The Scalability Code

Why Most Teams Fail (And How to Fix It Fast)

• Matt Haney • Episode 29

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What’s really holding your team back?

In this episode of The Scalability Code, Matt Haney and DeEtte Feurtado explore the hidden factors that prevent teams from performing at a high level.

From siloed departments to unclear accountability, DeEtte shares insights from her leadership journey on how to create alignment, trust, and measurable results across an organization.

In this episode:

  • Why teams struggle even with strong talent
  • How silos impact performance across departments
  • The importance of clarity, communication, and shared goals
  • A leadership approach rooted in curiosity and development

If you’re looking to unlock better performance from your team, this conversation delivers practical, real-world guidance.

Feeling stuck in your business?

It’s ok. We’ve all been there… You simply don’t have time for vision and growth. You feel frustrated, anxious, and stuck because goals aren’t being met, processes aren’t followed, and your team isn’t on the same page. Time after time, you’re putting out fires only fast enough for the next one to pop up.

Get OUT of the Sh*t Show 

Let’s build your team and guide them to the next level.

DeEtte Feurtado

In different departments, people probably naturally see things in different ways. They're probably naturally wired to handle challenges and they're motivated in different ways, right? But just like anything, like any team, every position on the team affects every other position on the team. So how do you really strategically integrate your teammates?'cause they may all be working in silos and it may feel that way, but really at the end of the day, those individual silos bleed into the team,

Speaker

Welcome to The Scalability Code, the podcast that helps you get out of the sh*t show and start growing your business. And now for your host, Matt Haney.

Matt Haney

Thanks for joining us again for an episode of The Scalability Code. My name's Matt Haney, and I'm joined today by a former client, turn friend, DeEtte Feurtado. Thanks for joining us today on the Scalability code.

DeEtte Feurtado

You are welcome, Matt. Glad to be here.

Matt Haney

So we start every episode the same way. We go back and we reflect on what it means to be an entrepreneur and everyone's path and journey to becoming an entrepreneur. And everyone has a different story and a different, path. But I'd love for you to think back if you can, and, recall your earliest entrepreneurial, memory, whether it was, someone who impression you as an educator, as a father, as an entrepreneurial experience you had, and ideally we'll tie that into some of your entrepreneurial drive and passions you have today. So, does anything come to mind?

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah, it's funny, I hadn't thought about this really in a super long time, but I think that my first venture into being an entrepreneur happened when I was in high school. Uh, my father at the time was a sales rep. He was a food broker, so he had all these accounts where he'd have different food and different types of food products that he would sell. And this one particular year. He got the account for the Reggie Bar and I don't know if anybody would be out there, remember the Reggie Bar, but it was a chocolate bar that was made after Reggie Jackson, uh, won the World Series way back in the day. And there were a bunch of clubs at my high school that were selling candy for fundraisers and I thought, man, I could use some extra money and I could probably sell some candy bars. So I talked my dad into getting a couple of cases of the Reggie Bar and I think I sold out in the first couple of days. And then my father was so excited about,'cause he was a sales guy, so he was just super excited about me being able to sell out in a couple of days. And so he just kept replenishing my supply of Reggie Bars at the time.

Matt Haney

Keep feeding the machine.

DeEtte Feurtado

okay. Yeah. But then I got in trouble like a year later I got, um, called into the principal's office because I wasn't part of, any club quote unquote.

Matt Haney

fundraising effort, you're like, listen, I'm the fundraiser raising funds for me.

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah, I should have been smarter and started like my own LLC or something, or like my own club at school to continue to, uh,

Matt Haney

given a portion of the proceeds back and kept your operating costs?

DeEtte Feurtado

exactly. But I was a little intimidated by the principal that shut me down. So that, was my first, at the same time, I guess my first soare into business ventures that didn't work or weren't sustainable.

Matt Haney

What'd you do with the money?

DeEtte Feurtado

I bought a sweatsuit, actually. I bought this really cool Adidas sweatsuit that I really wanted. I had wanted it for a long time and my, parents had said that I had to save up my own money to go get it. And so I went out and sold Reggie bars to be able to get it.

Matt Haney

That's so awesome. I had a guest on, it's been a few months now, but his first soiree into it is that he brewed beer in his closet in high school. So he went to the brewery store and bought a home brew kit and was literally brewing beer in his closet. I was like, that's a, that's, I've never heard that. I've never even come across it.

DeEtte Feurtado

That's super cool.

Matt Haney

That's awesome. Um, give us a little history on, your career and the progressions that you've made from somewhere between selling candy bars to where you are today, turns and trials and tribulations that have gotten you to where you are as a leader.

DeEtte Feurtado

when I was born I had, a defective heart valve when I was three, they discovered it. I was kind of blue out in the backyard, and I had to have open heart surgery. So back in the sixties when people had open heart surgery, after the surgery, The recommendation was that you weren't allowed to do anything taxing to your heart. So growing up I wasn't allowed to play. Like I did a lot of indoor activities, art, and I learned to play the piano and different kinds of things like that, but I wasn't really ever allowed to go out and play with the kids. And I was probably maybe 12 and I just, I couldn't take it anymore. My father had played, football at the University of Florida and I talked him into taking me to the cardiologist without my mom knowing about it. With the sole purpose? of getting clearance to be able to. to exercise and, I don't know how my dad did it, but he talked the doctor into letting me play a sport, but the doctor refused for it to be an individual sport, so it had to be a team sport. And I, started playing soccer. So my father, I think when he came home to tell my mom about what had happened, she probably had a few, um, not so nice words for him and told him that if anything happened to me that, you

Matt Haney

It's on you.

DeEtte Feurtado

yeah, pretty much. Uh, so then my father became my soccer coach for, almost my entire, life until I went to play, uh, soccer at the University of Florida. And since exercise was the thing that liberated me when I was a kid, it was just kind of a natural extension for me to go to University of Florida and get a degree in exercise physiology, which You know, I was super passionate about, and I was sitting in an exercise physiology class one day and one of the professors came in and said, Hey, there's this crazy guy named Arthur Jones and he's inventing this, uh, low back machine and he's given a grant to the University of Florida to do research with this low back device, and I think you guys should just go and volunteer for the lab. And something about what the professor mentioned just resonated with me. And so I went to go and volunteer, at the exercise physiology lab and the grant came through and then all of this research started with the medex lumbar extension device. So at the time I was just kind of a lab rat, was really involved intimately with all of the research. And then I graduated. I went to school to get my master's degree, and I came back to the University of Florida looking for a job. And then I was employed with, the College of Medicine to, teach clinicians how to use the medics device. And the clinicians that I were teaching, I was teaching doctors and physical therapists and chiropractors. And so I decided at that time that I was gonna be a physical therapist, so I took all of the prerequisites and the courses and all the chemistry and so forth, and I got accepted to the University of Indianapolis, to get my master's. And then a friend of mine, a colleague, a mentor, had decided that he was gonna go off and start his own, business to prevent low back injuries in the workforce by utilizing the medex lumbar extension device.

Matt Haney

So that was, that was your first kind of exposure into rehabilitation for lower back. I mean, you had, you were just curiosity got you there. It was, it was an opportunity to jump in and do research and that led you to discovering the medics Correct. Or, or discovering how it relates to you.

DeEtte Feurtado

It just started off as kind of a research project. And what was fun about it was Arthur Jones, he was also the inventor of Nautilus, which people probably remember from the eighties. And he, Arthur Jones had sold Nautilus in part of the agreement of selling Nautilus was that he wouldn't compete in the exercise space. So he decided that he was gonna use all of the principles that he used to make the Nautilus equipment to make rehabilitation equipment for the low back, the neck, and, and the knee. And he was a pretty strong, proponent of research. And so when he gave the grant to the University of Florida to start with, he kind of dropped off the medics machine and he just said. Just, do whatever research you guys want. And so we started looking at the validity of the device to measure low back strength. And then we started to look at protocols that develop low back strength with healthy individuals. Then we moved into, you know, how can the device help patients, with chronic low back pain? and the research just really kind of evolved, over the years.

Matt Haney

Give us a little bit of the gist of the product and some of how it works, what it was, what it is,

DeEtte Feurtado

if you wind back the hands of time and you go back to the eighties, I'll just take my dad as an example. when he was a young kid in high school and in college where he played football, exercise was really not what we think about it today. especially when it came to lifting weights. So back in the day, there was You know, a lot of emphasis on cardiovascular exercise, but the common feeling or belief was that lifting weights or bulking up, quote unquote, was really something that you should stay away from. And Arthur Jones had made, you know, millions of dollars and revolutionized the fitness industry with all of his Nautilus clinics by providing the single joint, cam loaded, uh, resistance training devices. And he really kind of took it, from a different angle, which was that if you look at like animals in the wild, this was one of the things that he always talked about. Like the ones that survived were always the ones with that were the biggest and the strongest, sort of with the biggest, strongest muscles. So working with Arthur really taught me, to kind of inverse a lot of the beliefs that were going on at that time, which was, you know, the heart was the most important muscle when you. Look at the cardiovascular body of information, but Arthur, you know, and to this day I believe it, like your heart really is in service to your muscles, to the amount of muscle mass that you have. And so when, when Arthur looked at, well, how can I make a rehabilitation device for the low, back in the eighties, he was really flying against the face of common beliefs for loading, you know, the lumbar spine in this case. And a lot of the treatment recommendations were around stretching, you know, they were around more passive modalities and those kinds of things. And it was really frowned upon to load up the spine with, what was perceived as, you know, a large amount of weight.

Matt Haney

Yeah. We don't, don't put weight on it, you're gonna hurt it. It's like, well actually little do we know we need to, to strengthen it and it, the core muscles and core emphasis wasn't a thing at that time. It was like you said, it was all cardiovascular during those days, which is interesting.

DeEtte Feurtado

it was also flexion exercises. So like if people were gonna do any type of exercise, it would be something where they were bending forward and Arthur was like, well, you're not really engaging the muscles of your low back when you're bending forward. Right. you're engaging your abdominal muscles. If you wanna get your back muscles stronger, you have to extend'em. So his, lumbar device was an extension device.

Matt Haney

let's fast forward a little bit to your journey with Medex. I don't think I realized, that you've been around the product for that long, for years, decades, perhaps, depending upon your age. give us the story of how you, ventured away I think and came back.

DeEtte Feurtado

like I said, when I was teaching the clinicians how to use Medex, I just felt like I wanted to take my next step. And that next step for me was to get a degree in physical therapy. And then as I mentioned, I was accepted to get a master's degree. And a friend of mine had started up, his own, entrepreneur business, which was called, Prevention First. And the idea behind the company or the vision of the company was to use the lumbar extension device in the prevention of low back injuries in the workforce. And they had landed this opportunity to do a pilot program with Northwest Airlines at the time, which later became Delta. And they had also landed pilot projects with, health span transportation and, 3M in Minneapolis Well, house span transportation really was like a, a paramedic service. for the hospital, and they were at really high risk. And then, of course, factory workers at 3M were at high risk, and my mentor colleague. Probably a week after I got accepted to get my master's degree. He called me and said, Hey, I got this great position that, I think you'd be really awesome for, and I wanna, offer you a, a job. You'd be my first employee. We're just kinda starting this company up. we got these really big contracts and we need somebody like you that can help come in and run it. And, um, I was like, man, I just, I worked two years to get into PT school and now I've

Matt Haney

And I just got in.

DeEtte Feurtado

And I'm moving to Indianapolis. and he is like, well, you know, why don't you think about it? And I said, okay, I'll think about it. And so I called my dad and I said, Hey, I don't know, this is just kind of a crazy idea, but I really wanna be part of this. And, you know, they've given me the opportunity to be part of a, startup company. You know, what do you think? And I, I'll never forget, he said, well, what do you have to lose? And I said. Well, I don't know, three years of school. And I just got accepted. And, and, uh, he said, well, could you ever be the first person of this company ever again? And I said, no. He goes, well, what are you gonna do? And I said, well, at least I'm going to another city that ends in OLIS. So I won't go to Indianapolis, but I'll head off to Minneapolis. and so I withdrew from the physical therapy program and, moved in December, which is a whole nother story, to help start this company.

Matt Haney

so that's fantastic. So you were literally employee one. and did they have any revenue or any processes or systems or anything? Or was it just, Hey, here's an idea, we've got a little seed capital, let's go do it.

DeEtte Feurtado

It was all of those things. Actually, it was kind of my first introduction into like really what it is like to start something up from nothing. So, you know, we didn't really have any money and the owners, a couple of them funded it to begin with. And then as we kind of moved through, you know, the months into the years, then we went out and, and did some fundraising. so that was one thing I learned about how hard it was to fundraise and the experience that you go through with that. And then the other side of it, which was, I mean, we were working with really big companies, right? And so we were just ecstatic that they were letting us kind of come in. They gave us access to their claims data, to their injury data. And the idea was that we would. Do an analysis of their injury and their claims data prior to the implementation of the program. And then we would look at, the claims data after we implemented the program. but they were all proof of concepts. So I think that this is probably something, that all entrepreneurs go through, which is like, we think we have something and we really believe in it, but maybe it'll work, you know, and

Matt Haney

exactly. I would say you're, you are, uh. More of the exception than the rule on the fact that you're very much a measure once, twice, three times and then make a cut. Like, I think the average entrepreneur probably cuts first and then measures three times afterwards, wondering why he didn't do those three cuts first. having worked with you cherish and appreciate the fact that you are, unique that way. Were you able to build those systems and help those processes? I'm sure you was the person that was at your other side, were they more of the visionary or What was that like?

DeEtte Feurtado

I think certainly the founders they were a combination of visionary and they were a combination of operations people. to our detriment, we didn't have early on that real sales minded, gonna go out and cut another deal. we were all really more wired in that operations you know, mindset as opposed to a sales, mindset. one thing in the proof of concept models, and I think this is why this way about measuring three times, is that when you're in a research atmosphere and you're doing research. You start with a hypothesis and then you try to control all of the variables that are related to that hypothesis to see like what kind of conclusion you get. So the standardization of the process and the way that the variables are controlled is really important to the outcomes, as it relates to what you're trying to prove. So I really just brought that same idea to these proof of concepts, which was, how do we have protocols that people follow and they're not just whimsical and, you know, how do we measure progress and how do we measure, our results? And really at the end of the day of all of those three major companies, we showed significant reductions in the incidents of low back injuries with, cost savings related to the fact that those injuries were being prevented. and North us expanded the proof of concept. Actually we started off in one hub in Denver, and then we ended up going to Tennessee, and then in Detroit as well. So it was actually a lot of fun and we scaled really, really quickly.

Matt Haney

That's awesome. what a great launch. so where did that, segue into kind of the next few steps into your career and, were there any pivotal times during the formation or the strategy in that company or pivots that sort of gave you direction to move forward in a different direction or continue to stay your path? any catalysts along the way?

DeEtte Feurtado

a lot of artistic experiences. I mean, I was so young at the time, but, as we grew, the owners or the partners, whatever you wanna call'em, decided that they needed to bring in an outside CEO right? That was not part of the original group. And they did that with kind of the intention of being able to raise more money and to be able to breed, you know, in some leadership and some. Structure really to the leadership. And what I learned about that was on paper, I think the CEO looked, spectacular. But culturally, when he kind of came in, it introduced just a whole lot of stress and tension amongst him and also the owners of the company, which was difficult for everyone to navigate. I also learned, really firsthand,'cause I was flying around to all the sites originally doing all of the openings and working there for a period of time, how important it was to hire people that you could trust and people that would follow, the process and the policies.'cause I was, at one location and then flying off and going to another location. And I certainly felt the pressure of the proof of concept, right. Which was like, if man, if we don't prove the concept,

Matt Haney

then we're all outta work. And this has been a great idea. Well, you, you triggered on something I want to, I want to pick up for just a second. you mentioned hiring the right people. Were you involved in that process during the expansion?

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah, I was running operations. I probably didn't have the title that would reflect that, but I was the person that was going and doing all the work and doing all the hiring and doing all the training, and then doing all of the, reviews, which was kind of in hindsight, like, I don't even know what I was doing at the time,

Matt Haney

Do you remember how old you were during that time? More or less? you still in your twenties.

DeEtte Feurtado

29 I think I was like, I hadn't turned 30 yet.

Matt Haney

Isn't it fascinating? you can remember this point too, where it's like, oh shit, I'm responsible for hiring these people, and that's great. Everyone loves hiring and all this stuff, but then it's like, oh, and I'm also responsible for their success or failure. That's a little bit of pressure. It's a little bit on my shoulders.

DeEtte Feurtado

And I'm sure other people in healthcare. Not only that, but of hurting patients, right? like there's this Yeah. And also too, I mean, patients are coming to you to be helped, right? Like, so the last thing that you wanna do is, is hurt them, you know, with something that you're trying to provide them that's gonna help them.

Matt Haney

Uh, really interesting. Do you remember, uh, like onboarding those people and I think back sometimes and I'm like, I really didn't have a plan. It was just like, trial by fire and get good luck. Here's the chair, not the metaphorical chair. Sit in it and figure out how to do the work. I'm sure you approach it a little differently, but, I don't know if you had those times where you're like, wow, these people are really wanting me to tell'em what to do and I don't quite know.'cause we haven't figured it out yet.

DeEtte Feurtado

I wish I could say yes, but

Matt Haney

You're not that way. You're, I get it. You're, you're much more, methodical.

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah, I mean, I can remember creating training manuals and protocol manuals and interview questions and, just bringing all the structure that I would normally bring. Now, I don't know if the interview questions were any good, but I know that I was convinced that I had to have a standard set of interview questions. But I can remember one particular time of, well, two particular times of just complete humility, right? Like, you learn lessons to your point of my, you know, measure three times or four or five before I cut. you'll think, this is a funny story. We had the opportunity at Northwest Airlines, the operations team at Northwest, at DIA, they would always have like five minute huddles or 10 minute huddles every day where they would bring their main leadership into. And they would just round on operational issues and we got a chance to come in and give the operational team just like a little mini two minute, you know, update on, on the program that we were doing. And so my boss and his boss came into town to give the presentation and I was gonna give a part of it and they were gonna give another part of it. And we didn't have any materials. We wanted to give out a handout. And so they asked me to go about five minutes before the meeting started to copy the handout. and I ran down the hall, as you can imagine, like the CEO of of, or you know, of, of that version of Northwest was there. And, the copier wouldn't copy the documents clear enough. And so I was so focused on the idea that I just can't give this executive team something that's, Beyond not perfect. And so I was so focused on, getting the quality of the print together that I completely missed the meeting. So I come back, like seven or eight, 10 minutes later, right?

Matt Haney

I am here. I got it all.

DeEtte Feurtado

I was like, okay, okay, I'm ready. And my boss turned to me and he said, you gave a great presentation today. And of course, you know, I went from being bolstered to like down to like, ooh. but it was the first time I guess that I can remember where I kinda came into challenge of this idea that there's a balance between operational perfection or perfection. And my other boss used to say, you know, the archrival of perfect is good. And I'm like, oh yeah, that makes a lot of

Matt Haney

yeah. Progress, not perfection. Yeah, no, that's so true. And I think not surprisingly, sometimes I struggle with, or, or did struggle probably as I've gotten older, it hasn't been such a big deal, but definitely when I was younger, just turning out subpar product to turn something out I, I think for me, it wasn't until I got a older that I was like. It's okay to, to spend a little more time on it, get it right, or, and, and maybe not get it right, but get something you're proud of. There's been a few times I've turned in some stuff early in my career where I wasn't proud of it, but, you know, and some of it got called, some of it didn't get called, some of it got noticed and didn't get brought up. but who knows? well, cool. Well, let's keep moving. so where did you lead? Like where'd you get to after that?

DeEtte Feurtado

Um, so a little while later we hired a high power sales person. He was a friend of mine He moved from Florida. He was part of the original, group of people that were selling the medics devices, back in the day. And he moved, from Gainesville to Minneapolis. And he was crushing it on, sales leads and, you know, opportunities to take the results that we had of these pilot programs that we had done and we were trying to expand. And so two things happen, which sometimes you just get lucky, and sometimes not so lucky. So, he was growing the sales pipeline and he got to the point where he had this opportunity to bring the injury prevention program to Walmart. And Walmart was, interested in putting these programs in all of their superstore throughout the United States. And then there was even some conversation about potentially doing some beta test internationally. And so he was working vigilantly on trying to get that, deal closed and, operations was going great. And then one day, you know. Nine 11 happens and,

Matt Haney

Yeah,

DeEtte Feurtado

And since the bulk of our client was airlines at that point. And then we had, companies that were in support of airlines, within maybe two weeks, like all of our beta tests and everything, all of our contracts with them were canceled. And then probably, maybe 30 days later, and we couldn't fundraise anymore. Like we couldn't support ourselves'cause nobody was investing at that point. Like everybody's priorities were, completely different. We didn't have enough cash and reserve. And so, the company folded, pretty quickly,

Matt Haney

so many companies at that time that were just doing fine in the world. So man, that's, so you had to go through that.

DeEtte Feurtado

And then that was my first, experience with laying people off and, collecting recollecting inventory, which is not fun. but the sales guy that was working on the on the Walmart deal, he was so close and he was so determined that he decided to start his own company. And he pivoted and, and instead of selling injury prevention, which nobody was really interested in, he convinced Walmart to allow us to have a, a pilot project I think we started with three Walmart, Supercenters and a retail model. So they allowed us to rent the vestibule space in the front of the Walmart Superstore. And then what we were doing is we were trying to provide low back strengthening programs for people with low back pain outside of the normal healthcare,

Matt Haney

So would this be targeted towards the Walmart customer or the Walmart employee?

DeEtte Feurtado

No, it was, it was targeted towards a Walmart customer and, and the employees were allowed to participate too. But this was to the customer themselves.

Matt Haney

Was this a fee for service where the customer would pay for a certain period of time or what was the model?

DeEtte Feurtado

it was like a gym membership model if I had to describe it. so we started off with three locations and my friend, said, well, I've started this new business and you've done all this great work. It looks like you don't have a job since your company just closed down and, you wanna come in and be my chief operating officer and help me get these things up and going. And I was like, okay.

Matt Haney

and this was still on the MedX.

DeEtte Feurtado

this was still in the medics? Yeah, this was like, this was like a pivot. So it went from

Matt Haney

Yeah.

DeEtte Feurtado

workplace, like a injury prevention workplace model to now a retail model, like a health club, like a gym model.

Matt Haney

Yeah. Fascinating.

DeEtte Feurtado

it was kind of fun, like we'd have these MEDEX devices and the vestibule spaces up in front of the cashiers, you know, the checkout area. People would come in with their kids and their shopping carts and you know, their, all of their

Matt Haney

Whatever. All the stuff they got. Yeah.

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah, whatever, whatever stuff they had, which was fun. and then, you know, our investors told us, this was the first time I learned about the power of scaling too fast, which our investors were telling us that you would generate more value in the company if you weren't just in three stores, if you were an eight, or if you're a 10 or if you're in 12. and we resisted,'cause we hadn't really figured out at that time, like how to really become super profitable in one location. But we had a chairman of the board at that time and he was really intricate involved in fundraising and they were pushing us to scale. So we scaled to like yeah, around 15 locations, I would say.

Matt Haney

what period of time? How long did it take you? More or less?

DeEtte Feurtado

maybe three or four years we kind of did that. but the challenge always was we were chasing profitability for the idea that we would be able to sell, right? because we had the landscape of being inside Walmart, which gave us tremendous scalability opportunity, like if we even, you know, global. But as a company itself, we really hadn't yet figured out, like, how do we sustainably get people to come in and become, paying customers

Matt Haney

right. And keep them. Well. Fast forward us a little bit, get us to closer to where you are today, and then I wanna talk about some leadership stuff.

DeEtte Feurtado

Uh, so that company we scaled and then, it, at some point it went under as well and, pivoted to kind of turn it into an outpatient rehabilitation company. I'm fast forwarding that. Eventually petered out as well. And then I got an opportunity to, come to work for a company called Pure Healthy Back. And the pure healthy back model was, trying to work with organizations that wanted to provide accountable care to their employees. So it was a self-funded model and in a lot of companies that are self-funded. They really have an incentive, internally to contain their costs related to low back pain treatments. And so we got an opportunity to, do kind of another pilot program with a large hospital system in New Orleans with this model. we were trying to demonstrate that we could contain healthcare costs related to the treatment of back pain. We did another kind of pilot beta test. The results, the analysis were fantastic and we were asked to scale. And the challenge that we had at that time was we were in a brick and mortar location, and the system in Louisiana had 14,000 employees that they were trying to cover. but those employees were spread out all across the state. some of them were en large populations, but you had A lot of employees in remote areas that were driving a lot of the healthcare expenses where it wasn't really feasible to, they couldn't get access. And so we started to brainstorm around how could we bring the program to them. And at that point, we invented, a medex device that could be used in, a person's house, which was pretty instrumental because we eliminated the challenge related to access.

Matt Haney

That's awesome. So here you are still in your career on this, this Medex device

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah. I, I really, I am, I don't know if it's good or bad to say, but it's been my career since, you know, since

Matt Haney

since since college. which

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah.

matt-haney_2_02-06-2025_192447

You are listening to the Scalability Code. I'm your host, Matt Haney, founder of Sinclair Ventures, and we help visionary entrepreneurs like you get out of the shit show and focus on growing your business. We offer fractional COO and leadership coaching services that free up that brain of yours to focus on what's next. Learn more about us at SinclairVentures. com. Now back to it.

Matt Haney

and somehow you ended up with the folks at Converge Med Medical Technologies, and that's how you and I crossed paths. So you are at another startup.

DeEtte Feurtado

Yes. So the brick and mortar model just wasn't working and we were trying to figure out how to expand this in-home sort of program. And we got introduced to a group of people that were really experienced in DME products and DME services inside patient's home. And they had strong sales acumen and myself and the other, partner really had strong acumen in, operations and sort of, fundraising and, and investment type strategies. So we merged and, created converged medical technology.

Matt Haney

And how long ago was that?

DeEtte Feurtado

2018. Yeah.

Matt Haney

That's awesome.

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah.

Matt Haney

so you joined another startup, merged. So you had some existing business, but one thing I know that most people don't know, is that you joined a, a group of people and it's you and three partners, four partners.

DeEtte Feurtado

there were six of us that started and one of the six partners, stepped away. so now there's five of us.

Matt Haney

Did you know those folks, before this, like, Or were you walking into some strangers?

DeEtte Feurtado

I knew one other person. He and I had worked together for a really long time, but the other four, I did not know whatsoever.

Matt Haney

Which is a fascinating, experience to go into an agreement or understanding with someone or a group of people that you've never worked with. I did that, one of the company that we founded and sold my partner, one partner I knew, well, the other partner, I didn't know who we brought in because he was a subject matter expert and he had a, group of labor people that we needed. And so we formed this three-legged stool, which is always challenging when you've got two people that know each other coming in to bring a third person in. it was just like, we gotta form a deal that makes sense. We've gotta make sure that we like the person, we've gotta trust everyone, You had a similar scenario where you knew one of your partners but didn't know the other ones. And it's like, okay, here we are. I hope we can make this work together.

DeEtte Feurtado

I mean, maybe I'm just simple minded. Like I, I just really liked everyone and I felt really inspired by the conversations that we had and inspired by the opportunity. And I think sort of like once everyone said yes and we decided to kind of move forward with it everybody's work rate, just, told me everything that I needed to know, like right from the start.'cause everybody really went into high gear in the buckets of things that they were really good at. And it just really didn't cross my mind to be super honest, to be, worried about it. I was actually really excited about it. Like it was, I just really wasn't sort of in the head space of like, what are all the things that could go wrong? And I

Matt Haney

Let's just go do it. Yeah.

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah, let's just go do it. Like we can go help people and this is a great model and this is really fun and we really have something that people need and let's go do it.'cause this is cool. Nobody's ever done it, you know, before.

Matt Haney

Right. I reminded, uh, last time I saw Mark that, converge is actually a logistics company. like, he kind of laughed and I was like, you, you, you guys are, yes, you are doing a lot of great things and helping people and getting them back to being healthy, but you are moving a bunch of shit around a lot of times and a lot of different people all over the place. And just that whole element of your business is challenging to me. But I want to, I wanna segue into leadership. Because, um, you know, your whole career you've worked with people and had to lead them. And I think you have a very, special way of motivating people. and if you could think about, like, if you could describe your way of being a leader, I think it'd be fun to hear in your words, and then I'm gonna explain the way I think you lead and we'll see if they line up.

DeEtte Feurtado

I think sometimes these are really big ideas. I think for me, like where I started to kind of create an idea of leadership, what that means really started through coaching. Like if I really kind of pull it back and I think about it.'cause even when I was leading like the teams in. The prevention company, maybe every center had one person or two people and they were really spread out from each other. So it was easy to kind of come in and have a relationship with just one person and you weren't trying to influence them. And maybe like in a group, like in a group setting. with coaching it's all the things about leadership. do I have the right players in the right position? So I coach soccer, do I have the people that are focused on scoring in the right spots, the people that are focused on protecting the house in the right spots and, am I setting, clear expectations with them? You know, am I following up on my level of, Commitment, like, am I holding myself accountable to the things that I'm asking them, to be held accountable to? And then the measure was always winning, which I was telling, one of my managers today, like, I had a really strong winning percentage, like 90% in the time that I coached. But the winning percentage never really motivated me. Like, I mean, it was fun to win, but not because I had 12 wins or 13, but because to see the kids just, you know, scream out in joy if they won a championship game or to watch the parents, you know, celebrate because everything that they had invested in the kids and in the team to get there. So I, I was always more, naturally curious and inspired by the development of the players and also the community health, of the team. Those were things that were always really important to me. And I was telling my manager that I read a book the Pyramid of Success by, uh, Lou Holtz, I believe way

Matt Haney

Yeah, I've heard it. I've heard it.

DeEtte Feurtado

yeah, he was talking about how he would always, you know, the winningest coach in basketball history. He would do a pregame warmup by talking about a poem. And I thought, well, hell, if it's good for him, I'm gonna try it. So for like a year, you know, before every game we would do a little bit of a warmup, and then we'd come back and we'd all sit down and be discussing a poem and the opposing team would always walk by and just be confused.

Matt Haney

going on over

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah.

Matt Haney

are they talking

DeEtte Feurtado

much. Yeah. But we'd always win. So I,

Matt Haney

Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump in and give you, some of the things I've witnessed and, I think one of your greatest strengths is your, genuine curiosity for people, right? you have this innate ability to just be curious about what someone's doing and what motivates them and understanding these people. And I think that curiosity makes you a very attractive leader because who doesn't like to have someone around them that's curious about others? And I think that gives you an element of trust and more importantly, an element of respect by your peers because they know how genuine you are in those asks. It's really hard for me to not want to go to battle with someone who cares about me as a human, not just me as an outcome or a need or a want. So I'll give you a ton of credit for that, People that are on your team want to go into battle with you. They want to, and I think a lot of that has to do with how you're wired, but your coaching and your background and your competition and your teamwork. Like, it pays off to be really, genuine and you are. So I think that's a great trait that I've seen in you and that I obviously try to embody. And you're a good role model for me in that sense.

DeEtte Feurtado

Thanks. I think thank you for the compliment. I, it's not easy for me to take. I'm not an extroverted person, so if you put me in a room and asked me to go meet 10 people at a party, I probably would maybe meet one. And that would be only if they sat down and started talking to me and I had no choice but to talk to them. Um, but, you know, put me in a group of people that are my work mates or my, players or whatever the case may be. then I have a different mindset to it, which is, I really wanna help you. it's not so much so that I really wanna help you so that I look good or that there's a score that you get, but it's like, you're here and you're working and you're spending a lot of time here. Don't you want to get better? Don't you wanna improve? You know, and that's really something that has always just been part of who I am.

Matt Haney

let's switch to some challenges. if you could think back, I always tell people, think back this week because, those of us in leadership in some capacity, deal with challenges every week. any, any aha moments or anything that comes to mind? and think about it. I'll give you an example of something that literally happened this morning at 8:00 AM. dealing with one of my clients who actually was fortunate enough to just sell their business to Accenture, at the end of last year, and I was involved in that process was awesome. But, you know, as you go through these compressed timeframes, I take for granted the fact that I've only known some of these people, or I've hired some of these leaders in such a short period of time. We get so comfortable so quickly. One of the leaders that I hired reminded me this morning. He said, I've been there. Five months and 24 days. And I was like, oh shit. He hadn't even been in this company for six months. I feel like I've been with this guy for a year and a half, and he is an awesome leader and very humble, and very self-aware, And, um, he just said, you know, I missed this. He's like, I was busy working on this and this and this, and this thing just popped up and I missed it. He's like, I absolutely missed it. and he, there were some repercussions around it from a client facing, they, they deliver services, software services to a client. the client was essentially reported back that they were dissatisfied through a net promoter score of some sort. They said, Hey, we're off track in this. And of course it made it back to the big boss. And the big boss comes to me and he is like, what's going on? And then I call my guy, oh, my guy doesn't know. And the moral of the whole story is that as you start running a hundred miles an hour, something's going to fall through the crack. And in this instance, it happened to have been the delivery of their service. but I was quick to coach the owner to say the founder, visionary. I was like, Hey, just chill. Don't react. Like not all is lost, but more importantly, what are we gonna do to fix this? And even more important, how are we gonna prevent this from happening again? that was an example of something that I think if people, get a chance to speak their mind before they've processed what they want, sometimes you get this blurted out response with words you've said that you can't recall. So I was able to sort of navigate that conversation between two people and help them and not because I'm special, but just because I gave them both a chance to explain it where they weren't with each other. We had a great conversation, you know, and in this scenario it ends with, you know, sunshine and roses, but it doesn't always, we were able to kind of come back together and form a game plan that took the customer's need first, and then a process or a system together so that we could get alerted of things before it went, too far. So I don't know if you've seen any challenges that were, um, unique or that you found a solution for that would be impactful.

DeEtte Feurtado

I mean, the first thing that came to mind is chaos. especially in startup businesses, you start with a vision or an idea and then you get like one step, and then you start to see that the vision is gonna work, right? But you don't have any operational processes in place, and so you're simultaneously growing and then you're building, you know, at the same time, and it creates a certain amount of chaos, right? And so I think that just slowing down enough to realize like how much chaos is okay, and then how much chaos is gonna lead to like a total collapse. Like if we don't, if we don't address it,

Matt Haney

Sometimes that's a very fine line. Right.

DeEtte Feurtado

It's a super fine line. and not only just trying to address it, but really fixing it, like really addressing it. Like really kind of getting in that next level of operational organization that's sustainable. Right. And it's not just like a fix of the week or, whatever that may be. in no particular order, interdepartmental influence and communication, how important that really is In different departments, people probably naturally see things in different ways. They're probably naturally wired to handle challenges and they're motivated in different ways, right? But just like anything, like any team, every position on the team affects every other position on the team. So how do you really strategically integrate your teammates?'cause they may all be working in silos and it may feel that way, but really at the end of the day, those individual silos bleed into the team, right? and that intersection where everybody's together, we should all protect because that's really where the beauty is, is when that interconnection, where everyone's understanding what their role is and how to hold each other accountable. And not only that, but how to work Fluidly together to improve both sides. Like, you know, it's sort of like I would never have a soccer team where the defenders never talked to the midfielders and the midfielders never talked to the forwards

Matt Haney

That'd be a disaster.

DeEtte Feurtado

Right. And we somehow expected to win, you know? Right. And we would never talk to the goalkeeper'cause Well, you

Matt Haney

They're way back there.

DeEtte Feurtado

They're way back there and kind of, they're kind of weird. Anyway. Um, sorry, goalkeepers out there. and then also I would just say, for me, staying away from big words, accountability is a big word. Like what does that really mean? I always ask this question rhetorically, like, what does that mean? You know, if you're not getting to a meeting on time, are you accountable? And if so, how does that roll out into other things that you're really trying to do? And then, I could go on, but really being mindful about development, not only yourself as a leader. With mentor groups and coaches that you look for outside of the organization?'cause I don't think that every manager or every leader in an organization is naturally someone that's invested in developing the people that report to them.

Matt Haney

Totally agree.

DeEtte Feurtado

And it's really easy to get into, I told you Matt, to do it like this, you know, sort of mindset. But it's not very rewarding. It's not very sustainable and nobody really likes it. So how do you really become someone who's invested in themselves to develop and then invest it in the people around them, you know, to develop.

Matt Haney

All right. I wanna switch to one more thing and then, then we're gonna hop off. But I do have to tell you I'm a proud moment when, you and I were getting ready for, you know, just chatting, texting a little bit about before meeting today, you said, I'd like to forward you a document and I'd like for you to look at it. And I was like, okay, great. And, I want you to go back, if we can succinctly talk about the program that you run now. And how it's metric driven. and then what changes you implemented as a hypothesis and then what the outcome was. And you know where I'm going. Hopefully you have a hat next to you.

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah. I have to go get it if you want me to go get

Matt Haney

it's fine. I'm just giving you a hard time about it. But tell us about the program and the hypothesis that you built and the team and what the goal was and the outcome

DeEtte Feurtado

So I have, I'm gonna probably bounce some kudos back to you'cause I don't think that that opportunity would've ever happened without you. My background has always been in patient care and clinical operations. And in July of, of 2025, I was working with Matt and I was asked by the leadership team to take over the, intake and authorizations team, for the company. As far as a set of experiences working within the intake and the authorization team was just not something that I had experienced a lot of in my career. And, and of course I had experienced insurance within my career, but not within the process of how you go about and secure and authorization and how you go through the process of, of appealing a denial within the work comp system. That was definitely not something that I had any expertise in, or even really any cursory, knowledge of. But I was approached to take over the team and my vision for taking over the team was that I, I saw this disconnect between two departments within the company, which was the the patient care services side, and the intake and the authorization side. Because the two really go hand to hand. Even just from throughput, right? Like so At the start of the throughput process is, you know, you get a prescription and then we start to work on authorization. And if we were able to secure an authorization, then the patient starts, you know, in, in one of the programs with the devices. And so I just saw this kind of natural opportunity at first related to the, talents of the patient care team. Because they were organized, they were detail oriented, they were focused on providing outstanding patient care. And we needed that organization to kind of bleed over into and improve upon the operational processes of the intake team. And so what I wanted to do was create, first step was to create a role called the clinical operations coordinator role, which was a position that served in the middle of both departments. And the goal of that role was to. Do outreach conversations with patients to collect additional information from them that could help within the authorization process. And we launched it but I don't know if this was just humility or what, I mean going into a new team and being the senior leader of the team for a team that I didn't know really anything about the specific operational processes was really daunting.'cause I couldn't say whether it was right or wrong, or I couldn't really, you know,

Matt Haney

And just for the record, nobody else could say whether it was right or wrong. You're walking into a, a game that's measured differently by each player. I think it's like, maybe not necessarily completely measured, but you know, there was a lot of, in your world, in your life, questionable data. doesn't compute well with you. it, you gotta trust it and it, it was challenging

DeEtte Feurtado

it was totally challenging, but I really didn't know. So from the point of humility, like I just knew I needed to go in and listen and learn and let people talk. And so the first part of my onboarding in the department was really to just sit and listen and let everyone share their experience with me so that I could start to learn. And in the process of listening, and I would start to ask questions, at which you would assume Matt, like, well, how long does it take you to do this? Like,

Matt Haney

by the way, perfectly logical questions. These are like, you would think, 1 0 1.

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah, like how long does it take you to process a submit? what are the challenges that prevent you from being able to process the submit? So this kind of goes into the idea of bad data, right? like when you have a submit that has bad data, like where does it go? what happens to it and who takes care of getting it, better as data. we looked pretty hard at the scorecard and, for weeks I looked at the scorecard and I literally would end the calls and say to myself, I have no idea what that thing's supposed to mean, but the team thinks they know what it means, right? you know, and then I just continued to ask different questions like, how do we document this? What are the expectations for follow-up calls? how do we hold ourselves accountable for making sure that we get things from point A to what does point A to point B look like how do we hold ourselves accountable from getting the point A to point B? So those were my questions. I started with questions and, and I didn't come in thinking like I knew everything, which gave me an opportunity to create a relationship with each of the intake teammates, in addition to the manager, which was really critical, right? Because you come in and you're taking over a new team and the manager that was there before was promoted into a different department, but he was moving away from this particular team. And so there was

Matt Haney

The team he built, right? his his hires. Yeah.

DeEtte Feurtado

And so they felt loss, right? And of course they didn't, they didn't know who I was or what I stood for. And so I really knew that the best first step was to just listen. And then I started to ask questions like, what don't you have that you need to do your work every day? You know? And people started to say simple things like, I don't have earphones, my. Computer screen is too small. I need something that's bigger. Like I don't have a backpack for my chair, you know? And so I tried to eliminate all of the little things that make people really upset with work because they don't have the things to do, you know, their job.

Matt Haney

Yeah.

DeEtte Feurtado

Um, so I, I fixed that and then I used to do this in coaching, but it happened sort of, by accident. Like we went into a meeting and everybody kind of came in and they sort of were like, oh, I'm so tired. It's been such a long day. and then somebody offhandedly said, that's just the struggle bus. And I was like, what does that mean you guys? Like, what does that term mean? And I'm like, you've never heard of the Struggle bus? And I'm like, no, I never have heard of the Struggle bus. And so they told me what it was, and I had remembered this book that I read a long time ago, which was called The Energy Bus. And so I asked if each of them. Play a game with me and read a couple of chapters of the Energy bus that we could talk about every day, because what they were recounting and their struggles felt really negative and not optimistic. It felt like they could not do anything about it. So we started reading the Struggle Bus. I sent them this little figurine of a bus and each of them had their own customized buses. so we created a language of, we can do it together.

Matt Haney

Yeah. And by the way, I know, I know the role that they sit in. It's a hard job and it's a lot of volume. It's a lot of weight, it's a lot of details, it's a lot of, confusion. You've got people making subjective decisions about people and their wellbeing, and you're submitting a request for someone to pay for someone to get better, and they're getting denied for reasons that you can't calculate, and you're just constantly guessing and trying and it's dense. Right. I think it's a very dense role to be in, in the company.

DeEtte Feurtado

Instance, and it's heavy in the sense that it's, relatively unrewarding and unrecognized, throughout the company.

Matt Haney

Yeah. Your, Your, people aren't calling you and thanking you for getting you through the approval. they, they just, you don't ever talk to the person's life that you've impacted positively.

DeEtte Feurtado

well, that, and, the, the company's very sales heavy and a lot of the accolades and the focus go, towards the sales team and not towards the operations team. there's just not really a lot of cultural, parade for the operations team and I definitely brought that to the team. I was like, man, you guys are, this is awesome. but after a few weeks, I was like, okay, I don't understand the process, so let's improve the process. Like if this was a research study, we are doing way too many things differently. And I don't even know how different they are, but why are we doing everything differently? if we don't know how to bake a cake, we need to figure out how to bake the cake?

Matt Haney

Yeah. and common language. Common terms. Yeah.

DeEtte Feurtado

And so I just decided that we were gonna focus on the throughput of the process. So if we get one submit, what do we need to do consistently across all the teammates to get it through the pipeline to get to a decision so that everybody's doing it the same way. And so I recreated the scorecard and it had nothing to do with, like the end result. It had to do with the steps. So how many patients did you have in each of the steps, and how long did they stay in those steps? was really important. And it was the first time that the intake team had ever had a scorecard that measured their ability to have throughput. To have throughput with some type of pace, and visibility.'cause everything else was just before. it was just all together. It was just co-mingled. Like you couldn't figure out like who was doing what. So we just, I remember, you know, the leadership team was like, what kind of scorecard is that? There's like no real KPIs on it and I'm like, nobody can get to a KPI if we don't know how to get there. So we need to figure out how to get there before the KPI even matters and we're gonna figure out, you know, how to get there. so I would say that's the first thing that I really did was really gain, support from the team to implement that. and then the second thing, I went undercover. You know, I think that there's a lot of value. I think as leaders, you get away from the grind of everything and you think you know it all, when in reality you don't know anything about what the team really needs or what they're experiencing. So I threw myself into, writing appeals, which took a burden off of the team.'cause they're timely, they're lengthy, they take a lot of time to write. The success rate, is like. We've just won the Super Bowl, so to speak. but every authorization is a patient that we get to help and you're fighting, for that every step of the way. and so I got to see the level of work burden that each of the intake team members had on them. And I, because I was new and this wasn't something I had done for 20 years, it just felt like gigantic boulders that I was like, we gotta fix this.'cause we can't sustain this because it's not efficient and it's too heavy really. then I got really intrigued with improving operations. And so I reached out to a coach that could help me write, appeals or help me write, pre-authorization requests using ai. And then through that process, it was liberating to be able to see how much using AI could really speed up the process where you're not really creating everything and then reviewing everything and then sending it off. You're using software to help you create, and then you're reviewing it, but it's cutting your overall total time down, significantly.

Matt Haney

Talk about the response from the team. When you suggested this hypothesis and you put it in place what was the response to the AI and the output.

DeEtte Feurtado

Well, it's actually not in place yet. So the first thing I put in place was I took over writing the denial letters or the appeal letters, which I was learning about. What it was that was preventing the success, of the authorization. Like what were the reviewers looking for, or finding lack of information around in order to authorize, a device or the adjusters. So that was really enlightening. And then I think the intake team was just really inspired with the idea that the appeal letters I was writing and sending back to them. But I asked, so this was strategic. I asked them to read every single appeal letter because I wanted them to learn something new from a different angle that they themselves hadn't really thought of or been working through because they were saying the same kinds of things to everybody over and over and over again. So I asked them to read everything with the hope of developing them because the messages were different, through those appeal letters.

Matt Haney

That's awesome. And were you able to put in AI or you're still working on that? I mean, I,

DeEtte Feurtado

so it's been about a seven or eight month journey to get that approved, by, by the leadership team. I definitely can get frustrated with too many hoops that I have to jump through to demonstrate that this may work. So, we finally got approval to implement it, and We started the implementation last week.

Matt Haney

Oh, that's fantastic.

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah.

Matt Haney

On top of, an incredible, you know, improvement metrics from first half of last year to the second half of last year. I'm looking at it in the background. your submissions were up, by almost 38%. which is incredible'cause that's the top of funnel. your approvals were up 82%, which is incredible. and your authorization percentage was up almost 10%, which means for every 10 that went through, you got another one approved, which is, it's amazing. you multiply that out over the, the year or the quarter of the month and those, those rates are impressive. And were you able to track those things through your current measurement or you haven't used your AI tooling yet? To me to, to monitor, to look back. How were you able to document all that stuff differently?

DeEtte Feurtado

I did have reports generated. We had Excel files that we kept track of things. those metrics are only showing like the final output of everything. Like now I'm really trying to focus more in the total days in between the stages of it. going into it, I had no idea that the results would be as successful as they have been so far. sometimes I still try to figure out like, okay, well what was it exactly that we did differently? but definitely focusing on the team's confidence and the level of appreciation that they felt for the work that they were doing. Definitely giving them the tools that they needed to do their jobs better and more efficiently. Creating, throughput process, goal measurements, me investing, in their own development and just really trying to get into the team and be part of the experience, I think, really all contributed to it

Matt Haney

Yeah, absolutely. They, they wanna, they want to, uh, they want to, work with you, which is awesome. Well, I want to get us to a point of, of closing up, and wanted to just, thank you for your depth, you know, you talk so eloquently and so, in detail around these different things and, for me it's you are a nice reminder and refresher to me to. Slow down a little more, listen a little more, be more intentional, talk less, two ears, one mouth, listen more and talk less. So thank you for giving me, some detail and some depth on all the various things. And I still, I don't think I realized this when we worked together, that your entire career has been around involving with the Medex product, which I think is absolutely fascinating. It just shows you, staying with a tool that works, continuing to find ways to implement it and improve it, and build systems around it is pretty powerful.

DeEtte Feurtado

Yeah. Thanks so much. And every time that something collapsed, the next little step was there for me, so I stepped up to it, I guess.

Matt Haney

That's exactly right.

Speaker 2

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