, so everyone goes about it differently. Let’s talk about how you have gone about building the culture at Principal Health. How would you describe it first and then how have you gone about building it and nurturing it?

James (09:38):

Yeah, so great question. I mean, starting out, I couldn’t tell you when we started the organization, what was our mission? What were our core values? I couldn’t even tell you what they were. There was something we came up with. I think two of us came up with one day in a couple hours,

Chris (09:55):

Some marketing stuff.

James (09:55):

Yeah, marketing stuff. We hung it on the wall just like you would expect from most organizations to do. And we had a phenomenal, I would say the top 20 people in the organization just had a great relationship together. And I would say that we thought culture was very strong. Four years in, we polled the entire company and it was pretty terrible. I mean, it was like a 60% satisfaction maybe even in the fifties.

(10:24):

And we were kind of horrified, like, wow, we thought we had this great culture and everybody loved this company and it was what it was. Well, I decided a couple months later, I did it offsite. So we did a two day offsite kind of big hotel room, or I guess I say conference room with these big windows overlooking clear lake and was the whole idea was like, let’s think big. And we brought in just management. So I think there was 46 managers at that time in the organization, and we all came in the room and we said, Hey, we’re here for two days to figure out three things, our mission, our vision, and our core values, and we’re going to sit together. And this isn’t going to be the C-suite telling everybody what we’re about as a company. We as a people, as a community are going to discuss what is this company?

(11:09):

Who are we not, what are we, who are we? And where do you want to be? Exactly. And we did come up with a bhag. We ended up throwing in a BHAG as well there of where do we want to go, right? Classic Jim Collins. So we did get through that two day period and we came out with a really strong mission, vision, core values. So our mission is to improve patient outcomes and experiences, relatively simple, very difficult to do in healthcare. We decided our core values would be U-R-P-H-S, principal health systems. So instead of the acronym I should say is you are PHS understand the mission, respect everyone. Patients are our purpose, happy to help and step up. And we talk about simple to understand. Right? Exactly. I would believe at this point, 90% of any we’re approaching, I think, right, 500 employees today.

(11:57):

I would think 90% of those folks could tell you that and not just tell you what they are, but give you examples of how they’ve done those things. We live culture, we no longer talk about it. We did that for in the beginning. Now we live it. It’s brought up in every management meeting. It’s brought up in all the leadership training sessions, all the offsites, and it’s kind of what I call the North star. So we look at culture as the direction. If you’re not sure about a decision that you’re going to make in any regard, I want you to think about the North Star. Is it in alignment with are you walking towards the culture? Are you walking towards the mission of this company? And that helps to drive behaviors

Chris (12:33):

So important. I mean, that is the true key to the kingdom. I think the word I would use is it sounds like your culture’s become institutionalized. It starts out where it is you as the culture cop or maybe the C-suite and getting it deeper into the organization. But once you’ve done that and everyone knows it and everyone lives it and everyone can hold each other accountable to it, then you’ve got a true directional tool. To your point, I think the more you can tie behaviors to those values, that’s when they become real. And so when you’re praising people because whatever they did connects with these two of our six or whatever number is of our values, it becomes real to them and they know how to repeat it

James (13:19):

A hundred percent.

(13:20):

Yeah, I’m fairly unapologetic about the culture. So I would say it’s even unusual. Some of the things I’ll say when I’m in management meetings or even when I do a quarterly coffee and conversation. So I meet with the entire company. It’s usually takes six or seven sessions, but I go company wide, we bring the big groups and I’ll sit down with the entire company for an hour every quarter. And what I’ll typically say when it comes to culture is that it’s up to you to, we can’t police it from management. It’s up to the people to police the culture. So one of our core values is respect everyone. So if there’s someone who’s not respecting everyone, I expect that the people of the company will kick that person out, go after ’em, make sure they don’t work here.

(13:57):

And I’ll literally look out and I regularly look out across when I’m talking to the whole team and I tell ’em, if you really can’t say that you’re here for the patient, if you can’t say that you are really here to serve our mission. I was like, I really don’t want you here. I was like, I prefer you to quit. I was like, we will replace you. And I would prefer to go without somebody for a short period of time. So unapologetic about it. We truly believe it. That’s what we’re about. Above all things, the rest of it, because at the end of the day in our business, if we do a really great job treating patients, everything else will follow. The doctors want to work with us, the facilities want to spend time with us. The payers will respect us. It’s really about the patients. So we put patients first, everything else comes next. And if you can’t get behind that, we don’t want you.

Chris (14:41):

Yeah. So I think that’s a great point. Some of the words we use here, right? We’re passionate about our mission and our values, which means they resonate in our and in our gut. It’s in our fiber. If they don’t resonate with you, it’s really okay. It means it’s not the right organization for you. There’s a different organization out there that you’re going to be happier with, you’ll connect with, and we’ll go find someone that connects with us because they’re going to be the better performer. The self policer, the self motivator. They’re there to be the ones that connect with for us, similar to patient care, client

Speaker 4 (15:17):

Service,

Chris (15:19):

And mutual respect amongst everyone. So I agree with you. It’s okay to tell people if you don’t connect with this. Actually, I use it in interviews when I’m interviewing someone. Here’s who we are,

(15:29):

We’re very clear about it. And if you don’t connect, it doesn’t make you a bad person. 100% doesn’t. It just means it sitt in the right organization for you, and there’s a gazillion other organizations. Hello friends, this is Chris Hansley, your building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations, and business leaders. Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm@boyermiller.com and thanks for listening to the show.

James (16:10):

There’s another team. There’s another team that’ll work just well for you.

Chris (16:13):

Totally. Let’s switch a little bit. I want to get back into the business. I’m always interested to ask about innovations and technologies. I mean, obviously in healthcare there’s got to be a lot of them, but what are some of the ones you see that you’ve either implemented or you see in your industry as coming on the horizon that’s going to change or require you to change some of the ways you deliver your services?

James (16:39):

Yeah, I mean, obviously with the increased levels of compute, now you have the large language models, you have artificial intelligence, and that has already made an impact for us. So I would say that we are, the next 18 months are going to be very interesting, but we are already using automation from AI that is changing the way we do things. And I can give you one example in particular. Well, two really good examples. One, in the back office, we have a team of, I believe it’s three ladies total still. We had three ladies that would handle all of our facility invoicing, and it’s very complex. We have part, we have to decipher between patient to patient each day, who’s part A, who’s part B, and how we do the billing. And some of it gets billed to facility. Some of it’s billed to, without getting too much in the weeds, some of it gets billed into the insurance

Speaker 4 (17:27):

Company.

James (17:28):

And we’ve been able to quadruple our volume with still having the same amount of people and not have to scale payroll because of implementing automation techniques through AI that help to decipher where those goes. These get scanned in and it all gets brought up. Still have a little bit of a people component to it, but just we would be sitting here with and one division. It’s just a great example because that one division would probably be 10, 11 people by

Chris (17:56):

Now and the cost increases. Exactly. That’s an amazing

James (17:59):

Statistic. So that is kind of a back office area that we’re really focused on going. Where else can we look at the bringing in this technology to help as we continue to scale so that we don’t have to just keep hiring bodies,

(18:11):

Which is from a real estate perspective, even difficult. So we’ve been tapped out on space for two years and it’s been very challenging. Where do you keep putting people? But on, I guess I’d say on the actual business, well, that’s the back office on the front of the house. We’ve got a program, we call it the daily DON. So DON is a director of nursing. A lot of the facilities we work within skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, they have someone who really oversees the house. They’re the clinical expert in there that makes sure that all the patients are taken care of. That’s called the DON. So we have a form that’s thousands of these go out every morning to all of our facilities, and it is an AI program that picks out the most important things that happened the prior day. So here’s Bobby. Sue had a stat test performed at X time, and here’s the result. Here’s a critical result, or whatever is most important. They kind of have a clinical mind that says, Hey, this is where we think you should pay attention to your patients today.

Chris (19:13):

Wow,

James (19:14):

These people are trending in the wrong direction. These people, if they’re doing just fine, they’re at the bottom of the page. The things that are most important are highlighted at the top of the page, but it’s really helping us provide better healthcare diagnostics for our providers so that they can treat the patients better. So it’s right in line with our mission, but it’s really just automation. And again, it would take an army of people to do this.

Chris (19:34):

Yeah, that’s really cool stuff. I have to believe that is also, if not already, will become a huge marketing tool.

James (19:41):

Oh, it’s a big marketing

Chris (19:42):

Tool. People are worried about the family members they’re putting in there where they’re really going to get care. You already know this. Your industry doesn’t have a great

James (19:50):

Reputation

Chris (19:52):

As a whole.

James (19:53):

No, for sure.

Chris (19:54):

And so the more you can say, no, this is what we do to make sure we’re taking care of your loved one.

James (20:00):

So there’s a huge journal publication called McKnights, and it is the premier publication for the long-term care space all over the country, the daily DON. We actually won a bronze medal this year against thousands of applicants for innovation. So it was actually very cool. Yeah, we were rewarded. I guess that was 2024, but last

Chris (20:21):

Year.

James (20:21):

Yeah,

Chris (20:22):

Close enough. Close enough. So let’s talk a little bit just about being in Texas, being a business primarily in Texas. What are some of the advantages that you have experienced being here, not just in Houston, but taking advantage of the Texas economic climate, if you will? Business

James (20:40):

Climate? Yeah. I mean, so for us, I would say the biggest business advantage to being in Texas for us is related to the Medicare Advantage plan. Or excuse me, the Mac. So different. Medicare has Medicare administrative plans and they actually carry out Medicare’s will in an area. Texas has a Mac that is somewhat more favorable than the rest of the country. There’s a few states that share that, but just in general for us, from a standpoint of clarity, they’re a little bit more clear. There’s a lot of bureaucracy that goes on and just getting paid. So this might be surprising to people outside of healthcare, but today I believe we are paid on 61% of the business. We do, and we’re actually probably one of the, on the high end, the really high end, we’ve run studies on this and we are better reimbursed than most companies out there in our space. And so we still roughly four out of 10 patients that we treat, we get paid $0.

Chris (21:39):

It’s just fascinating to me that it’s that poor.

James (21:42):

It is very poor. However, we are in one of the more favorable areas. So I can only imagine if you don’t have a lot of clarity and guidance on how to bill, it just becomes more and more challenging for you.

Chris (21:57):

Yeah, this may be one of those, but I’m just interested as you look lookout going forward, what are some of the challenges or headwinds you see maybe coming at your industry? Lots of changes going on in Washington right now will have an effect I’m sure on your business, but maybe also affect what goes on at the state level. So anything you’re kind of worried about as you look

James (22:18):

Out? I would say just one of the concerns, and I mean I think, again, everybody likes to point the finger to the big bad guys. And I really look at ’em more as a partner. They’re not an adversary to us or more of a partner, but the insurance companies have become more active in utilizing AI to identify discrepancies within chart notes to deny claims. So that’s something where recently went to, one of the conferences I attended was for healthcare payers and they have Booth set up trying to sell to the health insurance companies of how to use artificial intelligence to identify these to not pay.

Chris (22:54):

They’re already not paying

James (22:54):

Much. And now in reality, the reason they are not paying is because the notes are lacking in something. So rather than paying a person to go and evaluate each note, which is very expensive, as you think about the health insurance companies, if they have to hire thousands of people to evaluate the charts or they can use AI and programs to evaluate the charts, it’s going to save them money and hopefully that money gets passed on to the consumer. So I actually don’t think it’s a bad thing, but I do expect in the meantime it’s going to just decrease even further, decrease the amount of claims that get paid.

Chris (23:28):

Right. It sounds like it’d be incumbent upon companies like you to kind of push back a little more in the short term to be able to take advantage of those efficiencies later.

James (23:36):

Absolutely. Yeah. And I look at it from our perspective, we’re in a really good spot. We’re developed to where we can handle those kinds of headwinds.

Chris (23:44):

So switch again a little bit, just talk about leadership. How would you describe your leadership style? How do you think it’s evolved over the past 12 to 15 years since you’ve kind of been moving forward with this company?

James (23:57):

Yeah, I mean, so starting out with a group, I think start with five people and 500 folks. So leadership looks very differently as business scales. And to start, I mean, I used to take out the trash and do the accounting and do the, I mean, I’ve worked every job in the company personally and in the beginning worked with a lot of people who were, for lack of a better word, incompetent at what they did. And today, having been able to develop people and hire and bring in and partner with people that are frankly better than I am at a lot of things, it allows me to go and do what I’m really good at. And from a leadership perspective, I’ve probably, if I’ve believed in you from the beginning, I’ve always given you, I’m not a micromanager, I don’t believe you can’t really grow a large company if you’re watching over everything going on. So you have to truly just, I would say, collaborate with those around you. And I guess if I had to define it and who I am, I try to be a great collaborator. I try to really help provide as many resources for the people around me as possible so that they can be successful.

Chris (25:05):

That’s good. Let’s talk about problem solving, especially where you are today and probably have been in your role, probably more of what you do is facing issues and how are we going to work through this and solving, solve an issue, solve a problem? What have you found to be the most effective way to get the information you need to make those informed decisions that you believe would be in the best interest of the company?

James (25:28):

So again, that’s something that over time has become, I would say much more of a process. So now we have data analytics and we have incredible CFO that’s been come in and able to provide information there. We have great all these additional resources from accountants to lawyers to folks that, so we sit down, I like to surround myself with the right group. We try to sit in a room with the right people at the right time and analyze all the information. But very quickly, I do not like the old analysis paralysis. That’s not us at all. I move very quick. I like to make decisions very fast, and I don’t look in the rear view mirror very often. I’m always looking out the front window and just moving forward. So when there’s challenges that are hitting us, it’s a relatively, let’s get as much information as we can today. Let’s analyze it and let’s go.

Chris (26:17):

Yeah, I love that because I agree. I think the idea that stagnation will kill the company. And so I think absolutely you try to get as much information as you can, knowing it’s never going to be perfect.

(26:31):

But I think the key then is I agree with the mindset of kind of move quick. To me, the next piece of that is to evaluate the decision as it’s implemented. Then you’re continuing to learn and gather information if you’re doing that so that you can adjust, right? A hundred percent because the plan goes out the window as soon as you start to act, right? So some people will act and then ignore. And I think that’s a mistake. I think if you act, continue to analyze and then align behind what you’ve learned to, it may not be a pivot, it may just be a tweak, but you got to keep moving.

James (27:08):

Totally agree. And you really touched on a great point that I like to speak about often, and it plays a little bit into culture. I relatively, I always tell people, if guys, we’ve got to make mistakes here. If we’re not making mistakes, we’re trying nothing new. So I hesitate to say I encourage mistakes, but to some extent, I think I did my last meeting ask for mistakes directly. So the idea here is that it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s not okay to make the same mistake over and over again, but if we’re not trying, we’re not growing. If we’re not growing, we’re dying. So we’ve got to continue to move it forward. And the culture is that if you are focused, and I mentioned that North Star earlier, but if you’re heading towards the North Star and you make a mistake, you’re okay,

Chris (27:49):

There’s

James (27:49):

No problem. If you’re doing something new and you’re trying something for the good of the company and the good of the patient, that’s okay, let’s learn from it. Let’s change course and let’s keep moving.

Chris (27:59):

Yeah, that’s right. Comfort and complacency aren’t good. And I think that that freedom to take risk, as long as it’s an informed risk, as long as it aligns with our mission and values, is the type of risk you want to encourage your people to be doing and learn from it. A hundred percent. That’s good. People always learn from setbacks. So let’s talk about a failure or setback you’ve experienced, and I know there’s probably two or three examples from yesterday.

James (28:25):

Yeah. I mean, where do we start here,

Chris (28:27):

But what was it and how did you learn from it and how did it make you better? How did it improve you or the company, whatever the example may be.

James (28:36):

Yeah, I think, geez, this is only a tough question. I have so many. You’re not alone in

Chris (28:42):

A lot of guests say the same thing, and I can identify with that.

James (28:44):

Yeah. So I think for one, this just comes to mind somewhat early on in our business, we had just one massive customers. We had a great deal of revenue concentration, and one customer who ultimately had a bankruptcy and put us in a really bad financial position when we lost out on, they were way behind on paying their bills and et cetera and such. You’ve heard the story.

Chris (29:13):

Oh, sure. So not only did you not get paid if you were that beholden to ’em, you didn’t have a lot of other things coming in.

James (29:20):

Correct, correct. And just to learn from that example of not letting yourself get too far out over your skis for one, but also just to diversify, not just the customer, but we were actually diversified in our revenue and how we were paid, but it was all one customer. So you’ve got to diversify your revenue and your customer base and not have too much concentration. That was a really early on lesson that just comes to mind that I feel like was still one of the most painful, had to, I think I laid off 40 or 50 people that day, and it was just a, that one scarred me pretty bad.

Chris (29:56):

That’s laid off are never easy. Those were ones you’ll

James (29:59):

Remember. Yeah, that one still haunts me. So again, which mistake would

Chris (30:05):

You like to talk about?

James (30:06):

We

Speaker 4 (30:07):

Could do a whole show on.

James (30:08):

Yeah, that would

Speaker 4 (30:08):

Be really good.

Chris (30:10):

So kind of bringing this more to a close, any advice you would share with our listeners, entrepreneurs and business owners out there that if there’s one thing, if you’re thinking if you’ve just started the journey or you’re thinking about it, here’s one or two things that you would want to pass along.

James (30:29):

Yeah. I mean, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, I had one of my father’s good friends, I was a young kid, probably high school. He told me at one point, he said, Hey, your business really isn’t going to fail unless it runs out of time or money. And just kind of keep that in the back of your head, because I can think of at least six or seven times that we were done and I had to sit there and go, well, hold on. Haven’t completely, we’re not completely done. We haven’t run out of timer money. And that was how I spoke about chewing glass earlier. I think one of my buddies who’s a new entrepreneur, I tell him, ready, shoot, aim. At some point you can analyze all the data and if you do analyze all the data, you’re probably never going to start because the odds are of starting a new business are challenging for sure. As everyone says, it’s not for the faint of heart, it’s not for the faint of heart. And everyone will run into a lot of problems and challenges. And that’s why if it was easy, everybody would do this. Correct. So it might sound a little silly, but just don’t give up. I mean, if it’s something you believe in, if it’s really a great cause, if your heart’s in it, just keep your head down and push on because you will be successful.

Chris (31:42):

That’s great. Perseverance and grit is what it takes if you’re going to be a true entrepreneur,

James (31:47):

A hundred percent.

Chris (31:48):

But the ready, shoot, aim is kind of like you were saying earlier in decision making. At some point you got to make a decision.

James (31:52):

Absolutely.

Chris (31:53):

You got to go.

James (31:55):

I see that as just a big mistake that folks are making over and over again is sitting around just waiting. And by the time they actually make the decision, the opportunity’s passed.

Chris (32:03):

Yeah. Well, we’re going to close with some more fun stuff. Talk a little bit more about Texas. Any favorite vacation spots within the state? Things you like to do in your spare time?

James (32:13):

We have a little piece of land up in West Texas, so we’re out in the Lakey area.

(32:18):

It’s kind of over there by Garner State Park. For those that know the river and just absolutely love, we go out there probably every month. I have two boys and little girls, so I spend a lot of time out there. The family makes it out there every now and then, but I definitely try to grab a boy and go out there every month. How fun is that? We just go and shoot guns and hang out and take the kids and their friends over to the Garner State Park dance and do all that kind of stuff.

Chris (32:42):

God’s country over

James (32:42):

There, God’s country. It’s fantastic. Those are my favorite place. It’s just beautiful out there.

Chris (32:47):

So any books or anything that you’ve read lately that you might pass on to a listener as something to go spend some time reading or learning

James (32:58):

From? Geez, I’m actually doing 10 books with my kids right now, so there’s nothing new and exciting, but they’re all, I’ve got ’em reading Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. So that was the book they read last week. They’re reading a book a week. So this week they’re on the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Peter Lencioni. So those are kind of what’s going on on my mind at the minute.

Chris (33:19):

I like

James (33:20):

It at the moment.

Chris (33:21):

And teaching ’em Young, I love that.

James (33:23):

Yeah, I mean, well, they’re 15, 13, not too young, but kind of when I was reading those books and trying to, so a bunch of oldies, but goodies is what we’re going through right now. We’re doing Rich Dad, poor Dad, and just kind of helping ’em help ’em get an understanding of the world from that perspective.

Chris (33:37):

Last question, do you prefer TexMex or Barbecue? Barbecue. Alright.

James (33:43):

Yeah,

Chris (33:43):

I guess you can’t go out to Lakey and not have barbecue in that area or on the road trip to and

James (33:48):

From. No, I mean, that’s a tough question. Just for record. I

Chris (33:52):

Always save it for last and everyone says the same thing.

James (33:55):

It’s a trick question, what’s yours?

Chris (33:56):

People turn that on me. And I think it is a tough one. Once it’s turned on me, I realize how unfair it is. I think my answer has always been, I love barbecue, but probably my go-to is probably Tex-Mex more than barbecue.

James (34:10):

So if I was going to say Tex-Mex with a margarita, that might go above barbecue for sure. But if it’s just food, it’s

Chris (34:18):

Barbecue. Okay. Yeah, because it is hard to have Tex-Mex without a margarita. And then of course you have places now, especially here in Houston, I’m sure other places where they’re combining like the

Speaker 4 (34:27):

Brisket

Chris (34:28):

Into the Tex-Mex. So brisket, burritos or tacos. And that to me is probably the penultimate. It’s fantastic.

James (34:35):

Yeah, there’s some great food nowadays, isn’t there?

Chris (34:37):

Yeah, there really is. It is challenging when it comes to healthcare. So James, this has been great, man. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. It is pretty fascinating and congratulations for all the success. Thank you. Appreciate it and what I know will be successful in the

James (34:53):

Future. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.

Chris (35:00)

And there we have it. Another great episode. Don’t forget to check out the show notes at boyarmiller.com/podcast and you can find out more about all the ways our firm can help you at boyarmiller.com. That’s it for this episode. Have a great week and we’ll talk to you next time.