Cultivating Tenacity in Leadership and the Kinkeeper Healthcare Revolution with Jill Michal

Resilience isn't just a buzzword; it's the lifeblood of entrepreneurship, a daily meditation that keeps us steadfast through the storm. Together with the remarkable Jill Michal, we unravel the fabric of tenacity that binds every entrepreneur. Jill, with her laser-focus and a toolbox of personal mantras, epitomizes the entrepreneurial spirit. We converse about the power of "I am" statements and their pivotal role in forging a resilient identity, both in the boardroom and beyond. This episode isn't just a conversation; it's a testament to the relentless pursuit of growth amid adversity.

Our journey doesn't stop at the business arena; it extends into the intimate corridors of personal health and the networks that sustain it. We explore the notion of 'kinkeeper' and how healthcare networks can transform patient care. Sharing my own voyage from accounting to social services, I reflect on the resilience born from personal loss and how it shapes my approach to life's challenges. We also unveil the Kith and Kin app, a beacon of hope for managing health information that underscores our discussion on cultivating a culture of resilience. If you're seeking a leadership compass or ways to bolster your support network, this heart-to-heart is your guiding star.

About Jill Michal:
Jill Michal is the CEO and Cofounder of Kith + Kin. She is a champion for the human at the center of every healthcare journey, on a crusade to bring a sense of confidence and control to individuals and families who want health to be done WITH them and not TO them. As a wife and mother of three children, she’s been the "KinKeeper" for decades - the one in charge of everyone's health - playing air traffic control for all the appointments and reminders and central intelligence, making sure everyone knows what they need to know, when they need to know it. Jill started Kith + Kin when she realized health is a team sport; and in her house, she’s the coach, but she had better tools for travel volleyball.

Connect with Jill:
Website kithandkin.app
LinkedIn linkedin.com/company/kithandkinapp
Instagram instagram.com/kithandkinapp
Facebook facebook.com/kithandkinapp

This episode is brought to you by Kith + Kin. Securely create, store, organize and share health information. Go to KithandKin.app to learn more.

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Are you a visionary founder with a compelling success story that deserves to be shared with our audience? We're on the lookout for accomplished business leaders like you to be featured on the Founders' Forum Radio Show and Podcast. If you've surmounted challenges, reached significant milestones, or have an exciting vision for the future, we'd be honored to have you as a guest on our show. Your experiences and insights can inspire and enlighten others in the business world. If you're eager to share your journey and the invaluable lessons you've learned along the way, we invite you to apply here.

Transcript

Announcer: 0:00

Entrepreneur, author and financial consultant, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing entrepreneurial business owners create a vision for the future and follow through on their goals and intentions. Ang Onorato is a business growth strategist who blend psychology and business together to create conscious leaders and business owners who impact the world. Founders Forum is a radio show podcast sharing the real stories behind entrepreneurship as founders discover more about themselves, while providing valuable lessons and some fun and entertainment for you. Now here's Marc and Ang.

Marc Bernstein: 0:35

Good morning America. How are you this morning? Good morning America. How are you? How are you Arlo? How are you Ang? How you doing? I know you had a rough flight.

Ang Onorato: 0:45

Yeah, it's been some travel nightmares, but you know that's Thanksgiving travel, I guess, so glad to be home for now.

Marc Bernstein: 0:53

Good morning to Jill Michal, our guest today.

Jill Michal: 0:55

Good morning.

Marc Bernstein: 0:56

And we will introduce Jill in a moment. But I'm, you know, thinking about. I was just thinking about the fact that when I used to think of the word resilience, which we've talked about on the show before, I used to think about tough times I was in and how I had to be resilient, or certain people I knew that went through real struggles and they had to be resilient and come back from that. But now I hear that word all the time, almost every day, and I'm realizing that it seems like in a lot of ways, businesses gotten harder. People were having family issues, health issues. We just Enge I know you have several family members with COVID.

Marc Bernstein: 1:35

I had the effects of the shot yesterday which felt like COVID, and that was a struggle for a day. It's, unfortunately, fine today, but we, you know, we're all. It just seemed that things going on in the world, world events I mean there's tragedies all around in the Middle East and people that are going to spend lifetimes recovering from those tragedies, and so I'm just thinking about resilience. Instead of something that you, like you, have to summon up every once in a while, it may be something that you almost have to use on a daily basis. So I would like to hear from both of you on your thoughts about that, and you want to go first.

Ang Onorato: 2:15

Yeah, you know, Marc, it's a great topic that you brought back up again because, as we shared offline, we did talk about this a couple months ago. But, as I was mentioning, going through some business struggles which, honestly, I thought would be, you know, in a different position in just a few months, but it's really really taken a lot longer and it's to your point, it's it's required me to kind of be more resilient than even I had prepared and thought. So I think a lot of people are in that space. And then when you add in a lot of the things you mentioned, you know, family caregiving, national global events, it's, it is a daily practice, for sure, for sure.

Marc Bernstein: 2:51

We also, you know, I have a new company as of a year ago and working with a lot of the same people I've worked with for years. But new company, new vision. And we had this very grandiose vision and we did it for a year and a half, six months, before we started the company. And then, since then and recently, we decided to reset that. We realized that while it was attainable, we had other things we needed to do first. So we had to kind of reset, go back to sort of our original vision with some revisions, and that required some resilience and adjustment by my partners and our staff and everybody. So so we've gone through that. Jill, how about you? What is it? What occurs to you about?

Jill Michal: 3:33

this, oh Mesh. Well, you know, this is an entrepreneur, right? I think I was reading some article that said every entrepreneur goes through at least a dozen near-death experiences, right, Right. And so you know, resilience. I've never required more resilience than I have in this role, but to your point, it just kind of now becomes one of your core skill sets versus, to your point, something you, you know, as you said, summon up. You know you got to summon it up every morning.

Marc Bernstein: 3:58

Right when you get out.

Announcer: 3:59

You're like all right, I'm going to do this right.

Jill Michal: 4:01

I'm going to do this again today and it takes a lot.

Marc Bernstein: 4:05

Well, I am a believer in and I know Angie does similar things. I do these. I am statements, you know. I remind myself of what I am and what I'm made of. I did them this morning before I came here, because sometimes you wake up in the morning and it's like you forget who you are, you know, forget what, you know what you're about and those reminders. It gives me strength every day and it's you know. People pray. I do some of that too, but there's a lot of things you can do to kind of summon up that power every day. I don't know if you have any routine about that, Jill, or you know I don't.

Jill Michal: 4:39

I don't know that I do. All right, I mean, there's a. You know there's a lot of routine, right, there's a lot of things that I do to keep my world kind of calm and focused, and I think that's how I do it right. It's for me, it's trying to figure out how to reduce the distraction, or at least set it aside and recognize the difference so that I can really try to focus on what matters.

Marc Bernstein: 5:03

I do know you have some things like that, because I know you have quotes that you use and we'll get to those, but I know you have quotes that are very motivational to you that I think you kind of you know hold up when you need them, you know, kind of thing. So let me introduce Jill Michal. She is CEO and co-founder of Kith and Kin and she will explain what that means in a minute. But I want to read you, in the third person, her bio that she wrote. Um, I don't always like to read, but I'm going to read this because it's I love the way it's written.

Marc Bernstein: 5:37

She is champion for the human, at the center of every healthcare journey, on a crusade to bring a sense of confidence and control to individuals and families who want health to be done with them and not to them. As a, you know, as a wife and mother of three children, she's been the kinkeeper for decades, the one in charge of everyone's health, playing air traffic control for all the appointments and reminders, and central intelligence, making sure, um, she knows what they need, what they know, what they need to know and when they need to know it. Uh, she started kits and kin when she realized that health is a team sport and in her house she's the coach, but she says that she actually had better tools, um, when she was just involved with travel volleyball with her kids, so I thought that's a really interesting way to put this. So tell us about kith and kin and maybe let's maybe briefly about that. But then I want to hear about how, um, you got there, your previous experience and your life and what brought you to this point.

Jill Michal: 6:40

Well, thanks so much for having me.

Jill Michal: 6:41

So, uh, you know kith and kin's an old fashioned term for friends and family because we know that there's no one way that people care for the people they care about.

Jill Michal: 6:49

And you know, back to the earlier comment, health is a team sport and, um, we really haven't treated it as such for many, many decades and I think we're just starting to realize the impact of people's support structure.

Jill Michal: 7:01

And you know, for me, um, you know, it started down this journey when I was sitting at yet another of thousands of health conferences, with people talking about adherence, right, getting people to do what they're supposed to do. And I'm sitting in the audience and I'm listening to people talk about, you know, they got to take their pills and they have to do this and they have to do that, and they're, like you know, in the role of doctors and pharmacists and therapists and sitting there in the audience going do you people understand that that job is actually mine, right, right, I'm the one who does that because I'm the mom. If you want someone to do it, you can give them all the instructions you want, but if you really want somebody to do it, you tell their mother, right? So that's kind of how the organization was born and figuring out. You know really how to empower the kinkeeper and give them the tools that they need.

Marc Bernstein: 7:47

There is some overlap with a guest we've had on the show who I know you know, Glenna Crooks, absolutely.

Jill Michal: 7:52

I was just talking to Glenna yesterday. Very excellent.

Marc Bernstein: 7:54

So I think I helped reconnect you to this. She talks about the network that everyone has, not just healthcare but everything you know. She inspired me to talk to my 90 year old mother about with my brothers, because we didn't know who all her doctors were. But we didn't weren't really sure who her hairdresser was these days, or you know all the people that she relies on. Some of them we knew, some of them we didn't know. So we decided we needed to know that. But you take it a step further, because there is a kinkeeper, you know, there is somebody in charge generally of that and I think that's really interesting. So tell me about your life experience and your work experience that brought you to this place of founding this company. Kith and kin, yeah.

Jill Michal: 8:36

So I, you know, I always say like from a, from a professional standpoint, right, I have a very eclectic on paper. I'm a closet CPA by trade. I spent eight years in public accounting, mostly in the healthcare and social service sector. But then I spent the next 14 years at United Way and I loved that work, I loved the people, I love that experience. It's where I really was able to connect kind of back to you made that comment in my bio really at the human at the center of the journey and where I spent so much of my career trying to figure out how to push the boulder uphill.

Jill Michal: 9:17

You want to talk about resilience, work in the social service sector for 14 years trying to change systems. Right, and somebody even asked me recently they're like, really you couldn't pick anything easier than consumer health care. Right, you had to pick the one thing in health care that's probably arguably the most difficult, and I said I don't. You know, I feel like my whole life has kind of prepared me for this willingness to push so hard on systems and being willing to celebrate just that crack and that start of that change, because that's really what it is in this space. It's been about creating tipping points and that's been a lot of my career, a lot of my life.

Marc Bernstein: 9:59

So that brings up a few questions. I have One. Well, so obviously you had some challenges along the way and I know that you've had to have a lot of resilience and I know some of the way you live. Your life was inspired by your mother and the story, the end of her life and what happened.

Jill Michal: 10:16

Yeah absolutely.

Marc Bernstein: 10:17

You want to talk about that and how you handle challenges.

Jill Michal: 10:20

Yeah, so. So my mom passed away when, when I was in my mid 20s, she actually had breast cancer when I was probably at that point, maybe five and and she made it through that and which was amazing because at the time not a lot of people made it through that and I was thankful to have had her for another over 20 years. But she passed away. She had what they call T cell lymphoma, which is like lymphoma, is like 5% of cancers, and T cell lymphoma is 5% of lymphoma. So you know there wasn't a lot of. You know there wasn't a lot of research, there wasn't, there wasn't a lot to be able to really to have hope for at that point when we kind of started down that path and we knew that that's what it was. But you know, I spent. I took a leave of absence from my work at the time in public accounting. I took a three month leave of absence. She went into the hospital on my birthday in July and she passed the week before my first anniversary in October. But I spent those three months. I slept in that hospital every day because I didn't want to have any regrets.

Jill Michal: 11:28

That was kind of the moment for me where I said, I'm not going to have any regrets. I don't. That's not the way I want to live my life. I want to say everything that needs to be said and I want to do things the way I want to do them and the things that I believe should be done Not all the things that society says that should be done. Right, because you know there's a lot of it. You know I tell people a lot of times when they're feeling that kind of anxiety and pressure I'm like you got to just shed the shoulds. People are going to should all over you and tell you all the things that you're supposed to be doing in one way or another. But the reality is you know you've got to. You've got to do the things that that won't put you in the position in the future to regret the decisions you make today.

Marc Bernstein: 12:18

So you had, that was a struggle, and you were 25 at the time yeah, pretty young so to come to that conclusion that you would have no regrets at 25, a lot of people don't come to that conclusion much later, if they ever do yeah, so that's pretty. So you were very fortunate, like you said, to have your mother all that time and to have that experience with her and to be able to spend all that time to think about it.

Marc Bernstein: 12:39

Yeah and to come to that conclusion, that's pretty amazing. Tell us a little bit about what Kith and kin can do for people listening to our show, how you help them.

Jill Michal: 12:48

Yeah, absolutely so, kith and kin is. It's an. It's an app that basically helps you manage what we advice can say this on the air we affectionately refer to as show of managing health information, right? So the stuff that you've got in texts and emails, notes on your phone, documents you download from your very secure patient portal and email to yourself so that you can find them later, all of that information, you know, we spent over 1000 hours just talking to people before we wrote a single line of code, because we've spent 20 plus years trying to build consumer health care tools from the system back instead of from the human forward.

Jill Michal: 13:24

And so we just started to talk to people and, like, tell me how you do this today? People like I take pictures, I make notes, I store documents. I don't love to fill out forms. There's no NA in my binder, there's no NA in my life, right? So we just started to kind of build a solution that actually mirrors the way people do things. Right, they make quick notes, they take pictures of everything from rashes to discharge procedures. Right, they do very simple behaviors, and we want all of that information to be able to be in one place, at your fingertips and in your control. Back to your conversation with Glenna right that it's about sharing the right information with the right people, because the reality is, people said also, I need all that information, oh, but, by the way, I share some information with some people and other information with other people and I need a solution that helps me do that and you can do that.

Jill Michal: 14:14

And you can do that with Gith and Ken right so you get to choose who has access to what.

Marc Bernstein: 14:19

And how are you doing with subscription? I didn't imagine yet.

Jill Michal: 14:23

Yep, it's a subscription. We just went to market at the end of 2022. We have our first almost 5,000 users and now we're kind of out in the market looking at B2B partnerships, folks who are able to help us get the word out and be able to build, whether it's patient groups, family groups, organizations. That's the stage we're at today.

Marc Bernstein: 14:50

That's wonderful. So, and how about? In this business in particular, what challenges have you faced?

Jill Michal: 14:56

Yeah, so I alluded to it a little bit, right? So consumer health is not for the faint of heart, right? So I said I'm going to get t-shirts made that has who cares on the front and who pays on the back, because they seem to never meet in healthcare.

Jill Michal: 15:08

Right Because you have this space of you know there's this. I would say right now there's, it's an amazing time to be in the space enabling that person we call the Kinkeeper we use that term deliberately, interestingly, because I will say there's, there's part of the challenges. Most people who are in a role of quote unquote caregiver don't refer to themselves as a caregiver. Right, if you've got you know, if you're the parent of a kid with special needs or you're the adult child of an aging parent, you don't define yourself as a caregiver, right? You're a kid, you're a parent, you're someone you know who's taking care of a loved one. But so being able to could have built this ecosystem around these, these folks who are sitting in these roles, has been incredibly challenging, because there's not an economic model to support that.

Marc Bernstein: 16:04

That's very helpful to hear that, and we're going to continue in this conversation right after our.

Announcer: 16:09

It's no secret, when it comes to being able to confidently manage health, information is everything. Unfortunately, most people learn the hard way that managing health information can be overwhelming, exhausting and even isolating. We see you, the Kinkeeper, the one playing air traffic control for all the appointments and reminders, and central intelligence making sure everyone knows what they need to know when they need to know it. We created Kith and Kin for you to securely create, organize and share health information for all of your loved ones all in one place. Visit kithandkinapp to sign up today and become a more empowered advocate for those you care for and about.

Marc Bernstein: 16:55

We are back on Founders Forum with our guest today, Jill Michal, and Ang Onorato is here. Ang, I've been asking all the questions. Do you have anything you'd like to talk to Jill about?

Ang Onorato: 17:05

Oh well, as always, Marc, you know, I sit back in the wings sometimes and just hear and think a lot of really interesting things and I love this so much because I mean, obviously I'm sitting here going my whole family, we need this app. So I can't wait to get started on it.

Marc Bernstein: 17:20

But success you got one more subscriber today.

Ang Onorato: 17:23

Yeah, absolutely so. It's just so needed, and I love the. You know how you're addressing your target audience and your clients and the external facing folks. I'm also curious about you know how have you built the company on the inside in terms of you know how would you describe the culture? How do you attract people, what type of person do you look for? And you know today's workforce is very different. You know I've been in the recruiting space for many, many years in the executive leadership space, so I'm just curious what's working for you and how do you see this growth from a team development culture perspective? You know, moving, moving down the road.

Jill Michal: 18:00

Yeah, you know it's interesting that you started this this session with the conversation about resilience, right, because that's one of the things I look for in folks a fundamental belief in what we're doing and the perseverance and resilience to get it done. Because I will never bring someone into our organization and say come on in, this is easy, this is easy. You know it'll be, it'll be a cakewalk and you know you won't have to wake up every day and need to push through. You know I bring people into this organization who fundamentally believe that what we are doing is so important, but also understand that this is going to take time. If we were able to really solve the quote unquote consumer health care crisis, right, and the challenges of this person in a, in a kinkeeper or caregiver role, you know we would have done it in the last 20 years.

Jill Michal: 18:55

It's going to take individuals and organizations really trying to deeply understand the human. So I'm always looking for people who actually care about that very deeply personal journey. They have a personal story, they're engaged, they have a belief system that matters. But from a culture standpoint, I'm always looking for people who care more about getting it right than about being right. That's what's Driven the every team that I've ever worked on and that's mattered to me, you know, probably More than almost anything.

Marc Bernstein: 19:30

That's wonderful. You have a lot of great expressions and I know there's honey your guiding principles, and one of them we talked about and we were talking about resilience for you personally was that you love to do things in the face of fear, and you had another quote around that. Do you remember that one about behaviors?

Jill Michal: 19:48

Yeah, yeah, somebody gave me some really, really great advice at this point it's probably almost 20 years ago and said you know and never forget, that you can't talk yourself out of something you've behaved yourself into, and so I've that those words have lived with me forever Because you know you can put posters on the wall about your vision and your values. You know, but your integrity is what you do when nobody's watching right. And so being able to be in that space and Constantly have to ensure that your behaviors are a hundred percent aligned with your belief system and what you tell people you believe, has really mattered to me personally over the years, because I've, you know, you watch far too many folks who tell you something right and then behave in a totally different way. And there's, you know, that's just. It creates a lot of inconsistencies and a lot of lack of organizational, organizational clarity. And you know, for me, back to the no regrets, right? You know I don't have enough time to be one person. Some days I sure as heck can't be two people.

Marc Bernstein: 20:55

Right, so it sounds like you have the right people in place at this point. Yeah, absolutely.

Jill Michal: 21:00

I have amazing people who are passionate, committed, consistent, always deliver, but very clearly deeply care and are mutually accountable. Right, because I think it's you know. Look, it's easy to To manage people who report to you. But I've always said leaders are people who can lead, people who have the choice not to follow them. Right, and so I I love that. You know we've got a lot of leaders.

Marc Bernstein: 21:31

How do you find them? Because I'm sure, because everybody you know, finding good employees is very difficult out there today, and Let alone leaders that you're finding. How do you do what? What's your secret to that?

Jill Michal: 21:43

Yeah, it's um, you know, I I really start with the, the, the mission of the organization. As Polly and as that may sound, I need to know that you actually care about what we're doing and that you don't believe that this is just a kind of a Slam dunk day-in, day-out, or it's just a job, because I'm not going to be able to fill your bucket every day for you. You're gonna have to come in here and make sure that you're coming in fueled by the fact that you believe that what we're doing is so Fundamentally important. You're gonna push through, you're gonna push through the fear, you're gonna push through the things that are gonna go wrong Any day, and so you have to be able to have that. You have to be able to have that at your core and I think that allows you that and that personal level of accountability.

Jill Michal: 22:37

When I see that in folks and I typically have a relationship with people Before they work with me, relationship I'll call it loosely right. It may not have been years or decades right, but I have a sense of who they are as a person, and that's made it a lot easier for me to find the right people and the people that I want to spend time with because, let's face it, when You're in this kind of business, you spend a lot of time with your people what sounds like you say those things to people off-front and then you know pretty quickly if they're not one of those I would imagine a hundred percent.

Jill Michal: 23:08

I mean I will say that to people any time. I was just talking to somebody last week and I said look, you know we're talking about Bringing in somebody on the sales side. And I said I, I need somebody who's gonna put their shoulder to this boulder all day long. And you're gonna know it's not gonna be easy and and if that's not for you, that's okay. That is not the job for everybody, but you got to know that coming in right and you've got to know what. You know what we're up against in the space.

Ang Onorato: 23:36

I think that's such a critical part. You're almost like an ideal Recruiting client, because I can't tell you how many clients don't do that in their hiring process and then it doesn't work out, and then they're blaming their recruiter or whatever. I think that's so important to embody and represent your value even up front, before the first interview. So I love to hear companies that take that approach.

Marc Bernstein: 24:00

We have only three minutes left. Believe it or not, this time flies when you're having fun like this, and this has been a really fun show. Jill, I know you have a future vision for your company. If you were looking out 10 years from today and looking back, what would have to happen in your company and, I suppose, in your life for you to feel like that was a successful 10-year period?

Jill Michal: 24:20

I would look. My dream is that everybody feels confident in being a consumer of health and that 10 years from now, no matter where you are you are, you're dealing with just maybe you're just dealing with your kids' day-to-day health issues or you're dealing with, unfortunately, some kind of severe chronic condition that you're able to show up and lean in and be a first-class citizen in your healthcare, that you have the information you need, you have the confidence, you need the idea that healthcare is stressful enough, but if health information doesn't have to be that way, you can show up, you can lean in, you can truly be a true participant in that journey. It's going to change the game. It's going to fundamentally make those outcomes different and it's going to make us feel different both as consumers of health, but really as impactful and empowered advocates for the people we care for and about.

Marc Bernstein: 25:17

So can your app do that? Because I think you would also need the providers and the insurance companies to cooperate for that to happen as well.

Jill Michal: 25:25

Yeah, I think you need a whole ecosystem, right. So in this space, for me the vision is to create a different kind of ecosystem around caregiving than we have around others. And notice intentionally ecosystem, not set of silos. This is not a volume play right. This is this work, this next evolution. To achieve that vision, the whole has to be greater than the sum of its parts.

Marc Bernstein: 25:53

Well, it's an amazing vision. You're literally changing the world with what you're trying to do, and I know you're very passionate about it and I believe you will do it. We were talking earlier. You have an interesting way to look at success. How do you define success, Jill?

Jill Michal: 26:08

Yeah, success for me is knowing what makes you happy and being happy when you have that. And that sounds easy. It's so not.

Marc Bernstein: 26:19

Right, I understand that and we were talking about is that a destination or is that a journey? It's a little bit of both, I would imagine.

Jill Michal: 26:29

Absolutely. I also think it's a state of mind right, Because some days you're going to feel successful, some days you're not. But you have to be able to choose happiness some days, and that's not always easy. But to me it's what matters more than almost anything.

Marc Bernstein: 26:52

That's great, jill. You've said a lot today. We've covered a lot of ground and I've written down several quotes. I'm going to use them because you got a lot of great sort of guiding posts on that. So thank you for being here. It really is a pleasure, and everybody check out Kith and Kin. We don't usually do that, but I do think this is something that everybody can benefit from, because everybody is caring for somebody in some way or another. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to Founders Forum and we'll see you again next week.

Announcer: 27:21

You enjoyed your time with Founders Forum today and you found value to take with you throughout your day. Join us again next week for another episode of Founders Forum on WWDB Talk Radio.