Step into the world of healthcare technology with our guest, Jeff Sturman, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer. His journey from consulting to healthcare technology enablement is an inspiring one, laced with lessons on project management, relationship building, and the importance of foundational knowledge. Join us as we unravel the complex dance of combining technology with healthcare and putting patients at the core of this amalgamation.
We shift gears and delve into the challenges that digital transformation and inflation are throwing at healthcare, specifically in the realm of labor issues. Jeff walks us through the complexity of navigating healthcare for vulnerable populations and sparks an essential discussion on simplifying healthcare. He also speaks about the potential of artificial intelligence in enhancing patient care and how quick wins and multi-level consumer engagement are key in this transformative phase.
Finally, we tap into Jeff's vision for Memorial Healthcare and his passion for caring for people. His Midwestern upbringing and love for college football add a personal touch to this conversation, making it more relatable. Listen in as we blend healthcare, technology, and personal stories to give you a comprehensive view of the industry. Jeff's commitment to improving healthcare access and impact through technology will leave you with much to ponder and act upon.
https://www.mhs.net/
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest marketing trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates from us, be sure to follow us at 5starbdm.com. See you next time on Follow The Brand!
Step into the world of healthcare technology with our guest, Jeff Sturman, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer. His journey from consulting to healthcare technology enablement is an inspiring one, laced with lessons on project management, relationship building, and the importance of foundational knowledge. Join us as we unravel the complex dance of combining technology with healthcare and putting patients at the core of this amalgamation.
We shift gears and delve into the challenges that digital transformation and inflation are throwing at healthcare, specifically in the realm of labor issues. Jeff walks us through the complexity of navigating healthcare for vulnerable populations and sparks an essential discussion on simplifying healthcare. He also speaks about the potential of artificial intelligence in enhancing patient care and how quick wins and multi-level consumer engagement are key in this transformative phase.
Finally, we tap into Jeff's vision for Memorial Healthcare and his passion for caring for people. His Midwestern upbringing and love for college football add a personal touch to this conversation, making it more relatable. Listen in as we blend healthcare, technology, and personal stories to give you a comprehensive view of the industry. Jeff's commitment to improving healthcare access and impact through technology will leave you with much to ponder and act upon.
https://www.mhs.net/
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest marketing trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates from us, be sure to follow us at 5starbdm.com. See you next time on Follow The Brand!
Welcome to another episode of Follow the Brand. I am your host, grant McGaw, ceo of 5-Star BDM, a 5-Star Personal Branding and Business Development Company. I want to take you on a journey that takes another deep dive into the world of personal branding and business development, using compelling personal story, business conversations and tips to improve your personal brand. By listening to the Follow the Brand podcast series, you will be able to differentiate yourself from the competition and allow you to build trust with prospective clients and employers. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Make it one that will set you apart, build trust and reflect who you are Developing. Your 5-Star Personal Brand is a great way to demonstrate your skills and knowledge. If you have any questions for me or my guests, please email me at grantmcgauh at 5-Star BDM. Be for brand, be for development and for masterscom. Now let's begin with our next 5-Star episode on Follow the Brand. Brilliant Mind Steering the Ship. Today, we have the privilege to dive deep into such a mind. Picture this a young man from the fast Midwest, molded by its simplicity and values, dives into academia's debt. As he grows, he becomes captivated by the digital age's accelerating rush. A young mind soon emerges as a beacon in the intricate world of healthcare technology. Enter Jeff Sturman, senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer, at today's esteemed guest. In the expansive realm of healthcare, finding clarity and innovative pathways can be daunting. Yet Jeff's journey, which he'll share with us today, lights the way We'll explore the ins and outs of putting patients at the core, the intricate dance of managing fast systems and the monumental task of marrying technology with healthcare in our modern era. But the Follow Brand podcast isn't just about the professional stories. It's about understanding the human spirit behind every innovation. So, whether we're diving deep into technology's transformative power or kicking back to reminisce about the adrenaline rush of college football, today promises a vibrant tapestry of insights and shared experiences. So, dear listeners, buckle up. Today's journey with Jeff Sturman promises a vista of challenges, triumphs and the relentless quest for betterment in the healthcare sphere. Dive in, soak it up and be inspired right here on the Follow Brand podcast, where we are building a five star brand that you can follow. I want to welcome everybody to the Follow Brand podcast. I don't always get opportunities to talk to some of my favorite people face to face, mono E Mono, to talk about their history, the legend and I'm calling the legend of Jeff Sturman. People don't know. Like you know, they see the name out there, they've heard about this guy and he might have had a couple of meetings, but they don't know the man. We're going to go behind the scenes a little bit and really tune in to Jeff Sturman as a person he has become over time, the things that he's really passionate about, what drives him as an IT professional and where he was to take this thing to a whole new level. So we're going to take this back just a little bit. I call this episode the 30 to 30 of Jeff Sturman because that's how much I feel about him as an individual. So, jeff, you'd like to introduce yourself, man Grant.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I can even hold a light to that Legend. I don't know. I'm just a 13 year old boy, still trapped in when I look in the mirror, so I don't know what you're talking about, but it is great to talk to you, my friend. So yeah, jeff Sturman, I'm the Chief Digital Officer, senior Vice President here at Memorial Healthcare System, which I'll tell you more about Memorial in a moment. Based here in South Florida, been in this role for five years. I'm a bit of a schizophrenic recovering consultant, so I go from consulting in my career to provider-based leadership roles, back to consulting, back to provider-based leadership roles. So a pleasure, like I said, to talk to you and, man, I can't even come close to matching your energy.
Speaker 1:Oh no, and you know what we're going to talk about energy right now, because at 13, you grew up in the I don't know what you call it the mid-east, the Midwest.
Speaker 2:I'm a Midwest boy through and through. I grew up in Detroit, outside Detroit. I was born in Chicago, but I went to school in Indiana and Missouri, or Missouri as I finally call it. I don't know if that's any Missouriians, but yeah, it was a great young life in the Midwest.
Speaker 1:Well, so let's start there, because obviously you had a great childhood. I was just up there. We were just talking about that. It's a great wildlife fishing out there in Lake Erie Really enjoyed it. People don't realize how close those cities are to one another. I mean, they're all kind of like just a metro area to metro area. Whether you're in Detroit, you're in Chicago, you're in Milwaukee, there's so many cities that aren't that far away so they're kind of clustered there. You had a great, great childhood but you ended up.
Speaker 2:well, I'm just saying, you know, grant, it's not like living in Florida right, where it takes what? Eight hours just to get out of the state of Florida. It's not like living up in New York, where you can get to Boston or DC or Philly easily Midwest maybe as well, not as close as the northeast to big cities, but yeah, you certainly get a little bit more of that closeness. But the rivalry.
Speaker 1:I mean, you're literally got Ohio right there. You got Michigan, you know, right there.
Speaker 2:Forgive me, but I'm from Michigan. We don't acknowledge Ohio, especially during football season, and a lot of my good friends are from that great state, or at least that state to the south. I call it. But yeah, they don't acknowledge Michigan either. I don't think.
Speaker 1:Oh, I was up there. There's definitely a lot of rivalry there and I love it. I mean, you can feel it. There's just a lot going on. There's a lot more history there than people don't realize but we're going to tune in to because you're up there. You went up on the school and Kansas, no, Indiana, no, don't.
Speaker 2:You keep insulting me. No, I went to IU. My wife and I both went there. My son is there now, so it's now a family tradition. I'm a little bit of the black sheep in the family. I'm the only one who didn't go to Michigan in my family. But yeah, we still a big Michigan football fan. You can't take that out of me, but I'm an IU guy. Iu College football and basketball is where we live, and yeah. Then I went to Missouri for grad school, got my master's in health administration because my dad, who's a doctor, told me not to go to medical school and take a couple of years off, and I never looked back.
Speaker 1:Now. So let's talk about that time period. Think about this You're going to school. Whether you're an IU, you choose to go to grad school. Are you thinking you're going to go into health administration? Are you thinking about information technology? What exactly is going to be your dad?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, no, I mean, I didn't even have a computer in college. They didn't exist. My first computer was a gateway computer in grad school and I didn't know what technology meant. I think I fell into technology because what do kids in the mid-90s get thrown into after going to grad school and getting my master's in health administration and going to consulting? They throw you into technology because everyone thought this Y2K thing was real and so, yeah, I knew nothing. They knew that I knew nothing, but I got a great opportunity to join Ernst Young, a great consulting firm back then, and really learned the business, learned relationships, learned people. Some of my closest friends are from the first couple years of my career.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that, I love to see you. You don't know what you're doing. You get thrown to the wolves, basically, this is kind of what has happened traditionally when you go to school and you're looking for that first job. I've heard it from a lot of different professionals that they end up going into this consulting role, which really, at the time, it's a grind. It is a grind because you've got to pack a suitcase. You're going to city to city, you get in front of different people, you're expected to have some type of knowledge or experience or expertise and you've got to really get the ground running. What do you think? Did you think back? What were you leveraging day in and day out in that first consulting role?
Speaker 2:It's a great question and for me it was living in the moment and being a cocky young kid out of grad school just trying to learn and soak up as much as I could. But you're right, in those days we'd get on a plane Sunday night and many times we wouldn't come home till Friday. It's amazing that my girlfriend I was living with in Chicago actually became my wife and now we're married 25 years. But it's amazing she stopped by me because I made her move from New York to Chicago and then I'd leave and I didn't see her. I saw her for maybe 36 hours on the weekend and then I'd leave again. But in the first couple of years I was really fortunate. At Ernst Young I had a couple of clients in Chicago. I got to work with some of the most senior people and partners in the practice in the health care technology enablement practice. I learned IT strategy by watching them and meeting a lot of people, because those projects were two, three, four months at most and a lot of my counterparts and peers were going on these big implementations that were two, three years and gang sucked into these cities all across the country for really long periods of time and that didn't happen to me right away. It ultimately did and I spent about a year in Pittsburgh where I first implemented Epic in 1997 for a year and a half, and those were the days when Epic was only an ambulatory solution and I learned so much so quickly. But, yeah, I got the greatest benefit of the world by meeting a lot of people quickly and doing and what I didn't know what I was doing. But strategy worked by being the guy who held the bag of a partner and listening to them and then realizing, oh, I can figure this out and yeah, I can take that deliverable I created at that client and use it here and change some names and it's still pretty applicable. Scary thing is it's probably still applicable today.
Speaker 1:Well, it is a fact, things are templates and you can utilize those templates because they're tried and true playbooks that still work. You look around just in life in general the playbook for drawn a tree, for having the different seasons in life there are so many repetitive, automated things in nature that work. They're constant. You've got to have some foundation. That foundational knowledge can then propel you. Because what I have found in my IT journey is that as you get involved with certain organizations, there are certain levels of discipline that sometimes aren't there. Sometimes they are there. There's things that people want to get into but yet they haven't developed the basics, like where is this thing going to sit? Because it's going to sink because you don't have your foundational infrastructure built out properly and that's going to run into certain issues. I don't want to get too far into weeds in that world. A lot of times, when we think of CIF, chief Information Officers, chief Desmond Officers, Chief Strategy Officers, they also think, well, they must have cut their teeth somehow, some way, but they worked their way through the ranks and project management. They worked their way through the ranks from a technical, from a director of IT, and then they got into these different levels. It would appear that because you got into an organization like E&Y, do you start already at this strategic level. Did you find that to be an advantage or disadvantage?
Speaker 2:It's true and it's maybe not so true. So you're right in that, like I said, my first couple of years I got such a wealth of knowledge of relationships and strategy in terms of IT strategy and how that supports the overall healthcare system strategy. I learned that. I learned how to develop those tools. I learned how to navigate and facilitate. The biggest thing I learned early on, though, was project management, and you alluded to that. I am not and I like to say this all the time I'm probably the least technical guy a lot of times in the room, especially with my team, and I've learned a lot through osmosis over the years and try to become a little bit more technically knowledgeable, but the value I think I bring and what I've learned is how to again navigate these diverse relationships that exist in healthcare and really project manage at a level to make change happen, and that really is synonymous with information technology and digital today. What that is is all about change. It's all about adopting new ways of thinking, adopting new ways to deliver care, and I also say through and through I'm a healthcare guy. I'm a healthcare guy first and foremost. I'm a technology guy a far, far, far second, but I'm passionate about taking care of people and doing the right thing and thinking about delivering care. I just don't do it with a scalpel and I don't do it in the operating room, but I get to have the pleasure of working with some really talented physicians and leaders and I know that they have the hard job. I get the easy job to think about delivering care and thinking about a consumer experience and engagement and driving change, but it is a collaboration that today I feel like what again, backing way up now almost 30 years ago the foundation of all that I got in consulting has benefited me greatly in being able to really do what I do today.
Speaker 1:That's wonderful, I like that. So we're getting down to the brass tax of the Jeff Sturmey story. You know part of the legend that I'm talking about. I want you to back up just a little bit, because 30 years ago you're sitting here in Pittsburgh, you're working on an epic design, you're working with epic amputatory systems. Now you're sitting at the you know really top levels of IT for one of the largest public health systems in the United States. Between that period of time, what has been your greatest challenge?
Speaker 2:Greatest challenge. For me, every day is a challenge, but because this world is so fast moving, trying to stay up on top of the latest and greatest has always been a challenge. At the same time, we always say healthcare runs probably a decade behind other industries from a tech standpoint. And how we can then apply and adopt those sort of learnings and products and services and apply them to healthcare has been a tremendous challenge because I think, culturally and from a people standpoint, you know, it's not about technology Again, it's about change, it's about change management. So for me it's adoption of how we apply new ways of thinking, change management and really shifting a culture, and that's been the biggest challenge. It's something that I love doing. It's something that I think the people side of our business is so much more fun to try to make change around. And I think if you don't think about changing, you don't think about culture, then you really miss the boat on delivering care at a new level. But it's also been the biggest challenge, I think.
Speaker 1:This episode is brought to you by Five Star BDM. Five Star BDM is a professional consulting and advisory group, teamly focused on business development services for small to mid-sized businesses and entrepreneurs. Although every business is unique, they often share challenges that can be addressed through smart branding. Services include process improvement and operations, digital strategy and transformation, business intelligence, digital marketing and personal branding. Our Five Star Business and Personal Branding Company has helped a number of professionals and organizations to optimize and grow. The result is more business, more opportunities, better reach, positive outcomes. Please visit wwwFiveStarBDMcom to learn more and view all the episodes of Follow the Brand. And I agree with you. Especially right now, the labor issues within the healthcare industry are paramount. I've been talking to some industry leaders and say, okay, what's top of mind now? What's really going on? And they're talking about hey, grant, you don't want to be part of the billionaires club. I'm like the billionaires club. What are you talking about? Those are the hospital systems that are losing a billion dollars a year because of inflation, and the supply chain because of the loss in labor and just the knowledge base of people that are just transitioning out of the industry. You are now challenged with digital transformation and working through the challenge of okay, here's your budget coming into 2023, 2024, 2025. And this is what you're going to have to work with to make this change, a holistic change in patient experience. Thank you, what are you saying to that?
Speaker 2:I was having a conversation with a group of folks earlier today and I made the same point that you know what? We don't have infinite resources, we don't have infinite money, and so you got to really look at how you prioritize. What can you do to make things happen while not staying just stagnant? Because if you just stay stagnant, if you just stay in today, then consider yourself probably dead. Because you got to think about evolution, you got to take some quick wins, you got to do what you can do to make change happen. And that doesn't mean you consume everything. That doesn't mean you do everything. That means you can't boil the ocean, as a good friend of mine used to say. You pick in shoes and sometimes those are easy things to do and aren't that expensive, and sometimes they're really hard to do and they're really expensive, but they're the right thing to do and you got to set foundation. So, from a prioritization standpoint, we got to think differently. We got to think not just hospital care. We got to think that consumers and patients are not just going to come to our hospital, that we have to get out to them. We got to think about engaging them at a different level that they're just not going to call our call center to make an appointment, that they want to chat with us. They want to have a chat bot and maybe they don't, but different demographics and different age groups and different areas of the country all want to do things, maybe to some degree similarly, but also, in some cases, differently. Therefore, I think we have to engage and think about talking to consumers and I'm again very intentional when I use the word consumer in healthcare, and all my colleagues and all of your listeners probably have said the same thing for a long time now hey, patients are, when they're in your hospital or in your care setting, getting care, but 99% of the time we're consumers and we're doing things and we want to know and get knowledgeable and be educated and take more control of our situation, like we've done in other industries, and so there's so much to be done there, and I think to me, that again is one of the biggest opportunities that we can do in digital to help shift. The way in which we culturally impact a population, our community, our patients, our consumers is through digital engagement, and there's lots of tools out there. Everyone's trying to solve this, and that goes well beyond just digital. It goes to how we solve access, how we solve growth and we remain relevant. It talks about provider engagement and experience, not just for the consumer. But how do we simplify? At the end of the day, my goal for healthcare is how do we simplify this very, very complex industry that we all have to be in at certain times in our life and make it just easier to manage? It's a shame it's really difficult for me to think about this that it's hard for me to navigate healthcare for myself and my family. I can't imagine being on the outside of the industry trying to navigate this and you're at one of the most vulnerable times of your life, typically whether you're a family member worrying about another family member or friend, or whether you're actually the person receiving care. We just got to make it simpler for everyone to consume.
Speaker 1:I 100% agree with that. Anyone listening to this podcast will understand that it is a patient-first organization. You have to understand the situation. It doesn't mean you have all the solutions, but you have to understand the situation. The healthcare industry is elaborate, it's not simple, it's not easy. There's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of things that are happening that are in your control and outside of your control. It's completely out of your control. However, you become the face of the point of care. You've got to be conscious of that. I want to ask you, from a hiring perspective, from a human resource perspective, when you are now as opposed to what you might have done five or 10 years ago when you're looking to hire people in your department, what is the mindset that you look for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that question, I love talking about this. Yeah, I'm probably not a traditional CIO, chief Digital Officer, because I'm not all that technical by background, but hopefully I'm pretty strategic and forward-thinking, innovative and a project manager who likes to get stuff done. I said it earlier a healthcare guy. I'm a healthcare guy through and through. I think we have to remember the industry that we work in and it's a balance. Everything in life is a balance and my department that I control it from a digital standpoint here at Memorial is a balance. But I've been very sensitive to balancing that team out with what I'll call more traditional technology folks with very, very critical operational strategy, clinical business knowledge, because if you don't understand the business, you don't understand the clinical operations. You can be the best technologist in the world, but you're not going to be passionate about the industry and about the place that we work. I think it's really important that you understand that we're impacting people's lives, that we're taking care of people. I hire a lot of nurses and doctors and therapists and pharmacy folks. In fact, a lot of those people are leading my IT organization today because they get healthcare. That's the fabric of who they are certainly the fabric of how. I grew up with a doctor and the family and many doctors in the family. My sister's a psychologist, my other sister's a speech pathologist. We're all in the helping professions world. I think if you don't have that passion and you want to work in IT, then you can pick a lot of other industries. Where IT is more mature you can probably make more money, you can maybe even have more technology fun. But if you're passionate about healthcare and about taking care of people and, at the end of the day, just being passionate about people, there's no better place to be. That gives me a little bit of joy, a little bit of satisfaction in that I feel like we impact today more than ever before. I'm not that guy that sits behind the scenes and is programming or is a database guru at all. I have some of those guys and they're great. But I tell them all the time if you're not passionate about taking care of people and knowing the impact that you're having by doing what you're doing, then don't be here. That's a hard pill to swallow, especially in this job market that we're all in, because it's hard to recruit, it's hard to retain, but we have an incredible team here at Memorial that I could not be more proud of. I'm pretty confident that of the almost 400 people in IT here, almost all of them, if not all of them, would tell you that they're here for the right reasons. That's to take care of people. We take care of each other while we're at it.
Speaker 1:I love that. I can feel it. I've been around a lot of people from Memorial and the enthusiasm and the care they put into everything that they do, from the top leadership all the way throughout the organization, is evident. I'm not just saying that because you hear. That's something I believe. I have consumed a lot of the health care there at Memorial, whether it's at West or is at one of the other facilities. I've got nothing to top that service. I really appreciate that.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you saying that. I think in some respects we're the best kept secret in the country. We might be well-known in our small little geography down here in South Florida but we are, I think, a force to be reckoned with. We are the highest level of quality and satisfaction that I'm proud about and certainly a very community focused organization that's now growing its roots into even academic medicine. We are a big fish in a little pond maybe in some respects, but we are a really awesome, really great place to work Lots of. I can keep going on and on about how happy I am at Memorial and how great of a place it is, because it is a wonderful place, thank you.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people you see the clapping, it's probably 400 people in your team. It's definitely like, yeah, yeah, that's our guy.
Speaker 2:I hope there's 15,000 people at Memorial clapping, because that's what we got. I feel that 15,000 employees here probably all feel the same way.
Speaker 1:Well, let's put you on the stage. I want you give you a real short project right now, as you are a PM. I want you to enter the stage. 15,000 people are on the stage. You're about to get an award. You've gotten awards. You've gotten award. I believe you've got some other CIO awards. You have been on the stage. I want you to now take the mic and talk to us about what you consider to be a pressing problem in healthcare that you feel that the audience truly needs to hear about. You've talked about some of their human resource problems. You've talked about some of the technologies. You've talked about some of your background. That's very, very important. I want you to take the mic and talk to 15,000 people right now that you feel is very important for them to hear this method. What would you say?
Speaker 2:Maybe it's a little bit repetitive from what I've already said, but I'll cover it. It's so hard because there's so many problems that we're trying to solve, but I'm on stage now telling you about something that we got to fix. Access, obviously, is a huge problem, but the first problem we need to fix and I talked about it is to raise the labor shortage and labor issue. I'm not going to cover that one anymore because I think we've beat that one up enough, but I will tell you that simplification and, overall, getting access to the right care at the right time at the right place is absolutely critical. I know there's ways we can solve this, both operationally, culturally, by digital means. I don't know that any of those are silver bullets, but I do know that we all have to be committed to trying to make that just better and easier for our patients, our consumers, to get care. We're doing some great things, from working with some very innovative solutions on virtual and telehealth to remote patient monitoring and making sure that care is delivered at home to thinking about care even in the hospital. Maybe this doesn't sound that sexy, but it's a huge win from an artificial intelligence standpoint to think about how we are talking, about prediction and predictive analytics. All of that, at the end of the day, really ties to access of care, because if we can identify disease states more predictively, more proactively, then we are going to get care to a patient in a manner that they need to get it, even if they don't know they need to get it right now. That gets to some really cool things that are happening with artificial intelligence on the clinical side. That gets to thinking about decision trees and navigating how you make online appointments in a much more simplified manner. That gets to again a vision of knowing that you can go to the supermarket, the mall, the airport and have a telehealth appointment with a virtual list at any time that you're in those settings. Just creating those areas, those conveniences of delivery, is so important. Not to mention, we just got to get better at opening our schedules and managing our physicians and our practices with templates and how we can allow more growth of what we all need to deliver to our own communities. That just comes down to some really very complex things to navigate, but also getting to a mechanism by which our providers are managed at a level of continuity and consistency. Right now, we have a lot of physician practices in our community that operate independently from each other. I think there's an opportunity to bring them together and collaborate and work in a way in which we're creating consistency.
Speaker 1:That is a wonderful answer. Small wins lead to big victories. We're all in this together. We're all in this community together. We've got to tap into our universal knowledge, our wisdom and our experience to bring for just a transform, healthier experience for everybody, because times have changed. We've got an older population. We've got a lot of things happening. You don't know what that unknown is. Hope it wasn't unknown. Who predicted something like that? But kudos to everyone who stepped up and said wow, this is an unprecedented event. It takes unprecedented people to be able to meet that challenge. You've been able to meet that challenge. I'm very proud of you. If you have not been told that, I'm going to tell you that here on the Follow Brand Podcast, grant McGaw, just, I'm very proud of you, what you've done, what you've been able to accomplish throughout your career, what you're continuing to do, because I feel you're one of the people that you can actually have a good conversation with and have a candid discussion about what's needed, what's necessary, what can we do together to make change happen. Thank you very much for being on the Follow Brand Podcast.
Speaker 2:Grant the good news about a podcast. Hopefully you can't see me because you're making me blush, but thank you for those kind words. We did learn so much, if anything we learned over the last three or four years we mobilized. We learned how to mobilize, get things done. People would never have believed that we could have done what we did in the face of COVID before COVID happened. Now we sit in the cross-section of strategy and operations, and digital is where it's at. I'm thankful for all my colleagues across the country that make a difference, and they all do.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, Jeff. If the audience wants to get in touch with you, what is the best possible?
Speaker 2:way Probably get in touch with you and you'll get them in touch with me. No, they can email me. I'm always on my email. Don't tell my wife or she knows it. That's Jesterman JSTURMANnet. I do look forward to talking to folks. I love talking to people and hearing about problems, about how we can solve them together. If nothing else, I know I don't know how to solve a lot of things I learned from other people and I know that's called plagiarism in college. I tell my kids that's just called smart business practice in the real world.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. We've got to learn from each other. It's not a lot. We're going to learn that the Michigan-Wolverines pulls it off again and defeats the old house state. What guys are we going to hear it first here?
Speaker 2:I like it. I think Michigan's got a good year ahead of them. I'll be at a couple of games. I'll be at a couple of UF games where one of my son is this year. I'll be at a couple of Indiana games and probably a couple of Wolverine games. Love it.
Speaker 1:Love it, love it. Thank you for being on the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks, grant, appreciate it. You're welcome. Life IS Tommy valuation.